Organised holiday placement schemes are becoming increasingly important, to both students and law firms, writes Polly Botsford


Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote: ‘A moment’s insight is worth a life’s experience.’ When it comes to getting an insight into what it is like to be a lawyer, a few weeks working in a law firm can reveal a plethora of truths to the uninitiated.



Work experience has evolved. The informal arrangements, varying in content and form, have metamorphosed into planned and structured holiday placement schemes. The change has been caused by increased competition for talent among the larger firms and, from the other side, a scramble for the best jobs by students.



There are some concerns that the schemes have made work experience into something fabricated, thus losing that ‘moment’s insight’. But in reality most schemes allow students not only to get a snapshot of life in a law firm, but also sell the firm to the student and the student to the firm.



The organised holiday placement scheme runs mainly in the summer for between one and three weeks. It involves a full agenda of lectures, lunches and drinks, as well as role-plays and outings. Students sit in a department and are allocated a ‘buddy’ or ‘mentor’ trainer for the duration and they are paid for their efforts – about £250 per week in the City, about £100 outside it.



The formal scheme arose for many reasons, partly out of concerns that the traditional pattern of casually arranged work experience was nepotistic and therefore closed off the vast majority of potential candidates. As Manjot Dhanjal, director of equality and diversity at the Law Society, says: ‘Casual arrangements mitigate against diversity.’



A proper scheme, therefore, opened up the process. The result is a detailed assessment of candidates for the schemes – and stiff competition: Allen & Overy receives 1,500 applications between October and January for about 150 places. ‘They do have to go through a rigorous selection process to get on the scheme. We assess them in the same way we do for training contracts,’ explains Zoe Gordon, the firm’s graduate recruitment manager.



The schemes were also born out of an increasingly competitive market for law firms chasing good candidates and for students trying to get a foot in the door, so they have become an intrinsic and express part of the recruitment process.



Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer takes in about 100 students each year. Deborah Dalgleish, head of UK trainee solicitor recruitment at the firm, says: ‘Quite a reasonable proportion get taken on [as trainees]. It doubles your chances of getting a training contract. It is not a prerequisite for applying for a training contract, but applicants do need to have an informed understanding of a law firm before applying.’ This is why most students will look to secure a work placement between their second and third years at university so that they are in good shape by the time they are applying for training contracts the following year.



Nor is this a magic circle phenomenon. Last year, 42% of students who did work placement schemes at Cobbetts in Manchester went on to get training contracts there. ‘If they have been on the scheme, they do not need an interview when applying for a training contract,’ says Janet Toombs, the firm’s graduate recruitment/training officer. Students give a presentation in front of the training principal at the end of their one-week placement, which is as good as an interview. ‘It costs upwards of £120,000 to train a trainee for two years, so it is critical,’ she adds.



But if it is an occasion for students and firms to market themselves, do they get a true picture of the firm? Ms Dalgleish believes so. ‘There is always a point when the graduate recruitment team has left where the students can ask frank questions, such as at social events,’ she says. ‘I think they do ask the trainees what they really care about, such as what kind of hours they work.’



Sue Lenkowski, head of training, development and graduate recruitment at national firm Irwin Mitchell, agrees: ‘Students think we are spin doctors. They get the real truth from the trainees.’



It is not only the purpose of work experience that has changed but also the content. The traditional work experience ‘experience’ often left students photocopying for a month, perhaps learning about office life, but not about being a lawyer. Schemes are now, therefore, filled with activities.



For instance, Charles Russell, a medium-sized London firm, has a detailed programme including a mock court, a debate, a trip round legal London, and for the first time this year, students will be set a ‘Dragon’s Den’-style challenge: they will be given a business idea which they will have to market.



Freshfields’ two-week scheme includes a full-day case study designed to show how a commercial transaction works. The students will conduct the negotiations and take the transaction through to the completion meeting.



Almost all firms organise social events for their students, where they are ‘given alcohol’, as one recruitment manager describes it, although it is nothing compared to some of the big firms in the US, where students enjoy the high life to a remarkable extent in a bid to win their affections.



But are these gimmicks? Irwin Mitchell thinks so. The firm’s work-placement scheme is far more focused on the work. ‘We don’t have manufactured activities,’ says Ms Lenkowski. ‘Here, they do whatever work is around. They experience what it is really like – good and bad – rather than what people would like to think it is actually like. I am not arrogant enough to believe that this is the place for everyone. Two years is a long time to spend anywhere if you’re not the right fit.’



Similarly, the Government Legal Service (GLS) focuses on the work. James Murphy, a recruitment officer at the GLS, says: ‘The work is what is on offer. They are given specific tasks. One student who was placed with the Ministry of Defence was put to work on the interesting case of soldiers who were being considered for pardons for cowardice.’ A far cry from the photocopier.



Ms Gordon believes that placements include different elements as well as pure legal work because they also reflect the fact lawyers need other skills. This is why Allen & Overy includes training on communication and presentation skills during the work-placement scheme.



But it is also the case that almost all of the schemes have at their core the notion of shadowing a trainee, helping them do whatever it is they are doing, researching points of law or drafting minutes, even if there are other more lively activities alongside this.



Students do have to be careful, however, if they do more than one scheme a summer. One solicitor recounts how he spent the first week of his second placement grumbling about how it was not as good as the City firm he had finished working at a couple of weeks before. ‘Someone dobbed me in and I was called in to see the head of HR,’ he recalls. ‘She gave me a stern talking-to. She made it clear that if I wasn’t happy, I didn’t have to stay the full three weeks. But I just apologised humbly – I needed the money.’ He did not bother applying for a training contract there.



Work experience in its more casual guise still exists outside of the formal schemes. For instance, casual arrangements are still used in high-street firms, mainly because of a lack of resources. As Paul Bargery, a partner at small Merseyside practice Haygarth Jones, says: ‘We don’t have a scheme because we are absolutely stretched and don’t have the time.’



Often a local law firm takes on work experience to play its part in the local community. Dowse & Co, a firm in Dalston, East London, takes on school children through Inspire, an education and business partnership. Ted Sarkis, the partner in charge, explains how it works: ‘We take on about three school-age children a year who get to help out, listen to tapes of interviews by police, or get taken along to court. It is incredibly helpful for them in building confidence.



‘We don’t have the time for a structured scheme, but what we have works very well.’



Informal work experience arrangements do also still exist in some larger firms, running alongside the more formal schemes, though on the whole, they are strongly discouraged, and are not recognised as being part of recruitment.



In either form, the value of work experience is doubtless. The sheer numbers of applicants reflects that, 1,500 to the GLS last year, for only 60 places. In private practice, the ratio of applicant-to-place is rarely less than ten to one.



Its importance is the reason why the Law Society diversity access scheme, which assists the disadvantaged in getting access to a legal career, will from next year concentrate its efforts on getting access to work placements for students who would otherwise not be able to.



In fact, a moment’s insight is more likely to lead to a life’s experience. Oliver Wendell Holmes was wrong all along.



Polly Botsford is a freelance journalist