For aspiring lawyers, vacation schemes are an essential path to career progression. Grant Murgatroyd speaks to this summer's batch of interns and finds out that the chance to network and socialise with employers can be as vital as the actual work

On 15 August, the body of 21-year-old Moritz Erhardt was found in the shower of his east London lodgings. The student was an intern in the investment banking division of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and was reported to have collapsed and died after working 72 hours almost without a break.

His death cast the spotlight on student work schemes in banking and other professions – including the law – which are notorious for their long-hours cultures. No one denies that law involves hard work and long hours. But firms are quick to distance themselves from the 24/7 culture of banking. 

"Students have got to show determination, commitment and enthusiasm for everything they are asked to do. But very rarely are our vacation students expected to work the same kind of hours as our trainees or associates," says Aster Crawshaw, training principal at Addleshaw Goddard. 

Standard working hours on a vacation scheme, which usually last two or three weeks, are nine-to-five and few students spend much more time than that in the office – half an hour extra at the start and end of the day is the norm – in part because the schemes also come with a fairly full social calendar. 

Beth Hammond (pictured), who worked on a vacation scheme at Simmons & Simmons this summer, says: "It was a tiring three weeks, but the hours were what they said they were going to be.

"We usually went straight out to a social activity in the evening, so it was quite a lot of commitment. But it was good to get a balance of work and socialising with people from the firm."

On the ladder

Work placements, also known as vacation schemes, are becoming an increasingly important rung on the legal ladder. It has never been harder to get a training contract: in 2012 there were just 4,869 registered with the Law Society, a 10.5% drop on the preceding year.

That stat is even more worrying when you take into account the fact that there are more than 10,000 students a year taking the Law Practice Certificate (LPC). 

The first thing students see when visiting the Solicitors Regulation Authority website is a stark warning: "You need to know that the number of employers able to offer training contracts may be dictated by economic factors and can be significantly lower than the number of LPC graduates."

Anything a student can do to stand out from the crowd will be invaluable in winning the race to a training contract. And there is no better way to get noticed than a stint working for a firm. Tom Hopwood, who went on a vacation scheme with Addleshaws that led to a training contract, says: "The vacation scheme was instrumental in terms of getting a training contract position. 

"Following the vacation scheme, we had a breakout meeting where they asked if you were still interested in a training contract, and of course I was. It all forms part of the same recruitment process."

Some consider getting on a vacation scheme to be the most significant hurdle on the career path. Firms receive hundreds of applications for the placements and some offer a training contract to about half the students working during their holidays. 

Addleshaws, for example, has 50 to 60 people on vacation schemes and takes on 30 to 35 trainees a year, about two-thirds of them from the placement pool.

Hit the target

One student who appears to have cracked the application process is Liverpudlian Lee Malam (pictured), who was invited on to seven vacation schemes this year, although he was only able to take up four of them. "I applied to 10 firms – which some would say is too many," he says, before stressing that this was in fact fewer applications than many students make.

Malam adds: "Doing a small amount of applications and tailoring is so important. The scattergun approach does not work. If you don't show a firm you have actually researched them and shown an interest, then you are not going to get past the paper stage." 

Students and recruiters agree that if you have not researched the firm for which you are applying, you might as well forget it. Crawshaw advises: "Apply selectively. You will not get through the initial sift unless it is very clear that you have done your research on the firm you are applying for and that you know what it is that distinguishes them in the market."

That is, of course, easier said than done. Law firms pride themselves on their individual cultures. But for the outsider, it is hard to tell one from another. Trade magazines and websites provide valuable insight.

Corporate websites might even yield the odd nugget. Yet recruiters and successful applicants say students should try to speak either to others who have completed vacation placements or training contracts, or, better still, work at the firm. 

Interview techniques

Once over that first hurdle, candidates need to make it through a rigorous assessment on the interview day. The interview itself can be of limited value, according to participants, with employers asking standard questions and students giving safe, non-controversial answers. But assessment days are about much more than just the interview.  

"Employers are looking for you to take part in group tasks, instruction-taking exercises and psychometric tests, and that is something you can't just swot up on in the week leading up to the interview," says Malam, who argues that the various assessments will be better navigated by those who have already made a long term-commitment to breaking into law.

"You need to be looking for work experience, opportunities at your educational institution, and then fingers crossed when the day comes round, you have built up enough experience and enough confidence to be able to shine on the day."

Courtship rituals

Once on the scheme, the balance of power in the relationship between student and law firm undergoes a subtle but significant shift and becomes more equal, with each party out to impress the other, rather than the one-sided courtship of the interview process. 

While there are still elements of the old-fashioned 'gofer' in some schemes – one student recalls being sent out three times to buy a birthday card for the daughter of a partner – most of the work is "real".

"The work placements have been really good," says Olivia Mitchison, who spent part of her summer working with legal aid firm Imran Khan and Partners. "I got really hands-on experience, taking phone calls, checking transcripts, and helping out on hearings that were about to happen. On some of the ones I did when I was younger, I didn't get to do an awful lot. But now that I have done my LPC, they can give me more to do."

David Ryan recently completed a vacation scheme at Leeds-based commercial firm Shulmans. The work was challenging, but he says he was supported all the way by the firm's trainees and associates. 

On one occasion, he was asked to draft a letter of response to the opponent in a claim where there was no precedent, and he had to come up with responses to each of the points being made. He says he was delighted when his draft was sent largely unaltered to the client and approved straight off. 

"It gave me confidence that what I had picked up from the LPC was relevant and worthwhile and that I could actually do the job in practice. But there is also a lot of leg-work and a lot of mundane tasks that you have to do, so it gives you a complete picture of what it will be like as a job."

Vacation placements differ from work experience in that a student is unlikely to have much time to tweet about the contents of their sandwich. "You can clearly see that firms make a real effort to ensure that the supervisors and people in the office are giving you work," says Malam. 

"I've been doing anything from legal research to actually drafting clauses in agreements for big-name clients. Obviously, these things get checked over – or might even go in the bin, for all we know – but it is nice to know that they will set you that challenge. It's rewarding to know that you are doing real work."

At the end of the day

In many ways, the social element of vacation schemes is more important than the work. Crawshaw (pictured) says: "Yes, we want fantastic technical lawyers, but you would not have even got an interview if you hadn't met the academic standard. 

"You need to show how you are going to build relationships with clients and how in the future you will be a client relationship manager and a work winner."

Much of that will be determined by how students get on at the various social events, which can vary from a bowling night to a champagne reception on the London Eye or the ritual humiliation of pedalling round the City of London on a bicycle bus while local workers merrily chant "Interns! Interns!" at you. 

The emphasis is on fun and social interaction, with the obvious caveat that the kind of behaviour that makes somebody a star in the student union bar is probably not going to earn them many brownie points in the buttoned-up world of corporate law. 

"I can't recommend going on the socials highly enough," says Hopwood. "That is when they really appreciate you as a person and your personality and whether or not you would fit in with the other people at the firm. It is a great opportunity to network with people you might not have encountered elsewhere."

Alternative views

A placement can also be instrumental in radically altering a student's view of the law and where they want to practise, according to Louise Gaspar-Brown, who has completed three internships. She recalls: "When I first started out, I was dead against going into family law and I wanted to do employment law or international law. 

"But now that I have seen the work [family lawyers] do, I have found the whole area fascinating. I did not realise how vast cases can be and how areas of the law intersect with one another. I'd rather be at a high street firm because the emphasis is more personal."

And a vacation scheme is not the only route to a training contract. Alexandra Keane decided to go for a full-time position before doing her LPC to get some work experience under her belt and applied "here, there and everywhere" before securing a position in the legal department at Adidas, where she worked for 12 months. 

That led to a part-time position in a niche intellectual property firm, where one of her roles was managing the trademark portfolio for Oxford-based Darbys Solicitors. In turn, this helped her secure a job and training contract offer there.

"I had a meeting with the [Darbys] managing partner Simon McCrum about trademarks, and I mentioned to him that I was going to be applying for their training contract position and asked if we could have a meeting about it. He agreed and a few weeks later offered me a paralegal position."

Keane also stresses that she had to go through the formal application process for the training contract, which she will start in 2014. 

But for those who decide to stick to the vacation route, succe-ssful applicants say the process does still demon-strate the reality of working at a firm – warts and all – while also allowing students to get a better sense of what kind of legal career might work for them.

"It's been a real eye-opener about how different employers operate and their good and bad points because no employer is perfect," Ryan concludes. "It gave me an idea of what appealed to me and what I was suited to because that is a difficult thing to work out when you are still studying."