Winter Placement Review

I found the winter vacation placement in Leeds to be a really enjoyable week overall. Not only did I get lots of real trainee tasks which were interesting, educational and insightful, we also had networking lunches and attended the Christmas party to allow us to get to know people at the firm.

I didn't feel like an inconvenience, everyone was happy to give me work and go through feedback with me. Everyone at the firm made an effort to speak to you and the fact we were invited and encouraged to go to their Christmas party made us feel really valued and welcomed.

I did receive some from the trainees but not really much from more senior members. I understand, however, that people are busy but it would have been helpful to receive more. Would have also had been useful to receive more information on the office and the practice areas the particular one does in more detail.

I have learnt numerous things about trainee tasks which would help me on other schemes and on my training contract such as how to draft certain things etc. I also learnt a lot about the culture of the firm and how this can vary massively in firms that look the same on paper so that was useful to know.

We received a timetable at the start of the week telling us how we would spend our time. Most of it we were just in department but we had 'networking lunches' which were good but could have been more structured with more specific practice areas instead of just speaking to the same trainees most days.

I think everyone on the placement really enjoyed it so there was a good atmosphere amongst us but at times it was very full-on so we were exhausted by the end of it. Everyone in the firm is super friendly and welcoming too so it was always nice when walking around.

There wasn't really any personal training and development aside from what you take from the week yourself rather than the firm investing in us. However, the firm is limited how they can do this in just a week placement alongside working in department and the assessments but maybe they could make the trainees focus on this more when giving work.

Speaking to numerous employees and spending a week in the office allowed me to understand how friendly and open the firm is. You can tell it's not hierarchical or traditional in that sense which is really nice to see. The networking lunches and Christmas party also helped with this too.

The networking lunches could have been more structured to allow us to meet more people and understand the different departments better. There was only the Christmas party as a social event which was good fun but the day before interviews. It was a good place to talk to people but perhaps another social event to get to know the other people on the team would have been nice.

I only found out about the charity committee because my trainee supervisor was on it and they had a couple events that week such as the charity singathon. Other than that, they didn't let us know about anything like this and how you could get involved and what other things they do.