Vacation Scheme Review

Overall, the placement was incredibly useful for getting a feel for the firm and its culture. As well as having the opportunity to work on some challenging tasks, the week was a lot of fun.

I have never been given as much responsibility on other work experience placements as I had on my Vacation Scheme with Walker Morris. I was conducting research to help with real client cases and felt that what I produced was really appreciated. One highlight was the willingness of everyone to provide thorough feedback and listen to your opinion.

I felt able to ask anyone for help at any time. There was an open door policy and each of us had an assigned trainee and supervisor. Moreover, we were sat in an office with our supervisor which meant we had support at all times. I also found this useful for feeling more relaxed an comfortable more quickly and was soon happily asking any questions I have about the career, or just generally.

Having only just finished my second year at university, I will be able to apply a lot of what I did in future. Namely, the research skills involved. Having originally felt apprehensive about my ability to complete work at my stage, I soon realised that if you have the right research skills you can work out most things. This gave me a lot of reassurance and confidence by the end of the week and going forward, I will be able to apply that to any new content I cover.

We were provided with a detailed timetable on the first day. There were a number of sessions scheduled throughout the week which broke it up well. This included two assessments on the Wednesday and Friday morning, leaving us with enough time to prepare.

The best word I can use to describe the atmosphere is fun! Everyone was very easy to get along with and happy to chat about general things alongside work. I felt very relaxed and comfortable after just a couple of days which made the remainder of the week even more enjoyable. Overall, the general atmosphere made you feel like a valued member of the team.

It is clear that if I were to secure a training contract with the firm, I would receive a very high level of help and support to make me the best lawyer I could be. It is clear that whatever ambitions you have, you will be helped in achieving them.

I feel like I had a brilliant insight into the day to day life. However, as I was only in one department I am aware this could differ. The only down side was that the placement only lasted a week. An extra week in another department may have been more useful.

Very quickly it was clear what the culture was like at the firm. The induction on the first day is great for this. The second afternoon we also listened to a number of presentations by the trainees who shared their individual experiences which was fantastic for an overall insight and prompted questions which could be asked later in the week.

Given how much I enjoyed the placement, I was reassured of my ambition to enter into a career in commercial law.

We were given £175 at the end of the week to help with covering any expenses.

Being a single site firm, it was very easy to network. You could access anyone at any time and a number of social events enabled us to ask questions in a less formal environment.

The events were a lot of fun. We went for drinks on the Monday and Friday with the trainees. The main social was held on the Wednesday night where we played table tennis, pool and beer pong. Generally people stayed out fairly late and let their hair down!

The trainee presentations were very useful for this and it would have been easy to ask anyone for information on this. There are a number of sports teams amongst other things such as charity events.

Absolutely, it was a valuable experience of a more unique commercial law firm with it being single site. It was interesting to see how this made the networking and social aspects different from other firms.