Career in Law Work Experience Days

The legal sector is an exciting and ever changing industry, whether you work as a lawyer or in business services.

We will be offering a Career in Law Work Experience Day in February and October half terms each year for 16 - 18 year olds in full time education, starting from February 2025. 

Our Career in Law Work Experience Day is designed to provide insight into working in a law firm and provide meaningful work experience which students can draw on in the future. 

Students will gain insight into work in the legal sector both from the perspective of lawyers as well as in business services teams such as Finance, Marketing, Human Resources and IT. 

The day will provide students with an opportunity to come into our head office in London and meet people who work within the legal industry. 

Sessions throughout the day will include an introduction to working in a law firm, routes into law, different roles within a law firm, and employability activities such as interview practice and skills based case studies. You’ll meet a range of people across the Firm and have a chance to ask lots of questions and build your network.

Eligibility 

The scheme is open to students aged 16 - 18 years old in full time education, studying GCSEs/A Levels or equivalent at the time of the insight day. 

Application Process 

We do not recruit on a rolling basis as we believe all applications deserve to be reviewed. Please don’t rush your application as you’ll want to spend time researching our Firm and considering your answers. However, please do ensure you submit your application well in advance of the deadline to account for any issues.

We have 20 places available per day, so we recommend you use the below guidance to ensure your application answers are as detailed as possible.

Applications are currently closed. You can register your interest for our next day using the register your interest link.

Please note we are unable to accept late applications. 

What do we look for in applications?

Work Experience:

• While it’s not a requirement to have work experience, we would like you to list any experiences you have had. This helps us understand your wider application.
• We are looking for candidates to tell us about all of their work experience, including part time jobs, caring responsibilities, volunteering and virtual workshops etc.
• When explaining your work experience, talk about what your responsibilities were, the skills you acquired, and how you implemented them.
• For anyone who is looking for further ‘work experience opportunities’, there are many free virtual work experience platforms you can access such as Forage and SpringPod. You don’t need to complete these before applying to the scheme, but we wanted to share these resources in case they are of interest.

What interests you about a career in the legal sector:

• We would like you to discuss what genuinely interests you about a career in law or in the legal sector and why this is of interest. People may be interested in different roles within a law firm for example, the route to being a Solicitor, or Business Services roles such as HR and Marketing within the legal sector.  

• But be careful to ensure you are answering the question about what interests you and why, not where your experience matches a career in the legal sector.  

• We encourage you to give examples of sources that have been used during your research or have sparked your interest in a career in the legal sector, for example a TV programme, or something you may have seen on the news.  

• We like you to talk about why the legal sector specifically excites you. Candidates can fall down here by not giving enough depth of reasoning. In this question we are looking to see the ways you have researched careers in the legal sector and why this research resonated with you. This will evidence  of your interest at this point in time.

• Students apply at different stages of their journey, so we appreciate there will be varying levels of experience and research. It is more important to explain what areas are of interest and why.

• If there are specific roles or departments that are of interest, make sure you mention them! This can be legal roles such as lawyers or paralegals, or other departments like Marketing, IT and Finance.

Based on your research, what three aspects of Charles Russell Speechlys excite you the most:

• This question is looking for you to showcase what genuinely interests you, so please write what has interested you particularly and why, not what you think we might be interested in hearing. By talking about what has stood out for you, your answers will come across in a more authentic way.

• You’ll need to do some research on the firm and there are great resources available online to help you learn about our firm, such as:

  • Our social media accounts (Instagram: @crstrainees | TikTok: @crsearlytalent)
  • The news pages on our website highlight the work we have recently undertaken.
  • Legal information platforms such as All About Law, Law Careers Net and Chambers Student, have pages about our Firm, and  further detail about the legal sector.
  • Charles Russell Speechlys podcasts are available in all the usual podcast platforms such as Spotify.

What are you hoping to learn more about through this opportunity and why:

• We would like you to share what you hope to learn and the skills you hope to develop from attending. In doing so, you’ll showcase your curiosity. This may involve learning more about the routes in a legal career, such as routes into qualifying as a solicitor, or how different roles work within a law firm.

• What you hope to learn doesn’t have to be related to the role of a Solicitor. For example, you may be interested in the role of Marketing in a law firm, the working environment within a law firm, how a law firm makes money or perhaps how we get our clients!

• Be sure to add details as to why it is important for you to learn about these things.

• Giving detailed reasoning is important here as we want to ensure you have thought about why you are applying to our work experience day.

• We also want to understand what you are keen to gain from the day so we can ensure our content and activities are tailored.

General Advice

• Attention to detail is vital so triple check every place you have written the firm’s name. A good way to do this is to find every time you have written ‘Charles’ and check you’ve spelt our full name correctly. Using the Ctrl F function can be helpful to do this.

• General spelling and grammar are key – we often see poor use of apostrophes and a lower case ‘I’ when talking in the first person. Try to eliminate spelling and grammar issues.

• If you choose to copy your answers across from a Word Document, please ensure that your formatting remains consistent, for example, consistent bullet points or spacing between paragraphs. This will make your responses easier to read.

• Be sure to answer each question in full and add as much detail as possible to each section of the application form.

• There are some useful answer structures you can employ to help achieve the depth we are looking for. The ‘Point, Example, Explain’ method is useful to highlight your key reasoning / motivations, bring this to life through something you’ve found interesting through your research, and then give details as to why this is important for you. 

Apply here