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On Instagram, Legal Cheek recently posed a question to its nearly 100k followers: what gives you the ‘ick’ when it comes to law firms? While landing a training contract can seem like an elusive goal, we were eager to uncover what factors might deter aspiring lawyers from applying to particular outfits. A significant portion of followers responded to our call-to-action, sharing their major ‘red flags’…
It’s evident from our law student followers that diversity within training cohorts holds significant importance. However, a major concern arises when this diversity fails to translate into representation further up the ladder.
“[Law firms] claiming they are ‘extremely diverse’ but not seeing this translating to their senior management,” one Insta user said. “It’s giving a ‘glass ceiling’ for their more junior employees who are either woman, from an ethnic minority etc.”
“Talking about DEI in public but not actually having diversity and inclusion initiatives or groups internally…” another TC hunter added.
A big gripe about diversity also extended to law firm recruitment events. One comment which complained about firms doing “tailored events … to a specific set of Russell Groups/Oxbridge instead of opening it up to all unis” attracted over 200 likes.
Other lawyer hopefuls took to the comments to criticise the application process at some firms. It’s no secret that TC applications are often lengthy and time consuming, but certain aspects of the process can apparently be a big red flag for some students.
“Application forms that take four hours to fill, responses are unable to be saved on each page, so you can only save when you finish the whole application,” one student complained.
Another griped about “law firms putting you through their tests AFTER you spend hours crafting an application”. Continuing, the said “if all it takes for a rejection is a random CAPP score, make us take the test first so that we don’t waste our time with filling out a whole application form!”
Many others took to the comments to complain about law firms asking for GCSE grades in applications because this “shows [that] they are cookie cutters and progress is near impossible”.
And it’s not just TC applications either. Our followers also criticised the sometimes convoluted process for applying for shorter work experience opportunities:
“[There are] very complicated application forms especially for little programs,” one student told us. “Like why are there five application questions and a Watson Glaser test to take for just a three hour first-year insight day event?? Kmt [kiss my teeth]. You can only imagine what the TC application will be like.”
Other things that our readers (red) flagged were poor work/life balance, low retention rates and high turnover of lawyers. With some of these factors tending to be par for the course in the legal industry, one user joked that her biggest red flag is “[t]he fact it is a law firm”!
When it comes to law firm perks, one student highlighted that adding “an office fruit basket” to the list of benefits is a huge ick. Ironically, some commenters noted that sometime too many free amenities can also be a red flag.
“Firms that have sleeping pods, breakfast bars, gyms etc. those are the ones who provide everything so you have no reason to go home 😂,” one student warned.
The late working hours of many firms also featured heavily in the replies. Having a culture of being “proud” of long working hours, and trainees “not being able to say no” were big turn-offs for these Insta commenters.
“… [C]heck out how the offices look at night. Are the lights blazing away late into the evening or during the small hours of the morning? This is a sure sign that employees are working ridiculous hours and junior members of the professional staff will be taking the brunt of that.”
What would put you off applying to a law firm? Let us know in the comments below? 🚩👇
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