Steve Bloomer, BPP Careers Development Manager, on matching yourself to the right firm, the mistakes to avoid, and bouncing back from rejection
“The biggest takeaway is to identify the right law firm for you,” says Steve Bloomer, Careers Development Manager at BPP University Law School. “The worst thing you can do is get a training contract offer at the wrong firm and be stuck there.” It is a message that runs through almost everything Bloomer has to say about law firm applications, and one that a decade advising aspiring lawyers has only sharpened.
Bloomer heads up the Careers Development Team, the careers side of BPP’s wider Future Talent Development function, and leads a group of career development consultants. “I’ve been at BPP within the careers field for about 10 years, mainly specialising within law.” Before that came a career rooted in recruitment, taking in graduate and early-careers hiring, a stint in trainee recruitment at top City law firm, and a spell running an independent recruitment business.
So where should students begin? With themselves, Bloomer insists. “Invest time in what motivates you as an individual.” If that sounds abstract, he has a simpler piece of advice. Create a wish list. “Do you want to work with big law firms? In a particular sector? Which location? What kind of office environment or clients?” Only once that list exists does the hunt for a firm start in earnest. “Once you have that list, use it to drive the matching process,” Bloomer explains. “Research firms online to create a longlist, then narrow it down by attending events, law fairs, or open days to create a shortlist.”
The reward, Bloomer promises, arrives when it is finally time to write the application. “Writing the application becomes much easier because you’ve invested time and the ‘hard work’ of matching your interests to the firm,” he says. “The temptation to cast the net wider should be resisted. Don’t compromise on what you want.”
That emphasis on self-knowledge is built into the support on offer at BPP, Bloomer tells Legal Cheek Careers. “Anyone who signs up gets instant access to our Future Talent Development team.” Students can meet regularly with specialist law careers consultants and use an online careers platform with diagnostic tools that help them identify the right legal career path and assess their skills. There are workshops throughout the year too, where law firms are brought in to speak to students. Beyond that sit a handful of subscription tools, including one that uses AI to help draft and score CVs and cover letters, and another for practising video interviews with feedback. These sit alongside virtual internship programmes like Forage and specific resources for international students looking for careers in the UK or their home countries.
Having seen thousands of applications over his career, Bloomer has noticed the same errors cropping up. “The mistakes have changed over the years, but they’re still rooted in the same thing, which is not being tailored specifically to the right firm and role, or not understanding what firms are looking for,” he says. “In the old days, people used a scattergun approach, writing the same answer for every application.” Today the usual culprit is technology. “Now, a common mistake is using AI quite lazily,” Bloomer notes, before circling back to that familiar root cause. “It goes back to not investing the time at the start to work out what you want from your career and how that specific law firm can help you achieve your goals.” There are still the obvious slips, such as spelling mistakes or copying in the wrong firm’s name, but “the real mistakes are from not investing enough time to make a solid application.”
If one anxiety tends to dominate, it is a perceived lack of legal experience, which Bloomer thinks is largely misplaced. “A lot of students worry about not having a lot of legal work experience,” he says. “While it’s always great to have it, it isn’t essential because there are so many skills and attributes that law firms look for which you can pick up elsewhere.” Retail and hospitality jobs, for example, offer plenty of opportunity to develop client service and relationship building skills. “In truth, you probably deal with much more stressful customers in retail and hospitality than you would elsewhere,”. Student societies count too. Help the treasurer secure sponsorship and “you’ve built up commercial awareness”. Join a sports team and “you’ve built teamwork skills”. The challenge is in articulating why these experiences are relevant to becoming a lawyer. “Don’t assume the recruiter is going to know. Tell them why what you’ve done is going to make you a successful lawyer.”
It is when an application stalls that Bloomer’s central message really earns its keep. Take psychometric tests, the verbal, numerical and critical-thinking exercises (the Watson Glaser test, Bloomer notes, is common in law) and the newer gamified versions, right down to the one where you press a button to inflate a balloon until it bursts. “These are designed to assess some specific skills, not whether you’re going to be a great lawyer,” Bloomer explains. A knock-back, in other words, is no verdict on your ability. “So if you are unsuccessful, it doesn’t mean you won’t be a great lawyer. It just means that firm decided you weren’t what they wanted at that stage.” Firms, Bloomer points out, often set the bar high on purpose. “Sometimes firms set the pass mark on these tests pretty high, because they’ve got a lot of applications, so they’re prepared to lose some candidates if it means everyone who passes has the specific skills or attributes they are looking for.”
We ask Bloomer for one piece of advice for anyone bracing for the autumn recruitment season. “Don’t compromise!” he tells us. A bruising rejection, he knows, can do a number on the confidence. “If you have been through a rigorous selection process and were unsuccessful, it’s tempting to think you aren’t good enough, but that isn’t the case.” Far more often it is simply a matter of fit. The fix loops back to where we started, self-knowledge. “Know what makes you happy and what your version of success is.” And one rejection, Bloomer insists, settles nothing. “Being rejected once doesn’t mean you will always be rejected. It just means ‘not that time’.”
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