Vacation Scheme Review

Vacation scheme spent with the corporate team helping with pitches, letters of engagement, document lists and approvals needed according to Investor Agreements & Articles of Association, loan note drafting, completion bibles, updating statutory books, proofreading due diligence reports, and research tasks. Sat in on a call talking a client through the IPO process. Reached out to different departments to learn more about the firm, such as Competition, Corporate Tax, Employment, TMT, Restructuring, Commercial Litigation and IP.

Without fail, everyone I reached out to at Pinsent Masons took the time not only to speak to me about their work & experiences at the firm, but also to ask questions about and take an interest in me. I think this says a lot about the culture at Pinsent Masons. Despite having pre-existing reasons for preferring certain departments, the vacation scheme showed me every role at the firm is a useful, fulfilling and interesting one.

Detail focus - spotting spelling, grammar, formatting & other mistakes, and ensuring the details in pitches, letters of engagement, research tasks, loan notes, statutory books, due diligence reports etc. are faultless.
Business interest - always asking about the context of each project & thinking about the implications for Pinsent Masons.
Openness - reaching out to different departments with questions about their work.
Positive impact - learning to be proactive and pre-empting the need for particular information in various tasks, without being directly instructed.
Personal drive / Personal responsibility - consistently asking for & going through feedback and seeking clarification on elements of work I had completed.
Intellectual Capability - throwing myself into unfamiliar work, learning to collate questions to ask in one go, and picking up & applying new information quickly.
Self-organisation - always clarifying the deadline & urgency of tasks, being transparent about my progress, and completing tasks on-time and to a high standard.

Without fail, everyone I reached out to at Pinsent Masons took the time not only to speak to me about their work & experiences at the firm, but also to ask questions about and take an interest in me. I think this says a lot about the culture at Pinsent Masons.

I enjoyed the insight because I thought a great balance was struck between getting us out of our comfort zone with unfamiliar work & needing to be proactive in reaching out to people and learning about the firm, and allowing us the space to make mistakes & show our capabilities. There was a great balance between the work & social side of things. The lack of interview / assessment at the end also meant the experience was more enjoyable.

Yes