Winter Vacation Scheme Review

Vacation Scheme students were each given at least one Supervisor (an Associate) and at least one Trainee Buddy. You are given a specific team to work in. There were a number of talks, such as inductions, introductions to the firm and their sectors, overviews of the D&I networks, amongst other things. The rest of the week was largely determined by the student themselves, in terms of meeting with their supervisors for work on live matters, networking with lawyers from other teams, asking for work from other departments. There was also a virtual social event midway through the week.

As I mentioned, it is very much up to the student to contact people from different teams that you are interested in, outside of your team. This means you can really tailor the experience to learning more about the specific areas of law that you are interested in. There was a talk about the overview of the training contract, which is the role that we as Vacation Scheme students were assessed and interviewed for during the scheme.

As a non-law student, I gained a huge amount of legal knowledge - everything that I did involved learning something new, which was fantastic. I developed skills such as networking and communication, as it was very much up to students to be proactive and reach out to people and organise meetings. I carried out some summary tasks, research tasks, meaning I developed my ability to pick out relevant information from a large document. I also feel that I developed my commercial awareness in terms of how a law firm works and operates as a business.

The culture of Clyde & Co is genuinely one that I cannot fault. A lot of firms claim to be inclusive, collegiate and friendly, but Clyde & Co really show it. The people I met with were incredibly friendly, and more than happy to give me their time for me to learn from them. There is a good balance between friendliness and professionalism, with people wanting to get to know you as a person but not overstepping the line. We were encouraged not to work too late into the evenings too.

I really enjoyed it, we were made to feel welcome by the Early Careers Team, given enough of an introduction to the firm. I feel like I was both challenged and supported whilst doing work tasks - the perfect balance. Everyone on the scheme was friendly, we got on well, and it didn't feel like we were competing against each other. I think the small cohort of only 10 really helped this. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the week.

Yes