DLA PIPER : What It Takes To Be A Trainee Solicitor
Ennis McCreadie, who graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 202, works in the Intellectual Property and Technology team at DLA Piper. She shares her insight into how she got into the firm, tips for applications, what a day in the life as a trainee looks like and how she built her commercial awareness.
What would be your general advice for those applying to firms?
Have a think about what kind of law you would like to go into, whether it’s family, criminal or commercial. You will find that law firms may seem similar but have different sectors, clients, cultures and office locations. Do your research and apply to the right one for you. However, for this article, I’m going to be talking about commercial law and insights into DLA Piper specifically.
Can you share your specific advice for applying to DLA Piper?
2023 Internship, you need to be a penultimate year law student, final year non-law student, graduate, or career changer. Applications for this open Monday 5th September 2022 and close Friday 30th December 2022, however do see our website for more info.
CV and commercial awareness question – For your CV, ensure that it is no longer than two pages, has a clear structure and can be easily read. For the commercial awareness questions, potentially listen to the ‘Freakonomics’ podcast on Spotify, read the Financial Times or look on Practical Law (the sister of Westlaw) for inspiration on what to talk about.
A good rule of thumb when writing a commercial awareness piece is to ask yourself, ‘would someone find what I have written about interesting?’. Be sure to try and relate what you say back to DLA Piper, potentially back to one of the sectors, practice areas or how this might affect one of our clients. Try make your point come across easily even if it is a technical subject or area of law.
Completing the Watson Glaser test – Practice makes perfect, nothing more, nothing less. Try find as many practice tests as possible so you know the way in which information is presented to you, your careers service might be able to help. Take your time, for DLA Pipers test, there is no time limit so really think about your answer before submitting.
Assessment Centre
- Group presentation. The key to success here is creativity, the ability to deliver a proposition effectively, listen to other people’s ideas, build on their ideas, and voice your own opinions.
- Analysis presentation. Requires strong attention to detail, try reading articles and pick out the most important points to practice. Make sure you can deliver these important points effectively, you could structure you answer in groups of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
- Interview. This is with a senior member of the team. Ensure you do your research into the firm, find out as much as you can about the reasons why you want to join the firm. You could do this by connecting with trainees on LinkedIn, look at DLA Pipers website or have a general google. Do also have a broad knowledge of DLA Piper as this may be useful to draw on in the interview. Ensure you let the interviewer know about you! Even if the interviewer does not ask you a question directly about something you have done, try rope in the experience you have so that the interviewer leaves with a positive lasting impression.
Can you describe a day in the life of a trainee at DLA Piper?
This usually consists of gym before work, taking some breakfast from our lovely breakfast station up to my desk, then I’ll then set myself up for the tasks I’m doing that day. These can vairy widely as we have such a wide variety of clients. Here in the Edinburgh IPT team, we focus on commercial contracts, most companies we work with have contracts with various entities and so you can see why our work is quite diverse.
In the morning I could be contacting people in Africa and Europe where a client of ours needs advice around a certain jurisdiction, and by the afternoon I could be helping and taking notes on a negotiation around the terms of a contract between our client and our client’s supplier. I’m also involved in other pieces of work through pro bono incentives such as those affected by domestic abuse or with the charity and social committee where we are currently trying to raise money for our charity partner ‘Wellbeing Scotland’.
What is Commercial Awareness and how do you build it?
How to build it – I would refer you to my previous suggestions of the Financial times, Practical Law (in areas such as (‘IP & IT’) and the Freakonomics Podcast.
How to maintain it - I would suggest thinking about how these news stories can affect our clients, how it will affect the way we run our business, how different sectors might change based off a new up and coming technology and how politics or the economy affect our clients.
Why its so important in the role of a lawyer – Speaking for Intellectual Property and Technology, commercial awareness could not be more vital. Our clients need to know about how different legislation, policies and other global events affect their business and how they tackle this. We need to think about which terms in a contract are most appropriate between our client and the other contracting party. For example, if a financial crisis is round the corner, drafting the contract so that we are aware of the other parties financial standing, should they be in danger of going into insolvency. If there are general global supply chain issues, draft the contract so that the liability is on the supplier to source their supplies and exclude this as a force majeure event. If there is a change in the law, updating the contract terms so that this change is reflected and provide a separate legal update to the client in a format which is easily digestible.
I hope you have found this useful and wish you the best of luck with your future applications for whichever firm you apply to! 😊
