We are now firmly in vacation scheme season. If you have managed to secure vacation schemes or internships this summer, well done! However, getting a vacation scheme is only half the battle. Now is your time to demonstrate your abilities and get that training contract that you so desperately want!
Imagine this - you are a couple of days into your vacation scheme, and you have just gotten to know most of the people in your team. Naturally, you cannot wait to prove yourself, and here’s your chance: your supervisor comes along and asks if you have capacity to help with a task. You nod as you listen very carefully to the brief instructions. The supervisor asks if you have any questions - you think to yourself “funny you ask that... I have literally hundreds of them”; you come to your senses and shake your head, wanting to appear like you have everything under control. Your supervisor leaves and you are now sitting at your desk, trying to figure out what any of the instructions meant. Nothing makes sense!
Don’t panic - Admittedly Legal is here to help. Here are five things you can do to save yourself from the situation.
1. Take really good notes
As with most things, preparation really is the key to success. When you are being given a task, it is vital that you listen very carefully to the instructions and take note of what your supervisor is telling you. Where possible, you should take verbatim notes of your instructions, so that you can review what exactly you have been told. If you are taking notes with pen and paper, then verbatim notes would of course be difficult. Nonetheless, you should aim to take clear and comprehensive notes, which you can come back to later. Even if you do not understand a lot of the instructions, your notes will provide the foundation for the next steps, which we will come on to shortly. If your notes are bad however, your chances of saving yourself will be much, much slimmer.
2. Review your notes and consider what you already know
Most of the time, the tasks you will be given during vacation schemes will be suitable for students like yourself, meaning that they are unlikely to require a deep level of understanding of specific legal topics to complete. So when you are catastrophising about how badly this is going to end, take a deep breath and pull yourself together - what you have been asked to do is not rocket science.
Once you have composed yourself, review your notes and supplement them with anything you can remember from your conversation with your supervisor. You should aim to do this as soon as possible whilst your memory is fresh. Take your time and make additional notes: what do you already know about the topic or the task? Have you learnt anything similar before at law school or previous internships? What questions do you have? What are you confused about?
Read your notes a few times, digest and process what you have been told. If you can draw on your existing knowledge or previous experience(s), you will be able to contextualise your task. Your existing knowledge will serve as anchors that you can come back to when you are working on your task. Soon enough, you will realise that you can probably figure this out!
3. Look at your firm’s intranet, knowhow, and file management system
Your firm’s intranet is always a good bet when it comes to basic knowledge and concepts relevant to a particular practice area. International firms invest a substantial amount every year in developing their intranets so that lawyers can refer to them and find answers to the questions which are most likely to come up in practice. This should be your starting point.
If you haven’t had time to familiarise yourself with the intranet, now is your time. Apart from explanations of concepts fundamental to the practice area you are in, intranets would often contain references and links to helpful resources, such as in-house precedents, templates and external articles. If you can navigate your way around your firm’s intranet, it will greatly benefit you throughout your vacation scheme at the firm. If you are drawing blanks with the knowhow system, try spending some time to go through the firm’s file management system. If you are smart with the keywords you use, you should be able to find examples of work that people at the firm have done previously.
4. Research online
Where you have spent sufficient time going through the firm’s internal system(s) and are still not getting anywhere, you should try looking at online resources such as Practical Law and LexisPSL. These websites cover a massively diverse range of topics in very simple terms and are drafted with practicality and ease of understanding in mind. Read around the relevant topic on these websites and you should more or less be able to understand your task.
5. Seek help
Finally, do ask for help. Law firms are not expecting you to know much as a law student, and there is no shame in asking questions. Indeed, it would be much better to ask for help instead of submitting a piece of work that is totally incorrect and not what your supervisor had in mind. Remember, however, that you will be judged on the quality of your questions. Even though most people will tell you there is no such thing as a stupid question, there really is. Asking simple questions that you can find the answers to will show a lack of initiative, and will reflect poorly on your ability to handle more complex tasks in the future. If you are unlucky, your supervisor will also get annoyed by your perceived laziness or lack of intelligence.
Admittedly Legal’s Vacation Scheme First Aid service is designed specifically to help you with this. We are not the ones assessing you, so you do not need to worry about asking stupid questions and how your reputation might be affected. Delivered in blocks of 15 minutes, either by telephone or by DM, we will point you in the right direction on short notice, and you will be able to demonstrate your full potential -- contact us to find out more!
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