Applying for a Scottish legal traineeship: the essentials

Send your training contract application to the top of the pile by showing you have the skills and experience that solicitors' firms in Scotland are looking for.

Knowing that you are the best candidate for the traineeship position is not enough to convince Scottish legal recruiters of your potential: you need to prove it at the application and interview stages by providing evidence of how your talents and experiences confidently translate to a legal career.

Assessing your skills and achievements

The first and most important step to take before writing an application or CV is getting to know yourself. Your life to date has been a series of events and from each experience you can learn something new about yourself. The best way to explore this is to sit down with a large sheet of paper and decide on some major headings. For example:

academic life
work experience
travel
leisure/voluntary and extra-curricular activities.

Think about what you contributed, learned and the skills you developed. This will give you a huge database of application-friendly skills and achievements ready to use for all future applications and CVs.

How to demonstrate commercial awareness in your traineeship application

Commercial awareness is more than just a buzzword in the legal world: it’s an important attribute that all successful lawyers possess. In its simplest terms commercial awareness involves having a genuine interest in and understanding of how businesses work and how this and commercial activities can affect the clients you’ll be working for. Be sure to read the business pages and relevant publications. Check firms’ websites and read the press releases on recently completed transactions. This will give you a good idea of the areas of practice a firm is strong in.

Work experience and interests that law firms like

Legal recruiters want to see evidence that you can successfully interact with people at all levels of an organisation, that you can cope with working by yourself or in a team and that you’re proactive, efficient and reliable. A good way of demonstrating this is by gaining work experience in a commercial environment and by being involved in group activities or team sports. Any type of work experience is highly regarded by recruiters, whether it’s part-time work at a local shop, office work over the summer months, a summer placement or an internship with an organisation.

Involvement in team sports, university clubs and societies or any other personal interests can tell recruiters a lot about the type of person you are and what skills and competences you possess, but you still need to sell your experiences. If you’re the secretary of the drama club or the captain of the rowing squad be sure to explain fully your role and responsibilities. If you used your initiative to organise a fundraising event or led the mountain-climbing team on a two-week trek, include it on your application as this is what recruiters want to hear about and what will give you that unique and individual edge over other candidates.

Top tips for traineeship application success

Before submitting your form be sure to check it, double check it and triple check it for mistakes. Attention to detail is paramount. Each year a large number of legal application forms have spelling and grammatical mistakes. This is an immediate turn-off that often rules an applicant out of consideration. Ask a careers adviser or someone you know to read over your form or CV as a fresh pair of eyes will pick up simple mistakes you may have missed. If you take the time to assess your strengths and skills set, research employers thoroughly and tailor each application accordingly then you stand to gain a much higher degree of success when it comes to beating the competition.