Blog

How Work Experience Helps

Posted 17th December 2024
by Jemima

I am currently in my second year of law at the University of Leeds, and I have managed to get a lot of useful work experience. Work Experience is an essential for many legal employers, but it has other advantages to; it builds confidence, it gives you experience of your field in industry (which can be quite different from studying it), it can help you decide what part of the industry you wish to practice in, and can give you a taste of working life.
Personally, a lot of my work experience was gained through speculative applications. This essentially consists of putting your CV and Cover Letter (a brief overview of who you are, why you want the work experience and why you are qualified to complete work experience) in an email and sending it out. I have been able to secure a variety of work experience through this method. It may feel rude at first to email people (for me, it was usually the head solicitors at a law firm) asking about working experience that they have not advertised. However, speculative applications can often work in your favour, as they make you appear confident and enthusiastic.

Sending out speculative applications definitely helped me. I started off by trying to get some work experience in a Solicitor's Office. I googled all the Solicitor's offices in my nearby area and basically sent out around two applications a day. This is where another important piece of advice comes in; don't be disheartened. I probably emailed around 30 Companies; 70% never responded, 20% responded with a “no”, 9% responded to give me an interview, but I did not make it any further than the interview stage. However, the 1% was Criminal Defense Solicitors who allowed me to go for a week. With speculative applications you just need to keep going until someone says yes. Once you complete one work experience, you have the confidence, skills, and evidence of skills to put on your CV; it has a snowball effect. Since I had this experience on my CV, another Civil Negligence firm also took me on for work experience.

View all blog posts