Diversity knocks
This weeks bulletin leads with a look at the results of the hot-off-the-press Black Solicitors Network diversity report and a Lawyer2B report on students disclosing their disabilities to employers.
We also have a survival guide for mature students and career changers, a focus on banking and finance, blog posts on secondments in brussels and working on the Obama re-election campaign, a profile of LPC student Emma Horn, and an Ask Lawyer2B from someone seeking legal work experience when they have no prior experience.
In news, the Dickson Poon Scholarship Programme has been launched today offering 80 scholarships worth over £2m for students who wish to study law at Kings College London. The latest edition of the Bar Barometer discloses that 2010/11 saw the highest number of applications for the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) in five years – with 3,100 students applying for places, while Kaplan Law School and Field Fisher Waterhouse have teamed up to launch a diversity access scheme targeting students from under-represented backgrounds.
P.S - Lawyer 2B’s Not Too Late for Law free careers evening aimed at career changers and mature students is being held on 28 November in association with the College of Law, top firms such as Addleshaw Goddard, Bircham Dyson Bell, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper and RPC will be attending. Sign up here.
With the latest diversity league table from the Black Solicitors Network now published - here are some of the highlights: US firms steal a march on UK counterparts in diversity stakes; Coram Chambers tops bar diversity table; and Diversity league table: female lawyers react.
Business as usual
Seventy per cent of disabled students are concerned about disclosing their disability to potential employers. Lawyer2B asks why.
Survival Guide - Mature students and career changers
50-year-old trainee Mark Pentecost tells mature applicants how to shine above the 20-something graduates and survive the gruelling application process to land a training contract.
Blogs
Harry Langford is a third year full-time LLB student at Nottingham Law School who spent two months this summer at the Obama Campaigns HQ in Ohio, and Berwin Leighton Paisner trainee Katie Goodfellow is on secondment in Brussels. Read about her experiences here.
Practice area focus - Banking/Finance
As we all know, banks are in the money business; they accept our deposits, invest them in a wide range of financial products and make both themselves and us a profit in the process. But ever wondered what banking and finance lawyers actually do? Here we explore what it’s about; with a peek at the working culture and the skills required to practice in this field.
60-second interview
College of Law LPC student Emma Horn warns that when the training contract deadline is approaching, “quality not quantity” is an adage often forgotten.
