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December 6 2021

To The One Who Can't See How Great They Really Are

successwstephuk
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I recently met up with someone who asked the usual "tell me about your journey into the law" question which I answered in my usual way; and ended off by saying I was lucky to have landed a training contract in my final year of university.

Then she said something which I've never really taken in before; she said it wasn't luck, it was a product of my hardwork.
 
Something so simple changed my mental outlook on achievements COMPLETELY.
 
I realised that me minimising my achievements in this way was simply another manifestation of imposter syndrome. I had to start acknowledging my hardwork, and stop putting everything down to luck.
 
So now, I'm going to tell you my real journey to securing a training contract, in the hope that this will encourage you to be bold about your achievements, and shout about them from the rooftops because you deserve it.

My journey with law started way back at the tender age of 5 when I decided after an episode of LA Lawyer that law was the right industry for me because the lead actress looked pretty in a suit and had expensive things which was exactly what I wanted for myself. But I didn't stop with my dream; I started to be intentional about taking the right steps to work towards it.

By the time I was 10, and after endless hours in the library researching, I'd decided that I'd be taking History and a language at GCSE (alongside the traditional Math, English & Science etc.). This would set me up for the IB choices I decided I'd do by the time I was 13 - English, History, Economics, Biology, French & Maths. By 15, I knew that I'd complete my law degree at Durham University and by 18, I knew that I was going to become a lawyer at White & Case.
 
Now why did I know all these things at such young ages?
 
Because I was intentional, and I worked hard.
 
I don't come from a family of lawyers; my mum is a social worker, I have no relationship with my dad, and the majority of the people in my extended family are either Doctors or teachers. So I knew that whilst my family would of course be supportive of my legal dreams, there would be a lot of work I'd have to do by myself to get there.

My first step was understanding the process to become a lawyer. Now a lot has changed since I was younger as there's now things like the SQE and legal apprenticeships, but at the time the best route into the law that I knew of was:

  1. Doing humanities based GCSEs

  2. Doing humanities based A levels / IB subjects

  3. Going to a good university that had a high employability rate and do a law degree*

  4. Completing a vacation scheme

  5. Getting a Training Contract

  6. Graduating with at least a 2;1

  7. Completing the LPC

  8. Completing my Training Contract

*You don't actually have to do a law degree by the way, but I'll break down why I intentionally chose to do one.

Based on this, I'd worked out points 1 and 2 by the time I was 13.

For point 3, I figured I'd better get as much exposure to what a law degree was like as possible so I could work out whether I'd want to study it for 3 years or not. When I was in year 9, I found a three-day Birkbeck University introduction to law course for students that my mum too everyday. I learnt about the law of adverse possession and was HOOKED. I started looking for all the online courses I could find, and day by day I affirmed to myself that I was on the right path.

So the next step after that was working out which University I'd attend. For reasons that I won't go into in this blog, I didn't consider Oxbridge as an option for me. So after looking at the league tables first, then the rate of employability and finally the module options, I realised Durham University was the university for me.

Now for the bit that I don't usually tell people. I grew up in South East London which is a very diverse place. But even though the area that I lived in and went to school in was very diverse, I lived a fairly sheltered life as a child. Not sheltered in the sense that I didn't go through anything because I definitely did, but sheltered in the sense that it never occured to me that there was a whole world outside London where people didn't interact with black people on a regular basis.

From my research as a child, I realised pretty quickly that the legal industry was very white, but that didn't put me off my dream. Since I hadn't grown up in an environment like that, I thought it was important to put myself in the whitest, but equally good, environment that I could think of for university so I would be more accustomed to white British culture; Durham.

That ticked off step 3 for me. Now for step 4.

When I joined Durham University, I joined a bunch of people who already had legal internships under their belt and were well on their way to securing first year insight schemes by the end of our second month. I even remember one morning at breakfast where a student asked me if I had gotten to Durham on some kind of social mobility scheme; that really knocked my confidence back and made me feel like I didn't belong. I felt like I was on the back foot because I didn't really know much about the world of law in practice, and I was kicking myself for not having thought about getting practical work experience sooner.

Then came the social mobility heros; Rare recruitment, SEO London, Bright Network and Aspiring Solicitors. Now there are definitely many others, but these are the ones I personally used. They kept me on the straight and narrow with keeping on top of applications and meeting law firms, and actually got me my first legal internship in the Ministry of Justice at the Civil Service which I then used, along with my non-legal work experience, to get a vacation scheme in my second year. I worked hard to balance the work they gave me with university work and my part-time jobs, but I pulled through.

Result!

You'd think me getting that vacation scheme would automatically lead to the training contract, but it didn't. So I had to figure out how I was going to secure a training contract in my final year of university because I had already told myself I wasn't going to leave without one.
 
I figured winter vacation schemes might be worth a try, because I could start the applications earlier and that would leave me more time to sort out my dissertation and revision for exams later. I was right. I dedicated about 10 hours (1-2 hours a day over a week) to all of 2 applications, and got through with both of them.
 
Result again!
 
I knew that this time round I was going to flip the vacation scheme into a Training Contract offer, so I sat down about 2 weeks before the vacation scheme and thought about everything I'd done well and not so well in my last one; and used this to help my get it right the second time round. Then; one day after my birthday, I got the call to say I got the Training Contract.
 
To understand how I was intentional about points 6 and 7 we have to rewind the clock a little. I always did well in school in the sense that I had good grades, but I wasn't all that "good" at school. Things that would take my counterparts a couple of hours to learn would often take me a couple of days in the library, but I worked this out about myself quite early so I always factored in extra study time in my schedule, and became an absolute boss about my time management and productivity so I would have enough time to study along with my other activities.
 
After this realisation, points 6 & 7 were already in the bag to be honest.
 
 
As for point 8... well i'm still working on it, but i'm sure I'll have a positive update for you in 2023.
 

So if I were to put all of my intentional steps into one place for you, what would they be?

  1. I worked out my learning style early, and had an end goal in mind. This allowed me to pick subjects that (A) played to my strengths but (B) also aligned with what employers wanted to see

  2. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to give myself greater access to the legal industry

  3. I didn't wallow in sadness when I didn't flip the first vacation scheme; instead I reflected on where I went right and wrong and used that to my advantage

 
 
 

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