1st year undergraduates: Steps you can take to progress your legal career

Your first year of undergraduate study is a fantastic opportunity to explore your future interests, placements you may undertake or career opportunities you will look to as a graduate. In this article, we offer information and guidance for 1st year undergraduates to help you start to progress your legal career on the way to becoming a solicitor.

Explore the solicitor profession

We know it sounds early, but this year is the year to explore whether you want to become a solicitor, and if so, what type of organisation you might want to work in. Here are some of the things you could be doing to find out more:

• Learn about the different tasks solicitors do day to day
• Find out about the different type of organisations that solicitors work in
• Hear from solicitors and what its like day to day, not just as a trainee but beyond

Much of this research can be done online, but there are many opportunities to hear directly from firms and solicitors including:

• Career fairs: Attend virtual and campus based careers fairs, particularly in autumn term. Get involved, and every conversation that you have will help your communication and networking skills too
• Insight days: Firms are increasingly offering short insight days to help you get a feel for working at the firm
• Shadowing & Work Experience: Ask the firms local to you to shadow their paralegals and solicitors; find any work experience that you can however short, all to help you understand the life of a solicitor…and you never know where it might lead
• Law School & Law Society events: Take up the opportunities offered to you in your University’s Law Society and network. They will bring in solicitors to speak, firms to discuss what it’s like, and help you learn more about the legal profession

Resources:

1. What can I do with my law degree?

2. Why become a solicitor?

3. Legal Cheek virtual career fairs

Explore whether you are a good fit? Could I be a solicitor?

Start reflecting on your academic record, your skillset and what you enjoy doing. There are certain attributes and strengths that solicitors need, and common activities that you will be carrying out as a solicitor, such as legal drafting, writing and engagement with clients.

If you are looking to get a coveted vacation scheme place or training contract in the future, your academic record will be important. Most firms require 2:1 but not exclusively, and the SQE route takes the pressure off, should you not get the grades you need.

Learn about yourself, your strengths and your weaknesses - your University’s careers portal may have useful online strength assessments to help you find out more about yourself and whether you might have the aptitude to become a solicitor. These assessments will be similar to those you will need to complete if you apply for a vacation scheme or training contract, so good to start early and see where you can improve.

Compare the things that you enjoy doing, with the day-to-day tasks that a solicitor carries out. If you have some work experience in any field, consider which part of that work experience you enjoyed the most.

Resources:

1. A day in the life of a solicitor

2. Examples of aptitude tests

3. Law Care’s Fit for Law video

Position yourself strongly in the market

Now is the year to develop your public professional profile as a future solicitor. You can do this in a number of ways:

• Get your LinkedIn profile set up and use LinkedIn to start learning about the practice areas you are interested in. Share and comment on articles that relate to your interests, and link with your peers to start to develop your community
• Include in your CV the things you have learnt from points 1. and 2. Use your careers service and platforms to refine and develop it to resonate with your future employers
• Draft covering letters that portray you well, they shouldn’t be generic. You need to make the most of your experience and draw out the skills that you have gained from the workplace across any sector, positions of responsibility at school, University or in the voluntary sector
• Gain any customer facing experience that you can, it might be in retail or in a call centre. Any work experience will help with your applications in year 2

Then, we recommend that you start applying for opportunities, where you can test out your covering letter and application writing skills. Much of this is practice, but don’t apply for everything. Where you see a vacation scheme open to 1st years, or an opportunity for work experience, use them to trial and develop your formal writing and positioning yourself, to give yourself a head start for your 2nd year.

Finally, we do want to reassure you, that many people become a solicitor through a different route altogether, they look for work after they leave University and then they experience the role and only then, they decide whether that career path is for them. There are many ways of qualifying and this year isn’t the year to be concerned, but it is an opportunity for you to reflect and see whether you want to go through the application processes in the 2nd year that will test you and your resilience many times over.

Published October 2022

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