Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
I'm in my final-year at NUS, 2:2. Have been offered a TC at a small corporate firm, but it is unpaid. Been applying to other firms with no reply. I know it's a pretty raw deal and I will be negotiating for a basic allowance.
My end goal is just use this to get qualified and then move in-house. I do have savings and side hustles that I can subsist on over the TC period.
Assuming the offer doesn't improve + I don't get other corporate offers, is it justified or is the market for 2:2 corp firms better than this? . |
Hey there. Usually I just read this thread and cringe at the trolls, but I felt I should pipe up now because I was in your position not too long ago.
My advice is to keep hunting for better offers. Ask everyone you know about openings; not everyone advertises on the LawSoc classifieds. Even during your Part B, you may meet practitioners during who can connect you to lawyers looking for trainees urgently. That’s how several of my friends got their
TCs.
(A bit of not-very-wholesome advice: you can just accept this current offer as a safety net and break the TC later on when you get a better deal. A firm that offers
TCs for no pay is not a firm you’d regret burning bridges with anyway.)
Speaking from experience, I was a 2:2 like you and managed to get a decent TC during my last year of law school. There are bosses out there who don’t care so much about grades, but you have to do the legwork to stand out in other ways. Spend a little more time on each cover letter and prep well for every interview you get — my managing partner said he gave me an interview solely because I had a strong cover letter, and hired me because I seemed genuine during the interview. You can make up for a weaker academic foundation, but you really can’t teach attitude.
Gentle suggestion: be open to other areas of practice than corporate. The truth stings, but at our grade band we can’t really be choosers. It would be good if you keep your mind open to other areas of law too. It’ll widen your net and make it easier for you to get to the next stage, which is to just get called without being f**ked over too badly. You can always switch tracks later, especially in your first few years of practice. It’s really not a situation where if you do liti for your TC you’re stuck in liti forever. It might be harder, yes, but it’s not insurmountable.
In the words of a very wise senior of mine: law is a marathon, not a sprint. 75% of lawyers leave practice within the first 10 years, so you don’t have to be the very best, you just have to outlast everyone else. Don’t let the toxicity (of this thread and of practice in general) get you down, just stay grounded and work hard to make up for your shortcomings.
All the very best, kid.