Not a partner, but left a group run by a very famous senior partner a couple of months ago- one junior partner had their entire team changed in a year, one had four exits (half of the team), another had four too, one more had five and another had three. The attrition is crazy (and mind you, the culture was largely good, within the confines of the industry). If this is happening at a T1 with seemingly high pay, it happening in T2/T3 is not a big deal. You ain’t alone!

Proviso: Everything said below is based strictly on my knowledge of law firms in the UK environment, as your question seems like you're asking mostly about UK. Some of this may vary a bit if you're looking at Singapore or Hong Kong.

1. First, get your terminology right: "training contracts", not "trainee contracts" or any other variation of the same you might see used on any website (including this one). Short form: TC (singular) or TCs (plural).

2. Importance of grades: Quite high. You need to be among the best students in your cohort if you are from an Indian university. I've seen students who are not as good or sincere students of law academically getting taken on from UK unis, but nobody who's not above average. So basically, the only difference is that you have to be excellent in your studies, whereas a UK uni applicant can afford to be above average.

3. Importance of moots: High. You can talk about transferrable skills from moots you will find useful in the law firm environment on your written applications or perhaps even at interview. Also participate in negotiation competitions. Your uni administration, I have heard, regards this latter as a bit of a waste of your time. Totally not true. That's one of the few things that your VC, otherwise a smart guy who is up there with the best, being a Rhodes Scholar and an Oxford DPhil, gets wrong because of his status as a total theory person and his lack of experience of law firm environments.

4. Commercial awareness: This is an atypical one. For a host of complex reasons, they don't at this point (treating you as an applicant) care so much about evaluating your technical knowledge as evaluating your knowledge of the market and your ability to think about the law firm's position within the market as a business, and how various events might impact it. That's commercial awareness in a nutshell. You might also see the term "commercial acumen" used, this means the same thing, though most people in the UK who talk about these things use "commercial awareness". How do you gain this? Well, reading the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal or the Economist for a start. Personally, I'd spend a lot of time with the FT, if I could. If your uni doesn't have access to a subscription to it, ask them (fight with them, very fiercely, if needed) to ensure you have access to one. I'd especially concentrate on newsletters (and articles within the FT paper itself linked within them) such as FT Due Dilligence (a great newsletter, which gives you regular updates every weekday Tuesday to Friday about goes on in the PE and VC worlds, even with some great stuff about law firms), First FT Europe/Africa, FT Briefing UK Morning Headlines (providing a list of articles in at least two of the categories of "Politics", "Public Policy", "Companies", "Economy" and "Business") (you'll need to ensure that a premium subscription is taken out for this one, unfortunately, but the product is excellent so don't let that stop you) and "Inside Politics" (usually written by Stephen Bush, but sometimes by equally good colleagues of his), which gives analysis of large issues in UK politics. Why do you need all this? Because "commercial awareness" means understanding not just legal or economic implications of stuff, but evaluating the political or tech ramifications of stuff. Some people tend to analyse events to put their best foot forward in terms of demonstrating commercial awareness by using something called the 'PESTLE method' - each letter of that name is an ingredient of what your analysis should encompass. I won't bother explaining PESTLE to you, you can yourself read about it on a website called lawcareers.net, which is great if you want a UK law firm career. Other than that, listen to the podcasts that some law firms do which can help to raise commercial awareness. Shoesmiths, for example, has an excellent one, I believe. Other than that, read a book called 'Everything You Need to Know about the City', by Chris Stokes, which explains how London works as a financial hub.

5. Understand the difference and gain knowledge: Indian and British law firm environments are very different in various ways that you will get to know over time. For now, one way which is very important for you to know is something you may find a bit counterintuitive. In England and Wales, they don't expect you to specialise in a practice area in the training contract stage. So going in hot saying I want to do regulated payments or b&f is not necessarily the smartest thing to be doing when you're trying to persuade them to recruit you. You need to be open to learning through your vac scheme and/or TC from work the firm does in multiple practice areas. This is because of regulator expectations imposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), which requires trainee solicitors to be exposed to multiple practice areas in their Qualifying Work Experience (QWE) (which a TC is) period of two years. The way most firms handle this requirement is to expose you to (usually) four practice areas with rotations over a six month period. These rotations are usually called "seats". Each "seat" is six months in duration. Once you are done with your TC, you "qualify into" one of the four seats you did when you were a trainee, as a Newly Qualified (NQ) solicitor. Therefore, at the stage of you being an applicant, it may not be too good an idea to be too firm on what practice area you want to get into. You can (and should, obviously) mention which are your interests, but your cover letters/written application answers should focus more on how exposure to different types of work at a particular firm will help your career development as a lawyer. Therefore, you'll have to basically swallow the websites of the law firms you choose to apply to, because ideally, no sentence you write about a law firm in a cover letter for that law firm should be the type you can copy-paste into a cover letter for another firm, i.e., you know firm x's deals so well that you can write a cover letter aimed so specifically at that firm that people will gain the impression that your life's ambition, ever since you were able to do more as a baby than sucking your mother's thumb, has been to, let us say, work at HSFK. Make a note of this very carefully, because our cultural assumptions about the British is that they don't do things like this. We assume American unis make people do more generalised learning before becoming specialised, while Indians and the British expect you to go in with your specialism set right away. MC and U.S. law firm environments in London... don't work exactly like that.

Obviously, there are exceptions to this (which still fulfil the SRA requirement of exposure to multiple practice areas), such as the leveraged finance (LevFin) TC that Milbank's London office does: https://www.legalcheek.com/2025/01/milbank-creates-training-contract-for-aspiring-leveraged-finance-lawyers/

In these cases, like you see in the article, they expose you to let us say LevFin as a practice area, while also getting you to do other stuff. For such TCs, you can be more enthusiastic in your applications about work the firm does in that particular practice area.

6. Another significant difference in the working method - the vac scheme and the TC: In the Indian law firm environment, they usually make you do an internship, then call you back for another, then decide whether to offer you a job. Not so in the MC and U.S. law firms' UK operations. Essentially, think of the vac scheme as an assessment internship for the TC, because, if you get onto a vac scheme, many law firms will assess your potential for a TC through your vac scheme performance without necessarily needing you to apply again. In fact, some firms do things such that they won't accept direct TC applications, but only assess TC potential from their vac scheme cohort. Therefore, your vac scheme is your one big chance to convince them that you're worth it for a TC, because they're giving you that one opportunity to prove yourself worthy of a TC. Then, the TC is basically a drawn-out, two-year-long, assessment internship for them to decide whether you're worth it as an associate (i.e., whether it's worth them keeping you on as an NQ post TC).

7. SQE: Once they've offered you a TC, they'll make you study for the SQE (the Solicitors Qualifying Exam, imposed by the regulator), which you'll have to pass as a condition of your TC offer - if you don't pass, they will withdraw your TC offer. Basically, how this works for many firms is that they make you get on a university course (that they pay for) called an SQE LLM, that helps prep you for the SQE. Why these courses (offered by providers such as BPP and ULaw) are called 'SQE LLM' is that in addition to SQE training, they offer elective modules in various areas, e.g., IP. NB/warning: It's not a good idea for you to try and disrupt the order of this process, by self-financing your 'SQE LLM' studies and then applying to law firms. Many law firms will have specific electives that they will ask you, as part of your TC offer, to take up. If you do the SQE LLM on your own, you may not do the electives a particular law firm will want you to do. That's why take things in their order: apply for a vac scheme (or direct TC), then go for the SQE LLM on their money, because that's how they want you to do things. They pay your course fees and give you a stipend.

8. Practicing assessments: Foreign law firms tend to have a more involved and complex interview and testing process than their Indian counterparts. One of the things many of them (especially the MC guys) do a lot is the so-called 'Situational Judgment Test (SJT)'. This might be a type of multiple choice question test where they give you situations that crop up in everyday law firm life and give you four options out of which you have to choose one to deal with that situation. There is no "objectively" correct answer to many of those situations, reasonable people might disagree how to handle each of those, according to their own personalities. But you will have to answer based on your knowledge of the firm's ethos and culture. Therefore, you'll have to go past the corporate buzzwords on the websites, and actually get to know current trainees or NQs working at whichever firms you are applying to and ask about the culture. Based both on what you've read and understood from your networking research, you can answer those SJT type questions. Many also use more standardised kind of tests such as Watson Glazer. Get as many of these practice tests done as you possibly can, only way to handle this aspect. Also, in both interviews (individual chats between you and a law firm person or sometimes a pannel) and Assessment Centres (ACs) (a type of assessment in which they see how you work in a group of your fellow applicants), they might give you a case study and ask you to work on it. Get hold of some of the kinds of things they've tended to give out in the past (maybe from your seniors, maybe from trainees of other kinds at those law firms) and practice this element, too. This is where your question on the RCC comes in. Most law firms do not really recruit from the RCC in that way. Some might have some involvement with the RCC in some way, but that really depends from firm to firm. But what you can try to get your RCC to do (because this is the type of thing student law societies at UK unis do) is to get the firms to send along let us say a trainee + graduate recruitment pannel who'll present the law firm to you and maybe talk you through a sample of such an exercise. But mostly, it's applying on your own.

9. Final point - non-legal work experience: Another substantial difference between Indian and foreign law firm environments. If you've worked at a Pizza Express or something, for example, in an Indian law firm setting, you'd be made to defend yourself and justify why you did such work. Not so in the case of foreign law firms. In fact, they tend to take quite an encouraging tone towards getting at least some non-legal work experience. They believe it to be useful as a source of developing transferrable skills that will be useful in a commercial environment. Therefore, you need to understand what are the core skills and attributes each firm you'll be applying to is looking for in a trainee, then in your written application, CV or cover letter, find a way of arguing how your non-legal experience would have contributed towards building those attributes. If you really want to go into a foreign law firm environment, doing some of this type of thing might be a better use of your time than doing repeated and random Indian law firm internships, though some of those are likely to be useful to you, too.

Hey LI users

I am a first year student at nls. From everything I have gotten to know till now, be it from my interactions with seniors or personal research, one's batch rank/cgpa here is the most important factor for any domestic corporate job opportunity (and in cases like internships offered by rcc, the only factor even), but what about trainee contracts offered by magic circle law firms in various t1 nlus? What do they look for? Is it also only grades or moots/ecs as well? What about publications? I know they are significant for domestic corporate law.

A very important question, do the people who secure these contracts do it by applying on their own or through rcc? Does any foreign law firm come to rcc here to get few candidates?

Thanks

BO'26 guy here.

From what I've seen recently, they've significantly shifted towards hiring through PPOs over the past couple of years. Nonetheless, they still do Day Z hiring, albeit picking up only a handful and its mostly people who had previously interned there.

A little about the PPO Scene (This is the norm, followed 98% of the time)-

While interning, make sure to show that you’re interested in working further with the team you’re interning with, and talk to your mentor (who’s usually an SA1/2 or A3) about a potential callback. Make sure your presentation (if you’re asked to do one) goes well, because a lot depends on that, no matter how good your work was during the internship. This was true for me at least, because I mostly worked with the A3/2/1s and occasionally the SAs, but had virtually no contact with the Counsel or Partner. They showed up during the presentation and their feedback played a big part.

Post that, your mentor needs to fill out your feedback and recommend you for a callback. They also ask the entire team before submitting the form. After completing your first internship, you should receive an email from HR in about 60 days (from your last day). You need to ask your mentor whether the callback is an assessment or not. If yes, then you’re lucky af. Choose a month (the best ones are Dec/Jan or June, if you are graduating a year later) and intern peacefully (work hard). Make a good presentation if they ask you to.

If you’re able to cross all these thresholds, you’ll get an interview fixed with the partner you were working under. Trilegal also does a second interview with a neutral partner. Both interviews are a mix of technical and personal questions, so make sure to brush up Companies, Contracts, TPA and other subjects relevant to your team's practice.

(The other 2%)- Sometimes, even with just one internship, people manage to land PPOs. It’s usually a mix of luck, vacancies, and the quality of your work. A friend of mine actually got a PPO after just one internship, he had a single interview with the partner he was working under and, voila, he was hired. So at the end of the day, it's vv partner centric. Praying that you are with the other 2% if you intern there homie.

anyone who is in law school knows whats happening with Tri- they've almost completely stopped with Campus placements, except to fill in a few vacancies here and there. Cant comment if this was a one-time thing but Tri was the smallest recruitrer amongst t-1s this time, when they would be one of the biggest up until last year. Only hired in ones and twos in the best nlus, and a single student out of 500 odd students in SLSP.

Internship is your best shot with how things tand as of now. They have been remodelling their internship process as welll, with now making assessments mandatory for everyone, be it through placement cells or referrals. maybe they are being a little more rigorous about their internships so as to only take in ones that could be potential hires. Not sure tho, but campus placements are a really tough shot

Makes no difference, NLUD has almost entirely the same opportunities as NLS as far as recruitments go and its quality is as good, if not better, given the smaller batch size now. And no needless domicile quota and whatnot. You’ll be competing with lesser students and will naturally have more opportunities to get placed if you’re a half decent student.

Didn't Bar and Bench said 100 per cent, with 95 people placed?

https://www.barandbench.com/Law-School/recruitment-tracker/rectracker-nalsar-2025-batch-records-100-placements-global-law-firm-offers-65-lakh-per-annum

Hey folks,

I’m an A2 at KCO and in the process of moving over to CAM — should be getting the offer soon 🤞. I’ve heard that CAM has recently bumped up the retainer across all levels.

Any CAMMIES here who can spill the beans on what the updated numbers look like? Would be super helpful to know what to expect.

1. JRF is given to the top scorers in UGC NET exam. Earlier it was 1% but now had dropped down to 0.5% of people who clear.

2. At the current rate it's 37K+HRA per month. But you won't get it every month, it's usually once in 3 months combined. There has been rumours of increasing it to 50K per month.

3. It's a salary that is being provided by the central government. So, NO, you cannot work part-time. There is no double income scheme. You may teach, advocate or research assist but you can't get paid for it. If found out, you will get punished. This ranges from getting kicked out of your PhD program, having to pay a fine, having to return whatever you've earned in JRF or part thereof, having been barred from PhD etc

4. If you want to genuinely be a professor, and get into academia. Make sure you clear the NET, get admission in a decent university, start your PhD and if possible do it fulltime. Majority of people who do a part-time PhD are already professors in some college and need the PhD for promotions.

How does jrf stipend in phd work ? How much do they pay ? Can I still do part time work while getting jrf stipend, if yes can I earn more money from it ? I am currently pursuing llm and preparing for jrf exam. My goal is to be a professor and hence planning to do phd in future. Also would like to start earn as soon as I finish llm.

Well, in case you haven't noticed, it's very hard to get many of the things that lead to happiness for lots of people (a good home, perhaps multiple properties and other aspects of what the Americans speak of as their "dream" - that you will work hard and achieve sweet rewards) without money. Of course, you can be happy purely out of some sense of liking your job if you want, even if it doesn't pay properly, but that's a you thing. If you can find a well-paying job you like very much, that's obviously ideal. For far too many of us, it's a question of doing the career which is in some weird mid-point of being well remunerated, playing to our strengths and personal satisfaction, with personal satisfaction being the value compromised on in a number of cases where on the criteria of well paid, the job gets 10/10. If you let's say want to be an academic, as that plays to your strengths and satisfies you, then you need to, as the NLSIU VC has said, for many institutional contexts reconcile that the pay won't be anything close to magic circle levels. Or, if you want both academia and money, one way to get that might be to take the Dworkin route, work in a law firm for several years then go back to uni for further studies required for academic positions. In that way, you compromise your satisfaction for a few years, save up for later and then don't have to compromise! Remember, Raz did not read philosophy at university and instead chose to read law (as his London Times obituary quotes him as saying) because he felt the need to be financially responsible. Jonathan Sumption is another example of this trend. Former UK Supreme Court judge (the type of person LI readers will hate - just read his lecture which, I think, is called "Home Truths about Judicial Diversity"), gave up a history lectureship at Oxford in the 70s because even then, the rent couldn't be managed with it, and went to... well, being an UKSC judge, achieve rather a good deal of success at the English bar. So something has to give somewhere. That's it.

There is this private equity associate. The family is into ▮▮▮ ▮▮▮. Buys luxury watches. All cash. Still works in one of the most intense teams in the office. Some desire for validation it seems. Does not find social acceptance in circles in Delhi. Comes to office in a chauffeured luxury vehicle. Rather bizarre to have no sense of individual self worth

No one is calling jgls students entitled in this post. probably because you are entitled to better infra with all the money you pay for it. People call students entitled when they try to lower academic standards, harass their teachers, and buy a degree - not when they try to get proper services out of administration.

Hey mate, don’t worry too much about it. I’d suggest you start prepping for CLAT’26 rn. You still have more than 3 months left, and trust me, that’s plenty of time if you don’t have anything else going on. Clat can be cleared in 3 months w a great rank if you already have some experience.

Just get back to your desk and start solving mocks. Praying for you bud.

Hey kid, I'm a graduate of your college. I did well in Ascent and had a really good oral round score but couldn't make it because of a shitty memo. Trust me when I say this, moots do help, but they're not the end all be all in your cv. If not MCS, you can still get good publications and tbh quality publications (NLU Journals, blogs, etc.) carry the same weight as a good moot court achievement. There are a lot of opportunities after college as well if you know how to keep your eyes and ears open.

And one more thing that people often ignore, get as good at your understanding of law (core subjects such as CPC, Contract, CrPC) as you possibly can, since these are the most important aspect for clearing interviews. This is the one thing that helped me the most, and I can confidently no amount of moots could alone give me the opportunities that I ended up creating for myself.

Keep your chin up. Work hard on the things that matter. You'll do well :)

I know a girl who interned there and received a PPO. The most ironical thing about this is that she is the typical modi-hater-left-wing-girlie. Nothing wrong with that, to each their own, but grow a spine- money isn't everything. I wish people would stand up for what they truly believed in, instead of being so hypocritical and secretly hating the person they're paid to spread propaganda for..

Civil Lines is a damn good address. It’s safe, clean, green, 30 mins from Max Towers Noida and 20 mins from Supreme Court/ 30 mins from the DHC. No T1 senior advocate is more than 20- 30 mins away in drive time. No T2/T3 senior advocate is more than 45 mins away in drive time. Certainly offers a better quality of like than any Kailash suffix address- which would also be more expensive rent-wise. It might probably be more affordable than a T1/T2 Noida address too.