How Difficult Is It to Get a Training Contract?

I wasn’t the kind of person who is convinced that he wants to work at a global law firm early in his law school day – it took me almost five years to realise that. I never thought it is really an option for me. I was the first generation of my family to go to university. I literally knew no one in the legal field. While I essentially had to beg for an opportunity to intern at a firm, some of my peers just had to ask for it from their uncles or their parents’ friends. I was hampered by this tremendous difference in access to opportunity.

But I knew complaining doesn’t accomplish anything so I worked my head off for years trying to overcome this inherent difference. My desire to become a commercial lawyer grew bigger and felt stronger as I started my master’s degree there. I started daring to dream bigger. Yet, at the time I was still caught between two different value systems. On the one hand, I wanted to pursue my ambitions in London without holding back. On the other hand, it was difficult because I was in this constant battle of doubt – I was chasing a goal that could be a spectacular failure while my peers back home already got a stable job and had their career sorted out. But at some point, I realised that comparing yourself to people who are doing ‘better’ just makes you weak. It stops you from pursuing your own goals because you are too busy sticking your nose in others’ lives.

I remember a week before I decided to apply for a training contract in the UK, I sat at the park next to Selwyn College with one of my best friends from the time I was at Cambridge. He’s from Ecuador and is literally the best human being you could ever meet. I asked him, ‘What if my ambition turns out to be a spectacular failure?’ He told me, ‘you only live once and it’s often the things you don’t do that you end up regretting.’ It was exactly what I needed to hear. He was mostly right about that. You rarely hear people regret doing something, but most often they regret not doing something like not taking advantage of an important opportunity.

With a postgraduate law degree from Cambridge on my CV and numerous work experiences, it was easy to imagine that my rise to success is a straight line, and my inbox is going to be flooded with interview requests and offer letters – but that wasn’t even close to what actually happened.

A lawyer once told me this, ‘applying for a training contract is simply a numbers game’. They were probably right. You may not get the job you want the first few times, and it may take much longer than you expected. But I always believe that the ones who are well-prepared will always get to the top and show that they are ready when the right opportunity comes up. It took me more than twelve applications suggested by my friend who got into a magic circle firm, far more than the thirty, and a period of over twelve months to secure a training contract. I even had to travel back and forth between London, Italy and Hong Kong to attend recruitment events due to my visa restriction. It wasn’t an easy journey.

But judging from the offer I have obtained now – a training contract with a top-tier US law firm – I probably made the right decision to persevere. Many of you are like me of the past. You may feel like your life is filled with uncertainty: you don’t know how many more rejections you could endure before giving up. During that period of my career, I was also living in a place of fear: I was afraid to mess up, I was afraid to get rejected. But remember, if your goal is something easy, it wouldn’t be worth it; you wouldn’t put so much of yourself into chasing it. There’s a reason for all the failures you’ve experienced. Ultimately they will make you stronger.

My training contract journey was a rocky path of detours. I was hampered by my initial unfamiliarity with the interview, my limited visa conditions and a lack of understanding of the application process. As someone coming from a completely different country and background, I felt like I have to spend twice, if not triple, the effort of others. But what my story shows is that your starting point doesn’t matter, what matters is where you end up. Therefore, in the coming few articles I hope to explain the precious lessons that I wished I had known before I started applying, during the application process and after reaching the interview stage.