Your guide to every stage

Name things that are only true of that firm and connect each one to something you have actually done. A practice group, a named deal, a seat structure or a secondment that matters to you beats anything about prestige or culture, because those sentences fit every firm and recruiters have read them all.

Start with the firm’s own graduate site and its practice group pages, then check its recent deals and its Chambers rankings to see where it is genuinely strong. Trainee blogs and open day notes give you the detail that makes an application specific.

Usually a half or full day combining a written exercise, a group or case study task, and one or two interviews, sometimes with a partner. Firms are testing how you think and work with other people, not whether you already know the law.

A critical thinking test used by many firms at the screening stage. It asks you to judge inferences, assumptions, deductions and arguments strictly on the passage in front of you, which is a different habit from normal reading and improves quickly with practice.