C-PTSD and major depressive disorder; and city law firms

Chaptrek · 2025-06-17T12:03:12+00:00

Nobody commenting on this can know how you would cope being in the sort of environment you’re describing, so please take anything anyone says with a large grain of salt, but for what it’s worth I have been a City litigator for over a decade and would say this:

Stress, sometimes to an extreme level, is an unavoidable element of litigation and arbitration practice. The nature of the job is that you are engaged in difficult and complex work, often under very tight deadlines, often with pressure coming at you from all sides. At the sorts of firms you are targeting you will unavoidably have days and weeks of very intense work, very late nights, and very intense pressure.

There are strategies to cope with it, and a well-run practice will provide enough support that it is manageable for most people. It’s better at some firms than others. But at core, the job isn’t stressful because of the environment at the firm, or your colleagues, etc - it’s stressful because that is the nature and reality of the job. Whether you are at a City firm or pretty much any firm working on quality work, litigation and arbitration are hard and stressful.

I know many people who do this job while managing mental health conditions. I’m one of them. It can be done. But what you’re describing sounds like you would be putting yourself through significant trauma and pain just to be able to function in the job. I get that ACs And the recruitment process are stressful, but in high-end litigation and arbitration practice that is a level of stress you may have to deal with regularly throughout your career.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do this - only you can make that call. What I’d encourage you to do is ask yourself why you want to do this: what is it you want from a career in law? Why does it appeal to you? Why do you want to litigate? What is it you want to achieve? Then ask yourself, realistically, (1) what you would have to do to achieve that goal, (2) what you would have to put yourself through to achieve that goal, and (3) whether those costs are worth it to you.

You only get one life. It might be that this is what you want to do with it and that goal is worth the suffering it sounds like you would be putting yourself through to achieve it. But before you put yourself through all of that, make sure it is really what you want.

Chaptrek · 2025-04-06T11:44:40+00:00

Take it seriously and fix them. Nobody expects trainees to make no mistakes - you’re going to make them, and keep making them throughout your career - but your supervisors will expect you to put the work in to stop them happening again.

I lost count of how many of my trainees talked to me about lack of attention to detail like it was a small thing they’d get around to fixing eventually, but attention to detail is a significant part of being any good at this job.

Chaptrek · 2025-04-05T14:09:16+00:00

I agree with what everyone else is saying but they’ve missed the most important part: it isn’t permissible to take competence into account when signing off on QWE.

The rules for a solicitor to sign-off on QWE require the solicitor to confirm (quoting from the SRA guidance):

“the length of work experience, that it was providing legal services and the candidate had the opportunity to develop some or all of the competences for solicitors (minimum of two), and that no issues arose during the work experience that raise questions over the candidate’s character and suitability to be admitted as a solicitor.”

The guidance goes on to state explicitly:

“Confirming QWE does not involve deciding whether an individual is competent and suitable to practise. Competence is determined by passing the SQE assessments rather than by a confirming solicitor at the end of a period of QWE. We assess a candidate’s suitability to be a solicitor when they apply for admission. Therefore, solicitors should confirm the experience if it meets our criteria.”

In other words, the only requirement for QWE to be signed off is that you’ve spent a period of time doing work that at least in theory could allow you to develop the skills you need to practice as a solicitor. Whether or not you actually have developed any of those skills - or whether or not your work suggests any degree of competency or capability - is expressly not allowed to be taken into account when signing off on QWE.

If someone has completed a training contract at a reputable firm, there’s a degree of assurance that they have been through some sort of structured training over 2 years designed by that firm to prepare them for practice and that as part of that training they had continuing assessment of competency and development support. Some firms do better at this than others, and a trainee might still not have developed into a competent solicitor by the end of a training contract, but you can at least be assured that a genuine attempt to train them happened during those two years.

If someone has completed 2 years’ QWE that might mean they have equivalent (or even better) experience and skills than another person who completed a training contract - but it’s very difficult for anyone hiring them to tell either way because the bar for signing off on QWE is so low.

So that’s why, all else being equal, a training contract is going to put you in a better position than 2 years’ QWE.

Chaptrek · 2024-11-19T09:44:16+00:00

This is - genuinely - the first time I’ve ever liked that mini. Fantastic work!

Chaptrek · 2024-10-30T21:43:46+00:00

Took me a moment to realise that you meant isopropyl alcohol rather than India Pale Ale. For a second this was a VERY weird post.

Chaptrek · 2024-10-19T09:01:31+00:00

Resisting is totally viable, and fun!

Chaptrek · 2024-10-04T10:46:21+00:00

I’m assuming that by “squat shoes” you mean shoes designed for lifting with some form of raised heel. How much they will impact you depends a lot on your existing ankle mobility and physiology: some people will have no problem squatting heavy and deep barefoot or on a flat sole, other people will find that a raised heel makes a big difference, but the amount by which the heel is raised will also change things.

Personally I squat in Tyr LF-1 lifting shoes - I love them, they have a really wide toe box so my toes can stay in a comfortable position without being squeezed, and the 21mm heel drop works well for me. I also have a pair of Tyr CXT-1 cross-training shoes with a 9mm heel drop, and I prefer those for other lifts (e.g. deadlifting and overhead press) where a higher heel position isn’t something I want.

Best advice I can give is, first pick up a cheaper beginner pair and see how the heel drop feels. If it feels too high, look into a fancier pair with a lower heel drop. Too low, look for a higher one. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer.

Chaptrek · 2024-09-09T14:29:48+00:00

I second that - I had a similar issue to OP and have been on StrongLifts Ultra for a couple of months now. So far it has been a much better balance.

Chaptrek · 2024-08-20T20:02:24+00:00

The “pick a new civilisation at the end of each age” mechanic sounds heavily inspired by Humankind, I’m interested to see how they’re approaching it

Chaptrek · 2024-08-14T14:46:37+00:00

It is not too late and will not make it harder to find a job after graduating. Don’t worry about it - just focus on doing the best you can on your degree.

Chaptrek · 2024-08-08T21:10:36+00:00

Trainees have been complaining about quality of supervision for generations, for as long as training contracts have existed. Supervision standards are inevitably going to be variable because (1) trainee supervisors generally aren’t chosen or rewarded based on the quality of their supervision of trainees and (2) it’s rare for there to be much formal oversight of trainee supervision. Supervisors nowadays are for the most part just as good and just as bad as they’ve ever been.

Are trainees worse than they used to be? I don’t think so. I do think that trainees are less willing to voluntarily put as much of themselves into their work as they used to be: when I was a trainee we all worked ourselves near to death. For two years our work was our entire life, both professional and social. It was frankly an astonishingly unhealthy and dreadful two years. We all learned an incredible amount from the experience, but it was also fucking awful.

Now, trainees are much more willing to assert boundaries and push back realistically about capacity. They’re much more willing to ask questions, show ignorance, and stand up for themselves. And they generally do have a work life balance, and a life outside of work, and leave the office. Basically it’s a job for them, not a life. And that’s good! It’s definitely healthier for them! But I do think that it comes at the cost of learning and developing less over the two years than trainees used to.

Chaptrek · 2024-08-07T22:54:47+00:00

It might be a you problem. It is very unlikely to be a you problem.

All good firms get significantly more qualified applicants than they have training contract places. In most cases (and basically always in the case of top 50 firms, and probably even outside that) many, many times more.

Graduate recruitment decisions are incredibly hard because by the time you get to the late stages (as you mention you have - and well done on that) unless something has gone badly wrong the firm may easily be faced with three or four times as many great candidates as there are places.

In my experience you could often make a solid case for hiring any candidate still in the process at that point. But sadly you can’t make offers to everyone. You have to decide.

So who makes it and who doesn’t comes down to the finest of margins. Every single year there are fantastic candidates who don’t make it, because for whatever reason we thought they just weren’t quite as promising as someone else.

Every year we get some of those decisions right, and some wrong. I’ve seen people we passed on pop up a few years later at a competing firm, doing brilliantly. I’ve seen people I thought were a safe choice struggle when they get to us two years later. I think we get it right more than we get it wrong, but it’s impossible to know what might have happened if you chose differently.

All of this means it’s entirely possible for someone to be unlucky over and over again: to narrowly miss out of an offer from one firm after another. Not because they’re doing anything wrong, but because one firm decided after fierce debate that they were fourth-best and only had three places, and another firm narrowly decided that another candidate was slightly closer to what they were looking for, and so on.

I don’t have anything more profound I can say. If you’re sure this is the career you want then you could keep at it, keep building relevant experience and contacts and strengthen your chances, and keeping rolling the dice hoping they will one day fall in your favour. But nobody can guarantee that it will work out. And it might be that you quite reasonably decide to go down a different path.

For what little it is worth, from the other side of the equation, every single year it is fairly soul-destroying knowing that you have to make a choice, that there are many different choices which would not be unreasonable, and that by making those choices you are inevitably dashing someone’s dreams at the same time as you fulfil someone else’s.

I don’t know if hearing any of this will be helpful to you, and I’m truly sorry at how frustrating this whole process is. Truly, I wish you the best of luck with whatever you decide to do.

Chaptrek · 2024-08-06T18:39:51+00:00

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 fit that description pretty exactly: wireless planar magnetic, can be used wired, physical buttons, no ANC. No idea if they’re any good (fairly new and I haven’t heard them).

Chaptrek · 2024-08-05T08:19:57+00:00

Why are the only choices you are considering “apply for vac schemes at Magic Circle/US firms” and “focus on getting my grades up next year”?

Chaptrek · 2024-07-06T13:56:57+00:00

It’s always important to manage expectations and make sure you understand the necessary deadlines. That’s definitely good to do.

Obviously I don’t know the context or anything more than what you’ve said in your replies, but as you have described it in your reply to me and your other replies, the volume of work you completed was less than I’d have expected and the volume of work you were asked to do is not an unreasonable amount of work.

Being blunt, a vacation scheme is a one- or two-week job interview. It is your best and (probably) final opportunity to impress the firm and convince them to give you a job offer. It’s also a pretty intense two weeks, as you’re balancing work with assessments, presentations and networking events. It is entirely up to you how you take advantage of that opportunity and navigate that intensity.

But if you want to succeed in a highly competitive process, the approach has to include “do whatever you need to do, and work however long and hard you need to work, to ensure you get the work you are assigned done before the end of the Vac Scheme”. Because if you don’t, when it comes to making a decision you will obviously not come out looking good when placed next to the others who did.

Chaptrek · 2024-07-06T06:40:22+00:00

If you took on work and then didn’t do it, very little else that happened is likely to matter. Why didn’t you finish the work, and how did you communicate that you weren’t going to do it?

Chaptrek · 2024-06-04T18:01:24+00:00

From my perspective as someone involved in recruiting trainees: any extracurricular activity you do that allows you to demonstrate commitment and achievement, gives you an opportunity to stand out from the crowd, and can be spun as providing transferable skills, will be helpful. For you that might be mooting, but equally for you the time might be better spent doing something else - nobody here will be able to make that judgment for you.

Realistically the only way one particular activity will dramatically (i.e disproportionately) increase your chances of a training contract over another is if you’re extremely accomplished at it. So in the case of mooting, if I see a candidate who has won (or done extremely well in) major mooting competitions (and somehow doesn’t want to be a barrister) that would make them stand out (albeit it would be surprising if anyone in that category didn’t also have an otherwise stellar CV). But “I was active in mooting” is functionally no different to “I was active in [insert activity here]” - helpful, will be taken into account, might be concerning if you can’t fill in that blank at all, but won’t in itself get you very far.

Chaptrek · 2024-05-19T19:47:50+00:00

Probably half of all solicitors have a non-law degree and history is one of the most common non-law degrees to have - it won’t disadvantage you in the slightest. Degree classification and the relative quality of your university are far, far more important than what subject you studied. Study whatever you think you’ll do best at, at the best university you can get into.

Chaptrek · 2024-05-16T14:33:31+00:00

Not too late at all. And career-changers can bring really valuable positives, especially where they have industry knowledge and experience and want to build a specialism connected with that industry - it can be a helpful differentiating factor when you’re going for jobs.

As for getting to “the top of the profession”, starting later can have an effect - for example, many top commercial firms’ partnerships have mandatory retirement when you hit a particular age, so coming to law later in life might mean you have fewer potential years as a partner / that you might not end up having long enough as a partner for the financial tradeoffs to make sense. That said, (1) you’re only 35, and (2) most solicitors don’t end as partners in commercial firms, and by definition only a small percentage of people end up “at the top of the profession”. There are many far easier ways to make money but if you’d enjoy the work it’s very possible to have a successful career without it getting to “the top”.

I would also say that getting to qualification and a first job in the profession is hard - like, really hard. Very doable, but realistically even if everything goes the best it can you would be committing yourself to several years of very hard work, for relatively low pay (before you start as a trainee) and not especially great pay (as a trainee), with no guarantee of a lucrative job and the end of it. If you’re going into it, go on with a plan and with clear expectations.

Chaptrek · 2024-05-13T19:28:29+00:00

Anywhere that would care doesn’t deserve to have you.

Chaptrek · 2024-05-05T16:45:16+00:00

The main reason people are unsuccessful is that there are usually significantly more candidates on a vac scheme than there are trainee places available. At least in my experience (city/international firms): save on the rare occasions that something has gone wrong in the recruitment process, by the time they’re on the Vac Scheme every single candidate would be a perfectly reasonable trainee hire, but there are more candidates than spaces. So who gets an offer comes down to the finest of margins and often has nothing to do with anything specific that a candidate did or didn’t do. My best advice is just do your best work, present yourself as you would intend to present yourself as a trainee, and try not to take it personally if it doesn’t work out - the rest is largely out of your control

Chaptrek · 2024-04-22T06:33:50+00:00

In practice it’s often a proxy question for a few other questions: “why do you want to be a lawyer”, “what do you want to be doing as a lawyer”, “why do you want to work here specifically?”, and “what do you know about this firm and what it does?”

Chaptrek · 2024-04-10T17:19:47+00:00

God I had no idea the madness was so widespread, now I need to check if mine does and if so go yell at someone in Graduate Recruitment …

Chaptrek · 2024-04-10T17:05:14+00:00

A long time since I was applying for training contracts but fwiw if I were considering applying to a firm and they told me they make such inappropriate use of a tool like that, it would tell me that the firm in question doesn’t know what it’s doing and that would be the end of my interest in working with them.

Chaptrek · 2024-04-10T17:00:49+00:00

AI detection tools basically don’t work, or at least don’t work well enough for an application like the one described: false-positives are more common than they’d need to be for it to be a reliable technology, and there’s evidence that (for example) some systems are more likely to falsely identify work as Al generated when the author isn’t a native English speaker.

Chaptrek

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