Re-Start - Why we welcome career changers

At Shearman & Sterling we are always looking for the very best candidates for our training contracts. As a firm with a 140-year heritage, we know that the best lawyers come from a variety of diverse backgrounds - especially those with practical work experience. It is for this reason that we are running a Re-Start event on 11 June for those career changers who are looking for opportunities in the commercial law sector.

Our trainee intakes are diverse and we are proud of our diversity. Recognising diversity in all its forms led us to consider some of the great candidates we’ve seen in the past, ranging from undergraduates to savvy entrepreneurs and the more mature applicants coming from incredibly varied backgrounds. We hope that our trainee cohorts will represent the diversity of our clients in commercial mind-set, intelligence and can-do attitude.  That’s why we’re now trying to find aspiring trainees who have had very different experiences, whether as corporate masterminds; in start-up tech companies; in the strategic vision of the armed forces or with managing the pressures of 30 teenagers in the classroom.

So, if you or a friend is considering changing careers to law, then Re-Start is the event for you. It is a one-day structured programme which will inform and educate you on the pathway to law, what firms look for in candidates and how you can harness all those transferable skills into those of a City lawyer.

If you would like to attend Re-Start on Thursday 11 June 2015, please send your CV and cover letter outlining your interest in the event to [email protected] by Friday 22 May.

Please note that you are only eligible for Re-Start if you have previously worked full time in a different industry to law.

During the application process we will be looking at:

• your academic performance to date;
• your work experience to date;
• your interest in, and motivation for, a legal career;
• what you would like to achieve from the programme; and
• why you are interested in Shearman & Sterling.

Monika Ciereszko is graduate recruitment adviser at Shearman & Sterling.