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First Year Law Students

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Your first-year university checklist

You’re at university and want to know what you should be doing. Here’s a brief checklist to get you started!

LawCareersNetLIVE

First year? First move: LawCareersNetLIVE is where it begins!

Apply now! Find out more!

What to do in your first year

A first-year student’s guide to opportunities in law

Vacation Scheme Insiders

Get a sense of what different firms’ vacation schemes are really like by reading these insider reports!

Read interviews

Your first-year university checklist LawCareersNetLIVE What to do in your first year Vacation Scheme Insiders

The latest information

What to do in your first year

From vacation schemes to law fairs, here's what to focus on this year

Opportunities at law firms

Firms offering insight schemes and open day opportunities for first-year students and their deadlines

Solicitors Qualifying Exam – your questions answered

From September 2021, the route to legal qualification in England and Wales is changing with the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam.

The LawCareers.Net Podcast

What to do in your first year

In this episode we give you lots of tips of things to do in the first year of your law degree in order to launch your career. We spoke to Jane Wood, Course Leader and Principal Lecturer at Nottingham Law School, Maaya Sachdev, President of Warwick Law Society and Charis McGowan, Emerging Talent Coordinator at DWF.

How do I become a lawyer?

The Beginner's Guide to a Career in Law

Essential reading for those starting out

Year 12/13 and first-year opportunities: open days and insight schemes

Most trainee-hiring law firms run work experience schemes and events specifically for year 12/13 and first-year students. So, if you’re seriously considering becoming a solicitor, you’ll be doing yourself a big favour by getting involved at this early stage of your career – if not just to identify whether a career in the legal profession is for you. Use this list of law firms offering opportunities to year 12/13 and first-year university students to get you started!

Key questions

How can I get work experience in my first year of university?

"I’m a first-year student, how important is legal work experience and do you have any advice for securing some?"

What types of lawyer are there?

Solicitor, barrister and paralegal - find out about the different branches of the profession

When do I start looking for a job?

It's never too early to start thinking about your future career. Here are the main employer deadlines

Do first-year exams matter?

If they don't count towards my final degree, does this mean law firms won't see my exam results as important?

In this week's newsletter

Sign up to LawCareers.Net to receive the LCN Weekly newsletter, diary updates, events, surveys and other emails providing information for future lawyers.

Meet the Lawyer

Alasdair Johnston

Associate Alasdair Johnston discusses why he was drawn to working at international law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius UK LLP, the rewarding cases he’s worked on and the importance of work experience for aspiring lawyers. Plus, he highlights his time on secondment in Dubai.

Construction & engineering

“When I see completed shopping centres or newly constructed electrifying diesel berths at a container port, I feel a sense of pride knowing I contributed to its construction. The tangible outcomes of my work are incredibly rewarding.”

Meet the Recruiter

Should you use AI in your applications to HFW? How’s the firm adopting the Solicitors Qualifying Exam and what kind of work can you expect to experience on the vacation scheme? All of this and more is covered by HFW’s early careers manager Lucie Rees in this Meet the Recruiter profile.

Vacation Scheme Insiders

Clare Lash-Williams

University of Exeter

Law

Summer 2023

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Videos

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LawCareersNetLIVE Manchester 2024: trainee panel

Masterclass | researching law firms – identifying the firm for you

LawCareersNetLIVE Manchester 2024: partner panel

Meet the Lawyer | Abigail Saffron - Baker McKenzie

The latest news

Foot Anstey sets new standard with parental leave policy

National law firm Foot Anstey LLP has expanded it parental leave policy to include six months full parental leave to employees of all genders – “a vital step towards achieving greater equality in caregiving responsibilities”.

Dentons partners with legal AI platform to expand AI capabilities across Europe

Global law firm Dentons has partnered with collaborative generative AI platform Legora, giving its lawyers Europe-wide access to advanced AI tools and new ways of completing legal tasks.

Law Society proposes 10 steps to restore legal aid services after cyberattack

The Law Society of England and Wales has called for “immediate actions” to restore the justice system, following a major cyberattack on the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) in April 2025, which compromised up to 15 years of sensitive legal aid data.

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Getting started

Your first-year university checklist

Here's a list of things you should be doing in your first year at university

Career paths

Take a look at our simple timetable of the different legal career paths

What you need to know

From vacation schemes to law fairs, here's what to focus on this year

Looking beyond exam season

Some inspiration for you over the summer!

Blog posts and other insights

Dimitar Dimitrov - How your student law society can support you

Dimitar Dimitrov

As an aspiring lawyer, joining your university’s student law society is a fantastic way to not only meet like-minded people with similar career aspirations, but also to get involved in brilliant opportunities, including networking, pro bono and mooting.

From law graduate to LLM: how to apply successfully

Applying for an LLM can feel overwhelming, especially if you're aiming for a top-tier programme where competition is fierce.

Olivia Partridge - Top 10 tips for your vacation scheme applications

Olivia Partridge

Acing a vacation scheme application comes with time, effort and a lot of research. With the biggest vacation scheme deadline of the year – 31 January – looming (and many firms having their deadline before this), now is the time to perfect your application strategy.

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The LawCareers.Net Podcast

From researching firms to building your commercial awareness, listen to The LCN Podcast for everything you need to know about becoming a lawyer

Solicitor practice area profile

Intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for a variety of different rights which protect intellectual creations, such as inventions, brands, designs, and literary and artistic works.