Trainee blog - Letitia Longworth

Letitia Longworth obtained her graduate LLB and Diploma from the University of Edinburgh, after studying English in St Andrews for her first degree. Letitia is two months into her first seat with Brodies LLP, working with the Energy & Infrastructure team in Edinburgh.

APPLICATION TIME: Cracking the COMPETENCY

If you’re one of the hundreds of Scots law students starting third year this month, or second year if you’re on an accelerated course, then life is about to get busy. Autumn – season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and miscellaneous-spiced-lattes – is also the time of the traineeship application. And these days, that means one thing above all else: competency questions.

While you’ll find that there are as many types of form as there are firms to apply to, competency questions now come as standard across the board. When getting to grips with the technique can feel like an uphill struggle, once you’ve cracked it you’ll find that applications on the whole are far easier (you might even begin to enjoy them!).

So, to help with this process, and to coincide with the law fairs taking place around the country over the next few weeks, here’s a list of top tips for tackling the competency:

• Think STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Once you begin writing, it can be very easy to wander off track, especially if you’re describing action that you took in particularly complex or technical circumstances. STAR will keep you focused.
• Situation – this part of your answer should be short: it’s really there so that you can set the scene and provide any context that you think is crucial to an understanding of what you did.
• Task – this might be slightly longer, but remember you’re still setting the scene. Think about a time when you encountered a clear need or problem, and took responsibility for solving it.
• The Action section should be the longest – it’s your time to shine! It helps here to think about why you took the action, as well as what you did.
• Try to sum up the Result in one sentence: it shows that the action you took had a clear, definitive impact.
• Word counts are often small, so you will have to be lean and mean. It might go against the grain to hand in something that sounds less elegant than you’d like, but the aim at this stage is simply to demonstrate your skills.
• Don’t be nervous about using examples from non-legal work experience or extra-curricular activities. An example from your part-time job or a previous career in another profession can be as effective as mooting or something you did on a summer placement. Remember that it’s the underlying reasoning that will make you stand out.

Whether you’re applying as a third-year undergraduate, changing career, or coming back to study law after a couple of years in the workplace, just remember that you can demonstrate the required competencies in a myriad of different ways: ultimately it’s what you did and why, rather than where or when you did it, that will land you that place at an interview or assessment centre.

Good luck!