Free ECS content has already helped some people go from rejection to offers at top firms. If that’s what free can do, imagine what happens when we: – set your exact targets, – tear down and rebuild your answers, – and drill you on mocks until you sound like someone they actually hire. Free = frameworks. Paid = getting pushed to offer level.

1️⃣ Decide if Paul, Weiss is really my game. I’d study their London growth story and ask if I want a career built around private equity, public M&A, restructuring and high-stakes litigation, not mid-market generalist work. 2️⃣ Treat the vacation scheme as the only door. I’d plan backwards from the vac scheme, because it is the pathway to the Training Contract, with assessment primarily during those two weeks. 3️⃣ Build a PE-first commercial awareness plan. Every week I’d track at least three PE-backed or public-company deals where Paul, Weiss or its direct competitors are on the ticket, then break them down using PEAL-3® so I can talk valuation, capital structure and exit routes, not headlines. 4️⃣ Rewrite my CV using VTMR™. Every line would be Verb–Task–Metric–Result, with bullets that look like junior-associate work: fund modelling, credit analysis, transactions, advocacy. That is how you get taken seriously by a team built around Europe’s leading PE partners. 5️⃣ Build a Paul, Weiss-only PEAL-X® bank. I’d write at least four PEAL-X® answers where every sentence has a Paul, Weiss fact: London trainee intake size, NQ salary c. £180k, core seats (Antitrust, Finance, Funds, M&A, Restructuring), and their recent lateral hires from Kirkland, Magic Circle and A&O Shearman. 6️⃣ Engineer my story with STAR-3®. I’d script ten STAR-3® answers that prove I can operate in lean, high-pressure teams: decisions made, risks taken, quantified results, and reflection on how that transfers into cross-border PE work. 7️⃣ Reverse-engineer the recruitment funnel. I’d map every step: online form → interview → vac scheme → partner interview, numeracy test and presentation. Then I’d rehearse those three vac-scheme assessments under timed conditions until they feel routine. 8️⃣ Lean into the “entrepreneurial mindset” filter. Because Paul, Weiss explicitly wants self-starters in a differentiated, fast-growing London office, I’d choose examples where I built something from scratch, not just followed instructions.

They treat their university brand as the strategy. Firms don’t. Here’s the reality (and what you should actually do): 1. Firms recruit for outcomes, not optics. Slaughter and May hires from 70+ universities . White & Case says 80% of its trainees come via vacation schemes — not brand-name CVs . Your task is to prove you can deliver under pressure. Action: Show proof of outcome — quantify your achievements using the VTMR™ Formula (Verb–Task–Metric–Result). 2. Generic answers kill applications. Recruiters at Linklaters and White & Case openly reject cover letters that could be copy-pasted to another firm . Action: Apply the PEAL-X™ Framework. Every sentence must contain a firm-specific fact — a deal, client, ranking, or sector. 3. Commercial fluency beats academic polish. Clifford Chance explicitly values intellectual agility and the ability to discuss commercial issues, not just legal theory . Action: Train with STAR-3™ — structure competency answers around Situation, Task, Action, and 3 Results (deal, client, and personal outcome). 💡 At City Careers Coach, this approach has delivered a 95% offer benchmark across flagship clients — including White & Case, Ropes & Gray, and Sidley Austin. University prestige may open the inbox. Framework-based execution secures the offer.

Does anyone have any experience/advice with this from previous years? Appreciate this process is still rather new, so for reference this is what I have been told I will be assessed on: Work simulation tasks – tasks based on real scenarios you may encounter at Freshfields. Video response questions – short recorded answers to real-life situations. Any/all advice would be super helpful, find video interviews much harder than in person ones.

Hi does anyone have any advice for answering "Please choose a recent deal ( less than 12 months) or development in UK - EU news. Why is it relevant for X and clients?"