An application for a training contract, a pupillage, a solicitor apprenticeship or a paralegal job is read in a particular order, by people with a shortlist deadline, against criteria they do not publish. These four pages set out what each stage is for and what the person reading is marking against. They do not tell you what to say, because an application that sounds like ours is worth less than one that sounds like you.
Start at the stage you are at
-
The CV
What it has to do and in what order, the two-page convention, evidence against assertion and the legal usage a legal reader notices. Plus what our CV checker actually checks, rule by rule.
-
Cover letters and written questions
Why this firm, why this area of law, why you. What a weak answer looks like, and how to build the answer out of published facts about the employer instead of adjectives.
-
Interviews
Screening call, video interview, competency interview, case study, written exercise, group exercise, partner interview and the pupillage panel — each with what the assessor is scoring.
-
Assessment centres
The shape of the day, how the scores are pooled afterwards, what one bad exercise actually costs and the things candidates get wrong that have nothing to do with law.
What is free here, and why we say so
The general mechanics of a CV are free from the government and will stay free. The CV builder on jobs.service.gov.uk and the National Careers Service cover sections, order and wording for any job, and Prospects publishes a legal CV and cover letter page. Nobody should charge you for that, so we link to it rather than rewriting it worse.
Those sources cover law-specific ground as well — the Prospects page above is a legal CV and cover letter guide — and a general AI assistant will comment on a draft all day for a subscription many people already pay for. We are not going to pretend otherwise in order to sell you something thinner. What these four pages add is written for UK legal recruitment, cites the rules it applies, and does not store what you paste. What the paid tools add is the part nothing else holds: facts about the particular employer you are writing to, taken from the registers with a source against each one.
Who you are actually applying to
12,930 companies at Companies House identify themselves as solicitors’ practices, 4,700 offices hold a legal aid contract, and 3,097 distinct employers are named on the CILEx Regulation register. The twenty or thirty firms that dominate careers advice are a rounding error in that.
It matters for the paperwork. An application for a City training contract and an application to a legal aid practice in Bradford are not the same document, and almost all the advice you will read assumes the first. The employer data is where the facts for the second come from.
The tools, and which plan each one is in
Read from the same catalogue the pricing page and the subscription checks use, so this list cannot drift from what a subscription actually opens.
- What a legal CV has to do — The structure, the length, what a screener looks for, and the twelve mistakes that cost an otherwise good application. Free to read, no account needed.
- CV and cover letter templates — Templates for the training contract, pupillage, apprenticeship and paralegal applications, in plain formats that survive an applicant tracking system. Data, £7.95 a month. In preparation, and nobody is charged for it.
- CV checker — Paste your CV and get it checked against the structure, length, verb and evidence rules, with the specific lines that need work. Your text is not stored. Data, £7.95 a month.
- Application questions, worked — The recurring written questions — why this firm, why commercial law, a time you showed resilience — with worked answers and the reasoning behind each one. Applying, £16.95 a month. In preparation, and nobody is charged for it.
- Evidence packs: what to say about a named employer — For an employer on the register, the facts you can cite in an application — size, offices, practice areas, legal aid categories, who else works there — each with its source. Pro, £25.95 a month. In preparation, and nobody is charged for it.
- Every stage, and what it tests — Screening call, competency interview, case study, group exercise, written exercise, partner interview and the pupillage gateway panel, each with what the assessor is scoring. Free to read, no account needed.
- Question bank with model answers — Several hundred real-format questions by stage and by route, each with a model answer, the structure behind it, and what a weak answer looks like. Applying, £16.95 a month. In preparation, and nobody is charged for it.
- Timed mock interviews — Sit a timed set in the format you are facing, record or type your answers, and mark them against the criteria these exercises are generally built on, since no employer publishes its own. Applying, £16.95 a month. In preparation, and nobody is charged for it.
- Commercial case studies and the commercial awareness brief — Full case-study exercises with model workings, and a regular brief on the commercial stories a candidate is expected to have an opinion about. Applying, £16.95 a month. In preparation, and nobody is charged for it.
What each plan costs, and what cancelling involves.
What we will not tell you
- That there is a formula. Employers mark against their own criteria, which none of them publish. Anyone selling you a named firm’s competency framework is guessing at it.
- That using this changes your odds. Nobody has measured that, here or anywhere, so there is no number to give you and we do not invent one.
- That a tool can write your answer. The checker tells you which lines are costing you. It does not write the replacement, because an answer in somebody else’s voice reads like one.
Nothing here gives you an advantage with any employer, and we have no influence over anybody's recruitment decision. Training contracts, pupillages and apprenticeships are granted on merit, by the employer, at its own discretion. We publish data and build tools; we do not sell access, and we do not claim a success rate, because nobody has measured one.
Assize Careers is not a regulator, professional body, university, law school or official careers service, and it is not part of or endorsed by one. Nothing on this site is legal advice.