My Vacation Placement experience in the Manchester office

Pinsent Masons’ core values of bold, approachable and connected became apparent to me even before my vacation scheme had started. The Facebook group ‘Pinsent Masons Vacation Scheme 2019’ allowed all of the students selected to get to know both each other and trainees alike. This led to me and the other students in the Manchester office travelling down to London together on the induction day and ultimately forming great friendships.

The induction day consisted of talks about Pinsent Masons’ strategy, different practice groups and what life as a trainee is like. This helped in breaking us into the vacation scheme, so that for the next day we felt more confident and prepared for the two weeks ahead.

Throughout the placement, I was based in the TMT-Information law department, and straight away my trainee-buddy, Laura, took me for a chat to provide me with an overview of the team and answer any questions I had. During the course of the scheme, Laura was a great support to have providing me with great guidance.

As my team was quite small, I managed to have chats with each of them; all took time out of their busy days to help me gain the best experience possible. I sat in on calls with Rachel the junior solicitor in my team, and went for a coffee with my supervisor, Rif, for a chat about the work he carries out as a senior associate.

Due to my interest in Employment law, I was also fortunate enough to have an informative talk with a trainee named Emma, currently sat in the Employment team. She provided with an extremely insightful account into the work carried out in that team, in addition to explanations of the work in the other seats she had completed.

The tasks I was given throughout my placement were extremely interesting, while also being sufficiently challenging. To name just a few of them, I carried out research for large clients, produced an article for a conference, reviewed contracts and sat in on Atlas+ client calls such as Tesco.

Teams are more than happy to answer any questions about the work they do or the firm in general, and due to an open-plan working environment this was made easy!

The social aspects of the vacation placement were exceptional. On the first Wednesday, Jonathan, a trainee, and Rachel, a solicitor in CAD, had just reached a settlement and so invited all students for drinks after work. On Thursday evening, we had a fabulous social at Roxy Ballroom with many of the trainees, and drinks in the office on our final day which was fantastic networking opportunity.

The vacation placement at Pinsent Masons not only provides you with a invaluable insight into life as a lawyer, but it also shows you that it is possible to be an internationally successful law firm while retaining its core values and working with a wider purpose.

Did you enjoy reading about Hannah’s experience? Would you like to find out first-hand what it’s like to work at Pinsent Masons? For more information on the Vacation Placement visit our website.