Thoughtful leadership

The summer holidays may be in full swing, but for some of us the work continues

The print magazine may be enjoying a two-week break, but SJ will still be delivering news straight to your inbox, Twitter feed and at solicitorsjournal.com.

As I said last week, much of my time has been spent continuing to reduce the hundreds of training contract applications received to a more manageable number for interview.

It still seems incredible that, due to the competition, the recruitment process starts and finishes over two years before a training contract actually begins. Firms must anticipate not only their own future needs but consider how the nervous university student before them will develop in the coming 24 months, with more academic insight, legal training and life experience.

One of the most time-consuming parts of the process is the reading of application forms. Long gone are the days where candidates would simply send in a two-page CV and anyone with perfect A Levels and an Oxbridge education would magically jump to the top of the pile.

Of course academic achievement and education still counts, but the focus now is much more on competency-based questions and relating real-life experiences with future work-life dilemmas. One spelling mistake, typo or grammatical error may be tolerated, but anything more and it's straight to the bottom. Mentioning the wrong firm in your application is an automatic rejection (and yes, it does happen).

As much as the pressure is on the candidates to excel in writing and in person at the interview stages, there is also a pressure on those shortlisting. Having spent days reviewing forms and reading in great detail about how organising a college ball is one of the most challenging experiences anyone could survive, I had some sympathy with Lord Neuberger's recent comments about reading into the cases before him in the Supreme Court.

Speaking in Australia, the president of the Supreme Court described himself as an Impressionist: "Judicial Pre-Raphaelites read everything, whereas judicial Impressionists read very little - often just skimming the skeleton arguments."

I am sure that one of the country's brightest legal minds knows what he is doing, but when reading the forms before me, I believe I have an obligation to the aspiring lawyer presenting themselves to the firm to read all of what they submit, spelling mistakes and all. Only by doing so can I satisfy myself that the right decision is made. Of course it still remains subjective at this stage, but all too often there is so little to decide between the best of the best.

Lord Neuberger accepted in his speech that judges who follow the Impressionist approach run the risk of "not really being on top of things until after the hearing". As the training contract process moves on to interview stage, I don't want to miss any opportunity to see the best in the candidates. Only then will I feel comfortable speaking up as the hundreds are reduced to the few.

Kevin Poulter, editor at large

@SJ_Weekly

#SJPOULTER

editorial@solicitorsjournal.co.uk