Placement

Next year I need to undertake a 18 week placement (12 weeks of which is during the summer holidays) as part of my course. We’re barley finished second year and they’re already bombarding us with E-mails about the placement.

I’ve got five options:

  1. Find my own placement in the legal profession
  2. Find my own placement in Management
  3. Let the uni find me a placement in the legal profession
  4. Let the uni find me a placement in Management
  5. Don’t do a placement, have 6 weeks extra holiday and do three modules in 6 weeks instead of two modules

I’ve already ruled out number 5 as who wants to voluntarily put themselves under increased pressure (even when it means an extra 6 weeks added onto my summer holiday). During the second semester we already need to fit the work we’d do in 12 weeks for two modules into half that time, why would you add an extra 12 weeks of work into that?

I quite like the sound on number 1, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to find placements without already having contacts. Having no lawyers in the family and no lawyers as family friends I’m running a bit short on contacts. Number 3 would be the next best thing, but by leaving it up to the uni I could end up in a placement that does not interest me at all in the slightest, such as commercial or something equally as dull!

I’m not considering a career in management at all so I see going on a management placement as almost pointless. Saying that, I’d rather do one in Management than be forced into doing the extra taught module! So, that effectively rules out 2 and 4 as well.

I’m thinking about contacting COPFS, after all I have already done some work shadowing with them so, I reckon they’re my best bet for now. Other than that it’s down to researching firms that I could possibly ask about placement opportunities. Can’t actually start applying though as we’ve yet to be given the dates by the uni that we’ll be on placement (one assumes we’ll get those in September during our “Stage 3 induction day”).

The best thing about it is I can search across the whole of Scotland for a placement, I’m not limited to Anytown. This means I could look in Homecity as well (where I’ll get to live at home for 18 weeks and where there is a greater chance of finding a firm specialising in criminal law)

This looks set to be an interesting year, except from the modules being heavily based in corporate/commercial law (with the exception of Delict), which are very boring!