Please tell us about a time where you failed at something; what was the situation and how did you react? (max 500 words)

- I have worked as a paralegal at [redacted law firm] in October 2022. Here, I draft wills to comply with English law and Islamic law paying strong attention to detail and frequently interacting with clients to ensure that the wills are accurate and specific. My main concern is to ensure that clients feel supported in the process, as this community service is an important branch of the business.

Feedback: This is a classic competency question. The candidate does well to follow the STAR structure (situation, task, action, result). We especially like that the candidate has separated out the paragraphs to address each element of STAR. This makes the candidate’s writing very clear and easy to follow. You should follow the same approach. It will make the recruiter’s life much easier, which in turn will help you stand out against the 100s of poorly written and badly-structured answers.

This first paragraph provides a concise summary of the candidate’s situation. We believe the candidate goes into the right amount of detail. The candidate provides just enough detail to give the recruiter context. We know (1) the candidate’s position of responsibility, (2) the specific tasks this position involved and (3) the candidate’s objectives in this position. The candidate also spends just 69/500 words on the situation. As a general rule, you should spend no more than 15-20% of your answer on the context – the majority of marks lie in the “action”/”result” paragraphs.

As a very minor nitpick, the candidate did not need to shoehorn in a reference to “attention to detail” – this is evident from the candidate’s description of their duties. If the candidate really struggled for space, they could cut this out and save themselves 5-6 words.

- There has been a steep learning curve, especially at the beginning of the process, where I would fail to draft bequests sections with enough clarity or miss certain assets. My manager then had to take additional time to re-draft certain sections when reviewing the wills.

Feedback: This is a decent “task” paragraph. We are given a very concise outline of the tasks and situation this candidate faced. It is very succinct at 46 words – as general rule, you should not devote more than 25% of your answer to the situation and task together. The situation/task is also clearly relevant to the question – it showcases various times at which the candidate failed at something.

However, our main concern is that this paragraph is very generalised. The candidate does not identify a specific example of a time they failed at something. Instead, they generalise and rely on the fact that they made a lot of mistakes starting out as a paralegal. We strongly advise candidates to identify specific, detailed and singular situations/incidents which address the question. The candidate should outline the situation concisely and illustrate it with specific facts/details. In turn, this allows the candidate to build a logical and consistent argument explaining how exactly they approached that situation and produced a tangible positive outcome. Here, it is difficult for the candidate to do this because they do not identify a specific situation in which they failed at something.

Instead, we would expect the candidate to focus on a specific matter/client situation where they failed to draft a will to the required standard. The candidate would then need to explain exactly what went wrong with that will and how they overcame their failure.

- At first, when I became aware of the mistakes, I was disappointed in myself. To bounce back, I first went for a walk to clear my head and regain focus and perspective. I soon realised that due to the challenging nature of our work, mistakes were bound to happen initially. I decided to view the situation as a learning opportunity instead. After I came home, I proceeded to pay closer attention to the final documents, rigorously comparing my drafts with the amended drafts, where I would make a note of any changes. I actively sought out internal and external resources as well as started to ask more questions about the different processes, whenever I needed more information. I would then re-check these notes and answers when drafting the wills to ensure that the wills I currently work on do not include the same mistakes and that I would only ever make a mistake once.

Feedback: This is a strong paragraph because it demonstrates the candidate’s emotional intelligence and positive attitude. As a trainee, you will fail and make mistakes countless times (perhaps even several times a day). Much of the challenge lies in how you handle this mistake, and whether you take it personally or instead view it as an opportunity for growth and development. The candidate concisely outlined how they handled the mistake at an emotional level, the methods they used in order to keep a level head, and how they ultimately took the failure as an opportunity for improvement. This gets to the heart of the question. BCLP specifically ask how you reacted to the failure, so you need to demonstrate that you have the maturity and emotional intelligence to handle negative feedback.

Nonetheless, we would have liked to see further detail on how the candidate improved their work quality going forward. The candidate’s steps are currently quite simplistic. We are told that they “rigorously checked drafts” and “sought out resources”, but we are not told what these resources were or how they improved the candidate’s quality of work. Unusually, the candidate does not seem to seek feedback from their supervisor at any point. Had the candidate cut down their subsequent “result” paragraph, they could have spent more time discussing the specific steps they took to improve the quality of their work.

- Because of this approach, I have noticed fewer edits and amendments from my drafts to the finalised edits and received positive feedback from my colleagues and my manager. I have therefore been able to speed up the process for the clients that I handle, as the wills I work on require less editing and I work much more independently. I have since then been trusted to process any urgent wills and perform tasks of more senior colleagues, whenever they have been away. I have been involved in a larger amount of client contact and have even reviewed documents and resources. After new members joined our team in March, I have frequently received messages from them, when they have had issues or points for clarification.

Feedback: This paragraph offers a decent summary of the candidate’s result/outcome. It clearly explains how their previous actions resulted in a positive outcome for themselves, as well as how it prevented them from failing in this way again.

However, we believe that this is a weaker paragraph overall. The issue is that the “result”/”outcome” is not specific and detailed enough. The candidate generalises that they “received positive feedback” and “sped up” the process for clients. The issues are that it is unclear (1) what this positive feedback involved nor (2) precisely how this feedback sped up the process and improved client care as a result. Instead, we would want to see a specific and tangible outcome that arose as a result of the candidate’s actions. As a general rule, you should always illustrate the results of your actions in as much specific detail as possible. This should be quantified with numbers, statistics and facts as far as possible.

These issues are not helped by the candidate’s vague “situation/task” section. Had the candidate focused on a specific and individual scenario in their “situation/task” section, they would have avoided many of the issues present in this “result” paragraph.

Please give us an example of when you have learned from a mistake. What was the mistake you made, and what did you learn from it?

I have learnt the importance of being clear and direct from the outset of any scenario. When writing my personal statement for the study of law at Cambridge University, my school provided a mentor to provide individual feedback. After creating an initial first draft, my mentor provided feedback insisting that I should remove a certain part of my personal statement, in particular where I had stated my winning of a unique bursary for study at the school. I should have been clear with the mentor faster than I had that I wished to proceed with including the specific part of my personal statement. I felt strongly about including the part about the bursary since I believed it would help to distinguish me from other candidates. By not being immediately clear with the mentor of my intentions, much distraction was caused by this disagreement, as opposed to working constructively to create the best possible personal statement that could be submitted. In the hope of preventing outright contention or disagreement I was not as direct as I could have been, which took time out of having discussions that could have been more valuable. I have learnt that it is important from the outset to be clear and frank, such that all time is used efficiently and effectively. Luckily, I was then able to work constructively with my mentor to achieve a successful result by acceptance into Cambridge University. 

[Feedback: This is a unique and personal example, if not a little eccentric. Nevertheless, the candidate’s choice of example distinguishes their answer from the crowd.

For these kinds of answers, we would recommend employing a STAR structure: situation, task, action, result. Furthermore, we would recommend splitting your answer into three to four distinct paragraphs to ensure that the reader can follow your writing.

Whilst the candidate does have the hallmarks of a STAR structure, it has been written as one wall of text. Ensure that you use paragraphs when writing to differentiate the sections of your STAR-structured answer. Furthermore, you should err towards simple sentences over long-flowing prose. Complex sentences can be useful to express points of nuance; however, they can make your writing difficult to follow and unclear, especially if you have not employed paragraph breaks.]

We all have to deal with difficult times which challenge our resilience and ability to deal with stressful situations. Please tell us about a situation you experienced like this (other than exam pressures) and explain how you dealt with it? (300) (300)

At [redacted], I led a project for a PE firm acquiring a major music publisher. [redacted]’s expert network is mainly geared towards connecting clients with a small number of industry experts as part of commercial due diligence. However, the client expanded the project shortly before the deadline, demanding insights from 70 experts as opposed to the original 20. It was apparent that its investment committee were demanding greater reassurance from commercial DD given the increasingly challenging market for acquisition financing.

The PE firm was a new client yet our management had been prepared to drop the project because it was incompatible with our normal scope of work. I insisted that it could be completed on time.

Feedback: This is a typical competency question that calls for you to follow the STAR structure (situation, task, action, result). The candidate has generally followed that structure quite well here. This makes the candidate’s writing fairly easy to follow (and so easier to be persuaded by). You should follow the STAR structure closely, as it will make your writing far more straightforward to follow (and you will also make the recruiter’s life very easy!).

Overall, the candidate writes about the situation/task reasonably well. We like that the candidate has illustrated the situation/context with specific and quantified numbers/details. This adds gravity to the candidate’s achievements and helps the recruiter understand the scale of the task they faced. In turn, this makes the candidate’s writing far more persuasive to the recruiter. It demonstrates that the candidate can be resilient and can handle high-pressured situations, particularly those of the scale you would expect to see at a commercial law firm. You should aim for similar levels of specificity in your own writing.

The candidate also writes about the task concisely, in just 36 words. We are given full context about the candidate’s task and the pressure they faced to drop the project, without going into excessive detail. In turn, this gives the candidate plenty of space to write about their actions/results later in the answer.

Regardless, the candidate should have written about the situation far more concisely. The candidate devotes an 80/300 word paragraph entirely to the situation/context. Much of this writing is irrelevant and could have been safely cut out in favour of more detail elsewhere. We believe the following points could have been cut down or removed altogether:

1. “It was apparent that its investment committee were demanding greater reassurance from commercial DD given the increasingly challenging market for acquisition financing.” – This sentence has limited (if any) relevance. It does not demonstrate the gravity of the situation or explain why it was stressful. Instead, it reads as though the candidate is trying to sneak in commercial awareness knowledge. The candidate could have cut this out and saved themselves 22 words.

2. The recruiter does not need to know that the target is a “major music publisher”, nor that the PE firm mainly “connects clients with a small number of industry experts as part of commercial due diligence”.

As a rule, you should not devote more than 25% of your answer to the situation/task. At 116/300 words, the candidate devotes well over a third of their answer to this.

I drafted a more focused questionnaire which allowed the expert interviews that normally lasted an hour to be conducted in less than 20 minutes, with minimal sacrifice of content. I revised the pricing model and successfully pitched the idea to the client. We identified more industry experts and persuaded 70 to participate, exceeding [redacted]’s normal conversion rate.

Feedback: The candidate now moves onto describing the actions they carried out in response to the challenge. This first “action” paragraph looks to be strong. You should note how the candidate gets straight to the point. They concisely outline the specific steps they took to deliver a high-quality piece of work, even despite the stress. We are given insight into the candidate’s efficiency and ability to think/act logically in high-pressure situations. We also like how the candidate use specific numbers and quantified detail. This helps the recruiter understand precisely how the candidate worked under stress, as well as how their actions led to the eventual result.

As a minor comment, the candidate should have been more direct in addressing the question’s wording. The question explicitly asks how candidates deal with stressful situations. This calls for some discussion on emotional intelligence, with specific focus on how the candidate braves through stress to deliver an excellent outcome regardless.  The recruiter wants to know whether the candidate has the resilience and mental fortitude to bounce back from stressful scenarios. Had the candidate written about the situation/task more concisely, then they might have had space to address this element of the question more directly.

I worked late most evenings and over weekends, prioritising my workload. I handed over some of my projects to other teams, selecting those still in their early stages to minimise disruption to clients. I force-ranked my remaining projects according to urgency. I was also conscious of time zones, prioritising my European clients in the morning to free up my afternoon for US-based projects. As the project lead, I used a similar system to prioritise and assign tasks to my colleagues.

Feedback: This is another decent paragraph. We are given a concise outline of how the candidate prioritised their time and organised their workload. In particular, we like the candidate’s writing about how they used time zones to manage their time and handle competing demands. This gives the recruiter some insight into how they decided to prioritise certain tasks over others. In turn, this helps convince the recruiter that the candidate can handle high-pressured situations and sudden deadlines (particularly in an international commercial law firm context). In the same way, you should always explain how you prioritise tasks and the specific methods you use to manage your time. It is not enough for you to assert that you can manage time and stay organised – you need to explain precisely how you did this in the example you have given.

Nonetheless, this paragraph is quite vague in areas and should have been improved in the following regards:

1. The candidate leads in with the fact that they worked late evenings/weekends. It’s true that you will work some late hours as a commercial law, including consistent late evenings and very occasional weekends. However, you should not rely on this point as a time-management method in your answers. It is not a sustainable method of managing your time. In any case, it might lead a cynical recruiter to question whether you can truly organise your time properly if you always have to work beyond your normal hours to meet deadlines. Instead, you should focus on how you organised your schedule and balanced competing tasks in order to meet stressful deadlines

2. It is unclear how the candidate “force-ranked projects according to urgency”. The candidate would have needed to go into more detail explaining precisely how they prioritised each task. In your own answers, you should always explain fully how you manage competing deadlines and choose which tasks to prioritise.

The work was delivered on time and the client successfully completed the acquisition. The project was our team’s largest that year in revenue terms. Simultaneously, I was able to meet expectations on all my other projects. This enabled me to exceed my monthly performance target by 100%. 

Feedback: This final “result” paragraph is strong. In “result” paragraphs, we would expect candidates to describe quantifiable outcomes that took places as a direct consequence of their actions previously described. The candidate does reasonably well here. Not only have they explained that the outcome was positive, but they have also highlighted a couple of interesting details. We know that it was not only the team’s largest project in terms of revenue, but they also exceeded their monthly target by 100%. By using specific and quantified details, the candidate persuades the recruiter both of the gravity of the outcome and of their wider ability to handle high-pressure situations. You should aim for similar levels of detail when describing your own outcomes.

One minor comment would be that the candidate could have gone into even more specific detail. Had the candidate provided a number for the revenue, or some comparative statistics, then their answer would be even more persuasive. However, this is a strong paragraph overall that goes into the right amount of detail.

Trainees need to be resilient to change and have the drive to succeed.  When have you demonstrated resilience to overcome a significant challenge? Why did you find this challenge significant and how did you approach it? What was the outcome and what did you learn from this experience? (2500 characters)

 As a result of the pandemic, I moved to my family home from university during the second semester of my second year. It was, and continues to be, a stressful and challenging time for most people. I have been lucky in many ways, however I encountered significant challenges with completing the semester at home. My course was changed abruptly as a result of the move to online teaching. One of my modules, an independent research project that I had spent considerable time on, was cancelled completely. The assessment for my other two modules was changed from being exam and coursework based, to being completely based on one essay per module. For these essays, I relied on the resources that were available online. On top of this, I am a note taker for disabled students, and had to adapt my notes in order to make them accessible for students learning online rather than in person. I also had applied for a paid research project over the summer, which was cancelled before the applications were reviewed.

[Feedback:This is an interesting approach to the question. Usually, we would recommend staying away from big topics that everyone knows about, such as the coronavirus pandemic. However, this candidate has justified their selection of this example by describing, in decent detail, how it affected them specifically. The candidate provides a good explanation of the challenges they faced as a result of needing to work from home. Furthermore, the candidate’s choice of example directly addresses the question’s stimulus of being ‘resilient to change’ and the main question regarding ‘significant challenge’. This is excellent, as the candidate has demonstrated that they fully appreciate the question and understand how their experiences tie into their competencies.

However, a product of the candidate choosing this example is a drop in the answer’s clarity. A lot of this paragraph is akin to a list of events. Whilst the candidate has gone to some effort to explain each event and the impact it had on them, the answer comes across as quite jumbled and disorganised. Nevertheless, there is significant merit to the candidate’s answer and ideas.

Hence, to improve this answer, the candidate could have structured their paragraph to group events together by theme. The candidate could first address the impact on their coursework and exams. Second, the research project could be addressed (as it is related to academia). Finally, the candidate could address the note-taking issue. To add further clarity, the candidate’s answer may have benefited from being split up into smaller paragraphs. This would have allowed the events to be grouped together better and prevented a loss of clarity by combining too many discrete pieces of information in one paragraph.]

This seemed overwhelming, however I decided to take a few days to plan how best to work around these challenges. I approached this time by carefully planning and making revisions to my schedule to adapt to the new learning environment. I scheduled calls with my tutors to ensure that I had easy access to support. When my classes were moved fully online, I contacted the disability support service for advice on how best to structure my notes to help with accessibility. For the essays, I prioritised the weekly content that would best support them and dedicated most of my time to reading and planning for them, having regular contact with my tutors to get feedback and adjust my plans accordingly. I also reached out to the tutor I had planned to work with over the summer, and arranged to work with them on an unofficial project based on my initial research interests.

[Feedback: This answer is, substantively, quite strong. The candidate’s answer details a methodical approach to the range of challenges they faced, and the descriptions given explain what was achieved and how the candidate achieved it. Crucially, the candidate uses this space to show off a range of competencies. The benefit of their chosen example is that the candidate needed to employ different skills to succeed with each task. Hence, they can show off more than just ‘resilience’ and ‘adaptability’. For example, the candidate’s answer has explicit and implicit mentions of time management/organisation, communication, and initiative/motivation.

Competency questions such as these will usually be centred around one or two competencies. However, do not let this limit you – you can (and indeed, are recommended to) include mentions of other competencies, so long as you address the competencies detailed in the question.

As with several of this candidate’s answers, the main point of improvement surrounds sentence structure, language choice, and clarity. Make sure that you are clear in your writing and avoid indefinite or non-specific nouns. For example, the candidate writes ‘easy access to support’; however, it would have been better if they had spent one or two words qualifying what support they had access too, such as ‘writing support’, ‘emotional support’, and so on.

Similarly, in the following sentence, the candidate writes ‘how best to structure my notes to help with accessibility’ – this is a strange way to phrase things; it is not clear for whom the notes are being made accessible. Even if you have mentioned something in your answer, you should add the extra word or two to reclarify what you mean to ensure that the recruiter does not miss anything important or mark you down for unintelligibility.

Finally, the candidate could have improved their answer by adding some additional detail. Whilst, at first blush, the candidate’s answer seems to include a lot of specific information, their examples are slightly underdeveloped. For example, when the candidate discusses organising meetings with their tutors, they fail to mention the frequency of meetings. Similarly, when the candidate describes how they organised an unofficial project, they fail to include what the project was on. Specificity is crucial in applications – without it, your answer will lack credence and sufficient quality. Recruiters want to know how you did something rather than a list of bold, sweeping claims which are unverifiable and unrevealing.]

As a result of this, I received two high marks in the essays, one of which was the highest I had received in my degree so far. I managed to take effective and high quality notes for the disability service and submitted them all on time. By the end of the summer, I had completed my research project and published it in the form of a post for the department's blog, which has helped prepare me for researching for my dissertation. I learned that reaching out to people for support is crucial in getting through significant challenges, and that planning time and prioritising tasks is the way I stay most productive.

[Feedback: This is a pleasant, if not vague, conclusion to the answer. The candidate summarises the result of their actions and makes sure to answer the question by mentioning what they learnt from surmounting the challenge.

Whilst the paragraph is concise and easy to follow, the main issue is that it lacks a lot of detail. For example, the candidate mentions that they received a mark ‘which was the highest [they] had received in [their] degree so far’ – yet they do not state what that mark was. Similarly, they mention that they their research has prepared them for their dissertation, but they do not say what the research was, how it prepared them, and what the dissertation is to be on. These omitted pieces of detail weaken the answer and call into question the accuracy of the candidate’s descriptions.

Always remember to check your work to see if there is any room to include additional detail without unduly sacrificing concision. Having reviewed many applications, we know that, usually, including such detail does not overly increase the word count of an answer.]

Please detail a specific example or instance where you have demonstrated resilience. This example can either be academic or non-academic. (300 words)

I have worked for the charity [redacted] for over 2 years, working as a kitchen assistant and domestic when necessary. In this time, I have formed meaningful relationships with residents through small talk when preparing the dining table. Conversing with residents is always interesting, however, the prevalence of dementia can make this challenging at times. The unfortunate reality is that once residents move into the home, that is where they will most likely pass away. This is a distressing prospect in itself. However, this is compounded by the company policy of not informing staff when a resident does pass away. Routinely I conduct a lunch list, which involves knocking on each residents’ door and recording their lunch preference. During a particular lunch list I knocked on the door of a certain resident, who I had formed a great friendship with (and she had confessed that I was her favourite), to find her room completely bare and empty. This was a profoundly difficult unforeseen circumstance as this was my first encounter with grief. I was able to exercise resilience and overcome this significant challenge through 'lighting a candle' on a website I had found, which enabled me to send a message that would be shown at her funeral. I hoped that this message would give some closure to her family, who had relatively little contact with her while she was at the home. I was not actually sure if the message would be sent to the funeral at the time, but I was stopped by a fellow employee some weeks later, who thanked me for writing the message. I learnt from this experience that despite the gravest challenges, there is always a way to lessen the adversity and to find a way through.

[Feedback: This is a powerful and personal answer.  Like the candidate’s first answer, there is scope to improve readability but it is a sufficiently good answer overall.

As before, the candidate needs to make greater use of paragraphs.  There’s a reason why lawyers use short paragraphs of one to three sentences in most client emails.  It’s easier to read.  You should structure your answer like an email and use paragraphs liberally.

You should write numbers under 10 in words.  Larger numbers (i.e. above ten) are written as numerals in English.]

Describe a time where you received constructive feedback. How did you respond?

As Assistant Tennis Coach at the [redacted university], I lead sessions for a variety of playing abilities. I received a piece of feedback that my explanations of drills were pitched at too high a level. In my demonstrations, I tended to use technical phrases that my advanced group would understand but my intermediate and beginner groups struggled to grasp. This meant players would begin their drills still not entirely understanding the learning points and key areas of focus.

I had to adapt my communication style to make it more accessible for players. This meant taking time to consider which phrases were specifically causing problems and then finding alternatives. I watched videos of professional coaches to see the language they used, as well as reaching out to my network to see how they simplified the technical details. I also ensured I was actively considering how to further explain what I meant, rather than just simplify my language. Furthermore, I developed demonstrations that walked through the key parts of the technique, alongside developing explanations for phrases such as “top-spin” so my players also learnt something new.

The result was that players entered these drills with a much clearer understanding of what to work on and develop. When they understood my explanations, they were able to see quicker progress in their tennis and ultimately leave the session feeling more fulfilled than before. It also provided me the opportunity to better myself and my own skills as a coach.

Feedback: The candidate structures this answer well (namely by adopting the STAR structure). They begin by identifying a specific and high-quality personal experience (namely their time as a tennis coach). Then, the candidate explains the specific feedback they received in high levels of detail. Following this, the candidate identifies and drills down on specific actions they took to improve their coaching style in response to the feedback (e.g. by consulting professional coaching videos, reaching out to their network for advice and modifying their demonstration techniques). Finally, the candidate links these changes to specific and quantified positive outcomes for both the players and the candidate as a coach. This results in a well-structured and thoughtful answer that highlights the candidate’s specific, concrete actions in response to a piece of feedback. It also demonstrates the candidate’s resilience and adaptiveness.