Milbank Vacation Scheme – March 2025

What was the full recruitment process?         

1. Application

2. Assessment centre: written assessment lasting 40 minutes, group exercise lasting 40 minutes, and competency based interview which was booked in for 30 minutes but could have been longer/shorter.

3. Psychometric test: Watson Glaser test sent out the following Monday to those who attended the assessment centre, lasting 30 minutes.

4. Vacation scheme

Which aspect does this report cover?

Vacation scheme assessment centre

Where did the assessment centre take place?            

The firm's London office

What did the assessment centre involve?      

1. Written assessment: various trainee-related writing tasks (~40 minutes)

2. Group exercise: based on a law firm merger or acquisition (~15 minutes reading and preparation time, ~25 minutes discussion)

3. Competency and motivation interview: after initial introduction, I was asked competency and motivation questions (~30 minutes with 1 senior associate and 1 partner)

4.  Watson Glaser: this was sent out the following Monday after the assessment centre (30 minutes online)

Written assessment

I was given a bundle of emails stapled together, which consisted of an introductory email with a list of instructions. I had to act as a fictional trainee solicitor who had been given 4 tasks, 2 of which were urgent and 2 of which could have been delayed. 

Task one was to read a 3 page article on a piece of technology and summarise key points for an upcoming meeting with a private equity firm that was looking to invest into a company that had created that technology. I had to think about potential risks as well as what further questions we could ask the company. 

Task 2 was to proofread a letter before action and highlight spelling and grammatical mistakes, crossing out wrong spellings and writing the correct ones on top. 

If I had enough time, task 3 involved helping a partner with a bundle they had to send to court (this did not require a lot of work; I could just say whether we had enough time to help out the partner with the bundle), and task 4 was to create a timetable for pro bono hours based on the schedules of associates and write out an email regarding the schedule. If there was no time, I would just have to write that I had no time left and then put my pen down. 

I answered this with a pen and paper. The answers were to be given in the email templates provided separately.

Group exercise 

I was first given an 8 page bundle of documents relating to a fictional international   law firm that was looking to merge with or acquire another law firm. 

• The documents included background information about the firm itself such as number of offices, total revenue, profit per equity partner, and what the firm wants to improve (such as its AI capabilities).
• The firm wanted to increase total revenue by 35% within the next 3 years.
• The same information was given for 4 potential law firms we could have merged with or acquired, ranging from a small family law firm, to a firm which only operated in African offices, a UK wide national firm, and another international firm with similar number of offices and level of revenue as ours. 
• At the end of the bundle was the board minutes of partners discussing what they wanted as an outcome of this merger or acquisition, with some partners wanting to expand into Africa, some wanting to move into family law and another wanting to focus on AI capabilities. 

We were given 15 minutes to read the materials. We then had 25 minutes as a group to discuss which law firm would be best for the merger/acquisition, including positives and negatives and points of contention. We then had to reach a unanimous decision by the end of discussion. We were not allowed to vote on a law firm by show of hands; the discussion had to be so that we naturally landed at an agreement. 

At the end of the discussion, the associate overlooking the discussion said which parts he agreed with, and some parts we failed to mention and could have included in our discussion to make a better argument, such as the profitability of the bigger firm, which may have had a larger revenue but a lower profit per equity partner compared to the national firm. There was no correct answer per se, but rather our teamwork and consideration of the facts we had available was what was being judged.

Competency and motivation interview         

Competency questions 

• Tell me about yourself.
• Tell me about a time you worked in a team.
• Tell me about a time you had to manage a high workload.
• How did you work with a teammate who had trouble keeping up with tasks?

Motivation questions 

• How did you become interested in commercial law?
• Why Milbank over other law firms?

I also had an opportunity to ask them questions.

What was the outcome?                                                  

The firm emailed everyone saying they are collating the results from each aspect of the assessment, and that offers would be given out the next week. I did not receive any email after that, and so was unsuccessful. 

Do you have any specific advice on how to prepare?

The motivation interview is very straightforward. Although they have scripted questions, they just want to know you as a person. They don’t have access to the application questions and so it really can be a great way to just talk to the interviewer.

The group exercise was not nearly as daunting as I expected, but they were looking at how you think about law firms as businesses. You did not need to have any previous legal knowledge but were expected to understand businesses and how they operate in terms of expansion (i.e. what points to look for when wanting to grow), so my advice would be to think commercially - pretend as if its any ordinary business and the product just happens to be legal services.

The written assessment was the hardest, firstly being that it is with a pen and paper and you are expected to write nearly 3-4 pages in 40 minutes. It is very time constrained so you must ensure you do not lag behind when working on the two urgent tasks. As for the other 2 tasks, as long as you write that you will not have enough time to do the tasks, you should be fine. I would work on being able to read through a lot of information and pick out the key details. Also work on writing an executive summary in emails.