K&L Gates Training Contract – 2024

What was the full recruitment process?

1. Application: CV, cover letter and application questions

2. Psychometric tests: 4x Saville Assessment 

3. Written assessment 

4. Assessment centre 

5. Interview 

6. Training contract

Which aspect does this report cover?

Training contract assessment centre

Where did the assessment centre take place?
 
 The K&L Gates London office.

What did the assessment centre involve?  

1. Pre-AC: written exercise + 2x Saville Assessment

2. Chat with trainees

3. Group exercise 

Pre-assessment centre

Before arriving at the assessment centre, we were required to complete 2x Saville assessments. One was verbal reasoning and one was maths focused. We also had to complete a written exercise.

The written exercise was fairly standard and was timed for 1 hour. It involved interpreting legislation and advising a client accordingly. The legislation was fairly standard, and the facts were not too complex. 

Chat with trainees

This involved speaking with all five of K&L Gates’ current trainees. There were no assessors in the room, but my understanding was that the trainees provided feedback to the assessors. In this sense, it was a fairly nice ‘easing in’ for the upcoming group exercise. We also had cakes and coffee to hand.  

Group exercise

The group exercise involved working in a team of 5 on a case study. The case study was straightforward: we were given a brief that a business wanted to expand its presence and we were given in-depth information about each potential location. The hand out was entirely commercial and did not involve any legal considerations/points, it was a standard SHQ case study. 

Together, we had 1 hour. Our task was to decide upon which location the business should expand to. We then had an additional 10-20 minutes of presenting to the assessor, who was acting as the client and could also ask us questions which we needed to respond to.  

In terms of the team exercise, the standard information applies – and ultimately, I feel it that it fell down to the group on the day, and the different approaches to teamwork/management. We were not so well organised and this ended up creating a not so great team presentation, where everyone was not entirely on the same page. Make sure to set clear time frames, as the one-hour time slot went by very quick. Poor team-time management meant that we were not well prepared to present.   

What was the outcome?

I received an email 2 weeks later letting me know that I had been unsuccessful. 

Do you have any advice on how to prepare? 

I was able to impress the trainees with my knowledge and understanding of the firm, so I would suggest really learning about the structure of the training contract, asking tailored questions accordingly, and learning about the history/operations of the firm. It essentially has a finance focused set-up and the London office has a distinct London ‘identity’ given the time it has been around/the mergers that created the London office.