I've always been interested in a legal career but convinced myself early on that studying law was beyond my reach (rural background, low-income family etc.). After seeing some non-law graduate friends getting training contracts with firms in the City, I've decided it's now or never but I'm not sure what my chances are of getting a good TC without a law degree.
As it stands, I have two first-class honours degrees, a BA in Communication Studies from Dublin City University, Ireland, and an MSc in Political Science from Leiden University, the Netherlands. I have absolutely no law experience but I worked full-time throughout my undergraduate degree as an assistant manager at a cocktail bar (40 hours a week) and I held a lot of extracurricular positions e.g. online editor of the uni newspaper, class representative at the SU, and vice chairperson and public relations officer of the style society; and I won plenty of student awards for each of those positions. I also did internships with a national television broadcaster and one PR firm. Even with this experience, do you think law firms will look down on me because I haven't done law work? I'm also hoping for the gay diversity vote (lol).
My number one choice is Freshfields, but I'm also planning on applying to Slaughter and May, Herbert Smith, and Hogan Lovells. Also considering White & Case, Latham & Watkins, and Reed Smith. Open to recommendations on any other firms worth applying to or firms that are known to have really good training contracts.
I'm applying for Winter Workshops with Slaughter and May and Freshfields just to try and show future recruiters that I am interested in law but other than that, I can't decide if its better to apply for Spring vac schemes now or just cut out the middle man and apply directly for 2020 training contracts - I'm eager to start the GDL asap because I'm already 26.
I'm also slight terrified that I'm just wasting my time and won't be considered so any advice on where to go from here would be much appreciated.