The Student Room Group

GLS (GLP) Training Contract applications (2020)

Anybody heard what will be happening with the Legal Training Scheme this year? Is it all still going ahead as usual? I'm sure a lot of the events that they usually attend on-campus will now not be happening due to social distancing.

I say 'as usual'....................let's hope that the GLP are taking the management of it back in-house because 2019 was an near unmitigated disaster with those other clowns. The only saving grace was the GLP team who stepped in on this site and picked up numerous balls that had been dropped!!

Good luck everybody if it indeed all does go forward!

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Reply 1
Original post by Grimer
Anybody heard what will be happening with the Legal Training Scheme this year? Is it all still going ahead as usual? I'm sure a lot of the events that they usually attend on-campus will now not be happening due to social distancing.

I say 'as usual'....................let's hope that the GLP are taking the management of it back in-house because 2019 was an near unmitigated disaster with those other clowns. The only saving grace was the GLP team who stepped in on this site and picked up numerous balls that had been dropped!!

Good luck everybody if it indeed all does go forward!


I should imagine that it's business as usual as far as the timetable goes. Everything up until interview is online, so as long as lockdown restrictions have been lifted by mid-August, it'll be no change. My guess is that it will launch on 1st July in anticipation that this will be the case and then adapt the interview end if need be (to remote or have a socially distanced format etc)

As for who will be managing it, who knows? I would hope that the GLP do it themselves because it was clear that their own staff were the only ones who had any passion for service last time around and as you say who actually addressed the (many) applicant concerns. I think that what struck me most about 2019 was a) the lack of planning/prep b) the incompetence and c) the apathy of the recruitment third party company.

The fact that they knew that the SJT test was compromised in June before the applications start date and kept it hushed up was unforgivable and an indicator of what was to come!

I think that the mass of problems we all saw were just the tip of the iceberg. My money is on a change this year and I reckon the GLP will already have lined it all up.
Reply 2
Yes, I agree. Last year was the worst of the worst and unforgivable really.
Reply 3
Do you know if they fund your LPC if your application is successful for the GLS training contract?
Reply 4
Oh, where should we begin? :smile:

The highlights:

About a week before the campaign was due to start, somebody leaked the answers to the online SJT to a friend studying Law at a nearby university (the guilty party was alleged to be a student on a work placement year with the recruitment company who build the online form in Bristol). The answers went viral within UK law schools and this was reported back to the recruitment company concerned before the start date.

Said company sat on it and did nothing, and then a week in to the campaign the GLP found out and put a formal statement on gov.uk to say that 'steps had been taken to protect the integrity of the test'. That's a pretty major step to take, so it was obvious that they were hugely concerned.

However, the steps taken were simply to rearrange the order of the questions (not even the order of the answers!). As a result, a new answer key was drawn up and distributed by the student groups within about an hour! The recruitment firm then rearranged the answer sequence a couple of times - and the test cheats simply created new keys. Finally there were 4 different SJTs in play and 4 keys circulating - all identifiable because with each new test, the recruitment company put a reference number on the first page. Therefore there was one key for GLS022, one for GLS023 etc. The last few emails circulating had all four keys with a clear indication of which form each one applied to,.

In other words, it was all totally compromised.

End result was that hundreds of people cheated and pushed themselves artificially into the next round, but it could have been avoided if the recruitment company hadn't tried to cover it up at the start and hadn't falsely claimed that their 'solutions' were viable.

Added to this, the application form had loads of errors in it, for example asking candidates what their 'principle degree subject' was etc. Not major, but a bit shabby for a premier grad competition. From the rumours about the leaking, they were still putting the online form together the week before it went live.

Then came the online test stages and there were problems with adding reasonable adjustments. For the VRT test, candidates got 4 separate emails including two test links and they had to guess which one to use. Many candidate test score were lost and the company failed people for not taking the test and only admitted their error when confronted with evidence by SHL (the people who ran the test - another third party). As a helpdesk, the official 'govtrainees' gang were pretty shocking. Somebody joked, 'it was where candidate queries go to die'.

The problem with adjustments was caused by the recruitment company offshoring to their office in India (without the knowledge of the GLP!!) which was done because they didn't have enough staff to cope with volumes of applicant queries. Throughout the campaign, you would be lucky to get through on the phone or get a response by email. If you did speak to someone, they either didn't know anything about the GLP or they just cut you off. Where they gave answers, they were often incomprehensible. It turns out that the Indian team got a 30-minute training brief and told to get stuck in, which is apparently what was happening in the UK. All massive corner-cutting and very questionable professionally to offshore without permission etc.

It got so bad that applicants were coming onto TSR to ask questions and GLP staff had to answer them (in fact they did a damned good job and supported loads of candidates).

Then some staff at the recruitment company went rogue and started coming on here to berate applicants, and they got swiftly barred. Some of them were really obnoxious. I mean, it was obvious that they had just been used as cannon fodder by the recruitment company, but they were horrendously unprofessional.

At the end of the campaign, somebody posted on here, TSR, that a lot of offers would be withdrawn due to Brexit, which caused a panic and the GLP had to contact everybody to say it was all untrue.

It then turned out that this 'fake news' had come from the recruitment company themselves (!!) who had deliberately leaked it to some internal 'suspects',so they could find out who was making comments criticizing them. I don't know whether it worked (it appeared not to - mainly because they leaked the false story to a group so they still didn't know who the leaker was) but it only led to more confusion, a pretty irresponsible thing to do.

To cap it all, the recruitment company released a case study (without GLP's knowledge or input) celebrating the massive success of the campaign, which after a few weeks mysteriously disappeared!! You can only think that it was the final straw.

Early in the campaign, Legal Cheek published a story on it and the comments (particularly the more recent ones) were very revealing, including some from staff at the Government Legal Department who were apparently very irate at the way in which everything had been handled.

https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/07/answers-to-government-legal-training-contract-schemes-situational-judgement-test-surface-online/

Full marks to the GLP and GLD staff themselves though (especially @CAJonseywho for a while seemed to be working full-time on it) , they were excellent and made a huge difference in the end. Unfortunately for me, I didn't reach the assessment centre so not sure how smoothly the later stages went.

The 2019 thread highlights a lot of this, though quite a few posts were removed because they breached site rules https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6023568

So, yeah, it looks like the GLP used an external provider who just took the money and ran. I think a lot of people will be hoping that they aren't called back.

(**Edited 13th May to make the text clearer.)
(edited 3 years ago)
Original post by Grimer
Oh, where should we begin? :smile:

The highlights:

About a week before the campaign was due to start, somebody leaked the answers to the online SJT to a friend studying Law at a nearby university (the guilty party alleged to be a student on a work placement year with the recruitment company who build the online form in Bristol). The answers went viral within UK law schools and this was reported back to the recruitment company concerned before the start date.

Said company sat on it and did nothing, and then a week in to the campaign the GLP found out and put a formal statement on gov.uk to say that 'steps had been taken to protect the integrity of the test. That's a pretty major step to take, so it was obvious that they were hugely concerned.

However, the steps taken were simply to rearrange the order of the questions (not even the order of the answers!). As a result, a new answer key was drawn up and distributed by the student groups within about an hour! The recruitment firm then rearranged the answer sequence a couple of times - and the test cheats simply created new keys. Finally there were 4 different SJTs and 4 keys - all identifiable because with each new test, the test company put a reference number on the first page. Therefore there was one key for GLS022, one for GLS023 etc. The last few emails circulating had all four keys with a clear indication of which form each one applied to,

End result was that hundreds of people cheated and pushed themselves artificially into the to, but it could have been avoided if the recruitment company hadn't tried to cover it up at the start and hadn't falsely claimed that their 'solutions' were viable.

Added to this, the application form had loads of errors in it, for example asking candidates what their 'principle degree subject' was etc. Not major, but a bit shabby for a premier grad competition. From the rumours about the leaking, they were still putting the online form together the week before it went live.

Then came the online test stages and there were problems with adding reasonable adjustments. For the VRT test, candidates got 4 separate emails including two test links and they had to guess which one to use. Many candidate test score were lost and the company failed people for not taking the test and only admitted their error when confronted with evidence by SHL. As a helpdesk, they were pretty shocking. Somebody joked, 'it was where candidate queries go to die'.

The problem with adjustments was caused by the recruitment company offshoring to their office in India (without the knowledge of the GLP!!) which was done because they didn't have enough staff to cope with volumes of applicant queries. Throughout the campaign, you would be lucky to get through on the phone or get a response by email. If you did speak to someone, they either didn't know anything about the GLP or they just cut you off. Where they gave answers, they were often incomprehensible. It turns out that the Indian team got a 30-minute training brief and told to get stuck in, which is apparently what was happening in the UK. All massive corner-cutting and very questionable professionally to offshore without permission etc.

It got so bad that applicants were coming onto TSR to ask questions and GLP staff had to answer them (in fact they did a damned good job and supported loads of candidates)

Then some staff at the recruitment company went rogue and started coming on here to berate applicants, and they got swiftly barred. Some of them were really obnoxious. I mean, it was obvious that they had just been used as cannon fodder by the recruitment company, but they were horrendously unprofessional.

At the end of the campaign, somebody posted on here, TSR, that a lot of offers would be withdrawn due to Brexit, which caused a panic and the GLP had to contact everybody to say it was all untrue.

It then turned out that this 'fake news' had come from the recruitment company themselves (!!) who had deliberately leaked it to some internal 'suspect',so they could find out who was making comments criticizing them. I don't know whether it worked (it appeared not to) but it only led to more confusion, a pretty irresponsible thing to do.

To cap it all, the recruitment company released a case study (without GLP's knowledge or input) celebrating the massive success of the campaign, which after a few weeks mysteriously disappeared!! You can only think that it was the final straw.

Early in the campaign, Legal Cheek published a story on it and the comments (particularly the more recent ones) were very revealing, including some from staff at the Government Legal Department who were apparently very irate at the way in which everything had been handled.

https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/07/answers-to-government-legal-training-contract-schemes-situational-judgement-test-surface-online/

Full marks to the GLP and GLD staff themselves though (especially @CAJonseywho for a while seemed to be working full-time on it) , they were excellent and made a huge difference in the end. Unfortunately for me, I didn't reach the assessment centre so not sure how smoothly the later stages went).

The 2019 thread highlights a lot of this, though quite a few posts were removed because they breached site rules https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6023568

So, yeah, it looks like the GLP used an external provider who just took the money and ran. I think a lot of people will be hoping that they aren't called back.

As one of the candidates who didn't get through after that first stage (the SJT), I had absolutely no idea about the issues with the rest of the process - thanks for taking the time to write it out. Do we know if the process will be overhauled for the current recruitment campaign?
I received an email on 4th May stating that they are still going to recruit this summer.
Reply 7
Original post by Cornish27
As one of the candidates who didn't get through after that first stage (the SJT), I had absolutely no idea about the issues with the rest of the process - thanks for taking the time to write it out. Do we know if the process will be overhauled for the current recruitment campaign?

From all the stuff currently on the website, I would think the process will be the same but I am hoping that the SJT will have been revamped!
Reply 8
Original post by Grimer
Oh, where should we begin? :smile:

The highlights:

About a week before the campaign was due to start, somebody leaked the answers to the online SJT to a friend studying Law at a nearby university (the guilty party was alleged to be a student on a work placement year with the recruitment company who build the online form in Bristol). The answers went viral within UK law schools and this was reported back to the recruitment company concerned before the start date.

Said company sat on it and did nothing, and then a week in to the campaign the GLP found out and put a formal statement on gov.uk to say that 'steps had been taken to protect the integrity of the test'. That's a pretty major step to take, so it was obvious that they were hugely concerned.

However, the steps taken were simply to rearrange the order of the questions (not even the order of the answers!). As a result, a new answer key was drawn up and distributed by the student groups within about an hour! The recruitment firm then rearranged the answer sequence a couple of times - and the test cheats simply created new keys. Finally there were 4 different SJTs in play and 4 keys circulating - all identifiable because with each new test, the recruitment company put a reference number on the first page. Therefore there was one key for GLS022, one for GLS023 etc. The last few emails circulating had all four keys with a clear indication of which form each one applied to,.

In other words, it was all totally compromised.

End result was that hundreds of people cheated and pushed themselves artificially into the next round, but it could have been avoided if the recruitment company hadn't tried to cover it up at the start and hadn't falsely claimed that their 'solutions' were viable.

Added to this, the application form had loads of errors in it, for example asking candidates what their 'principle degree subject' was etc. Not major, but a bit shabby for a premier grad competition. From the rumours about the leaking, they were still putting the online form together the week before it went live.

Then came the online test stages and there were problems with adding reasonable adjustments. For the VRT test, candidates got 4 separate emails including two test links and they had to guess which one to use. Many candidate test score were lost and the company failed people for not taking the test and only admitted their error when confronted with evidence by SHL (the people who ran the test - another third party). As a helpdesk, the official 'govtrainees' gang were pretty shocking. Somebody joked, 'it was where candidate queries go to die'.

The problem with adjustments was caused by the recruitment company offshoring to their office in India (without the knowledge of the GLP!!) which was done because they didn't have enough staff to cope with volumes of applicant queries. Throughout the campaign, you would be lucky to get through on the phone or get a response by email. If you did speak to someone, they either didn't know anything about the GLP or they just cut you off. Where they gave answers, they were often incomprehensible. It turns out that the Indian team got a 30-minute training brief and told to get stuck in, which is apparently what was happening in the UK. All massive corner-cutting and very questionable professionally to offshore without permission etc.

It got so bad that applicants were coming onto TSR to ask questions and GLP staff had to answer them (in fact they did a damned good job and supported loads of candidates).

Then some staff at the recruitment company went rogue and started coming on here to berate applicants, and they got swiftly barred. Some of them were really obnoxious. I mean, it was obvious that they had just been used as cannon fodder by the recruitment company, but they were horrendously unprofessional.

At the end of the campaign, somebody posted on here, TSR, that a lot of offers would be withdrawn due to Brexit, which caused a panic and the GLP had to contact everybody to say it was all untrue.

It then turned out that this 'fake news' had come from the recruitment company themselves (!!) who had deliberately leaked it to some internal 'suspects',so they could find out who was making comments criticizing them. I don't know whether it worked (it appeared not to - mainly because they leaked the false story to a group so they still didn't know who the leaker was) but it only led to more confusion, a pretty irresponsible thing to do.

To cap it all, the recruitment company released a case study (without GLP's knowledge or input) celebrating the massive success of the campaign, which after a few weeks mysteriously disappeared!! You can only think that it was the final straw.

Early in the campaign, Legal Cheek published a story on it and the comments (particularly the more recent ones) were very revealing, including some from staff at the Government Legal Department who were apparently very irate at the way in which everything had been handled.

https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/07/answers-to-government-legal-training-contract-schemes-situational-judgement-test-surface-online/

Full marks to the GLP and GLD staff themselves though (especially @CAJonseywho for a while seemed to be working full-time on it) , they were excellent and made a huge difference in the end. Unfortunately for me, I didn't reach the assessment centre so not sure how smoothly the later stages went.

The 2019 thread highlights a lot of this, though quite a few posts were removed because they breached site rules https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6023568

So, yeah, it looks like the GLP used an external provider who just took the money and ran. I think a lot of people will be hoping that they aren't called back.

(**Edited 13th May to make the text clearer.)

I should also add the classic from the start of the campaign (it should be at the start of the 2019 thread) where advisors were answering the phone on behalf of the AA!

They clearly foresaw a breakdown on the horizon! (This is because the phone lines just route through to untrained advisors :s-smilie: )

There was also the matter of emails being sent out from 'GLP Recruitment Team', GLD Recruitment Team' and the 'GLS Recruitment Team' with all different brand logos - and some with combinations of these in the same message.

Even several emails from the 'GLD Qualified Lawyer Recruitment Team'.:confused:

It was monumentally farcical.
Reply 9
Original post by bakeasouffle
I received an email on 4th May stating that they are still going to recruit this summer.

Was this because you are on the register of interest? I am too but haven't received anything?
Reply 10
Original post by bmb1234
Do you know if they fund your LPC if your application is successful for the GLS training contract?

Yes, they definitely do, and there is no stipulation regarding which college/provider you use or the electives you choose. However, they will not reimburse retrospectively, so you can claim nothing if you have already completed it.

There is also a grant of about £5,400 (National) to £7,600 (London) if you intend to study for your LPC or BPTC on a full-time basis (possibly also part-time too). If you get an offer, you can raise the question of eligibility with the hiring
Original post by Grimer
Was this because you are on the register of interest? I am too but haven't received anything?

A few months ago I registered my interest, so I assume thats why I received the email? It is strange that you didn't receive anything as you have signed up too.
Does anyone know when applications open for it this current cycle?
Original post by Patch-22
Does anyone know when applications open for it this current cycle?

Apparently applications normally open up in July.
Original post by Grimer
Oh, where should we begin? :smile:

The highlights:

About a week before the campaign was due to start, somebody leaked the answers to the online SJT to a friend studying Law at a nearby university (the guilty party was alleged to be a student on a work placement year with the recruitment company who build the online form in Bristol). The answers went viral within UK law schools and this was reported back to the recruitment company concerned before the start date.

Said company sat on it and did nothing, and then a week in to the campaign the GLP found out and put a formal statement on gov.uk to say that 'steps had been taken to protect the integrity of the test'. That's a pretty major step to take, so it was obvious that they were hugely concerned.

However, the steps taken were simply to rearrange the order of the questions (not even the order of the answers!). As a result, a new answer key was drawn up and distributed by the student groups within about an hour! The recruitment firm then rearranged the answer sequence a couple of times - and the test cheats simply created new keys. Finally there were 4 different SJTs in play and 4 keys circulating - all identifiable because with each new test, the recruitment company put a reference number on the first page. Therefore there was one key for GLS022, one for GLS023 etc. The last few emails circulating had all four keys with a clear indication of which form each one applied to,.

In other words, it was all totally compromised.

End result was that hundreds of people cheated and pushed themselves artificially into the next round, but it could have been avoided if the recruitment company hadn't tried to cover it up at the start and hadn't falsely claimed that their 'solutions' were viable.

Added to this, the application form had loads of errors in it, for example asking candidates what their 'principle degree subject' was etc. Not major, but a bit shabby for a premier grad competition. From the rumours about the leaking, they were still putting the online form together the week before it went live.

Then came the online test stages and there were problems with adding reasonable adjustments. For the VRT test, candidates got 4 separate emails including two test links and they had to guess which one to use. Many candidate test score were lost and the company failed people for not taking the test and only admitted their error when confronted with evidence by SHL (the people who ran the test - another third party). As a helpdesk, the official 'govtrainees' gang were pretty shocking. Somebody joked, 'it was where candidate queries go to die'.

The problem with adjustments was caused by the recruitment company offshoring to their office in India (without the knowledge of the GLP!!) which was done because they didn't have enough staff to cope with volumes of applicant queries. Throughout the campaign, you would be lucky to get through on the phone or get a response by email. If you did speak to someone, they either didn't know anything about the GLP or they just cut you off. Where they gave answers, they were often incomprehensible. It turns out that the Indian team got a 30-minute training brief and told to get stuck in, which is apparently what was happening in the UK. All massive corner-cutting and very questionable professionally to offshore without permission etc.

It got so bad that applicants were coming onto TSR to ask questions and GLP staff had to answer them (in fact they did a damned good job and supported loads of candidates).

Then some staff at the recruitment company went rogue and started coming on here to berate applicants, and they got swiftly barred. Some of them were really obnoxious. I mean, it was obvious that they had just been used as cannon fodder by the recruitment company, but they were horrendously unprofessional.

At the end of the campaign, somebody posted on here, TSR, that a lot of offers would be withdrawn due to Brexit, which caused a panic and the GLP had to contact everybody to say it was all untrue.

It then turned out that this 'fake news' had come from the recruitment company themselves (!!) who had deliberately leaked it to some internal 'suspects',so they could find out who was making comments criticizing them. I don't know whether it worked (it appeared not to - mainly because they leaked the false story to a group so they still didn't know who the leaker was) but it only led to more confusion, a pretty irresponsible thing to do.

To cap it all, the recruitment company released a case study (without GLP's knowledge or input) celebrating the massive success of the campaign, which after a few weeks mysteriously disappeared!! You can only think that it was the final straw.

Early in the campaign, Legal Cheek published a story on it and the comments (particularly the more recent ones) were very revealing, including some from staff at the Government Legal Department who were apparently very irate at the way in which everything had been handled.

https://www.legalcheek.com/2019/07/answers-to-government-legal-training-contract-schemes-situational-judgement-test-surface-online/

Full marks to the GLP and GLD staff themselves though (especially @CAJonseywho for a while seemed to be working full-time on it) , they were excellent and made a huge difference in the end. Unfortunately for me, I didn't reach the assessment centre so not sure how smoothly the later stages went.

The 2019 thread highlights a lot of this, though quite a few posts were removed because they breached site rules https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6023568

So, yeah, it looks like the GLP used an external provider who just took the money and ran. I think a lot of people will be hoping that they aren't called back.

(**Edited 13th May to make the text clearer.)

I too feel the pain because I was one of the unlucky ones from last year, not just in the sense that I did not get through, but I was mucked about no end. Rejected, was lied to, then reinstated after I'd proved that I'd submitted my VRT, only to fail the CRT after not having been invited to this test until 1 day before the deadline. When I complained, a chap called Abishek finally managed to get me invited. He didn't speak brilliant English but he got me there in the end, so I was grateful to him at least.

Yeah, it was an absolutely momentous hash from start to finish.

I will be applying again and hope that they pass this to the Government Recruitment Service to manage. The reputation of the GLP Legal Trainee Scheme is much to valuable to be left at the mercy of liars and charlatans.

Fingers (and everything else) crossed, but I have that sinking feeling it's going to be carnage episode 2!!
(edited 3 years ago)
Does anyone know if the offers come with a requirement to work for X many years in the department post qualification? Not that it would be a deterrent for me, but I would like to know before I apply.
Reply 16
Original post by ManofBabylon
Does anyone know if the offers come with a requirement to work for X many years in the department post qualification? Not that it would be a deterrent for me, but I would like to know before I apply.

I'm pretty sure that is not the case. Once you qualify, you do not automatically gain a position anyway (though the numbers that do are very high - in many years it has been all of them). Therefore, I would assume that there would not be conditions attached to any offer, so you would be in the same position as any external application to a post.
Reply 17
Original post by grinchbob
I too feel the pain because I was one of the unlucky ones from last year, not just in the sense that I did not get through, but I was mucked about no end. Rejected, was lied to, then reinstated after I'd proved that I'd submitted my VRT, only to fail the CRT after not having been invited to this test until 1 day before the deadline. When I complained, a chap called Abishek finally managed to get me invited. He didn't speak brilliant English but he got me there in the end, so I was grateful to him at least.

Yeah, it was an absolutely momentous hash from start to finish.

I will be applying again and hope that they pass this to the Government Recruitment Service to manage. The reputation of the GLP Legal Trainee Scheme is much to valuable to be left at the mercy of liars and charlatans.

Fingers (and everything else) crossed, but I have that sinking feeling it's going to be carnage episode 2!!

You would have thought that the SJT disaster and the way it was handled (all the incompetence and lying) would have convinced the GLP to pull the plug on that dishonest and woeful recruitment company. I honestly thought they were going to sack them mid-process, it was that catastrophically awful.

...and then it got even more abysmally worse as the campaign rolled on!

Only time will tell, but I'm already cringing at the prospect of more Poopleshoot :eek:
Ye the SJT fiasco last year was unprecedented - thought they would just redo the whole process
Original post by Beanoff
I'm pretty sure that is not the case. Once you qualify, you do not automatically gain a position anyway (though the numbers that do are very high - in many years it has been all of them). Therefore, I would assume that there would not be conditions attached to any offer, so you would be in the same position as any external application to a post.

Having spoken to a trainee solicitor it seems that successful candidates are required to agree to work for two years post qualification. If they leave before that time then they will need to repay a percentage of the LPC. I will send off an email to get further details.

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