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Cardiff Law School’s Summer Work Placement Scheme with Clintons

23 July 2013

At Cardiff Law School, we encourage our students to undertake relevant work experience and to learn new skills that they can apply to a graduate career of their choice. We provide them with various opportunities, some unique to Cardiff, during their time with us. We are always pleased to welcome new and exciting partnerships that enhance our students’ employability.

So, we are delighted to report that this week sees the start of an amazing opportunity for two of our second year students, when they experience work at  Clintons in Covent Garden.  This is the second year that this scheme has run and John Seigal, Managing Partner at Clintons and a Cardiff graduate himself, tells us why the firm became involved in this partnership with us.

John’s Seigal says:

Each Summer, for a number of weeks, Clintons runs a work placement programme.  The programme itself lasts for a week and, in a usual summer, we will see a good number of interns experiencing legal life at Clintons.

From our perspective there are two motivations underpinning this programme.  Firstly, it is a way for this firm to reach out and allow a broad cross section of candidates from varying backgrounds, as well as academic disciplines, to experience working life at what we hope and believe to be a dynamic and forward-thinking legal practice.  In so doing, we as a firm are conscious as to the importance of social mobility and the need for all businesses and other organisations (legal or otherwise) to give something back to the community in which they are part.

Furthermore it is our belief that any organisation is only as good as the people it attracts and retains.  For Clintons to remain preeminent in its chosen areas of legal practice and related provision of professional services, it must always develop and evolve.  To do so, it needs to be relevant to and attract a wide range of high calibre individuals from different backgrounds.   In an ever more challenging and complex legal, regulatory and economic climate, it is good business sense too.  All organisations, whether businesses or for that matter academic institutions, must continue to adapt to the ever changing environment.

This leads on to the second motivation in Clintons undertaking probably the largest work placement programme in our sector of any legal practice in London.   Our programme allows us to see first-hand a number of exceptional individuals who in turn have given up their valuable time to spend a week with us.   During their week at Clintons, interns are given a broad range of work and exposure to the various departments and multiple legal disciplines which reflect day to day practice here at the firm.

Each intern will spend a day in our music, company/commercial, property, litigation and family departments.  They will meet partners, assistant solicitors and trainees in each department.   Our aim is that, over the course of a week here, they will get a feel for the breadth of legal and commercial work carried out at Clintons along with its culture and have the opportunity of working with some of the leading practitioners in their field.

We believe that Clintons combines first class professional excellence and client service, with a supportive team ethos which allows each individual within the firm to thrive.   We are proud of the fact that once part of Clintons, most of our staff and in particular lawyers, chose to spend their careers here.  In fact, a number of our Partners began their time at Clintons as trainees.     Within the context of our constant pursuit of legal and professional excellence and an unwavering focus on client service, Clintons attaches great importance to individual development and freedom.

Clintons looks forward to another busy summer with our programme and is proud of its continued association with the Law School of Cardiff University.

John Seigal
Managing Partner