As part of their commercial awareness and career development study trips embedded within the Contract Law module, all our LLB students recently got a chance to visit Linklaters LLP’s headquarters in the City.
Founded in 1838, Linklaters is a member of the ‘Magic Circle’ of elite London law firms, and employs more than 2,500 lawyers across 38 offices in 20 countries. Its lawyers have expertise in a wide variety of matters, including corporate and commercial, competition, banking, business and human rights, dispute resolution, crisis management, financial regulation, projects, tax, capital markets, employment, and real estate.
Our students’ visit was hosted by Ms Sima Ostrovsky, a Managing Associate in the competition team. Ms Ostrovsky educated our students about various aspects of competition law that Linklaters lawyers deal with, explained the repercussions of violating competition regulations, and provided examples of some recent deals (such as last year’s proposed merger between Sainsbury’s and Asda). She shared with the students how much she enjoys learning about the various industries in which her clients work, and explained how practicing competition law has enabled her to work with regulators, economics, and various service providers. As a competition lawyer at such a power-house law firm, Ms Ostrovsky not only advises clients on how to comply with competition law, but also devotes time to forward-looking practice, such as figuring out how competition law should develop to take account of new types of industries (such as Big Tech) and new political developments (such as Brexit).
Ms Ostrovsky and a trainee then provided the students with an overview of a day in the life of a Linklaters senior attorney and a trainee in the competition group, engaged in various aspects of competition practice (including mergers control, anti-competitive arrangements, and abuse of dominance). Learning about Linklaters’ work on cutting-edge legal issues and big global deals provided our students with a nice complement to what they had learned about in-house competition practice during their visit to Facebook last month.
Next, the Linklaters recruitment team was kind enough to offer our students an application workshop. The helpful HR representative explained what Linklaters vacation schemes are available to LLB students, and advised on how to do well with the application process and on assessment day. Notably, our students were provided with tips on how best to prepare themselves for applying and interviewing at big law firms generally. Students learned about how to translate their work and uni experiences into skills that law firms look for in potential trainees. They left more knowledgeable about what they can be doing from the beginning of their participation in our LLB programme to prepare for applying to law firms in the future.
Our study visit also included a tour of the client areas of the office, which occupies an entire modern high-rise building across from the Barbican Centre.