In order to help maximise your chances of being selected for the Flex Trainee Scheme, we’ve put together some tips and advice to help you with drafting your cover letter.
Here are a few commonly-made ‘mistakes’ that we’ve seen in the cover letters submitted this cycle - so check yours against this list and rework it if any of these apply to you!
- Not using the whole A4 page: if you are seeing a lot of blank space, you’re not using your space to its maximum potential!
- Going beyond the 1-page limit: If you use your space wisely, you should be able to go into depth without going beyond 1 page.
- Not observing the formalities of cover letters: see our template later on for a sample of what it should look like.
- Forgetting to include one or more of the essential points: these include -
- Why commercial law
- Why in-house (as opposed to private practice)
- Why you (what skills do you bring to the table + detailed explanations of your past experiences which support your claim that you possess such skills)
- Incorrectly referring to the scheme as a ‘training contract’: this is a ‘Trainee Scheme’ rather than a training contract, as Flex is not a training provider under the SRA’s definition.
- Incorrectly implying that you will be working at Flex itself: if you’re successful, Flex will be providing you with Qualifying Work Experience at legal teams within Flex’s clients, which are corporations/businesses such as The Crown Estate, NEXT15, ASOS etc.
- Incorrectly implying that STRIVE is providing the Trainee Scheme: STRIVE is (proudly) partnering with Flex to recruit and screen candidates, but will not be involved in the delivery of the Scheme itself.
- Not being specific enough: see more tips in the template document below
- Typos, spelling errors: Common examples include - double spaces, irregular use of commas, forgetting to capitalise the first letter of a word that is a specific noun (such as Flex, LinkedIn etc).
IMPORTANT NOTE
The deadline for you to resubmit your cover letter to us is 23:59 this Wednesday (27 April). If you do not submit a revised cover letter to us by that time, we will operate on the assumption that you are happy with your original cover letter and wish us to forward that to Flex. Late submissions will not be accepted, so please allow plenty of time for potential network issues.
