Student Conferences 2017 – Review

The Student Conferences 2017 held in London on 12th January and in Birmingham on 20th January 2017 were both a huge success. Over 80 students attended the conferences and there was a very lively question and answer section at the end of each conference.

We wish to thank speakers on both panels for giving up their valuable time.

The London panel was made up by: Sachin Trikha (Clifford Chance); Ranjeeta Kaur Matharu (Neumans LLP); Parminder Saini (12 Old Square Chambers); Steven Powles (Doughty Street Chambers) and Jaswant Narwal (Chief Prosecutor for CPS South East).

The Birmingham panel was made up by: Vinesh Mandalia (No.5 Chambers); Attiq Malik (Liberty Law); Sean Sidhu-Brar (Citadel Chambers); Bally Atwal (Smith Partnership) and Neetu Sehdev (DLA Piper).

The events were chaired by Ranjit Sond, SAL President.

A special thank you is reserved for The University of Law (Bloomsbury & Birmingham) who hosted the events and Dr. Kasim Sheikh, Head of Law at The University of Law (Birmingham).

If you missed the conferences, here are some of the key tips and points of advice given by our esteemed panel of experts to students making pupilage and training contract applications:

• Try to get as much practical experience as possible, in as many fields as possible. Don’t restrict yourself;
• It is very competitive at the Bar, don’t be disheartened and don’t give up;
• Do some research on the sets of chambers or law firms you are applying to and tailor your applications accordingly;
• Take time to prepare your applications. Make them watertight. Load the application form with your skills and demonstrate that you can be a pupil or trainee;
• Try to be different and stand out from the crowd. Create your own brand;
• Don’t be afraid to show your personality at interviews;
• Two themes that kept coming up were resilience and perseverance – don’t give up and keep trying. Follow your dreams!

SAL will continue its programme of holding student events in the future. We believe it is very important to reach out to future generations of Asian lawyers. If you are a student and interested in speaking to a professional, then why don’t you join our mentoring scheme? Details can be found on our Mentoring page.