For those who have received or will receive clerkship offers, congratulations. It is an extremely competitive process, so you should be plenty proud of yourself.

However, for most law students, the reality is that you haven’t received or won’t be receiving any clerkship offers (or an offer from your most preferred firms). It’s a tough pill for many to swallow (especially if you are genuinely interested in commercial law).

With law students in Sydney now having found out the outcome of their clerkship application journey (and students in other Australian cities such as Melbourne and Brisbane finding out in a few weeks), we would like to offer some thoughts that you could take away from the application process if you didn’t or don’t get a clerkship offer.

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Before we provide our tips on navigating those rejections, here are our own clerkship stories:

Jimmy: I got a few clerkship interviews back then but, unfortunately, did not ultimately get a clerkship offer. However, I was fortunate enough to receive a graduate offer from a law firm (after applying for graduate programs in my final year of university). I am now an in-house lawyer, having worked in large commercial law firms for a few years.

Lachy: I was not able to secure any clerkships or legal graduate offers coming out of university. It was only after joining a company as part of their graduate program [that] I got my first taste as a legal graduate (for a six-month rotation). After working in a commercial role for a couple of years, I was fortunate enough to move into an in-house lawyer role, where I have been for the past two years.

What next?

Firstly, reassess. Many students will use this time to figure out whether or not they would like to continue pursuing a legal career. For some of you, your true calling may not necessarily be in the law, and not getting a clerkship offer will allow you to realise this. However, for others, you will choose to continue that pursuit.

Pick yourself up. Assuming you still want to pursue a legal career, the best thing you can do is to quickly pick yourself up and “get back on the horse”. Ignore the noise around friends or colleagues who may have been successful, and focus on your next steps. Use this rejection as extra motivation to finally succeed in the “job hunt” in your final year of university. Here are our suggestions on the available pathways that you could consider in your final year:

• Have another shot at clerkships. There are law firms that will consider clerkship applications from final-year students. If you choose to have a second bite at the cherry, you would have the benefit of valuable experience from applying for clerkships the first time.
• Law firm graduate programs. It will vary from state to state and from firm to firm, but there are law firms that will open applications to final-year students for their graduate programs. Some large firms, despite predominantly sourcing their graduates from the seasonal clerk pool, may choose to “go to market” for a limited number of graduate positions.
• Alternative pathway: In-house, government and tangential roles. Legal departments of corporations, the public sector, the regulators, the professional services firms, and other large employers may have law graduate roles, legal rotations or “quasi-legal” roles (such as tax, compliance or policy) on offer. For those who wish to eventually work at large commercial law firms, it is not uncommon for in-house lawyers, government lawyers or “quasi-legal” professionals to transition into private practice within their first few years of practice.
• Alternative pathway: Entry-level roles and other areas of law. Interested in criminal law, family law or other areas of law that don’t fall in the “commercial law” sphere? Law firms specialising in these other areas of law tend not to have formal graduate programs but may advertise entry-level roles (e.g., paralegal or graduate-at-law roles). Be on the lookout on job boards and LinkedIn.
• Network, Network, Network! Don’t underestimate the power of networking and the opportunities it can provide. Networking isn’t about going through the motions and meeting people. It’s about building a genuine connection and having yourself front of mind if ANY opportunity were to arise. Just because you didn’t make it through the clerkship or graduate process doesn’t mean there aren’t other roles at the firm (e.g. paralegal, administrative assistant, etc.).

Closing thoughts

For most students (whether you got rejected before the interview stage or went through several interviews and cocktail evenings but only to come up short), “it sucks” is perhaps the best way to describe how you feel after spending countless hours preparing those cover letters, attending interviews, and waiting for the offer day.

Maintaining perspective. Both of us can relate to the feeling of clerkship rejection. However, while it sounds cliché and is hard to accept immediately, we assure you that it really is not the “be-all and end-all”. It is also easy to forget that there is some element of luck at play, and sometimes, luck isn’t on your side.

There are many lawyers and non-legal professionals who didn’t do any clerkships and have forged fulfilling and successful careers in and outside of the law. In fact, some of you may decide to go down a different path outside of the law and make clerkship rejections the best thing to ever happen to you.

At the end of the day, be kind to yourself, be patient, keep working towards your goals and (as we can both attest) look forward to taking the “scenic route” to where you ultimately want to be. As the saying goes, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, and hopefully, next time, you’ll be prepared when the opportunity comes, and luck will finally be on your side!

Jimmy Ngo is an in-house lawyer who is passionate about mentoring law students and junior lawyers. He currently runs a blog at auslegalcareersadvance.blogspot.com (@auslegalcareersadvance on Instagram), where he writes about tackling the career-related challenges commonly faced by law students.

Lachy (@legallyprivilegedofficial) is an in-house lawyer who is passionate about sharing his non-traditional legal journey to assist law students and junior lawyers in navigating their early careers. He manages an Instagram page, @legallyprivilegedofficial, which shares life experiences, tips and tricks, along with a touch of humour, tailored for aspiring lawyers.