A group of students from Edinburgh Napier University have won a week-long internship at a leading Edinburgh-based law firm after coming out on top in the second annual Legal City Challenge.
The Legal City Challenge – organised by Edinburgh Napier’s Student Futures team within its Business School – sees teams of students compete against each other to complete a number of challenges at legal employers across the city.
Featuring five teams consisting of LLB students, the challenge included tasks at TC Young, Anderson Strathern, Morton Fraser, TSB and Thorntons.
Each challenge provided students from different year groups the chance to work with each other to tackle real life problems and to meet lawyers and business leaders working in the city.
The challenges involved students undertaking role-plays of real life legal situations, then presenting their findings back to the firms, and defending their arguments. With one firm, this included handling legal disputes and court actions on behalf of “clients.” The employers scored the students on areas such as team work, legal knowledge, communication skills and creative thinking.
After the challenges had been completed, the teams, employers, law academics and Student Futures staff convened at the Law Society of Scotland in Edinburgh to announce the winners.
After a close-run battle, the team of students Zainab Butt, Jennifer Goldstein, Veronika Sauerova, Peter McDonald and Sean Doig triumphed, with all five securing a paid one week internship with one of the participating organisations.
Richard Whitecross, Head of Law at Edinburgh Napier, said: “As well as the experience of solving the challenges, the day gives students confidence on a number of levels: from meeting new people and going into a law office for the first time to the realisation that they can be creative with their job.”
Iona Phillips, Career Development Consultant within Edinburgh Napier’s Student Futures team, said: “The experience was invaluable to our students and we can’t thank the five participating employers and The Law Society of Scotland enough for their involvement across the day. Securing legal work experience can be challenging in a very competitive environment so it is fantastic that our winning team will have the chance to benefit from this at such an early stage in the development of their career.”
More information on studying Law at Edinburgh Napier can be found
here.