Prepare to contribute.
Stay ready to learn.
Early legal experience is a chance to practise professional habits: preparation, careful listening, useful questions and reliable follow-through.
Our planned career organiser would help you track your own preparation and reflect on learning. The public career guides are available now; Durmah does not offer placements or recruitment guarantees.
Build habits before your first day
Understanding an organisation’s work helps you ask relevant questions. Knowing what you do not yet understand helps you seek guidance at the right time.
Reflection matters, but confidentiality comes first. Record general skills and personal learning goals without client names, matter details, employer documents or other restricted information.
- Research the settingUse public sources to understand the organisation and its areas of work.
- Plan your questionsAsk about expectations, supervision, communication and feedback.
- Practise reliabilityConfirm instructions, keep your own deadlines and raise uncertainty early.
- Reflect safelyNote general lessons and next steps without confidential workplace content.
A simple reflection format
After an activity, describe one skill you practised, one thing you learned and one question for your supervisor. Keep it general and consistent with your workplace’s confidentiality rules.
Public careers guidance cannot replace employer instructions, professional obligations or advice from your university careers service. Verify deadlines and eligibility with the relevant organisation.
Keep learning.
Useful support needs clear boundaries.
Check every legal proposition against an authoritative source, including the relevant jurisdiction and date. AI can overlook an issue, misunderstand a passage or invent a citation. It cannot certify your authorship, predict your grade or replace your teacher's judgment.
For future material-entry tools, use your own original work that you may share, or third-party material with documented permission or a suitable licence covering the proposed storage and processing, including external AI where applicable. Your notes may themselves contain protected material.
University, module and task instructions apply separately. A private account, personal-study purpose or acknowledgment of assistance does not create permission. Assessed work requires specific approval for the type and extent of help; current uploads remain closed.
Read our research-based guide to study materials and copyright · Our responsible study principles · Material-permission rules