After all the hard work involved in securing a training contract offer, you’ll need to know what to do when you actually land one.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority publishes a ‘voluntary code to good practice in the recruitment of trainee solicitors’ at www.sra.org.uk/documents/students/training-contract/voluntarycode.pdf.

Read through these guidelines if at any stage you are in doubt as to what you should do. They address the conduct of both recruiters and students. Law firms are not obliged to follow these guidelines, though most will.

On offers, the guidelines say:

• If you’re still an undergrad, a training contract offer should not be made before 1 September in your final undergraduate year. If you’ve impressed a firm during a vacation scheme or period of work experience, it must wait until this date before making you an offer.
• At an interview, you will be told if there is a further stage to the selection process. You should also be told within two weeks of reaching the end of the process whether or not you have been successful.
• Offers should be made in writing. If you receive an offer by phone you don’t need to say yes or no: you can ask the firm to send a formal offer in writing for you to consider.

On deadlines, the guidelines say:

• No deadline should expire earlier than four weeks from the date of an offer. If you need more time to mull over an offer, firms are supposed to consider your request ‘sympathetically’, provided you have a good reason. No definition of ‘good reason’ is given in the guidelines.
• If a firm is going to pay your law school fees it should set out the terms and conditions of the arrangement in the training contract offer letter. A firm’s willingness to provide financial assistance should not affect the time limit for accepting the contract.
• If you feel you need more time, you will have to enter into diplomatic discussions with the law firm, telling them how much longer you need. Ask for written confirmation of any extension to the deadline so both parties are clear what has been decided.

You may want to hang on to an offer from one firm while you pursue applications with others. This is okay, but you must bear in mind the following:

• You should not hold more than two (as yet unaccepted or declined) offers at any one time.
• Students are supposed to respond promptly to a firm that’s made an offer, either by accepting or rejecting it. The word ‘promptly’ is not defined in the code.
• Because offers can and will be made with time limits for acceptance, do guard against allowing a deadline to elapse. The stupidity tax you may otherwise pay doesn’t bear thinking about.
• Once you have accepted your preferred offer in writing, you must then confirm to everyone else that you are withdrawing your application. This is only fair to busy recruiters and other applicants who may suffer if you clog up a shortlist.

The guidelines are silent on the issue of what happens if a student changes their mind after accepting an offer. It’s a rare firm that will be particularly sympathetic to a post-acceptance withdrawal but, on occasions, these things do happen. We can give no general advice on this subject, as each individual case will have its own merits. What we can say is that the smooth running of the whole trainee recruitment market relies on most parties playing by the above ‘rules’. So what if a law firm puts pressure on you to accept an offer earlier than the guidelines say they should? Again, there is no simple answer as the SRA’s code of conduct is voluntary. If this situation arises you will have to enter into delicate negotiations with the law firm. You could also discuss the problem with your university or college careers adviser and ask if they can recommend a course of action.