Summer Vacation Programme

If you are looking to gain hands-on legal experience and you are in your second or final year of a Law degree or have/are working towards the Legal Practice Course/SQE, our Summer Vacation Programme is perfect for you.

When can I apply for the Summer Vacation Day?

Applications for our 2025 programme are now open, with a closing date of Friday 9th May 2025. Apply by downloading this form.

When will the Summer Vacation Day take place?

Our virtual Summer Vacation Day is on Wednesday 4th June 2025.

What happens during the Summer Vacation Day?

We will offer up to 20 students a place on our virtual one-day programme.

You will spend time with our Board members and all Heads of Department to understand what their jobs look like. After each department introduction, you will have the chance to discuss legal case studies in smaller groups.

There will also be lots of opportunities to ask questions.

Later in the day, you will hear from our current trainees and others working towards qualification via our Staff Development Programme, who will give you some hints and tips and a real insight into working at Barcan+Kirby.

There will be lots of opportunities to ask questions throughout the day.

What previous candidates have said about the programme:

“Thank you once again for the opportunity to participate in the Barcan+Kirby Summer Vacation Day. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and have gained invaluable knowledge and experience that I will be able to carry forward throughout my future legal career. Furthermore, I was able to learn about the culture at Barcan+Kirby and hearing from employees about how supportive the firm has particularly interested me.”

“I enjoyed discovering more about areas of law with which I haven’t had much contact, such as Court of Protection work. The team gave a real insight into their work and the variety of ways they support people in rewarding ways.”

“I found the presentations from the team on how they got to their current positions utterly inspiring which, in turn, boosted my confidence and subsided some feelings of imposter syndrome.”

“All  the workshops with the pre-provided booklet scenarios were extremely useful for gaining insight into applying law to actual cases and gaining deeper knowledge from lawyers with expertise in that area. I particularly enjoyed medical negligence and Court of Protection as this gave me further invaluable insight into a practice area I likely wish to pursue and opened my awareness to another practice area I will research further and consider, which I had little knowledge about before but sounds very rewarding. I also feel I got a great insight and experienced the culture/atmosphere of Barcan+Kirby as a firm, as everyone was very approachable, knowledgeable and there was a definite team/community feel.”

“I particularly enjoyed the case study exercises and being able to work through these exercises with an expert in each of the fields. It was really helpful to get a feel for the broad range of areas that your firm covers and the type of cases that you deal with day to day.”

“I found it useful to hear about your firm’s culture and the activities that you get involved with. This helped solidify that you are the type of firm that I would want to work for.”

“I particularly enjoyed the individual talks from each department as this gave us an invaluable insight into the type of work your firm does. I also thought the scenario breakout rooms was a great way to get us to participate and think of questions.”

“The most enjoyable aspect of the day was having the opportunity to go through case studies with the Associates. It was great being able to discuss how they would approach these situations, and showed me that law is definitely the career for me.”

Everyone was so warm and welcoming so the day did not feel forced at all.”

“It has opened up areas of law I hadn’t considered.”

Further information

Download this form to apply for our Summer Vacation Day. You will need to send it with your cover letter to our Recruitment team.

If you have any queries about the Summer Vacation Day or Programme, please call our HR team on 0117 253 0368 or email us.