Warwick alumnus Jake Schogger’s new book ‘The Training Contract Handbook’ was published by City Career Series in July 2020. The handbook offers a solid grounding in the legal, commercial and financial knowledge required for commercial law interviews and internships.

Jake, who studied on our Law and Business qualifying degree from 2011-2015, is a qualified lawyer, career coach, entrepreneur, author, copywriter and consultant. He also trained at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and now acts as a legal adviser to start-ups and scale-ups, whilst also working as a career coach and delivering career-related presentations at universities across the UK.

Jake told us “I really enjoyed my degree, from the social aspects and my involvement with societies, to the broad mix of modules that I was able to study. I was heavily involved in extra-curricular activities, but more because I was interested in getting involved, rather than specifically to boost my CV.”

“I co-founded a society focused on commercial law, which meant that I could still enjoy the experience of running and building something. Running a society turned out to be much like running a business, from developing, branding and marketing an offering, to recruiting a team, raising funding and carefully budgeting. In this sense, my extra-curricular experiences helped immensely when it came to setting up my first business.”

Whilst still at Warwick, Jake founded City Career Series, a publishing company that has sold approximately 50,000 handbooks designed to help students secure City careers, including the critically acclaimed Commercial Law Handbook.

“My inspiration for writing the handbooks came from my experiences hosting mock interview workshops whilst running the student “commercial law” society. Students were clearly concerned about the commercial awareness elements of interviews, so I put together a guide based on all the notes I had taken during countless open days, firm presentations and commercial awareness-related events.”

With expert contributions from dozens of trainees and associates from a range of market leading City firms, plus comprehensive insights and insider tips from leading City trainers, authors and academics, Jake’s new training contract survival guide offers:

• Explanations of hundreds of key legal concepts and contractual clauses including terminology, jargon and acronyms that you’ll likely come across in practice.
• A comprehensive insight into what trainees do, including practice area overviews and example trainee work-logs.
• Insider tips on managing your workload, interacting with supervisors and demonstrating initiative.
• Expert guidance on how to effectively approach research, presentations, proofreading and written tasks.
• A summary of foundational commercial and contract law principles.
• Advice on how to project manage the M&A process, including complex due diligence exercises and signings and completions.
• A detailed explanation of some of the key transaction documents.
• An overview of key litigation documents and processes, including advice on how to coordinate large-scale document reviews.
• A practical guide to Microsoft Work, Outlook and Excel.

City Career Series offers a comprehensive range of resources directly relevant to the recruitment process for a wide variety of City careers. Find out more about this handbook and other publications available in the series: http://www.citycareerseries.com/about.php

Congratulations Jake.