Introduction

My name is Renee Zou, and I'm currently a lawyer in the Disputes and Investigations team at Allens. In 2020, I undertook the Victorian legal clerkship recruitment process with my friend Jay Ong, where our experiences confirmed what we'd already heard from senior law students — the process is challenging but extremely rewarding.

I'm thankful that I persevered through it, finding that the challenging application process transformed me into a more confident job applicant overall, with a better sense of my strengths and weaknesses, a more persuasive writing style and a greater awareness of my unique stories and what I can bring to different teams and employers. These benefits helped with my applications and gave me handy skills I use almost daily.

Now as an Allens lawyer, I'm excited to help law students undergoing this year's clerkship process. Welcome to Your clerkship companion, a guide Jay and I wrote while going through the application process together at university.

I hope this will help you maximise the clerkship application journey. You can use this guide to develop your overall resilience and confidence in job hunting, reflect on your unique strengths, priorities and desired outcomes, and articulate them with persuasion so that you can reap the benefits beyond offer day.