Legal Questions

Deadlines are meant to be met.

You have to be in it to win it, and it only makes sense to give yourself as many opportunities as possible. Before doing anything else, It is important that you should first get all the dates for submissions for each of the firms that you are going to be making a submission. Form an easier life by organizing all the details into a format that is simple to admit and understand. A time line is very helpful to estimate and organize each submission deadline so that you know how much time to complete each on them on time.

Don’t make spelling and grammar an issue

With a large amount of submission that are being scrutinized by firms these days, online submission has become the method of choice for many. While the convenience of online submission systems has a lot of clear benefits, it has also been the cause and source of mistakes for applicants. One of these is mistakes in basic spelling and grammar, more likely to be caused by carelessness than anything else. Even if you are typing directly into the recruiter’s website, it is not much trouble to copy and paste into Word for some assurance that you haven’t made any basic errors that will detract from the worth of your application. Simple and easy to do, and well worth the extra effort.

Give yourself sufficient time to prepare

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. As the saying indicates, you should really be prepared for all possibilities, especially when it comes to something as important as your training contract submission. There are enough stories about submission systems breaking down, or being overloaded with traffic in the dying minutes to make any applicants nervous. From the perspective of the firm, an early and well-prepared submission still has an advantage than a last-minute but well-prepared submission. Make sure that the quality of your submission matches your ability by having plenty of time up your sleeve.

Proofreading can make all the difference

Proofread as many times as possible to help eliminate unnecessary mistakes on your application. Careful check on a document, to make sure certain corrections have been made, and it always involves finding spelling, grammar and formatting errors. Do this, and you will find a vast improvement, as well as a greater polish on your work. It is more convenient If you know someone that may assist you to get this application. By putting yourself in the shoes of others can be very useful in determining those errors you missed, or gathering some ideas that are unclear to others.

Make your application easy on the eyes

What better way to demonstrate to the recruiters that you have all the skills and ability for the job by making your application stand out. With so many applications that they must go through in a short amount of time, being able to communicate ideas in a clear and concise manner will make any reviewer of your application sit up and take notice. Don’t introduce informal language into your application, because the online submission process is still treated as a formal piece of document. Give your potential employers some idea about your personality with the way you write and communicate your ideas. Avoid long sentences that may obscure the ideas you are trying to set forth.

“Individuals at the department were rejecting any of our candidates who could be construed as left-wing or who were perceived, based on their appearances and resumes and so forth, as being more liberal,” Kevin Ohlson, deputy director of the department’s executive office of immigration review, complained to Justice investigators.

The report marked the culmination of a yearlong investigation by Justice’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Republican politics were driving hiring polices at the once fiercely independent department.

The investigation is one of several that examine accusations of White House political meddling within the Justice Department. Those accusations were initially driven by the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006 and culminated with the ouster of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general last September.

The report issued Tuesday concluded that politics and ideology disqualified a significant number of newly graduated lawyers and summer interns seeking coveted Justice jobs in 2006.

As early as 2002, career Justice employees complained to department officials that Bush administration political appointees had largely taken over the hiring process for summer interns and so-called Honors Program jobs for newly graduated law students. For years, job applicants had been judged on their grades, the quality of their law schools, their legal clerkships and other experiences.

But in 2002, many applicants who identified themselves as Democrats or were members of liberal-leaning organizations were rejected while GOP loyalists with fewer legal skills were hired, the report found. Of 911 students who applied for full-time Honors jobs that year, 100 were identified as liberal — and 80 were rejected. By comparison, 46 were identified as conservative, and only four didn’t get a job offer.

The political filtering of applicants ebbed for the three years between 2003 and 2005, the inquiry found, then resumed by 2006.

Of 602 Honors candidates that year, 150 were identified as liberal — including 83 who were cut. Five of 28 self-described conservatives were rejected.

Investigators blamed two political appointees on a three-person screening committee for the preferential treatment. It also singled out one of them, former deputy attorney general staff chief Michael Elston, for failing to make sure the hirings were proper — and giving evasive and misleading answers about why they were not.

An attorney for Elston, who is now in private practice, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Although federal law prohibits discriminating against government job applicants based on their politics, it’s unlikely that any of those involved in the hiring process will be penalized since they no longer work at the department. A Justice official said the department is not considering pressing criminal charges or taking or civil actions against them.

Democrats quickly seized on the report to bludgeon the Bush administration for playing politics with a department sworn to uphold the law fairly.

“This is the first smoking gun,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We believe there will be more to come. This report shows clearly that politics and ideology replaced merit as the hiring criteria at one of our most prized civil service departments.”

Under Gonzales, the Justice Department last year moved to prevent politics from influencing the hiring screening process. His successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said Tuesday he “will continue to make clear that the consideration of political affiliations in the hiring of career department employees is impermissible and unacceptable.”