From student to practitioner: exploring the transition into legal practice and the opportunity offered by self-coaching in the management of rejection

This chapter will focus upon the move from education to practice. It will explore the position of those law students who are unable to secure employment within the law, reflecting on the need for law students to be equipped to deal with rejection and will discuss the possibilities offered by self-coaching. It will also seek to identify common features in those who rebound more effectively from rejection. The chapter suggests a self-coaching approach based upon a pilot involving academic staff. The pilot found that those individuals with higher levels of self-belief and self-efficacy will tend to respond to rejection by accepting that rejection as a challenge. It has a lesser effect upon their sense of their own identity. These individuals are less likely to take the rejection personally and their personal sense of being part of their social/work community is less likely to be impacted.

In the pilot, academic staff identified the importance of a space to share feelings with peers in order to realise that they were not alone in their response to rejection. Therefore, it is possible that, as with the academic staff participants, students would find the creation of space to mutually consider their personal strengths, values and motivations beneficial. Furthermore, increasing a sense of belonging and reducing competitiveness in law students may be supported by formally encouraging peer support groups within a self-coaching intervention.