About

2024 marks 40 years of The Client Interviewing Competition, a competition for law students run by a committee of law academics from law schools in England & Wales. It is part of the International Client Consultation Competition. The competition is an annual event which encourages the promotion and development of the skills involved with client interviewing and counselling within an educational context. Its prime aim is to promote the development of lawyers' soft skills and to enable law students to practise them at a high level.

Law students work in teams of two in a simulated law office. They interview and advise a “client” -a role-playing actor. They are assessed according to clearly described criteria which take into account interpersonal skills as well as their ability to handle a legal problem. Large numbers of law schools take part. As well as the competition, we have run preparatory National Training Day events  where students and staff were briefed and took part in practice interviews with feedback from experienced coaches and ex winners of the competition.

With Covid, the 2021 competition was cancelled. The 2022 competition was held online. We were delighted to run a successful hybrid competition in 2023 with 35 law schools taking part.

You can download a list of all our previous winners.