You know what? Sometimes I feel like I want to scream. Why? This training contract thing. I’ve been trying for four years, yes you read right, four years, to get a training contract, without success. It wouldn’t be so bad, except, I’ve got plans.

Rachel and I are getting married on 19 August 2006. She is adamant that she doesn’t want to live in London, and I don’t blame her. I would rather live in South Wales than in London, but unfortunately, the legal jobs are mainly in London. Plus I want to bring our kids up in South Wales, not London, so that our families are around for the kids during their childhood.

But. And there is a big but. Most law firms recruit two years in advance, which means that most of the applications I’ve made this year have been for 2006. Most of them are in London. That fucks up our plans a bit, doesn’t it? I don’t want to spend our married lives apart, and yet I don’t really want to have to commute back and forth to Wales.

What makes it worse is that now most applications for 2006 have passed, I’m looking at applications in 2005 for 2007! My LPC will expire in 2008, five years after completing it, so if I don’t secure a training contract before then, I’ve wasted ?7,000 just to do the LPC.

It infuriates me. Why is it is so seemingly impossible to secure a training contract? What do I have to do? I moved to London when I got my current job with RAD because I thought it would be a great opportunity to make contacts in order to secure the training contracts. I’ve made contacts yes, but none of them are able to offer me a training contract. I applied to Beachcroft Wansbroughs with encouragement from Clare Norriss, an Employment Solicitor and a good friend of mine, who works there, and I didn’t even get an interview. I was Chair of the GSD for a year, and even though I met loads of solicitors, it didn’t get me anywhere.

I’m starting to feel really lost now; I’m losing my sense of direction and aims for the future. I don’t know what to do next apart from keep applying and keep getting turned down. It doesn’t do much for one’s confidence and self-esteem. Would I really be that crap a solicitor? Is it because I’m Deaf that I’m not getting the training contracts? Why do my A Level results, which I obtained six years ago for fuck’s sake, matter so much to all those bloody law firms?

I may as well give up and go into teaching. But I can’t do that; I want to be a solicitor so much. I’ve worked so damn hard to get this far, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up.

But when the odds are stacked against me, where do I turn … ?