Commercial Awareness

Understanding how a business makes money, what threatens it, and what that means for the people advising it. For a law firm applicant it means being able to explain why a deal or a piece of news matters to a client, not just that it happened.

Being able to follow a story from an event to its consequence: a rate rise makes borrowing dearer, which slows deals, which changes what a corporate team is busy with. Recruiters are listening for that chain of reasoning.

Pick one story you genuinely followed and explain its effect on a specific client or practice area. One well-reasoned example beats a list of headlines, which is the most common way this question gets answered badly.

Read one reliable source consistently rather than many occasionally, and write a line or two on why each story matters. Fifteen minutes a day over months builds something you can actually talk about under pressure.