BRITISH & IRISH UNIVERSITY
COMMERCIAL AWARENESS COMPETITION
THE STORY OF BIUCAC
Levelling the Playing Field
In 2020, a group of undergraduate law students at the University of Essex realised two facts. First, around 80% of all training contracts offers were made to students from Russell Group universities. Second, there are tremendously talented law students at non-Russell Group universities who lack the proper platform to showcase their talent.
To reconcile these two facts, this group came up with an idea: a commercial awareness competition designed specifically for undergraduate law students at non-Russell Group universities with the aim of allowing these students to showcase their talent to leading law firms. In short, to level the playing field.
Together with Mr. Denis Viskovich and students from other universities, they formed the British & Irish University Commercial Awareness Competition. Today, BIUCAC is the largest commercial awareness competition in the UK, operating as a symbol of the potential that non-Russell Group students possess.
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
DENIS VISKOVICH
❝ I, together with the BIUCAC 2023 Committee, would like to welcome you all to BIUCAC 2023 warmly and hope that it helps develop and increase your Legal Commercial Awareness. ❞
Mr Viskovich is a dual-qualified Australian and English lawyer with over twenty years of experience working for investment banks and companies in the City of London and Mayfair. He is the former Head of DCM legal at a large investment bank, where he worked on multi-million dollar deals in Russia, Kazakstan, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Africa. He then became the Managing Director of an advisory company in Mayfair.
Four years ago, he left the corporate world and became a visiting lecturer at three university law schools, where he taught commercial awareness and risk to law students. He also works with the charity SEO London by providing seminars on commercial awareness and risk to some of their law students.
In 2021, he founded Future City Lawyers with the aim of helping students develop their legal commercial awareness and excel at law interviews and assessment centres through interactive teaching with honest and direct feedback.