Graduate recruitment - The programme
So, how does it work? Well, it’s a two-year traineeship with a varied exposure to our legal disciplines. You’ll have eleven ‘seats’ to choose from and you must opt for six in the two year period. The seats last four months each and are spread across what we call our three ‘client markets’ and these are: personal clients, business clients and not for profit clients. The seats themselves represent the different disciplines of law as seen below:
- private clients (tax, estate planning and wills)
- rural services
- commercial property
- planning
- construction
- personal injury
- commercial disputes
- family
- corporate
- commercial employment
- commercial and technology
We ensure that all trainees get experience of litigation, commercial and property work. Trainees find a rotation of six seats provide a sufficient range of experience to help decide which discipline of law they want to qualify in. In other words, the programme and the trainee's dedicated mentor (a partner) help to tailor the trainees own training contract. This means you get to do what interests you most and for the long-term.
Trainees have the chance at the end of the fifth seat, providing a position in the firm is available, and assuming a job contract has been offered, to take their sixth seat in the discipline of law they prefer most. This deepens experience and makes the transition from trainee to newly qualified as seamless as possible.
Overall, our programme has a long-term purpose – which is to produce and retain high-calibre talent that is likely to grow and adapt with the ways of our business. To prove this point, both our current Managing Partner (Ed Turner) and our former Managing Partner (Christine Berry) were once trainees of the firm. What’s more, Christine trained with the firm as a second career having originally established a career in publishing.