About The True Picture

Every firm will tell you it is different from all the others because of its friendly culture in which everybody is down-to-earth and where approachable partners operate an open-door policy. If you're feeling bamboozled by brochure-speak we have the antidote...

How we do our research

Every year we spend many months compiling the True Picture reports on law firms in England and Wales, ranging from the international giants to small regional practices. Our purpose is to get to the heart of what you need to know about a prospective employer – what it can really offer you in terms of work and working environment. You’ll want to know how many hours a day you’ll be chained to your desk, the tasks that will keep you occupied and who you’ll be working with. Importantly, you’ll want to know about a firm’s culture and whether colleagues will turn into party animals or party poopers come Friday night.

Most of our chosen firms handle commercial law, although many also offer private client experience. There are a few general practice firms offering publicly funded advice to their local communities. To take part in the True Picture a firm must provide a complete list of its trainees. After checking the list is complete, we randomly select a sample of individuals for telephone interviews. Our sources are guaranteed anonymity to give them the confidence to speak frankly. The True Picture is not shown to the law firms prior to publication; they see it for the first time when this book is published.

Trainees tell us why they chose their firm and why others might want to. We put on our serious faces and talk about seat allocation, the character and work of different departments, the level of supervision and what happens to people on qualification. And we flirt shamelessly to get the gossip on firm politics, office oddities and after-hours fun. We look for the things trainees agree upon, and if they don’t agree we present both sides of the argument.

Your choice of firm will be based on location, size and the practice areas available... then it’s a matter of chemistry. Some firms are stuffier, some are more industrious and some are very brand-aware, involving trainees heavily in marketing activities. Some work in modern open-plan offices; others occupy buildings long past their sell-by date. Some focus on international business; others are at the heart of their local business communities. Some concentrate on contentious work, others transactional. The combinations of these variables are endless.

Our findings this year

The redundancies and falling profits of 2009 and 2010 are now fading into the mists of time, corporate activity has recovered somewhat and, after hearing a lot of talk from firms about 'consolidation' in the last few years, in the current round research we heard more about growth. This should not imply that the profession is out of the woods yet. This has been the year that budget cuts made by the coalition government have really started to bite. More cuts will come, and will have profound effects on many law firms.

A word on law firm mergers or closures. Mergers are an increasingly regular occurrence in the profession. This is partly due to the recession – strength in numbers, and all that. However, it is also a result of globalisation. The firms with large international networks seem to feel that unless they have offices absolutely everywhere, they will be left out of an emerging 'global elite'. When firms merge, trainees’ contracts are honoured, though of course it does mean that new recruits find themselves in a different firm to the one they signed up to. Closures are rarer, but as we’ve seen with the case of Halliwells in 2010, they do happen and trainees can find themselves out on their ear.

Since the recession many firms are announcing their qualification job offers extremely late, making it difficult for those who needed to look elsewhere for employment. Pre-recession, usually just over 80% of qualifiers stayed with the law firms that trained them, but in 2009 total retention at those firms we covered dropped to 74% – the worst for years. There was a slight recovery in 2010, and in 2011 80% of those at our True Picture firms were retained. This is an encouraging return to pre-credit-crunch levels, with the caveat that many fewer people completed training contracts that year due to reduced class sizes, and it is obviously easier to keep more people on when the trainee group is smaller. If you intend to use retention rates as a determining factor in your choice of firm, do be wary of the statistics being bandied around. Law firms make their own rules on how to calculate retention rates – you may not be getting a full picture from them. We collect our own statistics and include them in each law firm feature. We have collated statistics since 2000 and publish them here.

It's not all bad news, and anyway, we know that by the time you, our readers, hopefully begin your training contracts in 2014 and beyond, market conditions might be very different. We’ve tried to make this a forward-looking guide and, as always, we’ve a good deal of time speaking to training partners and managing partners about their strategies for the next few years. You’ll notice their comments scattered throughout the True Picture features and published in more detail in our bonus features.

Some things never change...

• Certain seats are more popular than others. The perfect example is employment law.
• Levels of responsibility vary between departments. In property you might have your own small files. In corporate you will generally work in a very junior capacity as part of a team.
• The experience in litigation depends entirely on the type of cases your firm handles; usually a trainee’s responsibility is inversely proportionate to the value and complexity of a case.
• In times of plenty, corporate and finance seats mean long hours, commonly climaxing in all-nighters. The size and complexity of a deal will determine your role, but corporate and finance usually require the most teamwork.
• Most firms offer four six-month seats; some offer six four-month seats and others operate their own unique systems. Trainees switch departments and supervisors for each seat. Most share a room and work with a partner or senior assistant; others sit open-plan, either with the rest of the team or with other trainees. Occasionally trainees have their own room.
• All firms conduct appraisals: a minimum of one at the conclusion of each seat, and usually halfway through as well.
• Client secondments help you learn to understand clients’ needs. They can be the highlight of a training contract.
• The Solicitors Regulation Authority requires all trainees to gain experience of both contentious and non-contentious work. Additionally most firms have certain seats they require or prefer trainees to try. Some firms are very prescriptive, others flexible. Remember, a training contract is a time to explore legal practice to see what you’re best at and most enjoy. You may surprise yourself.

And finally...

We hope the True Picture will help you decide which firms to target. No matter how hard or how easy securing a training contract is for you, you’ll want to end up with the right one.