Fladgate LLP
16 Great Queen Street,
London,
WC2B 5DG
Website www.fladgate.com
Firm profile
Few firms can compete with us in our chosen space – delivering highly personal service for entrepreneurial, ambitious and fast moving clients with complex needs that are often international.
Our strategy is to combine brilliant teamwork and a truly personal service; connectivity and understanding across our clients’ worlds; and high quality specialist expertise and products that meet their needs.
For a relatively small firm to deliver the quality of work that we do, the range of expertise that we have and the depth of our relationships with clients are contributing factors that set us apart from our competitors.
Main areas of work
Corporate: including capital markets, M&A, tax, private client, restructuring, commercial, sports and IP and employment.
Dispute Resolution: which includes regulatory, corporate governance and investigations, banking and financial services litigation, international commercial arbitration, insurance, contentious trusts and family, intellectual property, civil fraud and asset protection and contentious construction.
Funds, Finance and Regulatory: including investment funds, private equity, fund managers, asset and investment managers, promoters, sponsors and investors ; alternative finance providers, banks and debt funds, family offices, owner manager businesses, private equity funds and corporate borrowers FCA applications, advice on UK regulatory frameworks, fund related advice.
Real Estate: including planning, construction, real estate finance and real estate litigation.
Training opportunities
Typically, you will complete four six-month seats across our core and specialist areas. Each seat will bring you into contact with new clients and colleagues, and you can expect to gain real hands-on experience of a variety of deals and projects, both large and small. In each seat you will work alongside senior lawyers who will supervise your development and ensure you are involved in challenging and interesting work.
In addition to on-the-job training, each department has a comprehensive training schedule of seminars and workshops covering a range of legal and skills training. The firm has a modern culture and an open-door policy where trainees are given early responsibility and encouraged to achieve their full potential.
Seat options include Corporate; Dispute Resolution; Real Estate; Funds, Finance & Regulatory; Commercial, Sports & IP, Construction, Private Client and Real Estate Litigation.
Fladgate recruit Trainees solely through the vacation scheme, which launched in 2020. Fladgate holds two one-week vacation scheme placements across June/July.
The vacation scheme provides graduate students – our potential future trainees – an opportunity to gain hands-on experience and a good understanding of life as a Fladgate trainee. Participants will be assigned a supervisor, usually an Associate, as well as a Trainee buddy.
Vacation scheme candidates will have the opportunity to attend departmental introductions, technical presentations and Q&A sessions with various Partners, Senior Associates and experts at the firm. Alongside these sessions, vac schemers will be engaged in discrete tasks, group work, BD activities and networking and social sessions, providing them with an insight into our practice areas and the trainee role within them.
Other benefits
At Fladgate we run our business in ways that promote equality of opportunity and respect for diversity. Ours is a business that thrives on bringing together people with different perspectives to address our clients’ challenges, so we value and encourage diversity, both internally and externally. Furthermore, the firm recognises the importance of the health and wellbeing of all our people and that it can play a part in promoting an environment which allows everyone to flourish and reach their full potential.
Promoting diversity and inclusion is a key element of our commitment to being a great place to work, enabling us to attract and retain the best talent, and we take our responsibility to this seriously. We will continue to strive for a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
Our strategy is led by the Director of People and Culture on behalf of the Executive Board, who works closely with our Partner Lead for I&D and Senior Culture and Inclusion Manager. We also have employee and partner led networks across the firm who support and inform our inclusive culture at Fladgate. We are also proud to partner with a number of organisations working hard to improve access to the legal sector.
This includes the PRIME commitment, which aims to provide fair access to meaningful work experience within the legal sector for school-age students who may not otherwise have the opportunity. Following our work experience programme, we are proud to have seen these students filter through our graduate and apprentice pipeline.
We ensure equity within our recruitment processes and monitor the data to ensure that we are reaching a diverse range of candidates. We use RealRating when reviewing our trainee and apprentice applications. This is a feature developed by UpReach, a social mobility charity, to help us to understand academic performance in the context of factors such as type of school attended and background.
We also uphold a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility, dedicating fundraising to two nominated charities per calendar year.
We care deeply about the wellbeing of our people and have a strong commitment to employee wellness. Our wellbeing programme consists of four key pillars: physical health, mental health, financial health and social & CSR. As part of our programme we offer a range of benefits to staff and provide regular updates and seminars on health and wellbeing. Furthermore, the firm has run various physical and mental health seminars, led by internal champions and external experts such as Nutrable, Mind and LawCare, encouraging staff to feel comfortable to bring their whole selves to work. As part of our commitment to employee wellbeing, we also offer a wellbeing information session guiding our trainees and apprentices on ways to manage their wellbeing and how to access the resources we have available. We were delighted to be win the "Best Health and Wellbeing Initiative" entry at the People in Law 2020 Awards, recognising our efforts and commitment to encouraging and support the wellbeing of our people.