Russell-Cooke - True Picture

Russell-Cooke training contract review 2025

The Firm

Everyone has their own tricks in the kitchen, whether it’s a square of dark chocolate in a chilli or a pinch of salt in a batch of cookies. Whatever your interest, if seats were meals, Russell-Cooke has a whole recipe book to sink your teeth into. As Training Principal Jemma Pollock explains, We have a multidisciplinary practice, which enables us to advise and support clients with everything that happens in life. We can take them through everything from property purchases, and running their companies, to estate planning, and dealing with any issues on the family side.” The firm’s trainees were clear that this variety was what drew them to the firm too: “It’s a full-service law firm, so there’s quite a wide variety of seats on offer in terms of the training contract.” What this translated to was “seats in areas like family law and private client law, but also in commercial departments as well.” Indeed, Russell-Cooke stands out from a lot of other London outfits thanks to their focus on private clients, charities, and family law, and receives nods from Chambers UK for their work on charities and children law nationwide, alongside top matrimonial finance and real estate practices in London.

“I knew I wanted to be at a firm that took legal aid and human rights seriously...”

The firm’s departments are spread across each of their three London offices in Putney, Bedford Row, and Kingston, and there’s a chance to explore different areas of the city too. The majority of trainees were based in the Putney office, with a handful in Bedford Row and just one in Kingston. Despite its rich mix of practices, Russell-Cooke is a firm with a conscience: “I knew I wanted to be at a firm that took legal aid and human rights seriously,” one told us,and it is something that shapes the way those at the junior end are treated: “The real focus in every department is that trainees are given proper solicitor level work and treated as fee-earners from day one, with the right support and supervision in place to enable them to develop as they do so,” Pollock tells us.

The Seats

Trainees’ first seats are allocated on the basis of business need. They then have the opportunity to indicate their preferences for further seats during a meeting with the graduate recruitment partner. Sources appreciates these conversations and felt respected: “Just because you’re a trainee, it doesn’t feel like you’re not heard.” We did hear that it’s “a relatively mixed bag” as to whether trainees get their preferences or not, as business need is still important and some of the departments best known for legal aid work “often don’t take a trainee because they just don’t have the budget for it.” With a mixture of seats across departments available, interviewees told us that trainees usually, in practice, spend time in private client, litigation and property seats during their training contract, with more than half of seats being commercial or property related.

A popular seat amongst trainees at Russell-Cooke was real estate – one of the firm’s headline practices – where we heard that the team work “almost exclusively on commercial property, generally with big property portfolios.” The seat involved working with a “varied portfolio of clients and types of matters, from big entities and private companies down to just individuals,” one source explained, “so it’s very mixed in the type of matters you come across, which I found really interesting.” We heard responsibility developed steadily in the department, with one source explaining that “I went through a process of doing small, discrete tasks within a transaction, and eventually I would build on those.” By the end of the seat, “I had started to do these small, low-value, low-risk transactions almost under my own steam (with input from a supervisor), so the autonomy was quite good.” The firm has advised Pret for over 30 years on matters relating to their UK property portfolio (from construction, development and acquisition to the renewal and disposal of their leasehold premises).

“I never ever did anything twice…”

Family was a seat that brought a lot of trainees to the firm, thanks to Russell-Cooke’s reputation for being amongst the best in the area. We heard that work in the seat includes “lots of divorce cases, so that’s the divorce itself but also the finances, and private children matters.” The team work on both pre-nuptial and post-nuptial agreements, as well as other financial agreements and even some international abduction work, so there’s a lot to sink your teeth into! Discussing responsibilities, sources shared that “client meetings are quite frequent within the department, so you’re taken to that alongside a fee-earner. You’ll take the note and do quite a lot of the follow-up work, which is nice because you’re getting into those instructions from the beginning and following the work through.” Naturally there are admin tasks for trainees too, covering the likes of “bundling, preparing for hearings, and getting counsel’s papers together.” There was always something new though, with sources sharing that “I never ever did anything twice apart from those admin tasks for different matters. I was given actual substantive tasks, and they were very, very varied, so that was really positive.”

“…they’d ask if I’d already drafted a will with a trust like this and if I had, they’d make an effort to find work I hadn’t done before.”

As another of the firm’s primary focuses, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that private client was a popular choice. Work in the team largely revolves around probate, the administration of estates, and documents like wills and LPAs. A lot of the work involves high-net-worth individuals, and trainees were proud to share that they were “involved in just about every part of the process.” In terms of the day-to-day experiences of our interviewees, we heard that “the work’s quite varied so it’s a good training seat, and I feel like the team were quite on it. They were understanding and they’d ask if I’d already drafted a will with a trust like this and if I had, they’d make an effort to find work I hadn’t done before.” Sources felt encouraged by the chance to work on a number of different cross-border issues and felt that they were “expected to be quite independent within a good support network.”

We heard the majority of trainees will spend time in a property seat during their training contract. Property is split into six sub teams, including commercial real estate; planning; real estate finance; rural & agribusiness; and tax. The property teams are split between Putney and Bedford Row, with Putney primarily taking on commercial property litigation for privately paying clients, and housing work funded by legal aid. The latter of which involves things like disrepair cases and defending illegal evictions. On the disrepair side, one recent case saw the firm advise the leaseholders of 2-4 Leigham Court Road, London in their application for a Remediation Order under the Building Safety Act 2022 over cladding and safety defects. “It almost felt like two seats in one, which was a real bonus!” one trainee told us, “I was exposed to so many different kinds of work and clients in the same seat.” Case in point, we heard trainees could be “drafting a letter before action or trying to recover some debt from the tenant of a commercial landlord, but later might have a licence meeting with a legal-aid-funded client who is being evicted by their landlord, so it really was very varied.”

Trainee Life

When it came to Russell-Cooke’s office spaces, a Bedford Row trainee shared that the firm’s central office is “really beautiful, grade two listed, and right in the heart of old-fashioned legal London.” The office in Putney is the largest of the three, so is naturally “more spacious, has more facilities, and more amenities.” It also happens to be the place where “most of the social stuff happens.” The Kingston office, a bit further from the humdrum of the city, was described as “really new and modern, and they have really nice facilities there. It’s right on the river!” It’s worth noting that it’s important that future trainees are open to working at all three of the firm’s locations, as when you’re putting forward your seat preferences, “you’re not really consulted about whether you might have a preference in terms of offices, that’s really just decided for you.” Sources explained that trainees are required to work from the office for four days every week, while this requirement reduces to three days for other fee-earners.

“…if I’m still here by 6pm, someone’s trying to get rid of me out of the office!”

The current cohort was quick to highlight hours as a positive of life at Russell-Cooke. Standard hours for trainees were around 9am to 5.30pm, with one interviewee explaining that “if I’m still here by 6pm, someone’s trying to get rid of me out of the office!” The firm was described as somewhere that “people very much work their hours, but it’s not the culture at the firm to work all hours just for the sake of it.” The latest we heard amongst the current trainees was 9.30pm, but that was described as “so extreme!” Trainees also told us that when they’d worked later hours it was because it was necessary: “I don’t feel like I’m being overworked beyond my will and that’s an important distinction.”

When asked about the culture at the firm, Russell-Cooke’s future solicitors told us that the firm felt like a place where “the people around you want you to succeed as a lawyer.” As one put it: “Every time I’ve been in to ask a question, it’s tools down to help, and I feel very well supported as a trainee.” Outside of work and professional development, we heard that the firm’s focus on work/life balance feeds into a healthy number of opportunities to socialise with colleagues through various clubs. These include “a few sports clubs; a football club, cricket club, netball club, yoga club, running club. Then there’s others – there’s a games club, film night club, book club. I can’t even remember all of them, there’s as many opportunities as you could imagine!” As well as the traditional Christmas and Summer parties, the firm hosts socials for trainees organised by their own social committee and using a dedicated trainee social budget. We heard that the firm often have “wine tasting nights, because we have a wine vault in the cellar.” That said, trainees were quick to reassure that there’s not an overwhelming drinking culture at the firm: “It’s certainly not the case that if you don’t drink you’re ostracised, which is important for an inclusive culture.” Trainees felt that the firm was doing well with diversity in terms of age range and gender, but that there was some work to be done from a race perspective. They did note, however, that the firm was working to improve this, including working with the 10,000 Black Interns programme.

Trainees were happy with the supervision they’d had from partners at the firm, who were “very willing to take questions and give feedback, even when they were really busy, which is appreciated.” Sources felt that they had a good amount of autonomy regarding their work and their capacity, and even when others are busy, we heard that “people are keen to help you with your work and happy to help with things that aren’t their matter.” On the topic of training, trainees highlighted firmwide ‘knowledge worth sharing’ sessions, where different departments share the work they’ve been doing.

Come qualification time, the process begins relatively informally, with trainees reporting that the process seemed “driven by us as trainees, in the sense that the general consensus is that you figure out what department you want to qualify into, and then it’s about having discussions with members of the team as early as possible.” While the timeline of the process was transparent, we did hear some suggestion that the system could be more centralised, with the current crop highlighting their uncertainty around things like NQ salary, billing hours and business development expectations post-qualification. The firm did not disclose retention rates.

How to get a Russel-Cooke training contract

The application stage

The application stage could be the hardest part of getting a Russell Cooke interview. “Candidates have to find a way to stand out when we are sifting hundreds of applications down to just 60 or so for a first interview,” explains Jemma Pollock, Training Principal. The firm includes some narrative questions to give candidates the chance to give an insight into their personality and previous experience. Pollock’s best advice would be to “include something interesting which shows us who you are as a person and why you would be a good fit for our firm in particular. It doesn’t mater if you don’t think it’s relevant to the law – a long-term hobby or sporting talent can show commitment, hard work and time management as much as legal work experience does.”

Candidates are then invited to a remote first interview with a Senior Associate and if successful from that round, will go on to either one of the firm’s vacation scheme weeks or a training contract assessment day. There are 16 places on the vacation scheme (8 per week) and 12 places on the training contract days (6 per day).

The vacation scheme

The firm’s vacation scheme is a week long and is designed for the candidate to get to know the firm as much as for the firm to get to know the candidate! Each candidate is supervised by a Senior Associate, who manages their week, arranges and supervises work, and can answer any questions. “We try to give our vacation scheme students a real insight into working at our firm and our culture,” explains Pollock, “so they undertake real work, attend court hearings and client meetings, and often get the opportunity to join in with networking events or team socials.” As well as all the fun stuff, it’s important to remember that the week is also part of the application for a training contract, so it includes elements from the firm’s assessment days and finishes with an interview with Pollock, the firm’s head of people, and two other senior members of the firm.

“The training contract assessment days have a busy timetable!” says Pollock. “That is mainly because we try to give our candidates the chance to get to know the firm as well as completing the assessments, all within just one day!” The tasks include a letter writing exercise and a group discussion session, and the day finishes with an interview with the same panel as the vacation scheme candidates. Don’t worry too much about the interview section though. As Pollock tells us, “an interview sounds very formal, but it is only around 20 minutes and allows us to chat with the candidate on a 1:1 basis as well as giving them the chance to ask any questions.” The day isn’t all assessments either, with candidates joining current trainees for lunch, and getting a tour of the firm’s Putney office!

Trainee profile

In terms of what the firm are looking for in a trainee, Pollock tells us that “there really is not set ‘Russell-Cooke’ type or criteria that we assess against.” The firm use the RARE recruitment tool to support its focus on diversity and social mobility. “On a general note, of course many candidates have done a law degree – around 50% of those that we offered training contracts to in our last recruitment round – but we also actively encourage candidates who are coming to law as a second career or from a non-traditional background,” says Pollock. Within the firm’s current trainee cohort, you’ll find an ex-English lecturer; former professional rugby player; a paramedic and a search and rescue responder in an NGO! Take Pollock’s advice here: “at interview we are looking for people who are confident in themselves and what they can bring, can draw on their skills and experience form their background (whatever those are) and are keen to learn, take responsibility and work hard in their careers.”