Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP - True Picture

Firm profile

Willkie is an international law firm of approximately 1200 lawyers spread over 16 offices in six countries. We provide leading-edge legal solutions on complex, business-critical issues. Our capabilities span markets and industries.

We provide English and US legal advice to UK, US and international market-leading public and private companies, investors and financial services institutions.

In London, team has grown to more than 130 partners and lawyers and regularly handle some of the most high-profile and complex international transactions and disputes in the market. Many of our lawyers are recognized as leaders in their field by the leading legal directories and third party publications and bring decades of experience to our clients’ businesses. Working closely with our colleagues in Europe and the U.S., we are committed to using our knowledge of the law to promote or defend our clients’ interests in the UK and beyond.

Main areas of work

Our principal areas of work in London are: asset management; capital markets; competition & antitrust; competition litigation; compliances, investigations & enforcement; corporate insurance; finance; international arbitration; litigation; mergers & acquisitions; private equity restructuring and tax.

Trainee profile

We recruit trainee solicitors via our vacation schemes only. In 2026, we will have up to 20 people in total on our spring and summer vacation schemes. We are proud of our vacation schemes; in 2025, 100% of those offered a training contract by Willkie accepted that offer. Our future trainees enjoyed undertaking real, live work and being fully integrated into their teams.

During your two-week scheme, you will sit in two different teams, with a partner and an associate, and gain hands-on experience, giving you the opportunity to undertake real, meaningful work and showcase your potential.

We hope that by the end of the two weeks, you will have met most of our people at our vacation scheme-specific workshops, seminars and social events. You will be supported throughout your time with us, by a partner mentor, an associate buddy and our graduate recruitment team, and will be paid £750 per week.

The application deadline is midday on 10 December 2025. Successful applications will be invited to a video interview and, if successful at this stage, will be invited to complete a written exercise. Our final stage of recruitment is a CV-blind interview with partners.

We welcome applicants from all universities and degree disciplines. We are looking for consistently strong academic achievement, with a 2.1 at undergraduate level. Willkie is proud to use Rare’s Contextual Recruitment System. Partnering with Rare means social mobility measures and educational data are embedded into our recruitment process. This means we will better understand your academic achievements.

Training environment

From 1 September 2025, we are recruiting trainee solicitors who can start their training contract in September 2028. We recruit our future trainee solicitors from our spring and summer vacation schemes only.

Our training contract provides an environment where junior lawyers can excel and be challenged, in a supportive environment. You will sit in four different practice areas, with a mix of partners and associates; spending six months in a contentious seat and six months in Private Equity or Corporate Insurance (M&A).

In addition to the full programme of formal training, you will work alongside our partners and associates in small teams on real matters from day one. Our people work in small, nimble teams on high-quality matters, so it is important that you are motivated, collaborative and able to pick things up quickly as you will receive a great breadth of work from the outset.

Willkie London has grown by over 160% over the past six years and by 51% since 2020 alone. With this in mind, we are looking for self-starters who want to contribute to a dynamic, growing workplace, and who have a genuine interest in Willkie and our clients.

Benefits

Our benefits include: 25 days’ annual leave, Cycle to Work scheme, employee assistance programme for employees and their families, employer pension contribution, eye test, health & well-being allowance, income protection, interest-free season ticket loan, life assurance, private dental insurance, private medical insurance and technology programme.

Sponsorship & awards

We offer full sponsorship of both the GDL and SQE, which covers your course fees in full, as well as a £20,000 maintenance grant per academic year.