Training grounds – why law firms need to overhaul their training programmes

Behind closed doors UK law firms should be gearing up for what could be a training revolution. The news that firms have been steadily scaling back their UK trainee intakes is nothing new. As the post-Lehman crisis gave rise to a wave of redundancies across UK law firms, it became painfully apparent that scores of lawyers hired years in advance were a pretty big liability. Particularly when the budding lawyers in question were all coming – initially at least – into the local market at a time when most firms were trying to chase growth in global currencies rather than in the pound.

Even so, the extent to which leading UK firms have decreased their trainee numbers is impressive. A steady drip of downward projections for future intakes has seen all of the magic circle – bar Freshfields – cut trainee numbers by more than 15% since 2010.

But this reduction is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the training of the next generation of lawyers. Buried in the August holiday period was a government announcement of new guidelines for legal apprenticeships, which a host of firms helped draft. The proposals would potentially open up a career as a qualified lawyer to those without degrees and certainly without formal training contracts.