Earning and learning

Solicitor apprenticeships are providing new routes to qualification, injecting young, diverse talent into the profession. Eight years on from the introduction of the professional apprenticeship, that is the conclusion of lawyers who have taken this route and the law firms and in-house departments that have placed their trust in this system.

Solicitor apprenticeships were introduced in 2016 as an alternative to the traditional graduate route to qualifying as a solicitor, and gained popularity following the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) in 2021. Solicitor apprenticeships are all-inclusive ‘earn as you learn’ training programmes combining practical on-the-job training with studying for a law degree and preparing for SQE1 and SQE2 assessments.

Apprentices are salaried employees and their training and assessments are paid for by the apprenticeship levy.

Solicitor apprentices spend 80% of their time doing on the job training, completing ‘seats’ in different practice areas, and 20% of their time, one day a week, studying. Once they complete the apprenticeship and pass the SQE, they can qualify into the profession.

There are two types of solicitor apprenticeships. The level 7 apprenticeship, which is equivalent to a master’s degree, is a six-year programme for school-leavers with A-levels or equivalents, or graduates with a degree in any subject. It consists of five years of work-based learning and part-time study, leading to a law degree (LLB) and the SQE1. That is followed by one year of preparation for the SQE2. An apprentice works for a law firm or in-house legal department, and studies at a university, law school or SRA-approved SQE training provider.

The level 6 apprenticeship (equivalent to an undergraduate degree) is a four-year programme for law graduates. This involves three years of work-based learning and part-time study leading to the SQE1, followed by one year of preparation for the SQE2.

Other legal apprenticeship programmes include the level 3 paralegal apprenticeship (an A-level equivalent), which is a two-year programme for school-leavers with GCSEs or equivalent, and people who have work experience in the legal sector. The apprenticeship leads to a paralegal qualification and the possibility of progressing to the level 6 apprenticeship.

There is also a five-year level 6 chartered legal executive apprenticeship for those who finished a paralegal apprenticeship, or have some work experience and qualifications in the legal sector.

Opportunity knocks

Apprenticeships are an alternative to the traditional training contract route to qualifying as a solicitor, opening up the profession to young people for whom cost of qualification is a barrier and those working in the legal sector.

Despite the increasing number of solicitor apprentices, there are fewer opportunities compared to graduate training contracts. 2024 figures from the website Legal Cheek show that most large firms take on 10 or fewer solicitor apprentices each year. While firms are competing with universities for the best applicants, the opportunity to get a degree and a professional qualification while being paid and avoiding student loan and maintenance debt means that as awareness increases, so does competition.

Weightmans takes on 10 solicitor apprentices a year and offers 20 training contracts. Early careers lead Denise Wright explains that one reason for its small cohorts is that the apprenticeship programme is longer and requires more resources.

‘We have two years with graduate trainees, to give them a varied experience, and balance that with legal training, which includes mandatory courses,’ Wright explains. ‘Solicitor apprentices are with us for six years. They do 12-month seats in the first four years and then they become trainees in years five and six, when they do six-month seats. They also spend six months working in business services – innovation, risk or marketing – so they get a unique view of how the firm operates and a varied skillset. While they are learning the law, they are also experiencing it in practice.’

School-leavers need more support than graduates, especially in the first 12 months. ‘We have to teach them the basic skills they need to be in work but they start to add value quite quickly,’ Wright says. ‘They go to university one day a week to study for a law degree, and after graduating they focus on preparing for the SQE. Graduates have two years to gain qualifying work experience [QWE], whereas apprentices have six. We work with BPP Law School and at the end of six years, apprentices will have an apprenticeship award and a law degree and when they pass the SQE they qualify as solicitors.

‘Choosing an apprenticeship over going to university says something about an 18-year-old,’ she adds. ‘While we will always have graduates coming into the business, this is a great opportunity for young people who know they want to be a solicitor. While it’s tough working and studying at the same time, our solicitor apprentices are permanent roles and they can qualify at the age of 24, so the rewards are huge.’

Patrick McCann is global head of learning at Linklaters, a founder of the Social Welfare Solicitors’ Qualification Fund (SWSQF) and co-chief executive of apprenticeship initiative City Century. McCann told a LegalTechTalk panel on legal education and training that the ‘numbers of people coming through via the solicitor apprenticeships are disrupting entry into the profession because they are loan-free lawyers’.

Another panel member, Mary Bonsor, founder of Flex Legal, which is now part of Mishcon de Reya, said apprenticeships are the future of legal training and an obvious choice compared to the expense and uncertainty of the university/training contract route to a legal career. Flex Legal’s graduate apprentices combine QWE gained in in-house legal teams with online SQE preparation delivered by an AI learning platform from legal education provider BARBRI Global, which personalises each student’s learning. On the challenges of managing work and study, Bonsor reminded the panel that most university students need to work to fund their studies.

'Over the last three years, increasing numbers of smaller firms, local councils and in-house legal teams are using apprenticeships as a way to attract local talent and retain and develop paralegals'

Jonathan Bourne, Damar Training

Victoria Cromwell, head of new business and account management at BARBRI Global, added that the range of apprenticeships on offer gives law firms and in-house legal departments opportunities to develop home-grown talent and increase diversity. 

BARBRI has partnered with Damar Training, which delivers apprenticeship programmes across many industries, to develop an accelerated solicitor apprenticeship specifically for the SQE. This broadens access to apprenticeships beyond school-leavers by enabling paralegals with law degrees to qualify as solicitors through an 18-month programme, a 35-month apprenticeship for candidates with a non-law degree, paralegal apprenticeship or similar qualification, and a five-year pathway for school-leavers that consists of a two-year paralegal apprenticeship followed by a 35-month solicitor apprenticeship.

‘Over the last three years, increasing numbers of smaller firms, local councils and in-house legal teams are using apprenticeships as a way to attract local talent and retain and develop paralegals,’ says Jonathan Bourne, Damar Training’s managing director. ‘We’ve built a route to allow more employers to bring in younger people and people from non-law backgrounds.’

The Damar/BARBRI model is a flexible route to qualification. ‘We are working with BARBRI to develop a five-year career ladder with a step two years in that allows for a change of direction,’ says Bourne. ‘This allows someone to start on a paralegal apprenticeship and switch to a solicitor apprenticeship or not. It also provides an opportunity for law graduates and paralegals with QWE to hop on the ladder and complete a shorter apprenticeship.’

Recruiting apprentices

While law firms have established recruitment processes for their graduate training schemes, recruiting solicitor apprentices straight from school presents different challenges. Weightmans’ apprentice recruitment process starts long before A-levels.

‘Research by Bath University found that lower social mobility among solicitor apprenticeships was partly caused by lack of information,’ says Wright. ‘So, we created a transparent recruitment process that includes outreach work in primary schools, where we run sessions for 11-year-olds explaining how law works and what lawyers do. Our lawyers give careers talks in secondary schools and attend apprenticeship shows. It’s about planting the seeds early and getting people to think about law before they choose their A-levels. For sixth formers we provide an online Legal Insights programme and work experience opportunities. We give them what they need to make an informed decision.’

Weightmans supports candidates throughout the apprenticeship application process.

‘We run open evenings for sixth formers and their parents,’ says Wright. ‘Before [they attend] assessment centres we give them a coaching call and talk them through the application process. This is similar to the support that universities give students applying for graduate roles, and acknowledges that not all schools offer that kind of support.’

This is proving effective, Wright adds: ‘We’ve never had anyone not turn up to an assessment. We like to think it’s because we support people through the journey. And people whose apprenticeship application didn’t succeed come back and apply for graduate roles, so we are still their employer of choice.’

Charity Lockie, a third-year apprentice solicitor at Weightmans, who was awarded BPP Law School’s Suzanne Finch Apprentice Champion award for championing apprenticeships, agrees that lack of awareness and information is a barrier for many applicants. ‘My sixth form college organised a session on degree apprenticeships so I took the initiative to look for opportunities, but not everyone knows about them,’ Lockie says. She adds that while the competition for places is intense – Weightmans gets around 1,000 applications for its 10 places – most national law firms offer apprenticeships. Another option is to apply for a paralegal apprenticeship as a pathway to qualification.

Jasmine Sharp has just qualified as a solicitor after completing her apprenticeship at Burges Salmon and is joining the firm’s disputes team. She considers the apprenticeship recruitment process equally daunting for firms and applicants. ‘It is difficult for firms to decide who out of a group of 18-year-olds with no work experience will make a good lawyer, so they are looking for how people interact and respond to questions,’ she says.

Although Sharp had been offered a place at Oxford University, she wanted ‘to start a real career, and find something more certain’. Burges Salmon’s recruitment process included an online application followed by an assessment day with group activities and practical tasks. Like Lockie, she recalls early training including basic office skills – like answering the phone and writing emails.

An all-inclusive package

A major advantage of solicitor apprenticeships is that apprentices are immersed in a firm’s culture. ‘Year-long seats for the first four years of the apprenticeship give apprentices the chance to feel comfortable in each department,’ says Sharp, ‘whereas I have heard from trainees that when they do four-month or six-month seats, just as they begin to understand it, they have to move on.’

In their final two years, the apprentices join the trainee rotation for SQE preparation. Both Sharp at Burges Salmon and Lockie at Weightmans used the flexibility of the longer apprenticeship programme to define the area of law they want to work in post-qualification by extending the time they spend in their preferred seat.

As trainee and apprentice groups merge, they are officially at the same point in the qualification pathway, so this would be the time to draw some comparisons, but in practice apprentices have the advantage of having got to know the firm’s systems and people.

Tom Whittaker, a solicitor advocate and director at Burges Salmon, says: ‘Although apprentices in their last two years are allocated work in the same way as trainees, because we’ve worked with them for so long and understand their strengths and preferences, we take these into account. Our apprentices are firmly part of the teams we allocate to different cases, and because they have spent time working here, they are better attuned to our teams and our clients.’

Lockie feels that apprenticeship brings early career advantages. ‘Although trainees join the firm having already completed their degrees, in some ways apprentices have a chance to get ahead [of graduate trainees]. I have been building my network and developing practical workplace skills since I was 19. I have won awards and people at work know my name.’ She sees the biggest advantages as having no student debt, a salary (and this year a bonus) and job security compared with university graduates.

Bridges to the future

As well as making firms and in-house legal departments more accessible and diverse, the fresh talent coming into legal is starting to challenge the status quo, reducing its average age and transforming its culture. Linklaters recently recruited its second cohort of eight solicitor apprentices.

‘We have been impressed by the solicitor apprentices that joined us straight out of school,’ says McCann. ‘They represent a wide spread of ethnicity, race, gender and backgrounds, which we haven’t necessarily had at Linklaters.’

McCann is co-CEO of City Century, a collaboration between City law firms to promote solicitor apprenticeships. It provides resources for potential apprentices via live events in London and Manchester, does outreach work with youth organisations and schools, and works with Apprentivia and other social media outreach organisations to produce informative videos for LinkedIn and TikTok providing guidance on the application process and insights into the lives of solicitor apprentices. They are also direct links to information about member firms and their websites.

‘This year 35 member firms have offered around 130 places, which will be confirmed on A-level results day in mid-August, and anecdotally, some firms prefer solicitor apprentices over trainee solicitors,’ says McCann. ‘We also hear that solicitor apprentices are doing client work within their first six months. Apprenticeships are a great avenue to new talent.’

City Century’s membership is growing exponentially as apprenticeships generally are now the first choice for more than 50% of school leavers. And the most searched-for apprenticeship is law.

Firms also benefit from having younger employees. Lockie says they ‘bring a bit of a buzz into the office’, including organising social events that give everyone the opportunity to mingle and network.

Whittaker appreciates the diversity of thought apprentices bring to legal work.

‘The large legal cases we handle are not just law, but also cover project management decisions, and benefit from diverse skillsets,’ he says. ‘The generational point is that people bring different experiences, and partners are always interested in new insights and approaches. It is important for everyone in the firm that we take management decisions for the long term, and we see our apprentices as being part of the firm’s long-term future.’

Notwithstanding the challenges, solicitor apprenticeships are a win-win for the profession. Ambitious apprentices are qualifying without incurring student loans, and firms are benefiting from employing resilient young achievers who have the potential to solve succession issues and drive businesses into the second half of the 21st century and beyond.

Solicitor apprenticeships are still evolving, and while their impact on the legal profession is not fully realised, bringing youth, enthusiasm and diversity into a traditional profession is already making a positive difference.

 

Joanna Goodman is a freelance journalist