It’s a small world after all

Aspiring lawyers training in small high street or regional law firms may not earn ‘telephone number salaries’ but they can be happier and better connected to their business and community. The Gazette spoke to legal professionals who have chosen to train in a small firm – either to specialise in the niche area of law covered by a boutique practice, or to live and work in a particular location.

Solicitors at some of the biggest firms can now earn as much as £180,000 on qualification but there are other benefits for aspiring lawyers who choose smaller firms. They cite a fuller life experience as a solicitor, closer supervision by senior lawyers and stronger skills, making them highly employable.

It is also unlikely they will have to regularly pull all-nighters or sacrifice social and home life by being tied to the office, as happens to peers at larger firms.

While there are various models of smaller firms, most tend to cover a cross-section of common services, typically conveyancing, wills and probate, family, personal injury, employment, immigration and housing. Some also do criminal work or provide commercial advice to small businesses, while others offer a specialist service focused on a specific practice area.

'My experience was exposure to clients from day one… I know quite a few people who trained in larger firms who say that they didn’t get as much client-facing exposure as they would have liked'

Daniel Peacock, Tilly Bailey & Irvine

Junior Solicitors Network chair Daniel Peacock is a commercial and civil litigation solicitor at Tilly Bailey & Irvine in Wynyard, County Durham. He qualified three years ago after training at high street practice Mortons Law in Sunderland.

Peacock, a law graduate of the University of Sunderland, picked Mortons Law, which had around 20-25 lawyers, because of its strong local reputation. Unlike many counterparts at larger firms, Peacock hit the ground running.

‘My experience was exposure to clients from day one,’ he says. During the two years that followed, some of them became his own clients. Their attachment made Peacock more employable – when it was time to move on he took some clients to his current firm.

In comparison, he says: ‘I know quite a few people who trained in larger firms who say that they didn’t get as much client-facing exposure as they would have liked.’

While the responsibility was initially daunting, Peacock was well supported by his supervisor, with whom he had close and direct contact throughout training.

Frances Onyinah is eight months into a training contract with Cole Khan, a boutique employment law firm set up by solicitors Emilie Cole and Shazia Khan during the pandemic in 2021. She is the first trainee at the firm, which also comprises seven solicitors and two paralegals.

Onyinah chose the firm because of its specialism. ‘I don’t have to do the traditional cycle of seats in different areas of law in a full-service firm,’ she explains. Instead, she can gain greater experience in different aspects of employment law.

She studied modern history and politics at the University of Essex, taking a sabbatical year working as a student union officer, before completing the law conversion course.

Onyinah, who is of Ghanaian heritage and qualified for free school meals, put her undergraduate degree on hold to go to Ghana to observe the traditional customs of her culture following the death of her grandmother. This affected Onyinah’s degree result but she successfully applied for funding from the Law Society’s Diversity Access Scheme to pay for her Legal Practice Course.

After completing the course over two years part-time, Onyinah worked as a paralegal with a national law firm for a year before moving to Cole Khan. She began her training contract last November.

Due to her time as a paralegal, Onyinah only has to complete 18 months of a training contract instead of the usual two years. And, like Peacock, her experience has been hands-on and client-focused.

Onyinah does fee-earning work, which includes speaking directly to clients, taking notes in conferences and hearings, legal research, carrying out disclosure exercises, and preparing and lodging bundles for court. Her work has included a Court of Appeal case.

‘Essentially, I operate as a solicitor but with close supervision and support,’ she says. Her work enables the firm to help those with more limited means who could not afford to pay for a partner to work on their case full-time.

But, Onyinah adds, she also gets involved in cases for other clients, including senior executives. ‘I’m having a wonderful time and can’t wait to qualify,’ she says. ‘It’s a privilege to be the first trainee at this firm. I’m looking forward to see what else we can do.’

A burden to bear?

For some smaller firms, with fewer staff to supervise and less money to pay salaries than larger practices, the thought of taking on a trainee can appear burdensome and expensive.

But, says Shazia Khan, a founder of Cole Khan, it was something the firm wanted to do from its inception: ‘We have always been committed to empowering the next generation of lawyers and it felt appropriate that we should offer formal training.’

To provide training, firms must be approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The process, explains Khan, simply involves completing an online form and submitting it to the regulator.

From the firm’s perspective, there is an investment of time and money, says Khan, but she insists that there is a positive return – and that return is not just financial.

The trainee, she explains, gets hands-on experience at the coalface, working on client matters, learning and fee-earning under strict supervision. They are closely involved in cases and get real life experience in the work of a solicitor, adding value to the firm in the process.

It is more difficult for smaller firms to take on the financial responsibility of training, cautions Anthony Earl, senior director and solicitor at Earl & Crocker in Liskeard, Cornwall, and chairman of the Law Society’s Small Firms Network.

SRA figures show that as of November 2023, small firms – those with 2-4 partners and a turnover of less than £400,000 – had 357 trainees or people doing qualifying work experience under the Solicitors Qualifying Examination route. That is down from 601 in November 2013.

While removal of the mandatory trainee salary in 2014 by the SRA may have helped firms in some areas – because it meant that they could pay lower wages – Earl insists that most firms pay good salaries, otherwise they would not get applications.

The Law Society’s recommended minimum salary for those undertaking a training contract or qualifying work experience went up by 10% last year, to £26,068 in London and £23,122 elsewhere.

But, Earl says, the introduction of solicitor apprenticeships, in which the training and assessments are funded almost entirely by the government through a levy paid by larger businesses, has made it easier for smaller law firms to provide training.

The law firm, he explains, selects a training provider – Earl & Crocker has chosen Damar, which has a partnership with Barbri – to which it pays 5% (around £950) of the fees while the government pays the other 95%.

‘It’s a no-brainer,’ says Earl. But he adds that many other small firms have yet to recognise the opportunity it provides, despite the efforts of the network and the Law Society to spread the word.

He is evangelical about the benefits to law firms of providing training and has experience from both sides of the fence.

Working your way up

Leaving school at 18, Earl joined Liskeard law firm Serpell Son & Davey as a trainee legal executive.

His mother had been widowed and the family had little money, so he received a local authority grant that covered his law school fees and also a maintenance grant, which paid his rent.

Things were different in those days, he accepts: ‘The grant was a big help – I wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise.’

He qualified as a solicitor at the firm, which had four lawyers, in 1984. While the name has changed, Earl has remained at the same firm, which now has five lawyers, throughout his career

‘I wouldn’t have wanted to train in a big firm,’ he says. ‘I was happy in a small firm.’ Earl adds that he got broader and faster training than friends in larger firms, where work was more limited. ‘In a small firm, you feel part of the family, which I don’t think you’d get in a larger firm.’

The firm currently has four apprentices – two doing paralegal qualifications and two who have switched from completing legal executive exams to become solicitors. It is also looking to take on a graduate solicitor apprentice.

The apprentices must have one day a week to study, when they are paid as though they are working, says Earl. He adds that ‘when you end up with qualified solicitors, it’s well worth it’.

Sam Ennor-Pengelly, 35, is one of the firm’s solicitor apprentices. She started working there at 16 as an office junior, progressing to secretary and then training to become a legal executive.

‘Having been at the firm for a while I knew it was a great place to work, so it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed,’ says Ennor-Pengelly, who will qualify next April.

With two children, she has been able to continue her learning locally. Her CILEX qualifications count towards her apprenticeship training.

She says it suits her to train in a small, family-based firm that is part of the local community: ‘Everyone knows you, you build up a good community reputation and we get involved in local events.’

Downsides?

While not the experience of the trainees who spoke to the Gazette, Elizabeth Rimmer, chief executive of charity LawCare, which provides free and confidential support to the profession, relates calls from trainees in small firms who feel isolated, lacking in support or who have been given administrative work to do or complex work that they are not qualified to undertake.

But, she stresses, the charity receives similar calls from trainees from firms of all sizes.

'During my training contract I was actively helping parents get their kids back and was doing my own advocacy in the family court most weeks'

Oliver Conway, Oliver Fisher

Oliver Conway trained with and now works at London legal aid firm Oliver Fisher, which has 13 solicitors and usually one trainee. ‘The best thing about training in a small firm that focuses on legal aid is that you are client-facing and running cases,’ he says. ‘You get the most interesting high-risk cases in family and work the case under supervision.

‘During my training contract I was actively helping parents get their kids back and was doing my own advocacy in the family court most weeks.’ Conway compares this to the ‘nightmare stories’ he has heard of ‘magic circle trainees sitting on Zoom at 3am and doing document review for six weeks’.

Joanna Connolly, who set up Joanna Connolly Solicitors in Liverpool, chairs the Solicitors Sole Practitioners Group. Many of her members provide training, sometimes as a way of expanding their businesses.

Training with a sole practitioner, she suggests, enables aspiring solicitors to learn from the ‘main solicitor in the areas they specialise in’. To provide a wider range of training, firms often collaborate and, she adds, because the sole provider ‘has personally provided the training and a relationship has developed, they are more likely to keep the trainee on’.  

 

Catherine Baksi is a freelance journalist