u/DefinitionSwimming22

Hey all,

I’m a trainee solicitor at an London HQ’d international firm. I am based in a Scottish office. I want to qualify into banking / finance and want to qualify in London. I’m due to qualify Sept 2027, and am almost half way through my traineeship right now. All of my work experience is English law despite my Scot’s law degree. (I am in an English law RE seat right now, and banking at my firm is 80% England based)

Grateful for any (truly) honest advice on how to make myself an appealing NQ candidate in London, as I know the market is dire and I have a Scot’s law degree. Or any advice in general for those who have trained in Scotland and made the move.

TIA!

Hi everyone ,

I’m a second seat trainee at an UK headquartered international firm. I am about to choose my third seat rotation. The way our firm does it is we choose 5 practice areas and rank them 1-5 based on preference.

So far I’ve had a high preference and a non preference. So this rotation I’m likely to get a preference.

As some background -

I have a year of paralegal work experience in London, which I completed whilst I was in the period between uni and my TC starting. I love London and want to move there on qualification, though I am not training there.

My first seat was corporate finance, and my second is transactional real estate. I love transactional work and it’s likely what I will qualify into. I also know that luckily, it is one of the more buoyant NQ areas in London and the skills from transactional work are also very marketable.

My firm offers client secondments across various practice groups which I am very very interested in pursuing since I know what area I want to qualify into. I have expressed this to the early careers team since day one.

My question -

Are there any seats you would advise to ‘round out’ my experience and compliment my previous seats well? My thoughts so far are restructuring, Corporate, and possibly repeating a seat in finance.

My main dilemma is re secondments. The firm offers various clients secondments, based in London. They are allocated across all of our regional offices. The majority of my cohort are interested in them. The early careers team have implied that this next rotation might be a better time to try and get a secondment, as most people want one for their fourth seat (if they want one). I want more face time in my regional office and within the firm, and wouldn’t want to move down there yet. But I also don’t want to cut off my nose to spite my face and not put any secondment preferences down , and miss the opportunity altogether.
Essentially

1. what seats would you recommend to round out a traineeship for someone who loves transactional work, has found the area they like, and wants to finish off their traineeship with a set of skills which will set them up to be a great day one transactional NQ; and
2. Secondment now or fourth seat? Any advice for communicating to EC how important this is to me?

Thanks in advance !