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Careers with Slaughter and May

Slaughter and May offer a training contract with international opportunities available to trainees in their second year. Openings that are accepting applications will be listed below.  

Training Contracts

Our training contract is designed to offer you the breadth of experience and training needed to advise on the full range of work within the practice areas you experience during the two years and on qualification.

During your time at the firm, you will spend time in different practice areas, known as ‘seats’. In each seat you will share an office with a partner or associate (your ‘supervisor’) who will guide you and ensure that you are actively involved in their work and the work of the group. You will be given responsibility from an early stage and the opportunity to work alongside partners, who, together with other team members in the firm, provide mentoring and individual support.

All our trainees complete at least two six-month seats in our Corporate and M&A and Financing groups. Subject to gaining some contentious experience, your remaining time can be divided into two or three specialist areas, for example, Disputes and Investigations, Competition, Real Estates and Projects.

Our overseas offices and longstanding relationships with leading law firms around the world mean there are also opportunities for trainees to apply for a secondment in their second year; this can either be an international secondment (to destinations such as Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, New York and Hong Kong), or a client secondment located in and around London.

You can find out more on our website here . 

Work Experience Opportunities

We offer work experience schemes, open days and virtual insight afternoons to enable you to gain an insight into life as a commercial lawyer. 

Full details of these opportunities can be found on our website.  

Solicitor Apprenticeship programme

Our six-year Solicitor Apprenticeship Programme is designed for bright and motivated school leavers interested in a career in commercial law. Through exposure to the full range of work undertaken by the practice groups you experience during the programme, and ultimately join on qualification, you will develop broad and varied experience alongside deep legal expertise. This will equip you with the commercial judgement, intellectual ability and independence of thought needed to deliver the complex and landmark work we are known for. 

You can find out more on our website here . 

What do we look for?

For our training contracts, we are looking for law and non-law candidates with a strong 2:1, ideally a minimum of 65% and above in the majority of your modules for each academic year completed, at undergraduate level and AAB (not including EPQ) or equivalent at A Level. 

Our trainees come from a range of universities – it is the quality of the candidate, not the university that is important to us. 

Across all of our opportunities, we are looking for candidates with: 

• a sharp intellect
• drive and an interest in commercial law
• commercial awareness
• communication and interpersonal skills
• resilience and resolve
• independent thought and curiosity
• a range of interests outside of the law
• a good sense of humour
• a willingness to take on responsibility

We use the Rare Contextual Recruitment System for all of our opportunities. The system helps us to identify high potential candidates by putting applicants’ grades and achievements in the context of their social and educational background.

For further details about the eligibility requirements for each of our opportunities, please visit our website.  

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