Training Contract

A training contract is the two-year period of paid, supervised work that a law graduate must complete to qualify as a solicitor in England and Wales. Trainees rotate through different departments of a law firm (or an in-house legal team, local authority or government department), doing real client work under the supervision of qualified solicitors. At the end, if the firm and the regulator are satisfied, you qualify and are admitted to the roll of solicitors.

Starting salary: £45k–£60k
Live graduate jobs: 56 open now
Main way in: The standard commercial route
They usually ask for: A qualifying path to solicitor qualification

Approximate graduate salary

Extremely wide. Trainee salaries in the largest London commercial firms are typically in the region of £45,000–£60,000 or more, while regional firms, high street practices, legal aid firms and public sector employers are often somewhere around £22,000–£32,000. Treat all of these as rough approximations - they move with the market and differ enormously by firm, sector and location.

What you'd actually do

Drafting first versions of documents - contracts, witness statements, letters of advice, court forms, board minutes - which a supervising solicitor then marks up and corrects, often heavily at first
Legal research: being asked a question by a partner or associate ('can our client terminate this agreement early?'), digging through legislation, case law and practitioner texts on subscription databases, and writing it up as a short, usable note rather than an essay
Reviewing large volumes of documents - due diligence on a company being bought, or disclosure of emails and files in a dispute - and flagging anything that matters to the deal or case
Running the mechanics of a transaction or case: bundling documents for court or counsel, chasing signatures, managing completion checklists, keeping the file and the case management system in order

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Attending client calls, completion meetings, court hearings or tribunals - usually taking the note, sometimes handling small items yourself
Recording time in six-minute units against client matter numbers (in most private practice firms), which is how the firm bills and how your utilisation is measured
Changing seat every three to six months into a new practice area, which means learning a new area of law, new systems and a new supervisor more or less from scratch

How graduates get in

The standard commercial route: apply for a vacation scheme (a one- to three-week paid placement, usually in your penultimate year of a law degree or final year of a non-law degree) and convert it into a training contract offer. At many larger commercial firms this is the dominant route in, so the vacation scheme application is effectively the training contract application.
Direct training contract application, usually two years before the intended start date. Common at high street, regional and mid-sized firms and still available at large firms, though competition is heavy everywhere.
Non-law degree route: any degree subject, then a law conversion course. This used to be the GDL; under the current system most non-law graduates take an SQE preparation course that includes the core legal knowledge. Firms recruit non-law graduates in significant numbers and usually fund the course.
Paralegal first: work as a paralegal (unqualified legal support) for one to three years and apply internally or externally. Very common in smaller firms, in-house teams and public sector legal departments, and increasingly a realistic alternative to applying straight from university.

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In-house, local authority, CPS and government legal trainee schemes. Fewer places, different culture, often better hours and lower pay than City firms; the Government Legal Profession runs its own trainee recruitment.
Solicitor apprenticeship (a six-year route from A-levels combining work and study) - this bypasses the training contract as such, so it is an alternative rather than a way in, but it is worth knowing about if you have not yet started a degree.

What employers ask for

A qualifying path to solicitor qualification. Since the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) replaced the LPC for new entrants, the usual package is: a degree in any subject, SQE1 and SQE2 assessments, and two years of qualifying work experience (QWE) - the training contract is the most common form of QWE. Some people still finishing older routes are completing LPC-based training contracts; the picture is genuinely mixed during the transition.
Degree subject does not have to be law. Firms recruit historians, scientists, linguists and economists; a science or engineering degree is a positive advantage for intellectual property and patent work.
Degree class: most firms ask for a 2:1, and many will look at A-level grades too. Some firms have moved to contextual recruitment or dropped fixed grade cut-offs, and smaller firms are often more flexible - this varies a lot.
Evidence of commercial awareness - some understanding of how businesses make money and why a client would care about a legal issue. This is tested in applications and interviews far more than legal knowledge is.

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Relevant experience: vacation schemes, paralegal or legal admin work, law clinic, pro bono, court marshalling, or genuinely unrelated work where you can show responsibility. Firms care that you have seen what the job is actually like.
Funding: large commercial firms typically pay SQE/conversion course fees plus a maintenance grant. Smaller firms, in-house teams and public sector employers often pay less or nothing towards it, so check before you assume the course is funded.

Skills that matter

Precise, concise writing

Most of your output is text that a partner will read in a hurry and a client will rely on - a research note that buries the answer on page three is useless.

Attention to detail under volume

Missing a date in a contract, a defined term, or a document in a disclosure exercise can cost a client real money, and trainees are often the last line of checking.

Commercial awareness

Advice has to fit what the client is trying to achieve commercially, not just what the law permits, and this is the single thing most often tested at interview.

Managing competing deadlines and multiple supervisors

You will often be taking work from several fee earners at once, and knowing when to say your plate is full is a practical survival skill.

Legal research using practitioner databases

Finding the right authority quickly on a subscription research platform, and knowing when to stop looking, is a daily task that university essay research only partly prepares you for.

Resilience to detailed feedback

Your drafts will come back covered in amendments for months, and trainees who take that as instruction rather than criticism improve fastest.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Two years as a trainee, usually split into four six-month seats or six four-month seats, including at least one contentious (dispute-based) and one non-contentious area at most firms. Secondments to a client's in-house team or an overseas office are common at larger firms.
Qualification as a solicitor and an offer (not guaranteed) to stay on as a newly qualified solicitor in a chosen department. Retention rates fluctuate with the market, and some newly qualified solicitors move firms at this point to get the practice area they want.
Associate, then senior associate - typically several years each, with growing responsibility for running matters, managing juniors and building client relationships. Timelines vary a lot by firm and practice area.
Partnership or legal director, usually somewhere around the eight-to-twelve-year mark in private practice, though many people never go for it and plenty reach it later or not at all.
Common alternative destinations: moving in-house to a company's legal team (often for better hours), into public sector or regulatory legal work, into professional support lawyer roles, or out of law entirely into compliance, policy, consultancy or legal tech - a law qualification travels well.

What people get wrong

“A training contract is a type of job you do for life, like 'solicitor'.”

It is a fixed two-year apprenticeship. It ends. You then either qualify into a permanent role at the same firm or look elsewhere, and whether a job is offered depends partly on the firm's workload at the time, not only on your performance.

“You need a law degree.”

Roughly half the intake at many commercial firms comes from non-law backgrounds, who do a conversion or SQE preparation course instead. Firms often value the different perspective, and for patent, shipping or healthcare work a relevant first degree is a real edge.

“Trainees spend their time arguing points of law and going to court.”

Advocacy in court is mostly the barrister's job, and trainee work in commercial firms is heavily transactional and administrative - document review, drafting, checklists and bundles. Higher Rights of Audience can be gained later if you want to appear in court as a solicitor.

“All training contracts are City deals with large salaries and brutal hours.”

That describes a small, highly visible slice of the market. High street, regional, legal aid, local authority and in-house training contracts pay considerably less, deal with very different work (crime, family, housing, planning, immigration) and often have far more sociable hours.

“If you have not secured one by graduation you have missed your chance.”

Many people qualify after working as a paralegal first, and the SQE route allows qualifying work experience to be built up across more than one employer, which has opened up later and less linear paths to qualification.

Where this varies

The single biggest variable is the type of employer. A City or international commercial firm means corporate, finance and big-ticket litigation work, intense hours, a structured seat system, funded SQE study and a high salary. A regional or high street firm means more direct client contact much earlier, work in areas like conveyancing, family, crime, employment or private client, lower pay and usually more manageable hours. In-house, local authority and government training contracts are different again - broader generalist work, close involvement with non-lawyer colleagues, modest pay and generally better work-life balance. Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal systems and qualification routes: in Scotland the equivalent is a two-year traineeship following the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice, so the SQE described here applies to England and Wales only. There is also a live transition between the old LPC route and the SQE, so the exact requirements depend on when you started your studies.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.