Having Your Training Contract Delayed By 12 Months Is An ‘Opportunity’, Claims Wragge & Co Managing Partner

On Saturday, I received this private message on Twitter.

The firm is Wragge & Co. And it has since been confirmed that it is offering its future trainees just £5,000 to defer their TCs for a year. In view of the awful state of the graduate job market, that doesn’t seem like such a great deal.

My anonymous source agrees:

Wragge & Co managing partner Ian Metcalfe maintains that the £5K offer is “an entirely voluntary opportunity that we think may interest some of our future trainees.”

He went on: “We are able to accommodate everyone due to start in September 2012, and Wragge & Co remains in a strong position, but events in the economy are still having an impact on the legal sector. In light of this, we think it sensible to ask people with a current offer to join the firm’s training programme if they would like to volunteer to defer for twelve months. If they choose to take up the offer of a deferral, they will start with us in September 2013.”

Hmmm…

Update 10 July: A spokesperson for Wragge & Co has said that no one took up the offer and all the trainees will start as usual in September.