Hipster law is here
A brand new Manchester law firm is calling on young solicitors to embrace their inner hipster and turn their back on a boringly conventional legal career.
The outfit gunnerbloom — yes, that’s right lower case ‘g’, sounds a bit like a craft beer — is based in a start-up incubator (obviously) and is presently seeking young entrepreneurial-minded solicitors to start their own business ventures. Goatie beard and fixie bike optional.
Based in Manchester’s uber-cool Rise Escalator enterprise hub, the firm, which is a spin off from London firm gunnercooke and has just received Solicitors Regulation Authority approval, will initially work with small start-ups and entrepreneurs.
Apparently, solicitors will initially provide legal drop-in sessions to businesses based in the hub, before going on secondment to larger firms in management consultancy and corporate finance, to gain experience.
With the firm defining “young” solicitors as anything between newly-qualified all the way through to eight years post-qualification, perhaps gunnerbloom is looking to attract those who have experienced life as a corporate lawyer and want to spend more time drinking flat whites and listening to someone you aren’t cool enough to know about.
Unlike Square Mile City firms, solicitors at gunnerbloom will not specialise in any particular area of law.
Having gained experience on pre-arranged secondments at large organisations — not so hipster — the solicitors will then be encouraged to secure their own secondments in areas of industry and business that are of direct interest to them (organic pop-up toast bars, for example).
Fast forward three years, the start-up firm will expect its innovative legal minds to take the entrepreneurial plunge themselves, either by setting up their own small businesses or bagging a non-executive position at an existing ones.
With no plans in the pipeline with regards a training contract offering just yet, but three solicitors already signed up, a spokeswoman for the firm told Legal Cheek:
We will start with a small group to prove the model, and grow in line with success of the model.