Up £3k
Magic Circle law firm Linklaters has increased maintenance grants for future trainees sitting the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE).
Graduates completing the SQE prep course with the firm in London will now receive maintenance support of £20,000, an 18% increase on the previous amount of £17,000.
The increase brings Links’s SQE grant in line with those offered by MC counterparts Slaughter and May and Freshfields. Meanwhile, Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance provide £17,000 in support.
Linklaters is part of the ‘City Consortium’, an influential group of six law firms that send their rookies to train at BPP University Law School. The consortium also includes Slaughter and May and Freshfields, plus three other firms, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells and Norton Rose Fulbright.
The firm recruits around 100 trainees each year on a starting salary of £50,000 in London, rising to £55,000 in year two. Links now offers a recently improved salary of £125,000 to its newly qualified associates.