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Osborne Clarke retains 38 out of 44 qualifying trainees

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By Legal Cheek on

6

86% score includes firm’s first solicitor apprentices

Osborne Clarke London office
Osborne Clarke has achieved a trainee retention rate of 86% for 2024, with 38 out of 44 qualifying trainees staying on.

This year’s cohort includes the firm’s first two solicitor apprentices, Yazmin Adrissi and Amy Lewis, who have recently completed the six-year programme. You can learn more about life as a solicitor apprentice by visiting the OC’s entry on our 2025 Solicitor Apprentice Most List.

The new recruits join the firm’s UK offices in Bristol, Reading and London.

The retention results come several months after the firm confirmed salary increases for its newly qualified (NQ) lawyers. Rates in Bristol and Reading now sit at £72,000 and £84,600, while juniors in London start life on £94,000.

 The 2025 Legal Cheek Firms Most List

Alexandra Gower, partner and training principal at Osborne Clarke, said:

“I’ve been very impressed with our excellent cohort of qualifying trainees this year. We’re thrilled that so many have chosen to continue their careers with the firm. This is especially important to Osborne Clarke as we have always viewed our associates as the future leadership of our firm and the custodians of its culture.”

“Beyond working to ensure our future lawyers have all the legal and technical training required to succeed, we’re just as focused on what the human behind them needs,” Gower continued. “This is reflected in our bespoke training and development programme which is only the first step in the continued support our trainees receive as they transition to newly qualified solicitors.”

The Legal Cheek Firms Most List 2025 shows OC recruits around 35 trainee each year.

Meet Osborne Clarke and over 30 other top law firms at our virtual event series for year 12 and 13 students considering solicitor apprenticeships. Pre-register now!

6 Comments

Alan

It’s sad that major law firms are making young people spend six valuable years undertaking a qualification with no value, when their time would be better spent getting a degree and training in the normal way. At least then they can be considered proper lawyers.

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(0)(6)

James

As someone who chose a law degree at a Russell Group university over an apprenticeship, I can honestly say I regret it. I wish so much that I had done a full-length apprenticeship (they were just popping up at the time when I was making my decision).

I didn’t have a great time at uni, I was a “mature” student from a low-income household, I didn’t fit in well with the rest of the students so I missed out of most of the “fun” bits of uni life. And now I have £60k+ student debt, whereas I would be fairly financially stable by now if I did an apprenticeship.

I am currently a trainee solicitor at a small boutique firm. I am probably about the same distance away from qualifying as I would have been if I started an apprenticeship at the time I started university. But I still have this monumental regret.

As for the ridiculous notion that only a law degree can create “proper” lawyers, I would gladly take 6 additional years of genuine work and exposure to law firm life over 3 years of listening to snooty unenthusiastic lecturers. On an apprenticeship you literally study the same stuff, so I don’t understand how a degree could be viewed as better in any way other than some conceited “tradition” bullshit?

Also how can an apprenticeship be “no value” if the majority of City firms are now offering them?

Your comment reeks of ignorance.

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(3)(2)

Alan

This “advice” is dangerous. I hope young people don’t heed it. It is clearly written by the marketing department of one of these law firms trying to appease the woke left by offering apprenticeships.

Please keep apprenticeships with the trades, where they belong, not the professions. Thank you.

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(1)(3)

James

It is laughable how far you are reaching to deny that people like me actually exist. Anyone who resorts to calling social mobility or inclusion “woke left” clearly has no real argument except blind prejudice.

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(3)(1)

No

What is the issue with doing this not in the “normal way”? They still end up as solicitors and do the same exams for the same qualification. There is certainly a benefit to doing things the “normal way” (i.e. the carefree uni experience which you give up by going straight into work) but doing a solicitor apprenticeship is just as valid.

More importantly, all other things being equal, an apprentice will end up being financially better off than a trainee at point of qualification, and this doesn’t just apply to legal apprenticeships.

My friend was an apprentice management consultant and he always had the most money out of all of us because he’d been working for 5 years, had no student debt, and was in a mid-level supervisory position by the time we graduated and entered the workforce and I was a trainee solicitor. Of course my entry-level trainee salary was around the same as his as a mid-level consultant (since consulting pay is much worse than lawyer pay in this country), but compared to entry-level graduates at his firm he was in a much better position (although consulting is a bit different since it’s not a professional qualification in the same way being a solicitor is).

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(1)(1)

Back to work

Alan is clearly a troll and should not be fed.

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(1)(1)

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