CMS

At home, CMS has one of the largest reaches across the UK, with ten regional offices in England and Scotland (including a new office in Leeds). Trainees are split between Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, although the majority are in London. The firm’s remaining offices, Reading and Leeds, currently don’t offer training contracts but there is always the option of doing your TC in Dubai! Sheffield has particular significance to the firm, as it was Nabarro’s original base, while CMS’ Scottish offices come from its 2014 takeover of Dundas & Wilson, previously one of the biggest firms north of the border.

There can be a fair bit of travel between all of these offices, which is where some of CMS’ best perks kick in. They include business class travel for certain journeys, mostly on flights to London City rather than harder to reach airports, and some five-star hotel stays with breakfasts and lunches. Other perks include dental and medical insurance, free counselling and physio sessions, a new foster care policy for all staff, a subsidised gym membership, away days abroad and “plenty of end of year / seasonal parties in nice locations such as Sky Garden”. There were some grumbles that perks such as free breakfasts and an annual trainee ball have fallen off the map but recruits in London can still get a full-english for £1.50 (sorry to rub it in regional trainees).

Training at CMS can be summed up as so: “great quality work, lots of client contact and a focus on your development”. There’s a front loaded skills course followed by an induction week, three days of department training, and intermittent training throughout each seat given by dedicated professional skills leaders — and breathe! One rookie reports: “We have in depth sessions at the beginning of each seat and on-the-job/top-up training as we complete different tasks. Team members at all levels are also generally really helpful and happy to answer questions/walk us through new tasks/processes.” The commercial foundation programme for the IP, tech, media and competition seat receives plaudits for some extremely helpful “interactive workshops” and its “toolbox of useful drafting tips”. Corporate transactions, and finance, also receive similar praise for their “excellent training sessions”.

However, the best stuff may only arrive “once you’ve proven that you’re capable” and some feel that CMS is a victim of its own success. “The team can be very busy and so there is not always time for training”, reveals one insider. Another reports that “there isn’t a firm-wide policy or programme about the quality or standard that a trainee supervisor has to meet. As such, it very much depends on the raw talent of associates and partners to train a trainee”. As such, training can be seat dependent but at least there isn’t a noticeable regional difference, with recruits outside the City still reporting “lots of training sessions in each seat as well as days to London for training.”

Work-wise, expect “good levels of client contact and trust to get involved in significant matters.” Recent highlights include advising long-standing client BBC on the acquisition of ITV’s stake in streaming platform Britbox and a multijurisdictional effort to advise the Esports World Cup Foundation on the company’s first Esports World Cup in Riyadh.

The work is, of course, varied, and at a firm the size of CMS, trainees won’t be tackling big ticket deals like these everyday. As one LC spy put it: “There are definitely more mundane ‘trainee tasks’ to be done but this is balanced/rewarded by being given more involvement and work in the matters we’re helping on. For smaller matters, we’re also given a lot of independence, often driving these forward ourselves with fee earner support.” Fee earners are praised for taking time to find out what you’re interested in, and try to help you get more of that work: “you’re encouraged to reach out to people across your team to find work that you want to do” according to one insider.

Another seasoned rookie offered this personal experience: “I have had incredibly stimulating work such as researching obscure points of law to support a legal opinion or searching for evidence of prior examples of a specific strategy we want to implement in our own litigation (which has then actually been followed and played out in a hearing), drafting a variety of different contracts using precedents as well as free drafting. Trainees are entrusted with better tasks once proven to be a safe pair of hands, and associates are great at letting trainees have a first stab at more complex tasks. There’s always going to be the odd matter with a major DocuSign signing or document roll-out, but CMS has incredible secretarial, document centre and paralegal support which means trainees can also delegate on some of the more repetitive tasks and remain focussed on the more interesting tasks.”

Partners and other higher-ups have an excellent reputation for being “extremely friendly” and are frequently on hand to help out newbies and junior lawyers. As in any law firm, there are always a few “notorious” superiors but trainees across the board seem genuinely enthralled with the “non-hierarchical” culture at CMS: “Everyone has an open-door policy, so I can ask questions both online and, in the office, freely. This helps work production, efficiency levels and getting to know the team more easily”, says one grateful insider.

The same goes for your fellow trainees as our insiders report of a “genuinely supportive atmosphere amongst trainee cohorts”. “The people and culture is one of the best things about the firm and so I haven’t had any issues with approaching peers or getting support” gushed one junior lawyer. A rather large cohort leads to some natural competition but for a firm as big as CMS there’s surprisingly few complaints about this: “I genuinely believe CMS has the nicest, most normal and down to earth trainees in the City — none of the trainee psychopaths I’ve met in other firms,” one spy tells Legal Cheek.

Social life at CMS seems to differ between offices, but where it’s good it’s really good. Rookies in London report some left-of-field socials including clay pigeon shooting and SoulCycle, whilst others enjoy the more traditional events “ranging from drinks and canapes at rooftop bars to wine and pizza nights in the office kitchens”. “I would not hesitate to turn up to the Bell on a Thursday without having made prior plans, knowing I would be included by my peers” beamed one rookie. Firmwide, the firm is very active on the sports scene with rumours of a tag rugby tour in Dublin, a netball tour in Spain and the infamous CMS Football World Cup (which was hosted in Vienna this year) and is said to be “on a different level — incredible fun and best thing about the firm”. People tend to socialise at all levels of experience/seniority too, according to our insiders, so don’t be shocked to see your supervisor donning shin pads and a bib this summer.

Some key features of CMS’ identity are tech-savviness, anti-traditional lawyer stuffiness, and internationalism. On the former, trainees are known to enjoy “lots of helpful tech that’s actually used” including Microsoft CoPilot, Litera, Avail and most recently, leading legal GenAI machine Harvey. One technophile recruit had this to say: “I have been involved in the Harvey trial, which has been great for productivity. We have weekly drop-in sessions to discuss any feedback. Some departments in the firm also started to use the app Capacity to allocate work depending on trainees’ utilisation. Capacity also enables trainees to bid for work they are interested in and encourages transparency in allocation of work.” In fact, the only bugbear in regards to the tech at CMS is getting some of the more senior fee earners to start using it!

Good tech has also helped with working from home. “The firm is very flexible and are brilliant at sending anything needed to help with setup (monitors, keyboards and even chairs if needed)” says one spy, whilst the “IT team is available at a moment’s notice”. Firmwide, trainees tend to go into the office around three days a week but there’s no hard and fast rule on this with some trainees said to be in seats where they follow the firm’s 50/50 policy whilst others are expected in every day.

Work/life balance receives some very decent reviews for such a giant international firm, with one constant being that “Weekends and holidays are generally respected.” Aside from the occasional sacrifice, most recruits are satisfied with their hours and happy to ride the peaks and troughs: “I’m currently sitting in Corporate Transactions, so a hit to the work-life balance is to be expected. My finish time is really variable — some days I can finish all of my work by 6pm and other days I have to work into the early hours. This feels typical of transactional work across the board, though, and not firm-specific,” noted one junior.

One trainee informs us, “across my TC I’ve generally had a good work/life balance. Office hours on average are 9am-6:30/7pm. At busy times of the year, or if a team is particularly busy, this could widely fluctuate. I was doing 8-past midnight during my banking seat, but this was due to pressures in the market at the time. When work is busy, teams will expect you to spend longer working, but do try to give you time off where they can during/after the busy period. If anything ever feels like too much people are happy to talk to you and help you. There are mental health first aid representatives in all teams, so it’s good to know if things are getting too much you can speak to someone. I go to the gym everyday, and whilst I sometimes have to be flexible around work, I am encouraged to find the time to have time off. Juniors will often go on a walk at lunch, or get a coffee with peers during the day. There are also lots of socials going on across the team/firm, which is nice!” For a starting salary of £50,000 and newly qualified pay of £105,000 that’s a pretty good deal.

The London office, located in a very fancy building above Cannon Street station in the City, is totally open plan, with “first class” facilities and a rather un-law firm-like appearance that seems to draw inspiration from airport first-class departure lounges and tech companies in equal measure. “It has taps that produce sparkling water. Need I say more?” states one hydrated insider. Cannons (the firm’s subsidised canteen), which offers free barista coffee until 10:30am is very much appreciated, but “it would be nice if some bean to cup machines could be purchased for better quality coffee” says one ritzy recruit. Beyond London, we’re told the Sheffield office is looking “great”, Manchester is “good” and Edinburgh has “an impressive view of the Castle” even if “internally it could do with some renovation”. With whispers of refurbs around the corner, we wonder if any will reach the heights of CMS’ Warsaw rainforest office which is home to 1,400 plants.

Speaking of the environment, the firm is making strong efforts to encourage recycling in-office with reusable cups and takeaway boxes and discourages its employees from printing more than necessary. The firm also has a strong train-over-plane policy and London plays host to rooftop bee-hives, the honey from which is harvested and can be bought by staff. Still not green enough for you? How about a new scheme which saw CMS save enough power to power 33 homes all-year-round just by shutting down one floor in its Sheffield, London and Edinburgh offices every Friday for three months!