Pinsent Masons

Internationally, the firm is strongest in mainland Europe, Asia and the Middle East, although it has been expanding in Australia recently adding a four-man insolvency practice in Sydney as well as a new employment and rewards team there. Despite this, trainees shouldn’t expect too much travel — international secondments largely take place at the post-qualification stage. Client secondments are more common with trainees heading off to the likes of Google, Natwest and Tesco. The process for securing these coveted client secondments is said to be “competitive” but, in the words of one lucky recruit who has enjoyed one, “the experience is great and trainees are really encouraged to become advocates for the firm.”

Work at Pinsent Masons itself is said to be equally “varied and challenging”, if a little hit-and-miss in different departments. As one rookie summarised, “in a few of my teams I have worked on some interesting and high profile cases. In other teams I was given knowledge work.” Still, trainees generally report “good exposure to high quality work” with the “opportunity to take on significant responsibility in transactions, communicate with clients and draft a range of documents”. What’s more, insiders tell Legal Cheek that “as trainees progress, they’re expected to strive to operate on an associate level. This level of trust and delegation is really motivating.”

Expect “impeccable” training too. As well as providing trainees with hands-on supervision, the firm offers “pre-recorded webinars, live training sessions, regular update forums and a mass of practice development lawyers who are on standby to give bespoke training or to answer quirky queries”. Great information packs in each seat, ongoing feedback and a thorough induction process has left trainees with high-praise indeed for the learning and development on offer here, with the corporate and finance teams given special shout outs for going the extra mile. As one trainee summed it up: “I have friends at other firms that have had nowhere near the same level of training and support provided to trainees at Pinsent Masons.”

Pinsent Masons’ most recent financial results reveal a record-breaking twelfth year of consecutive growth which saw revenues rise 7% to £650 million. Profit per equity partner (PEP) dipped slightly, down from £797,000 to £793,000, but this comes after three years of consecutive growth, during which time the number grew 40%. Investment into tech like Microsoft CoPilot and a new research and development team. A 22-strong partner promotion round has also seen total partner headcount rise to over 500 this year, with 14 of these being made up in the UK – four in London, three in Manchester and Birmingham, two in Glasgow and one in both Leeds and Edinburgh. The firm has furthermore seen some heavy lateral movement at partner level, adding 41 partners externally, including the head of Baker McKenzie’s London banking team Nick Tostivin. Junior lawyer pay for NQs in London sits at a recently improved £97,000, whilst those in the regions earn £63,000.

Given these pay packages, insiders are content with their work/life balance: “can’t see it being any better elsewhere for the same money work I do” said one wise recruit. This, of course, varies from seat to seat. Corporate and finance are apparently notorious for some late nights but even in these departments, there’s a decent balance: “My first seat, property dispute resolution, had a very good work/life balance. There is less of a balance in my current seat, which is finance, as the busy periods come in waves. When we are busy, we are very busy with frequent later finishes, but the team is very good at letting you enjoy the quieter periods and encouraging early finishes where possible.”

Another junior lawyer offered this: “I rarely work past 6pm, but that is mainly because I am a very efficient worker and very good at managing my time. If I do have a lot to do, I tend to get up early in the morning to do it, or work through a lunch break, rather than toiling away all night. The team seniors also actively look out for colleagues’ wellbeing when they know that people are very busy, and there is a real effort to allocate work fairly so that no one is needlessly swamped.”

The firm is also said to have “a very progressive attitude towards working from home” with most only going into the office around three-days-a-week. This is, albeit, team-dependent and trainees are generally encouraged to be in the office as much as possible to gain exposure from the wider team. But most report a fairly flexible approach to WFH. As far as a home-working set-up goes, it appears to be very much luck of the draw with some receiving a basic package of a screen, keyboard and mouse whilst others had to buy their own equipment.

There’s also an excellent sense of camaraderie that comes with Pinsents’ culture being unusually detached from “the commercial law firm stigma that many hear about and experience elsewhere”. One trainee tells us: “It’s not unusual to find us all at the pub once (or twice) a week and hanging out at weekends, even during NQ season when some of us are going for the same jobs. I think we’re pretty lucky that we can say we’re friends with most of our cohort both in our office and other offices in the UK”. All this lends itself to some “excellent socials (when they happen)” though the budget for trainee events is apparently “a point of contention”. Office wide summer bbqs and Christmas parties happen every year alongside smaller team events and drinks and one in the Leeds office praises the “mindful socials” on offer there, including pottery painting and office walks. It is rumoured that the London rookies can be less of a unit than those working in the regions, partly due to longer working hours and travel times, but “on the whole we get on really well and are a good source of support for each other” one spy told us.

Another rookie praised the Disability and Wellbeing and Neurodiversity Networks, which, they say, has been “invaluable in helping me implement reasonable adjustments, as well as allowing me to work flexibly (I have a non-working day) without making a big thing of it or making me feel singled-out.”

An “unstuffy” culture means that partners are also friendlier than at many rivals. “People are really ‘normal’ at Pinsent Masons. On the whole, teams feel tight-knit (but are not cliquey) and partners are approachable”, notes one. Another went as far as saying partner approachability is “a distinguishing element of training at Pinsent Masons”, adding “the partners take an interest in your growth and future and are willing to invest their time into developing your skills.” Overall, the consensus is that the “majority are very helpful and supportive”, with “the odd ‘difficult’ personality”. In this respect, “the open plan office(s) definitely helps — you feel like you can talk to anyone as there’s no doors closed!”.

It’s worth noting that Pinsents is highly rated for its tech-savviness — consistently scoring top marks in this category of the Legal Cheek Trainee and Junior Lawyer Survey — with “multiple tech solutions including document automation, AI and various transaction support tech that can assist with project management”. New GenAI automation platform V7 Go has recently been rolled out but one spy reports that while there is ”lots of legal tech at the firm, it is more a question of raising awareness of what we have at our disposal and offering training on the different platforms we have”.

It appears that investments in the contract legal businesses Xenia and Xenion, and the continued expansion of its flexible-lawyering service, Vario, which has now become a practice group in its own right, are paying off. In fact, paying off might be an understatement — revenue for Pinsent Masons Vario sits at over £40 million and the business has just launched a new office in Dubai after establishing presences in Ireland, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Germany. Another curious feature is the firm’s Human Cyber Index that analyses behaviours and attitudes towards cyber security with the aim of improving protection against hacks.

One junior summarised the tech on offer as so: “The IT infrastructure is not the best (laptops and the software on them can be quite unstable and unreliable sometimes), but PM does have innovative tech offerings for clients, such as our Alteria platform for IP/brand management. PM has also started using Microsoft Co-pilot following a successful trial of the software.”

Inspired by the firm’s push on legal tech, trainees have a proactive mindset on how to improve. One insider tells us: “I have ideas on products we could create/ways we could better use what we have. These are taken seriously at the firm and are listened to by partners and progressed”. Another added: “There is active encouragement to engage with legal technology and further developments in the pipeline. Everyone is encouraged to come up with opportunities that solve problems”. The firm is also given an interesting extra dimension by its Out-law legal news arm, which employs three full time journalists.

What you won’t get at Pinsents are amazing perks. Reviews here range from “not much to shout about” to “notoriously bad” but there’s still subsidised Costa Coffee, yoga and Pilates classes, regular themed drinks events, reduced Barbican gym membership and free healthcare. All in all, trainees recognise that the trade-off at Pinsents is a “nice culture/better work-life balance in return for fewer perks”.

Still, Pinsents’ “snazzy digs” at 55 Colmore Row in Birmingham have fired hopes of a glamour splurge. Boasts of the firm’s “impressive” City of London office are bolstered by the fact that it has been used as a filming location for a couple of BBC dramas — you might have seen it in season two of Industry. The glass lift is also known to be “a client favourite”. The “very modern” Edinburgh office is also said to be “excellent” and somewhat suffering from its own success as one trainee notes there’s not always enough desks to accommodate the swarms of lawyers desperate to get in! The upgraded client floor in Leeds has impressed but the rest of the office “needs a makeover” whilst those in Manchester are looking forward to their move into Gary Neville’s £400 million St Michael’s development alongside fellow law firm Hill Dickinson.

Trainees do feel the firm is making a big effort to be more environmentally conscious. The Climate Change & Sustainability Network is said to be “pretty active”, with the firm also “trying to cut down on international travel and ensure that it operates in a way to reduce waste”. Pinsents is “leading the way” exclaims one, pointing to the fact that it was one of the first law firms to have its global 2040 net-zero target verified by the Science Based Targets initiative. To achieve this, the firm has set out to clean up its supply chain, joining the Carbon Disclosure Project and zeroing in on its suppliers future sustainability goals.