The Training Contract
Structure
As a trainee in London, you will undertake four rotations during your two-year training contract, and these are known as 'seats'. During each seat you will share a room with either a partner or a senior associate who will be responsible for supervising your work and continuing development throughout your seat. One of the advantages of joining Mayer Brown are the seat choices available to you. Our trainees can tailor their training contract from a range of different seats, including our main practice areas in London and secondments to one of our international offices (currently Hong Kong, Paris and New York). If you don't want to stray too far, a wealth of in-house experience is also available via our client secondments within the UK. For a large global firm, our London office remains a tightly knit team with an open and inclusive culture. You will nevertheless be given significant opportunities to assist on matters which may be multi-disciplinary, cross-border, complex and high-profile in nature.
During your training contract
Trainees are given high levels of responsibility, case management and client contact from an early stage. The firm also has an extensive support network in place throughout the training contract in the form of senior-level support and continuous appraisals. Over the course of your training contract, we will take time to ensure that you are aware of the responsibilities of each seat by providing comprehensive training that goes far beyond the requirements of the Professional Skills Course (PSC). Additional training will equip you with skills to understand the international business world, develop client relationships and undertake advanced legal research. You will also benefit from the expertise of professional support lawyers who are responsible for providing briefing sessions on key legal developments and maintain in-house precedent databases.
We will make sure your expectations are being met and provide you with guidance and support throughout your two years at Mayer Brown. You will have an appraisal with your supervisor halfway through and at the end of each seat. There are weekly drop-in sessions with the Graduate Recruitment team and also regular Career Development meetings.
The Legal Practice Course
Your training programme with Mayer Brown will start long before your training contract begins—on our bespoke Legal Practice Course (LPC) with Nottingham Law at Kaplan Law School in London, which we ask all of our future trainees to attend. Elements of the course have been designed by our lawyers in conjunction with Nottingham Law at Kaplan Law School offering students an US law introductory course on top of the core modules. Our trainees studying the LPC at Kaplan have a great deal of contact with the firm throughout the LPC year, with regular visits to our office, both professionally in the form of research tasks and presentation projects and socially, for drinks and meetings with our current trainees and partners. We encourage our LPC students to take full advantage of the knowledge and experience of our associates, partners and professional support lawyers.
