During your two-year training contract, you’ll rotate through four seats across different practice groups. This, in laymen’s terms, means you’ll move around our business to experience different areas of law and work alongside new colleagues every six months as you find the area you want to pursue. Our training contract is structured so you can be immersed in our work almost immediately and develop your skills in the only way that really matters: on live projects for real clients taking real responsibility.
London Training Contract
Your training contract is where your journey to becoming an exceptional lawyer really begins. Over two years you’ll be working at the forefront of the global legal sector.
Every trainee’s journey is different but you can be confident you’ll be playing a meaningful role on some of the most exciting cases in the world as you learn from the top legal minds. After your training contract, you’ll have the technical skills, industry-recognised qualifications and the experience to become an exceptional lawyer.
Applications open (2026 & 2027 intakes) : 18 September 2023
Applications close (2026 & 2027 intakes) : 31 January 2024
Applications re-open (2027 intake) : 1 June 2024
Applications close (2027 intake) : 31 July 2024
SALARY
Year one - £50,000
Year two - £55,000
Upon qualification - £120,000
Induction
Before you get started with your seats, we’ll provide you with a comprehensive one-week induction. You’ll learn skills that will underpin your personal growth and professional success for years to come. We’ll help you prepare for your first seat so you can dive straight in.
You’ll also complete our award winning HL BaSE training. A mini-MBA style course for our trainees to develop their commercial skills and social impact.
SQE
The City Consortium is a group of six leading, global law firms: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells, Linklaters, Norton Rose Fulbright and Slaughter and May. The role of City lawyers has transformed, going beyond technical expertise to become trusted business advisers who have the ability and confidence to operate and build relationships in a commercial setting.
The introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) has given the City Consortium the opportunity to transform how we train our trainees to succeed in this fast-paced and rapidly evolving environment. We value education and believe that by investing in you, our future trainees, before you join us and by giving you the time and space to learn, you will be able to make a meaningful contribution to practice from day one.
You will need to pass the new centralised assessments, which will test your knowledge across a wide range of law and practice (SQE1) as well as your core legal skills (SQE2). Above and beyond the SQE, we have partnered with BPP to create a unique and market-leading Plus Programme designed to prepare you for practice as a City lawyer.
Qualifying work experience
During your two-year training contract you’ll rotate through different seats. You’ll build on your skills as you go, learning how to deliver level-headed advice to clients and deepen your commercial instincts and sector expertise. Two of your seats will be in one of our corporate and finance groups and another in one of our litigation teams. For your third or fourth seat, you’ll have the opportunity to second to one of our global offices or work directly inside a client’s business. Each of these will last six months and will help you scope out where your interests lie and which area best matches your developing skill set.
Secondments
In your second year you’ll have the option to go on secondment to an international office or work with a client and see law from an entirely new perspective. Whichever you choose, you’ll be exposed to a new environment and come out of it with experience and skills you’ll draw on for the rest of your career.
On an international secondment, you’ll join a new team, experience life in a new city and see what the term "global law" really means. We currently offer trainees a secondment in Frankfurt, Brussels, Dubai, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and Singapore. The world of law is your oyster.
Client secondments are your opportunity to sharpen your commercial edge as you understand how leading businesses work from the inside. It’s an irreplaceable chance to see the world through our clients’ eyes which will make you invaluable to other clients throughout your career.
The key traits of every Hogan Lovells lawyer
Intellect and intellectual curiosity
We challenge conventional thinking and that often means doing work with little precedent. You’ll need to be ambitious and able to look beyond the obvious to deliver something unique and exceptional. We also look for a strong academic record from GCSE onwards up to a 2.1 across your degree and above (or equivalent).
Commercial awareness
Clients need us to be their trusted advisors across their business. You’ll need to be comfortable speaking their language and interested in how business works.
Communication and interpersonal skills
When working with clients it’s important to be able to communicate in both a clear and concise way. Good verbal and written communication skills are a big part of being a successful lawyer.
Team working & building relationships
No one can do what we do alone. You’ll need to relish being part of a team, where everyone pitches in and achieves great things as a collective.
Resilience
You’ll have a rigorous attention to detail, be calm in the face of complexity and deadlines and happy to put in extra hours if that’s what it takes to deliver exceptional work. You’ll need to be comfortable adapting to new surroundings, respond to cultural nuances and tackle the unpredictable with confidence.
Have a question?
How many trainees are you looking to recruit this year?
Each year we aim to recruit up to 50 trainee solicitors, including two trainees in our Birmingham office.
How many people apply each year, and of those, how many do you interview?
Over 4,000 candidates apply each year for our programmes (HL Launch Pad and Lift Off programmes, insight-schemes, campus ambassador programme, vacation schemes and training contracts). Depending on the calibre of the applicants, we would expect 200 to go on to attend our assessment days for summer and winter vacation schemes, training contracts and our campus ambassador programme, 100 students to attend one of our first-year schemes, and 60 students across our HL Launch Pad & Lift Off programmes.
Do you sponsor students through Law School?
We currently provide maintenance grants to our future joiners whilst completing the pre-requisite courses prior to commencing their training contract. The current maintenance grant for full-time study during the pGDL is £10,000 outside London and £12,500 within London. The current maintenance grant for the CCP (SQE) is £20,000.
What is the process for deciding which practice area I will qualify into?
Around the second month of the final seat, trainees will be informed about all the newly qualified (NQ) vacancies available in the various London practice areas and international offices. Trainees will also be invited to attend a qualification briefing held by the Training Principle and Trainee Development team to explain the process and give you an opportunity to brush up on your interviewing skills.
Trainees will then be invited to submit preferences to Trainee Development. Trainees can apply to any group, whether or not they have done a seat in the group.
The partners in the practice groups will interview all trainees who express an interest and will confirm to Trainee Development which people they wish to offer roles to.
There will however be competition for some roles in smaller niche groups. Therefore it is important to keep an open mind so our trainees have a range of options available to them.
If trainees are not awarded a role following the first round, they are able to apply for any unfilled roles in the second round of the qualification process. Further roles sometimes become available at this stage also.
Can I find out more about the online Watson-Glaser critical thinking test?
- We use the Watson-Glaser critical thinking test.
- The online critical thinking tests assess how well you can absorb and analyse information.
- They measure your ability to evaluate arguments, deductions, inferences, and conclusions.
- They're good predictors of success in roles where you need to see things clearly from many angles and separate facts from assumptions.
- To get a feel for the intellectual demands you'll experience from day one, you can take our practice test.
- Be sure to read the feedback you receive as it will help you with the formal assessments.
London Training Contract
Are you ready?