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Legal training and recruitment schemes for graduates

Global law firm offering legal training contracts, vacation scheme and recruitment schemes for graduates in the UK. Find out more.

Careers - single female professionalOur training contracts offer the perfect route into law. Over a two-year period, we’ll give you the knowledge, tools and opportunities to make a truly successful and rewarding legal career.

Our legal training contracts give you the opportunity to experience four six-month seats over two years. At least one seat must be in a contentious area. You may also have the chance to apply for a secondment at a client office or at another Eversheds Sutherland office in the UK or internationally.

You won't simply be given a conventional development path: you’ll work closely with your supervisor to identify and build on your strengths - and we'll talk to you about how you see your future evolving. We recommend trying as many seats as possible but if there's one you really want to experience, we'll do our best to accommodate you.

Once you qualify, you’ll be able to apply for any of the vacancies on offer. As you might expect, our aim is to retain every trainee on qualification.

For those who are interested in part-time training, this is an option within the firm. Please discuss any requests for part-time working with the Emerging Talent team at any point during the recruitment process or at offer stage.

We currently have three schemes, these are:

  • Vacation scheme for graduates
  • Risk and Compliance graduate recruitment scheme
  • Legal Technology graduate recruitment scheme

Careers arrow yellowVacation scheme for graduates

Our Vacation Scheme gives you the opportunity to earn money whilst getting valuable hands-on experience in one of our offices. Each vacation placement will encourage you to really get under the skin of life at Eversheds Sutherland, providing a range of opportunities that typically include:

  • attending court
  • assisting with research
  • drafting documents
  • spending time in two different fee-earning departments
  • meeting partners, solicitors and trainees at social events
  • taking part in one of our corporate responsibility events
  • attending a range of informal talks to discover more about Eversheds Sutherland

We welcome applications from penultimate year law under-graduates, final year non-law graduates as well as candidates who've already graduated or taken different career paths.

Selected candidates will be shortlisted to video interview. If you pass that interview you will be invited to a selection day and if you are successful and do well on the Vacation Scheme, you may be offered a training contract.

Careers 4x4 orange arrow gridRisk and Compliance graduate recruitment scheme

Risk and compliance is now firmly established as a core business service function at law firms. Over the past decade, the risk and compliance function in law firms has developed into a broad field, offering a range of technical specialisms and an exciting alternative career path in law for those who do not wish to qualify as lawyers.

We have created this innovative new grad scheme to provide an opportunity for high performing graduates who are interested in developing a career in risk and compliance, to join the fast-paced risk and compliance team at one of the world’s leading law firms.

Careers arrow orangeThe Scheme will last for two years, during which you will be called a “Risk & Compliance Analyst.” During the Scheme, you will spend approximately six months in each of the four participating sub-teams within Risk & Compliance (details below).

Each sub-team focuses on a different specialism which will ensure that you get a varied, rich experience and develop a good breadth of knowledge over the duration of the Scheme.

During the course of the Scheme you will attend various skills-based training (such as presentation skills, personal brand, effective communication, etc.).

In the second year of the Scheme, you will be supported in obtaining a relevant professional qualification from an accredited third party provider (e.g. International Compliance Association certification in Financial Crime Prevention, Anti-Money Laundering or Regulatory Compliance).

The subject matter of the qualification or course will relate to the permanent role you will ultimately carry out upon completion of the Scheme.

Subject to adequate performance on the Scheme, you will be promoted to Senior Risk & Compliance Analyst.

Following completion of the Scheme, you will continue to develop in your permanent role, and work with your line manager to build a suitable development plan in support of further progression within the team.

You will still benefit from the same extensive training and development opportunities as others in the team, in line with the firm’s overarching learning and development framework

Note: this Scheme will not result in qualification as a solicitor.

We are now closed for applications for the Risk and Compliance Graduate Scheme. Please check back again later in the year.

Legal Technology graduate recruitment scheme

It is an incredibly exciting time to kick start your career in the legal technology industry. Over the past decade, the demand for innovative, tech enabled legal services has developed into a broad field, offering a range of opportunities and an exciting alternative career path in law for those who do not wish to qualify as lawyers.

We have created this new grad scheme to provide an opportunity for high performing graduates who are interested in developing a career in legal technology, to join the fast-paced Service Excellence team at one of the world’s leading law firms.

Careers arrow orangeThe Scheme will last for two years, during which you will be called a “Legal Technology Analyst.”

During the Scheme, you will spend year one embedded within the central Service Excellence Solutions team, where you will be exposed to our firmwide legal and client facing technologies and problem-solving frameworks. This will be a mixture of training exercises and live project work to build out your fundamental skills across our core toolkit.

During year two you will take part in two six-month practice group placements, creating an opportunity for you to build upon the skills gained in year one and develop your ability to analyze problems and identify feasible solutions in real time.

This dual approach ensures that you get a varied, rich experience and develop a good breadth of knowledge over the duration of the Scheme.

We are currently closed to applications for our Legal Technology Graduate Scheme.   

Developing your career with our Legal Technology Graduate Recruitment Scheme

During the Scheme, you will be exposed to and gain various fundamental business skills (such as presentation skills, personal brand, effective communication, etc.) as well as building out your technical skills in areas such as artificial intelligence, workflow automation, app development and data analysis.

At Eversheds Sutherland, we’re committed to getting our graduates up to speed as quickly as possible so that they can be part of the team that moves us forward. That means giving you early exposure to real, meaningful work from day one.

Upon completion of the Scheme, subject to adequate performance, you will be given the opportunity to apply for a permanent position within either the central Service Excellence Solutions team or a Legal Practice Group Technology team.

For further information, please read our Legal Technology Graduate Recruitment Scheme brochure