Solicitor Apprenticeship (school leaver/non-graduate) - September 2025 - Shoosmiths

Application deadline: 31 January 2025

Applications open 1 December 2024

Shoosmiths is committed to nurturing talent and developing expertise through providing relevant vocational and professional apprenticeships to provide everyone with an opportunity to develop to their full potential.

Whether university isn’t the right path for you, or you are keen to start working straight away, our Solicitor Apprenticeship Programme gives you to a great alternative route to qualify as a Solicitor.

Our apprenticeship opportunity provides an excellent opportunity for individuals to learn and grow while gaining experience, and forging a long-term career with an award winning law firm.

Through our apprenticeship, you’ll gain the technical knowledge, practical experience and wider skills you need for your immediate job and future career all whilst gaining a professional qualification.

This will be achieved by completing a six-year apprenticeship spending 80% of your time (four days a week) working at Shoosmiths learning from our expert professionals and tackling real-life legal challenges. Simultaneously, you'll dedicate 20% of your time (one day a week) to studying relevant legal subjects and developing essential skills with our training provider.

In the workplace, you will carry out supervised work-based learning in order to meet the SRA’s competence statement and will produce a work-based assessment portfolio. In addition to examinations throughout the apprenticeship, there will also be an SRA centralised assessment that you will need to pass to qualify as a solicitor, The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE).

You will study a range of modules online and face-to-face covering the subjects currently required by a qualifying law degree as well as vocational practice areas and skills.

The modules you will study will be based upon those modules which typically make up a law degree such as Introduction to Practice, English Legal Systems & Research, Contract Law, Public Law, Criminal Law, Tort Law, Land Law and Equity and Trusts. You will also study those modules which typically make up the Legal Practice Course such as Business Law and Practice, Property, Litigation, Wills and Administration of Estates.

You will receive support and guidance from us throughout your whole apprenticeship. In each team you will have a dedicated line manager, and you will also be paired with a buddy to help you settle into life at Shoosmiths.

You will also benefit from a Student Manager and Personal Tutor from our training provider. Your Student Manager is your dedicated point of contact throughout your apprenticeship, and their main role is to support you and monitor your progress in completing the requirements of the apprenticeship. Your Personal Tutor will meet with you when you attend face-to-face teaching sessions, and will assist you with compilation of your portfolio of workplace evidence and help you to identify how that evidence links to the knowledge, skills and behaviours required by the solicitor apprenticeship standard.

What do you look for in a solicitor apprentice?

We’re looking for great people who will work hard and be proud of who they are and what they do. Ambitious people thrive at Shoosmiths because of the enterprising and innovative way we work.

You'll be expected to make things happen and take initiative from day one. You will need a strong academic background and proven ability to apply your intellect in the real world. But we know there’s more to amazing solicitors than academics alone, which is why we take a holistic view when we assess you throughout our selection process.

You’ll join a firm of individuals working in a positive, professional and cooperative culture, in an environment that actively allows you to grow your skills and challenge yourself.

And you'll find a refreshing lack of hierarchy – just happy, energised individuals at the heart of our success.

What areas of law will I train in?

Shoosmiths is a law firm with core teams in commercial, banking & finance, corporate, litigation services and real estate.

In addition to these we have many other areas which offer experience on a slightly less regular basis and include intellectual property, pensions, regulatory & compliance, construction, medical negligence, restructuring and advisory. Plus, there’ll be the opportunity to go on a client secondment.

We will train you in legal practice and skills in line with the law society requirements, providing you with a variety of areas of law, and experience in non-contentious and  contentious law.

You’ll also experience some of our business support functions, which are fundamental to the smooth running of an innovative business like Shoosmiths. These could include Projects & Innovation, Risk & Ethics, Connected Services, Client Tech, People, Finance and IS.

The details

• Program length: Six years
• Location: Leeds
• Number of places: Two
• Start date: September 2025
• Salary: starting at £22,000, rising each year to match our trainee solicitor salary in year five and six.
• Work-study balance: 4 days working, 1 day studying
• Academic qualifications: Earn an LLB (Hons) in Law and Legal Practice
• Skills development: Focus on core legal knowledge, practical skills like legal writing and research, and professional ethics.

Ready to Apply?

The recruitment and selection process is designed to assess whether you have the potential to be an excellent solicitor at Shoosmiths. We assess this via the online application, an online strengths based assessment, and an in-person assessment centre. More information about what to expect in the application and assessment stage can be found on our careers blog.

This programme is open to those without a degree and looking for an alternative to university – typically this will include final year school leavers who have completed, or who are completing, their A-Levels. We want to recruit the very best talent, but we know that academics aren’t the only measure of success. Law requires a high level of intellect, but we look for candidates with strengths in other areas too, which is why our minimum academic criteria is a minimum of 5 A-C GCSEs (including English & Maths) and a minimum of ABB at 'A' level. Our minimum requirements at A Level stage are in line with the requirements set out by BPP University and the Level 7 Solicitor Apprenticeship Programme that you will be enrolled in.

The application form for a solicitor apprenticeship is divided into different sections, e.g. personal details, academic details, work experience and competency questions which are based on our values and expected behaviours. Scores are allotted to your application based on your responses throughout the application form and to the competency questions. All candidates must achieve the minimum academic requirements and a minimum criteria score on the competency questions to be invited to the next stage of the process. By assessing the application in this way, we are able to look at the whole you, without focusing on simply one part of your history.

We are also a member firm of City Century, an award-winning solicitor apprenticeship initiative that helps educate, recruit and develop the very best talent for the legal industry. If you are wondering whether a solicitor apprenticeship is the right career path for you, City Century provide a free virtual work experience programme through Forage. You can learn more about what life is like a solicitor apprentice whilst gaining useful experience and insights into what work you could get involved in.