2024-2025 Winners

Which firm offers the best quality of work? Which has the most approachable supervisors? And where will you get to deal with real walking, talking clients? Our tables show The Legal 500 Future Lawyers Winners – the highest-scoring firms in each of our categories, as rated by their trainees.


Methodology

For the purposes of this section, we took the twenty highest average scores in each survey category to produce our tables.

Because the difference in scores between the firms was sometimes negligible, full average scores are shown here, e.g. 87.6, rather than the rounded-up scores (88%). Even so, some firms received exactly the same score, so their position in the winners table is equal, and in some instances the tables therefore have more than twenty firms.

When assessing the tables we performed recommended statistical tests to ensure that the analysis was valid, representative and robust. We used our professional judgement to exclude what we perceived to be outlying or unrepresentative elements in the data.

Readers should also be aware that our survey covered a very wide range of firms, from global giants with hundreds of trainees to niche and regional firms with only a handful of trainees, so in these tables we are not attempting to compare like with like. If readers wish to do this (e.g. to compare scores for work/life balance at the Magic Circle firms), they should refer to the scores on the individual firms’ pages.

Job satisfaction

“How would you rate your overall job satisfaction?”

Quality of work

“How would you rate the quality of work you are given?”

Client contact

“How would you rate your amount of client contact?”

Work/life balance

“How happy are you with your work/life balance?”

Social life

“How good is your firm’s social life?”

Vacation scheme

“If you did a vacation scheme with your firm, how would you rate it?”

Confident you’ll be kept on?

“How confident are you that you will be kept on at the end of your training contract?”

Financial remuneration

“How satisfied are you with your financial remuneration?”

Work from home

How would you rate your firm’s work from home policy?

Sustainability

How would you rate the eco-friendliness and/or sustainability of your firm?

Legal technology

How would you rate the legal technology offering at your firm?

Inclusiveness

“How would you rate the inclusiveness of your workplace environment?”

International secondments

“How would you rate the international secondment opportunities available?”

Approachability

“How approachable are your supervisors?”