There is hope for millennial lawyers yet
The London office of a global megafirm has made up three former trainees to its partnership — providing a ray of hope to the nation’s young corporate lawyers as they mournfully trudge back to work after the festive period.
Becky Wales, Richard Diffenthal and Matthew Bullen were in the Hogan Lovells trainee classes of 2003, 2004 and 2005 respectively — and as of today they are partners. Not a bad return on a decade’s graft at the firm where average profit per equity partner is a cool £826,000.
The trio are joined by a couple of outsiders who trained elsewhere (John Connell is ex-Slaughter and May, while Faye Jarvis hails from Squire Patton Boggs), but three out of five ain’t bad.
At a time when top City trainees are estimated to have less than a 10% chance of making it to partner level at the leading firms where they begin their careers — and many end up being cast out into depressing in-house lawyer jobs in bland corporations — this is certainly a welcome January fillip.
It’s also encouraging that two out of the five are women — and will help Hogan Lovells boost its percentage of female partners in London, which stands at 23%.
In total Hogan Lovells makes up 24 new partners today across its network of international offices — eight of whom are women. The news comes after rival firm White & Case made up four former London trainees in its partner promotion round announced in December.