But pay is a long way off City law firm salaries
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is expanding its trainee intake by 50% as it seeks to develop more legal talent at junior level.
The CPS will take on 120 legal trainees this year, up from 80 the year before. Stephen Parkinson, director of public prosecutions (DPP) and head of the CPS, said the increase was part of a wider effort to build its own pipeline of lawyers.
According to Parkinson, who left his role as senior partner of Kingsley Napley in 2023 to become DPP, the CPS struggles to attract lawyers once they have a year or more of experience, as by that stage most are earning far more than it can offer. “It becomes very difficult to recruit lawyers that are one-year qualified plus. They often earn too much money by then,” Parkinson said. “Our strategy is to grow our own.”
CPS legal trainees earn about £34,000 in London during the two-year training contract, rising to roughly £50,000 on qualification. By contrast, according to the Legal Cheek Firms Most List, trainees at top Magic Circle, US and international firms in the City can earn up to £70,000 a year, climbing to well over £150,000 for newly qualified lawyers (NQs). Meanwhile, at elite, less finance-oriented firms like Kingsley Napley, which does some criminal work alongside a wide range of civil, trainees start on £40,000 and NQs receive £84,000.
However, Parkinson argues that CPS trainees receive the benefit of being “entrusted with responsibility at an early stage of their careers and [get] the fulfilment that comes from undertaking work of such fundamental importance.” “While they will not earn as much as others who go to work in the City, these are the compensating factors that keep them with us, often for an entire career,” he adds.
This hiring drive comes as the CPS grapples with growing delays in the criminal courts, where the Crown Court is buckling under a backlog of more than 80,000 cases and some trials are now listed for 2030.
I never did any criminal work in practice, having worked in commercial dispute resolution and then legal training and education, but in 2021-24 I did act as academic adviser to several solicitor-apprentices working at the CPS. I saw them through parts of their 6-year programme, covering the law degree element and the SQE1 and 2 elements. I had meetings with them and their employer-supervisor 4 times a year, tracking their portfolios of work. What brilliant lawyers and people the CPS supervisors turned out to be – I was consistently really impressed by them, as well as by the apprentices themselves, who were mainly former CPS paralegals.
If I was looking for a TC with a barristerial bent, and wasn’t especially into finance or M&A, I’d apply to the CPS. The training will be excellent. Less salary, but proportionately excellent pension. And you’ll be well placed to move into private practice in chambers afterwards, if you’re good.
Wouldn’t expanding the global intake of trainees by 50% dilute the overall salaries?
Most firms promise to provide you with responsibility from day 1 – I suppose the issue arises from caseload, lack of incentives and employee competition.