What’s actually behind the 2% drop in training contracts, and why is the decline far less dramatic than headlines may suggest?
Training contract numbers across 100 Legal Cheek Most List firms have fallen by 2%, a smaller decline than many may have anticipated amid concerns about AI’s impact on legal recruitment.
In this episode of The Legal Cheek Podcast, founder and publisher Alex Aldridge sits down with events co-ordinator and future trainee Hannah Thompson to unpack this data, examining standout figures and discussing what the broader trends reveal for aspiring solicitors.
While AI is often perceived as a major disruptive force in the world of graduate recruitment, the latest figures suggest that it is not yet having a significant impact on trainee numbers.
Instead, Alex and Hannah explore whether the rise of solicitor apprenticeships may be the more dominant factor behind the 2% decline in available training contracts. With an increasing number of firms expanding their apprenticeship programmes, this could offer a more convincing, and potentially less alarming, explanation than the growth of AI.
Despite all the noise, the figures may offer some reassurance that AI is not, for now, replacing the trainee solicitor.
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Don’t think Links decided to drop their trainee numbers by 40 just because of SAs, which they have had since 2023.
The British MC firms are feeling the squeeze from US firms in London keeping hold of their institutional clients for full service purposes. It had to happen.
Profit margins and revenue of law firms have a greater impact on junior recruitment headcount and budgets than almost any other factor. And that is owed more to a stagnant global economy with a very uncertain outlook, compounded by the rise of AI to replace junior candidates, more than anything else; certainly more than solicitor apprenticeships.
Or we would just be honest and say UK firms are getting ruined by US entrants, poaching their talent and clients… not too sure 10 solicitor apprentices staggered across three years are the reason why Links dropped 40 spots in one year…
These are inaccurate anecdotal numbers, there hasn’t been a drop of 40 in one year. The cohort from last September is considerably smaller than 50 people. Wouldn’t imagine the LL drop is materially different from FF.
Surely it’s because many now qualify via SQE and QWE? It’s cheaper and less work for firms to have lots of paralegals to do some of the work that trainees have traditionally done. Paralegals are generally the sort of people who would have been a trainee in the past, so they’re generally no less competent to do the work, but they cost less and you can just sign off a chunk of their QWE now and then without the TC rigmarole. Frankly it’s amazing there are any TCs left.