Gateley

The firm has a much greater spread when it comes to practice areas and rookies can have their fingers in many pies ranging from corporate, commercial, media, sports, disputes and arbitration, property, employment and tax. So, what is life really like as a junior at this ambitious company?

“Excellent,” enthuses one rookie. “The training has been of a high level and very varied across the seats. I’ve had good drafting experience, supervision and client contact.” Another junior reports of “high levels of responsibility with a strong support system, I had the opportunity to run some of my own files as a trainee which has given me a huge head-start as a NQ.” Training is split into seat specific, firmwide, and general compulsory training, with additional optional training sessions available through the learning and development officers, which can help prepare rookies when changing seats.

As one rookie tells LC: “Both juniors and seniors take time to explain tasks and then sit down and go through any corrections they made and explain the reasoning behind changes, this includes if changes are for technical reasons or just personal preference.”

The work on offer at Gateley is generally “challenging and stimulating” though current recruits warn that it can be very seat-dependent: “In some teams I’ve been given some real responsibility which is quite exciting, attending court with counsel on my own for example. But equally you can very easily get lumped with administrative tasks, particularly in teams where the junior support is minimal.” That being said, trainees do note that even if more admin-y seats “the team will go out of their way to try and expose you to as many different types of work as they can to ensure the seat is a well-rounded experience. They want you to enjoy the time with them and get the most out of the seat.”

Client contact is “fairly common” with notable names such as JD Sports, HSBC and Commonwealth Games England making up the clientele list in London (talk about diverse!). Big deals are also found in the regions, with the Birmingham office recently advising Virgin Money and Santander on the acquisition of the UK’s leading pure-play air compressor rental provider. Trainees report feeling like they’re “an important part of transactions” and can work “regularly” with colleagues across other teams and offices.

One area the company really does excel in is its supportive peers and approachable superiors — in the 2025-26 Legal Cheek Trainee and Junior Lawyer Survey, Gateley employees couldn’t speak highly enough of their “fantastic peers”, “brilliant support system” and the firm’s “good culture” — which was “probably helped by the trip to the Lake District at the beginning of everyone’s TC” (We bet!). First years receive a “buddy” second-year trainee to help with the bedding in process and the highly acclaimed emerging talent team schedules coaching sessions for each trainee which are tailor-made depending on your personality type! One spy reports, “I feel encouraged to make the training contract my own, and to speak to as many colleagues as possible across the Gateley group (not just the legal side of the business!). NQs show a keen interest in helping us explore potential qualification routes and have helped connect me to their peers ahead of seat rotations or for general training contract/career advice.”

Trainees run the social and charity committees in some offices, creating a “good culture both through official firm events and on more casual occasions”. Besides paddle-boarding and kayaking in the Lake District, rookies might find themselves attending painting classes, yoga events and joining various sports teams: “People are genuinely friends and see each other outside of work” says one happy trainee. Birmingham takes the plaudits for being the most active office, with activities like rounders, going out for Greek food, and quizzes being weekly occurrences.

Superiors are also described as “very approachable” in the large with rookies reporting that the “open-plan office and hot-desking system lessens the impression of any hierarchy and teams mostly work collaboratively between all levels”. The worst complaint is that partners sometimes “take a couple of asks to respond to any queries” — a good indication of how friendly the firm is. In fact, more often than not, trainees are said to work directly with partners on deals and the consensus is that “there is a strong desire to build future talent”.

Another area where Gateley outshines its peers is its work-life balance. Comments include “excellent, perfectly balanced” — not something usually uttered by lawyers. One junior lawyer says, “Staying late or working weekends has been incredibly rare. On the occasions it has been required, everyone has been as flexible as possible around existing plans and expressed their gratitude. It really is very rare though (for myself, I only had to once at the end of a deal in corporate and once when volunteering to help on an arbitration matter).” Our insiders were also keen to highlight that “as a trainee you don’t have a work phone and aren’t expected to log on out of hours unless previously agreed”.

The lack of billable targets for trainees helps this, but in some offices, WLB can still be team dependent. As one insider explains, “Corporate teams will obviously have more urgent deadlines and involve much later nights, however all corporate teams at Gateley are excellent at managing those pinch points and telling trainees to log off at a sensible hour wherever possible. They also have a large amount of flexibility with allowing trainees to work from home if they’ve had a late completion or starting a couple of hours later if it was a particularly late night. In most other transactional and contentious teams, the work life balance is excellent and trainees would, for the most part, be leaving the office by 6pm each day.”

Cutting edge tech isn’t the firm’s strong suit but Gateley top brass seemed to have lived up to their word by putting AI on the menu for research and drafting tasks. A few of the trainees we spoke to were happy enough with the “few good legal tech tools” on offer, noting that “the firm is actively looking at ways to introduce more legal tech into the business”. Others were not so happy with the wool being pulled, adding: “seems like anything legal tech wise remains forever in the pipeline…”

Trainees do at least receive a basic work-from-home set up which includes a monitor, headset, mouse and keyboard. The official policy for all juniors up to two years of post-qualification experience (PQE) is a minimum of four days in the office each week but our inside sources tell us this policy is pretty lax.

Not that those in Birmingham mind visiting their newly refurbed digs this often — especially as they now come equipped with some state-of-the-art coffee machines. However, those elsewhere in the regions have less to say about their humble abodes. “Client facing meeting rooms are modern and very nice but the working office has room for improvement” was the consensus from many of the trainees we spoke to., though we are told that in the capital, “nowhere in London beats the terrace for views of St Paul’s”.

One perk that is utilised is Gateley’s “sharesave” scheme which allows staff to take an equity stake in their employer — around 70% of staff are now thought to have some form of ownership in Gateley, providing extra incentive to work hard. A holiday buy-back scheme, YuLife (a points-based app used to obtain vouchers), monthly boardroom lunches, medical insurance, subsidised gym memberships, access to certain running events, and a new hybrid car scheme and an Itsu discount for sushi lovers, make-up the rest of the firm’s added benefits – not too shabby!