The Legal Cheek View
Meet the firm at Legal Cheek’s upcoming November UK Virtual Law Fair on Tuesday 19 November 2024
IPOs, acquisitions, restructurings, relocations and, finally, delisting — you name it, DWF has done it. After becoming Big Law’s largest listed law firm all the way back in 2019, DWF has had an eventful couple of years. The firm revamped its operating model to share profits firmwide, opened offices in Southampton and Canada, made alliances in Spain and Hong Kong, and diversified its service offering by swallowing up other law firms, insurance companies, and managed services businesses such as MindCrest and Proclaim — just for starters.
It has since become the largest law firm to delist from the London Stock Exchange after a buyout by Inflexion Private Equity Partners — also the proud owners of Chambers & Partners — in what global chair Sir Nigel Knowles has described as “the next step forward” for DWF. So far, this next step has seen firmwide revenues increase an impressive 14%, to £435 million this year, as the firm’s three major divisions — insurance, commercial and legal operations — all experienced strong growth. The firm also promoted 33 to partner and made 25 laterals at partner level this year alone.
DWF has 11 offices in the UK — Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton — and 20 offices abroad. Despite only launching its first international office in Dubai in 2015, DWF’s listing spurred the business on to carry out an ambitious period of geographic expansion. It quickly set up shop across the globe in many new locations including Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and the US, and fostered exclusive associations in Argentina, Colombia, Panama, Singapore, South Africa and Turkey, and Hong Kong.
Unfortunately for any aspiring globetrotters, this worldwide growth hasn’t inspired any international secondment options yet. However, client secondments to a range of multinationals — including Amazon, JD Sports, Virgin Money and Barclays — are most certainly available, with around 50% of trainees enjoying one each year.
Insiders at the firm still report DWF as an excellent place to undergo your legal training. “Everyone who I have come across in the business is happy to answer any questions and supervisors provide constructive and useful feedback,” one rookie reveals. “I have improved greatly during my training contract, which is a credit to supervisors and the training received at DWF.” Trainees say the firm offers a “good balance between adequate supervision and levels of responsibility to encourage independent thinking” with regular teamwide training supplemented by more informal one-to-one supervision. Although DWF isn’t immune to the familiar gripe of training being seat-dependant, new recruits give their supervisors and wider teams very high praise for their individual support: “Great team of lawyers, who are always willing to help and take the time out to explain any legal or technical query that a trainee may have.”
The quality of work is also highly rated by trainees. “I am able to be involved in a variety of matters, and express interest / undertake opportunities in sectors I am interested in personally. I have undertaken high value complex legal work throughout my training contract, and feel challenged which has helped my development immensely” is one satisfied rookie’s review. Expect a “high degree of responsibility” and lots of involvement in “high-profile cases”, alongside the inevitable more routine “admin tasks”. According to one LC mole, “there is some work that is more routine than other work, but that is the nature of being a trainee. 99% of the work is extremely interesting, and the workload is varied; no two cases I have worked on have been the same.”
Recent highlights in the firm’s UK hubs include winning a place on Tesco’s coveted property panel, rejoining BT group’s legal mandate and advising medical education provider Pastest in its investment in tutor platform The Medic Life. The variety of deals taking place at DWF speaks to a diverse service offering, which now counts an inaugural vegan team as part of its collage. That’s right, in what has to be a BigLaw first, DWF has launched a specialist vegan team which is expected to work on including food labelling, advertising, employment issues and even vegan-friendly pensions.
And if you wanted anything even more New Law than a vegan-specialist team, you only need to look as far as DWF’s internal embrace of technology: “We have excellent legal tech,” boasts one insider. “We have developed a number of different softwares over the last few years which are really efficient for carrying out tasks, e.g. DWF Draft which takes the form of specially created questionnaires that once completed populate a draft based on the answers you have given.” Another explains, “we had a really impressive induction on legal tech, and there’s even a legal tech seat”, referring to DWF’s lawtech seat which aims to usher in a new swathe of techy trainees with STEM backgrounds. The recent roll-out of AI assistant ‘copilot for Microsoft’, case management system ‘ShareDo’ and new people platform ‘Bob’ has marked the beginning of DWF’s new Digital Transformation programme — so we’re expecting even better reviews to follow!
Unsurprisingly, the firm’s “very flexible” working from home set-up was also well-received. Trainees say that all the equipment you need (including an extra screen) is provided on request and there’s no complaints with the firm’s current policy which allows new recruits to split their time between the office and their home 50/50.
Another area praised by our sources is peer camaraderie. The “very supportive and close cohort” from the fellow trainees to paralegals to other juniors — “supportive and friendly” is the overarching theme. Across all the offices there are “regular trainee socials” with monthly drinks in the bistro in Manchester touted as a highlight in the HQ.
An open-plan office in London and hot desking in Glasgow speaks to the lack of hierarchy the firm fosters across all its office spaces with rookies everywhere reporting partners who “are easy to chat to and willing to answer any questions”. One trainee told LC, “In the nicest way possible, everyone is just normal. I feel able to approach supervisors and partners with questions or concerns” – high praise indeed for a lawyer. Another remarked that “peers across all levels of the firm are supportive. The culture of the firm is one of its greatest assets. Everybody is ‘one team’ and it does not feel hierarchised.”
Some of the highest praise at DWF – and perhaps some of the most surprising too given the size of the firm – is for the work/life balance on offer. Insiders report top-notch work/life balance with one boasting they have never worked past about 7pm. Some finish at 5.30/6pm, weekends and annual leave are strictly off-limits and there is no face-time culture — “no expectation to stay late, no pressure is put on trainees to work longer hours”, noted one. Another offered this: “The workload as a trainee is never light, however DWF allows trainees to work from home (depending on client needs), and always encourages trainees to speak up if they have taken on too much work. There are a couple of late nights involved in any training contract, but I have found that it has been easy to maintain a work/life balance whilst training at DWF.”
Enthusiasm drops, however, when it comes to the subject of perks. “There are little to no noticeable perks at the firm,” claims one trainee. A training contract veteran moans: “We have a coffee machine but you have to pay. The best perk was probably that we got to tag onto a vacation scheme lunch.” There is also no canteen in any of the offices, though some are holding out for a refurb sometime soon… There is still a “strong pension scheme”, health insurance as well as “£200ish to spend on physio, massage etc.” to name a few bonuses on offer. There’s also “regular gym classes and activity clubs” in some offices.
If finding themselves perk-less bothers trainees, they can always look out the window. “DWF’s London office is in the ‘Walkie-Talkie Building’ — the office offers 360 degree views of London, and you even see Windsor Castle on a clear day,” reports one insider. With the Sky Garden upstairs and “unreal sunsets” in the Winter, trainees in the capital are pretty happy. Regional recruits were less impressed. Despite being in a “great location” the Manchester office is reported as being “quite basic” and the Glasgow office faces the same grumbles. However, Edinburgh is said to to be “great” and Southampton have just upgraded to a newly refurbed hub after doubling their headcount over the past few years.
DWF does not disclose its newly qualified (NQ) solicitors’ salaries, but trainees in London can start on around £38,000 while rookie pay in the regions sits around £26,000.