The Legal Cheek View
The five year solicitor apprenticeship scheme at Foot Anstey offers two pathways to qualification for candidates: traditional SQE training contract and legal executive (CILEX). Before you make that decision, the aim of the game is to earn while gaining boots-on-the-ground experience as a paralegal to make sure you have that practical exposure and firmwide support to serve as a foundation for qualification.
Here, you’ll be supported before you even start, you’ll meet your supervisor, buddy, and the early careers team with an induction and skills masterclass to prep you for your career. Once you get stuck in, you’ll learn the ropes on the integrated paralegal apprenticeship through years one and two, based in either Bristol or Taunton. These years will serve as a foundation in the “fast-paced” managed legal services team, where you’ll collaborate across the firm’s teams.
After completing your paralegal apprenticeship, you’ll begin to look toward your qualification and that means choosing between the SQE and CILEX pathways. You won’t be going in blind — besides two years experience, with practical exposure, you’ll have support from the firm to make an informed decision going into year three.
Year three is when you start your studying, all the while continuing to work as a paralegal — but now in different practice areas across the firm, so you can see how practice areas differ and you can begin to gauge what works for you and where you’d prefer to qualify. Once you hit years 4-5, depending on your chosen route, you’ll proceed into the training contract cohort or remain working to ensure you get full qualification built on this robust and supportive foundation.
Foot Anstey looks for students on-track or attained BBB or equivalent at A-level as a minimum, though they are sure to recruit contextually for all candidates. This means academics are not the be-all end-all — far from it — and that mitigating circumstances are also considered in the human-reviewed applications.