Legal traineeship opportunities

Take the next step in your legal journey. You will complete three, eight-month seats working across different practice areas, these can include Litigation, Real Estate, Corporate & Commercial, Banking and Personal & Family. Our traineeships equip you with valuable time and experience to develop your skills as a lawyer and a trusted business advisor.

You'll learn from and work alongside some of Scotland's leading experts, be involved in interesting matters and projects with national and international elements and gain insight into critical components of our business. There is often an opportunity to work across our different office locations or undertake a client secondment.

Downloads
Download our interview preparation pack for traineeships and summer placements(194.49 KB)

Support is always on hand from your team, and you'll have a dedicated graduate engagement contact, a supervising solicitor, and a mentor all there to provide guidance and answer all your questions. Additionally, your learning and development continues with a series of workshops that run over the two years to enhance your technical, business, and soft skills, as well as providing guidance on your health and wellbeing.

Responsibility and ownership of your own workload lies with you from day one – and we'll challenge you, teach you, support you and encourage you, to become the lawyer you want to be.

Early careers newsletter

Get to know the Brodies’ trainees – Jordan

We hear from Jordan Smith, a first-year trainee at Brodies, who explains what it was like to deliver submissions to a sheriff court and his favourite aspect of the firm’s culture.

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Get to know the Brodies’ trainees – Jordan

Get to know the Brodies’ trainees – Miguel

We hear from Miguel Chui, a first-year trainee at Brodies, who talks about his favourite moment of the traineeship so far and how his colleagues have supported him since his first day in the role.

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Get to know the Brodies’ trainees – Miguel

Get to know the Brodies’ trainees – Sophie

Sophie Charbonnier, a first-year trainee at Brodies, explains how the firm offers genuine opportunities for its trainees and one of the highlight features of working in the Edinburgh office.

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Get to know the Brodies’ trainees – Sophie

Developing legal talent at Brodies: inside our trainee development day

We hear from Brodies’ chair Iain Rutherford and trainees Jordan, Miguel and Sophie on the importance – and value – of the firm’s in-house trainee development day.

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Developing legal talent at Brodies: inside our trainee development day

The people are the best thing about working at Brodies. Colleagues are supportive, helpful and friendly. It’s great to be part of the trainee network, and I have already made friends for life.

Nina Munro, Solicitor

There are so many opportunities on offer at Brodies. There are lots of opportunities to go on secondment – I completed mine at Brodies Middle East office and was the first trainee to be seconded there.

Leona Whyte, Solicitor

Application and interview process for trainee lawyers

In this episode graduate engagement manager Wendy Murphy talks about the recruitment process for trainee lawyers at Brodies including how to make your application stand out from the crowd and what candidates can expect at the interview stage.

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Application and interview process for trainee lawyers

Being a trainee

In this episode, Regan Lambert and Robert Bough talk about their experience as trainee solicitors at Brodies; each sharing their own journey to studying law at university, the application and interview process behind securing a training contract and uncovering what it is really like to work at Scotland's largest legal firm.

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Being a private client lawyer

Do you want to know what it's like to work in one of the busiest private client teams in Scotland? In this episode, Iona Clark and Nikki Neal talk about their experience working in the personal law team at Brodies; each sharing their own journey to becoming private client lawyers.

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Rewards & benefits

We provide a total reward approach where our wide range of benefits gives colleagues the opportunity to tailor a package that is suited to their lifestyle and life-stage.

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Upper quartile trainee salaries

Our total reward approach reflects the market in which we operate.

Diploma fees paid

We provide financial support while you continue your studies by paying for diploma fees.

Bonus scheme

All colleagues are eligible for a firm-wide and individual performance bonus.

Pensions scheme

We are thinking about your future before you are, with monthly contributions being made to your pensions.

Our teams are always on the look-out for enthusiastic individuals and you'll be supported throughout your time in each seat by a dedicated buddy and mentor.

Wendy Murphy, Graduate Engagement Manager

Our values

Our values of courage, character, care, collaborative and collegiate are more than just a strapline. Whether delivering services to our clients, fulfilling our professional duties as solicitors, or contributing to the wider economy and communities in which we work, our values inform everything we do.

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Rare Recruitment

Brodies LLP is proud to be using the Rare Contextual Recruitment System which allows us to understand each applicant’s achievements in the context in which they have been gained. We seek to recruit the best people, from every background, regardless of their personal circumstances, and the CRS help us to do that. The CRS is only ever used to screen people in, not out and under no circumstances are candidates ever marked down for supplying this information.

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Sustainable Recruitment Alliance

We have adapted a greener, more sustainable approach to graduate recruitment. We have reviewed our recruitment practices to help reduce our carbon footprint and minimise environmental and climate impacts. As part of our commitment, we are signatories to the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance. We pledge to review our processes and operations, identifying opportunities to be more sustainable, reduce the amount of materials and/or switch to sustainable alternatives and report on change, so the impact can be calculated. SRA have featured us as a case study recognising our efforts to reduce waste at campus law fairs.

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Help & advice

I'm worried I don't have any legal work experience; will this disadvantage me?

We don’t expect you to have lots of legal experience – but that doesn’t mean you don’t have the qualities we’re looking for. Remember to include part-time work, sports activities, or hobbies and interests, particularly ones where you learned or applied skills that would be useful for a lawyer to have, strong communications skills, being prepared and organised, being self-motivated and resilient.
What makes a traineeship contract application stand out?

Wendy Murphy our Graduate Engagement manager shares her top tips in this blog.
What is the firm’s policy on hybrid working for trainees?

Learning from the expertise of colleagues is such an important part of your development as a trainee and there is no better place to do that than within the office environment, surrounded by opportunities to hear your colleagues speaking to clients or taking 10 mins to grab a coffee while they explain a complicated technical matter to you is so important. So, most of your time will be spent in the office, we all recognise the benefits of a home working day when we can get our heads into larger pieces of work with less distractions. The norm for our trainees is 3-4 days office based 1-2 days home working per week.
How is the firm trying to facilitate diversity and inclusion amongst it's trainee group?

Within graduate recruitment we have many successful initiatives in place to encourage diversity across the trainee group. Our early careers PRIME programme supports students from lower socio-economic backgrounds and provides work experience during school years and mentoring during university years. PRIME alumni have successfully returned to us as interns and trainees following their studies. We also partner with Scottish Ethnic Minority Lawyers Association (SEMLA) and Black Professionals Scotland to offer internships to their student members; we have future trainees joining the firm over the next few years that completed the SEMLA programme.
How do I apply?

News about our applications will be announced in due course on our website and via our Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram pages.

If you have any questions please get in touch at gradrecruit@brodies.com.
l am unable to attend any campus events, does this put me at a disadvantage when I apply for a traineeship or summer placement?

There is lots of helpful information on our traineeship and summer placements pages to get to know us that will help you prepare. Our recruitment process does not favour candidates that have attended these events.

Get in touch with Wendy

Wendy Murphy

Graduate Engagement Manager

gradrecruit@brodies.com

+44 (0)141 245 6293

Not ready for a traineeship? Explore our summer placements

For those students not at the stage to apply for traineeships just yet our summer placement programme is open to 3rd year and above LLB students and 1st year accelerated LLB.

Summer placements