Trainee Solicitor Campaign 2024

Starting September 2025 and September 2026.
Location - London, Manchester, Leeds and Bristol
Starting salary around £31,696. Salaries differ according to department and location

The Government Legal Profession (GLP) Legal Trainee Solicitor Campaign offers you the chance to start your legal career with a legal trainee position (i.e. training contract/qualifying work experience) in either the Government Legal Department (GLD), including GLD’s Commercial Law Group, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the National Crime Agency (NCA) or the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Whether the government is buying goods and services, investigating mergers that could restrict competition, setting the annual budget and collecting the right amount of tax, employing people, fighting organised crime or defending its decisions in court, it needs significant levels of legal advice on a whole range of complex issues.

Departments are offering the following locations:

• HMRC – London, Bristol, Manchester
• CMA – London, Manchester
• NCA – London
• GLD – London, Leeds, Bristol, Manchester

The training period will be for 2 years in duration. No account will be taken of training/ qualifying work experience completed elsewhere.
Whichever department you join, you can expect to be fully involved in a range of interesting legal work and receive high quality training in a supportive and inclusive working environment. You will have the opportunity to build a rewarding career, working on some of the biggest legal issues of the day. The work is cutting edge, public-serving, and often headline news. Your horizons will be wider too; you’re looking at a future that could take you anywhere, from employment to healthcare, enforcement, and insolvency to national security. If that wasn’t enough, you may have the opportunity to make the law, not just interpret it.

Trainee solicitors typically spend six months in 4 different areas of practice (‘seats’) over the 2-year training period, undertaking a mix of contentious and non-contentious legal work. The exact nature of the work and on-the-job training depends upon the GLP department in which you are placed.

What do you need?

As you’d expect, there are some must haves. These are detailed on the GLP website.
You must meet the Civil Service Nationality requirements and have obtained, or be predicted to obtain, a minimum of a 2:2 honours in a qualifying law degree or undergraduate degree in a non-law subject; or hold equivalent qualifications (e.g. a level 6 CILEx qualification), as recognised by the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority (SRA).

You’ll need to have successfully completed either the Graduate Diploma in Law/CPE (law conversion which covers the foundation topics in law) where a degree is held in a non-law subject; the Legal Practice Course (LPC) if you are following the LPC/training contract route; or SQE1 and SQE2 if you are following the SQE route, before the start of your training contract/qualifying work experience. Please note that should you be successful you will be expected to undergo Security Check (SC) clearance. Some departments may require additional checks.

We recommend that you take some time navigating our website; we want you to be prepared as possible for your application journey. You’ll find more information regarding our eligibility criteria, selection process, funding arrangements and where your career path can take you on our website.

And a reminder the opening date for applications is Noon on 24 April 2024 and the closing date for applications is Noon Wednesday 15th May 2024.

Note: The GLP’s Pupil Barrister recruitment campaign will launch later this year. The positions will be advertised on the Pupillage Gateway and GLP website in November, and the application window will open in January 2025.