Addleshaw Goddard |

Culture and values shape how we treat our clients, each other, and our wider communities. AG is driven to consistently deliver the highest quality experiences and outcomes for everyone we support. Our clients and colleagues, past and present, tell us that we are ambitious, supportive, innovative, and good people to work with. They tell us that what makes us ‘uniquely AG’, is that we deliver excellence through true collaboration and by doing the right things in the right ways. 

We act for clients whatever the scale of their requirements. Last year we acted for over 5000 clients including over 300 companies listed on the stock market of 10 countries. We have also advised over half the FTSE 100 companies in the last 3 years, including Associated British Foods, SSE, GlaxoSmithKline, HSBC and British Land. Our business is about strong client relationships built on successful delivery across national and international markets. 

The range and scale of our work is compelling, and encompasses high value strategic advice to the everyday. It means we are able to attract talented, like-minded individuals who love what they do, are committed to our clients success, and strive to build valued partnerships through our collective energy and expertise.

We require a 2.1 honours degree (or equivalent). But what will really open doors to an outstanding career here is the real you. At Addleshaw Goddard, we’re looking for original minds and collaborative spirits alongside motivation, drive and commercial awareness. We’re constantly delighted by the diverse backgrounds of our best lawyers, and we’re open to law and non-law graduates alike, as well as those looking to change career. 

At Addleshaw Goddard, we recognise that an inclusive culture is essential to attracting, retaining and enabling our people to be the best they can be – whatever their background.

In 2020 we introduced a new, Board‑approved inclusion strategy, which is now embedded within our AG2030 Vision. Key features include:

• Clear senior leadership responsibility across five strands of inclusion: Disability, Ethnicity, Gender, LGBTQ+ and Social Mobility.
• Firm‑wide representation targets for gender and ethnicity.
• Short‑, medium‑ and long‑term goals to keep us accountable and ensure our strategy evolves with the needs of our people.
  
  Our objectives are to:
• Improve the diversity of our workforce by attracting the best talent irrespective of background or protected characteristic.
• Nurture a culture centred on equity, inclusion and mutual respect so that everyone feels they belong and can thrive.
• Be recognised in the legal sector for flexibility, inclusivity and innovation in DE&I.

You’ll be entrusted with meaningful and challenging work, gaining exposure to everything from multi-million-pound transactions and high-profile fraud cases to employment disputes and complex technology contracts. Beyond hands-on experience, you’ll have the opportunity to build your network working with different offices or even undertaking secondments with clients, supported by exceptional training, a first seat buddy scheme, and a dedicated mentor who will guide you throughout your training contract, and beyond – your growth is integral to our success.

We’re committed to supporting you every step of the way, helping you unlock your full potential. During each of your four six-month seats, you‘ll receive regular, constructive feedback through two-way performance reviews with your supervising partner or solicitor. These reviews are designed to help you build the skills required to excel in the varied and dynamic work you will encounter.

All of that said, summing up what it is like to work at AG in a few paragraphs doesn't fully capture our essence. Our culture is authentic, living and breathing, written by our people and best told through their personal experiences. So we bring our culture to life through the stories of our people – and if you choose to work with us, the next page of our story and our culture is yours to write.

Click here to hear what one of our trainees has to say about training at AG

Click here to read stories of our culture

We offer week-long Easter work placements in Edinburgh and London, and two-week summer work placements in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Manchester. And because everyone is an individual, we make sure each placement is a valuable experience for each individual candidate.

While you are here, you will get to know the everyday life of an Addleshaw Goddard trainee. You will be allocated a department to sit in and, if you are part of the summer scheme, will swap into a new department in your second week. You will be supervised by an experienced solicitor, who will welcome you to the department and allocate work. A trainee buddy will be on hand to help throughout your placement.

This is a scheme as unique as you are. As well as informative sessions, group exercises, assessed work and plenty of time at your desk, you will attend social events with a range of people across the office. It’s a real chance to get to know our people and our culture. We offer training contracts to successful placement scheme candidates. We recruit for our trainees from our placement schemes and encourage anyone who is interested in a training contract at the firm apply for the placement scheme.

Applications open on 1 October 2026 and the deadline to apply is 12pm/midday on 5 January 2027. For more information please visit https://earlycareers.addleshawgoddard.com/careers/placement-schemes-internships/

If you are a first year law student or first or second year non-law student in England, any first or second year student of any degree discipline in Ireland, first or second year law or third or fourth non-law in Scotland, and you are interested in a career with us, you can apply to attend one of our 2027 insight days to get to know us better. As well as meeting people from across the business, you will get practical advice on what we look for.

Our insight days will be taking place as follows:

• 15th March 2027 – London in person insight day
• 19th March 2027 – Scotland in person insight day (held in Edinburgh)
• 22nd March 2027 - The North in person insight day (held in Manchester)
• 24th March 2027 – Virtual insight day (open to UK and Ireland)

Applications for our insight days will open on 1 October 2026 and close at 12pm/midday 29 January 2027. For more information please visit https://earlycareers.addleshawgoddard.com/careers/insight-day/

If you would like to be informed about future opportunities and events, please register your interest using this link.

At Addleshaw Goddard, we believe in creating opportunities for everyone to thrive, recognising that university isn’t the right path for everyone. Our apprenticeship schemes offer an exciting alternative to kick-start your career, combining hands-on experience with tailored development in an award-winning, global law firm. From day one, you’ll earn a salary, build your skills and knowledge alongside experienced professionals, and be supported by dedicated mentors and structured training programmes.

Our culture is built on collaboration, inclusion, and a shared drive to succeed. As an apprentice, you’ll be part of our story, contributing to high-profile projects and shaping the future of the legal industry. Whether you’re pursuing a paralegal or solicitor apprenticeship, or exploring opportunities in business services, you’ll be immersed in a supportive environment that values your growth and celebrates your achievements. At AG, your journey is just the beginning.

Click here to hear from one of our paralegals

Click here to hear from one of our solicitor apprentices

For more information visit https://earlycareers.addleshawgoddard.com/careers/apprenticeships/

Pro bono work allows us to live out our firm's values and support our communities and all our fee earners (including trainees) are encouraged to do 50 hours of pro bono legal work per year.  

Our pro bono programme mirrors our key practice areas across the firm and by delivering free legal advice to individuals, charities and social enterprises we're able to empower them to thrive whilst also providing opportunities for our people to give back to the communities in which we operate.  

We have a central pro bono steering committee, which is supported by our Pro Bono Partners and the firm's Senior Pro Bono and Inclusion Manager who are tasked with identifying new opportunities and innovative approaches to develop new initiatives to deliver our programme across our global business.  

AG's pro bono strategy is built around:

• the provision of pro bono advice to charities and social enterprises;
• providing pro bono advice at legal advice centres and/or supervising students at local universities and law schools which provide legal advice centres;
• the ability to work collaboratively across large scale pro bono projects;
• taking on key pro bono clients where we can become their complete legal function; and
• actively exploring opportunities to work with clients in partnership.

In the last financial year, we delivered over 10,000 hours of pro bono legal advice which had a value of over £6million and our strongest performance ever as a firm.  This year we’ll be looking to increase those figures further.

A core part of our programme is the investment in our employee networks and faith communities, which now have over 600 members. These are open to colleagues with lived experience and allies, and include:

• OpenAG (LGBTQ+)
• AG Embrace (Ethnicity)
• The Vine (Gender)
• The Ability Forum (Disability and Carers)
• The SMART Network (Social Mobility)
• Jewish Network
• Christian Network
• Hindu, Sikh and Jain Network
• Muslim Network

Our networks:

• Provide community, mentoring and peer support.
• Shape our policies and initiatives through lived experience and feedback.
• Run events, awareness campaigns and skills-building sessions across our offices.
• Help us collaborate with clients and external organisations on inclusion.

As an early careers colleague, you can join any network as a member or ally, take part in events, access mentoring opportunities and contribute to the firm’s inclusion agenda.

Our DE&I strategy directly informs how we attract and support trainees, apprentices and business services colleagues, including:

• More inclusive recruitment processes, such as contextual recruitment and blind recruitment, designed to focus on potential rather than background.
• Multiple entry routes into the profession, including our solicitor and business services apprenticeship programmes.
• Targeted outreach and mentoring – through initiatives such as Ethnicity.Talent.Law, Legal Explorers and joint mentoring programmes with clients – supporting talented students from under‑represented and less‑advantaged backgrounds.
• Practical support once you join, including workplace adjustments, wellbeing resources and access to specialist policies and programmes (for example, fertility support and parental pods).

We monitor progress and impact through annual diversity audits, inclusion surveys and UK (covering gender, ethnicity and, in the UK, disability, social mobility and LGBTQ+) and Dublin pay gap reporting These data sets help us track progress against our 2027 representation targets and refine our strategy each year.

Recent external recognition for our DE&I work includes:

• Listed in the Times Top 50 Employers for Gender Equality for the 17th time in 2026.
• Ranked 5th in the Social Mobility Foundation Employer Index (2025).
• Disability Confident Employer accreditation.
• Fertility Friendly Employer accreditation.
• “Leader” status in Stonewall’s Proud Employers scheme (2026).
• Innovation in Diversity Award at the 2024 Legal Innovation and Technology Awards for our neurodiversity programme.
• “Best LGBT Initiative of the Year” at both the Women and Diversity in Law Awards 2025 and the Legal 500 ESG Awards 2025 for our LGBTQ+ Legal‑Leaders Programme.
• Disability/Neurodiversity: Best Initiative to Attract and Retain Talent at the Legal 500 ESG Awards for the Legal Neurodiversity Network, which AG co‑founded.

We are also active members of external inclusion partnerships including Interlaw Diversity Forum, the Legal Neurodiversity Network, WorkLife Central, Black Solicitors Network, NOTICED, Stonewall, the Valuable 500, and PRIME.

• A key focus for Addleshaw Goddard is diversifying our trainee talent. To do this we have partnered with an external organisation, Rare, to introduce contextual recruitment and accountability into our graduate hiring process.
• Contextual recruitment looks at the context of academic achievement, and identifies candidates who have surpassed expectations or performed excellently in conditions of adversity.
• We have also removed our minimum A-level requirement to allow a more diverse pool of candidates to apply for training contracts at Addleshaw Goddard.
• We review your application without personal information to ensure we do not allow bias of any kind to affect the process.
• We have also increased the training for everyone involved in the recruitment process to ensure that we select people based on their ability, potential and nothing else.

We nurture strong links with reputable social mobility schemes and professional diversity networks such as Aspiring Solicitors, Upskill Me, Leadership Through Sport and Business, and PRIME and value their support and expertise when reaching out to untapped talent from non-traditional backgrounds.

We are signatories of the Social Mobility Business Compact: a government-led initiative which aims to reduce elitism and improve social mobility by encouraging businesses to open opportunities to everyone. 

In 2024, we proudly partnered with Aspiring Solicitors as the founding member of the SMART Commitment initiative. This programme offers financial support to socially diverse candidates participating in the firm’s placement scheme and to our future trainees.

We have always invested and partnered with local communities, schools and networks who are keen to raise the aspirations of young people – and will continue to do so by offering young talent opportunities to take part in quality work experience programmes and internships.

PRIME

We are a founding member of PRIME, an initiative through which law firms provide quality work experience placements to underprivileged school-age students. We work with local primary and secondary schools across London, Leeds, Manchester, Dublin and Edinburgh to inspire young people to fulfil their potential. 

Legal Explorers 

In 2023 we launched the AG Legal Explorer programme – a year-long programme offering mentoring, a laptop and work shadowing opportunities for socially diverse students. The programme now runs across offices in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dublin, Leeds, London and Manchester and will focus on preparing students to take the next step in their careers, such as applying for university or apprenticeship. 

Sonia McMahon Award

This award was established following the death of a colleague, Sonia McMahon. Sonia was a champion of inclusion and was passionate about providing greater opportunities for those from less privileged backgrounds.  The award is open to current law students and awards the two winners a £5,000 bursary (each), 12 months of mentoring and a week of work experience at the firm.  

Legal Access Scheme

Our award-winning Legal Access Scheme offers bright BPP University Law School students from unconventional or less privileged backgrounds a place on our summer placement programme. 26 candidates from this scheme have secured training contracts with us since its creation in 2007.

Lawscot Foundation 

We have partnered with LawScot Foundation to enable the opportunity for candidates from less privileged backgrounds a place on our summer placement scheme, along with providing a bursary for one candidate each year. We have our first trainee from this scheme starting with us in 2027. 

Street Law 

Street Law involves working with young people in schools to provide information about law and their rights and responsibilities. We work with low progression secondary schools to help raise aspirations and encourage young people to think about law as a possible career option, as well as providing useful legal information using interactive methods.