Kick start your legal career with a legal trainee position in one of four Government Departments.
Who we are
This is your opportunity to start your legal career with a legal trainee position (training contract/qualifying work experience) at the heart of Government in either the Government Legal Department (GLD), including GLD’s Commercial Law Group and Department for Transport Legal Advisers, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the National Crime Agency (NCA) or the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
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.
Recruitment Process
On meeting our eligibility criteria, and successfully completing three online application tests, you will then move forward to the video interview stage. Following the video interview, the highest scoring candidates will be invited to a half day online assessment centre. If you are invited to the assessment centre, the Recruitment Team will email you asking you to book your preferred date, and you should book your place as soon as possible.
The Recruitment Team will also provide you with our information pack about the assessment centre, which will help you to prepare for this stage of the process.
You will be given the opportunity to indicate your preferred department. Departmental preferences will be considered at the offer stage but cannot be guaranteed. .
There will also be a conference call for those invited to the assessment centre. This will provide an opportunity to ask any questions on the assessment centre process and to hear from members of the Recruitment Team and representatives from the Government Legal Profession.
On appointment, trainee solicitors will typically spend six months in 4 different areas of practice (‘seats’) over the 2-year qualifying work experience/ training contract period. The type of work you will be involved in and on-the-job training depends upon the GLP department in which you are placed.
Culture and Values
Civil servants deliver their roles in the spirit of the Civil Service values of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.
Our legal trainees (trainee solicitors and pupil barristers) undertake high quality, high profile legal work in a supportive and collegiate working environment.
Benefits include a good work life balance; flexible-working opportunities; pro-active staff networks; access to high quality training and development programmes; and a pay and reward package that includes a generous annual leave allowance and an attractive pension scheme.
Equality and Diversity
The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. A person’s background is never seen as a limiting factor in the Civil Service, rather an asset that can be drawn upon to improve policy making and service delivery.
We are looking to attract and recruit talented people from a wide range of backgrounds.
We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's Recruitment Principles
When recruiting trainee solicitors and pupil barristers, factors such as A levels and GCSE results, university attended, degree subject and work experience do not form part of the GLP’s decision-making process.
Reasonable adjustments are available at all stages of the recruitment process and we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS).
