The Guardian UK 300: top law firms

…as voted for by students and graduates

The Guardian UK 300 features the largest and most comprehensive annual survey of student opinion on graduate careers, employers and their own job hunts. The survey determines not only the most popular 300 graduate employers in the UK overall, but also the most popular graduate employers in a range of career sectors, including law.

The top graduate employers for solicitors are listed in the table below. Allen & Overy LLP remains in pole position and Baker McKenzie holds on to fifth, but otherwise there are a huge number of changes within the top ten. For example, Slaughter and May climbs from seventh to third and Herbert Smith Freehills LLP from fourteenth to eighth.

Students interested in solicitors careers…

expected an annual income of £28,775; according to data collected by TARGETjobs, those joining commercial firms can expect considerably more
mostly studied law (78%); the non-law students that were most interested in a career as a solicitor studied history/philosophy (7%)
largely agreed with the statement ‘I would accept a lower salary if I thought an employer was very suited to me’ (64%).*

*Statistics have been rounded.

Over 62,000 undergraduates took part in the trendence Graduate Study 2017, which formed the basis of the results in The Guardian UK 300.