Training Contract

Why train with us?

When you join us, you’ll be one of just six trainees. This means you’ll get plenty of opportunities to make your mark.

We’re looking for trainees who are genuinely excited to join a smaller firm that’s driven by its values, who understand that making a positive impact is as important to us as making a profit. We offer clients you can commit to, as well as incredibly interesting work. We enable and empower you to have client contact from the very beginning of your career.

You’ll begin to experience all of the unique qualities of a career at Bates Wells from the moment you’re given your training contract. We’ll keep in touch and invite you to our social events before your first day in the office.

We aim to have all our trainees qualify into the firm, where there is plenty of opportunity to grow and progress. One-third of our partners started out as Bates Wells trainees.

We’re looking for future lawyers who understand the work we undertake, the clients we work for and our values, and who are passionate about our principles. We encourage candidates with a range of outside work interests, which we’d like to see maintained and developed over the coming years. If this sounds like you and you are also a good communicator who can demonstrate academic potential please get in touch.

Finding and developing home-grown talent is important to us. We recruit six trainees each year and look to retain all of them at the end of their training contracts.

We are happy to consider applications for part-time training contracts. Please use the dedicated space on the application form to let us know if you would like to train part-time.

We currently pay first year trainees £41,000 and second year trainees £43,000. Our NQ salary is £70,000. We review all salaries annually.

If you secure a training contract with us and have not already completed the LPC or SQE, we will fund your SQE studies by paying your course fees, provided you have not already accepted a place on a course at the point at which we offer you a training contract. Please note that we do not cover course fees retrospectively.

We also provide maintenance grants of no less than £8,000 to support you whilst you’re studying.