The schemes gave me invaluable insight into working in a law firm, and the different practice areas that were on offer. With the competition for training contracts becoming increasingly tough, candidates are becoming more conscious of their educational background as they pursue a place at a highly competitive Magic Circle firm. I am sharing my experience in the hopes that I can aid aspiring lawyers and support others in taking advantage of similar opportunities. The Chambers USA 2021 guide will be released in May 2021. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". It was argued that by 2023 global law firms will rather be split between the Global Elite law firms, International Business law firms and Super Boutique law firms. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. idk01. Do firms look at your university during the application process? As firms recruit on a case to case basis, and are keen to make entering law as accessible as possible, the . Can you do anything with a 2:1 in Oxford law? It shows that a whopping 44% of partners at firms in the magic and silver circle attended . A unique look at who the Magic Circle of law firms are and how they have continued to expand their growth in the US with additional hires. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. Boost your law career for free. This study will point to issues about social mobility in the law. The cookie is used by cdn services like CloudFlare to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. This is no surprise given the dominance of the duo in academia. The Russell Group dominates the market at 81.4%. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. Barristers from it worked on 64 matters for the Magic Circle law firms since 2015. You can accept or reject cookies which are not essential for the site to work by clicking on the Cookie settings below. Clifford Chance, headquartered in London, is one of the world's largest law firms, both by size and revenue. Prestigious law firms lock their gaze on graduates from these prestigious universities, knowing they dont have to look far for the brightest and most driven candidates. So we cant conclude that the law firms have hired from a more diverse range of universities: whatever progress has happened beyond the Russell Group, its not significant. At most firms youll meet a balance of law and non-law grads. Find more on our methodology, plus a few disclaimers at the bottom of this page. Sign up for our newsletter to boost your commercial awareness. How does a non-law graduate prepare for the SQE exams? The latter two are the only universities outside of England to rank at all. At national firms those with various offices throughout the UK a clear winner emerged: Manchester took centre stage, leaving Durham some way behind. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement". Also worth mentioning are Southampton, Edinburgh and Cardiff, which appear almost every year too. Choosing a University Other Things to Consider. King's College London A102 GEM 2023 Entry. For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our. The Russell Group dominates the market at 81.4%. We also found that London attracted the highest proportion of overseas graduates. But the highest salaries in the business and top-notch commercial work also demand stamina and an appetite for long hours and hard work, more than any other city. Read more: Freshfields increases partner pay to 1.84m. The Super Boutique law firms comprise Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Sullivan & Cromwell; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Slaughter and May; and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. In nine years, law firms appetite for Oxbridge and Russell Group students has remained pretty much constant. One of my distant relatives is a director at one of the Magic Circle Law Firms, however I am yet to contact them regarding it. Remember everyone, we depend on your tips to stay on top of important bonus updates, so when . This is an informal term used to describe what are generally regarded as the five leading UK-headquartered law firms, namely Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters and Slaughter and May. We could stop our investigation right here: the law is demanding, intellectually rigorous and it needs capable graduates see graph. Want a more specific insight into each of these firms? We then combined this with our data all the way back to 2010, when most of the current. . The highly esteemed quintet are renowned for their pedigree in the most complex and high- profile mandates for the most significant clients, their outstanding financial performance and the highly impressive number of individual lawyers working across a multitude of practice areas offered. This is a analytic and behavioural cookie used for improving the visitor experience on the website. I assume this is because the stats didn't take into account the yearly law intake for each uni, which is quite low for LSE. Could someone read this and share their thoughts and corrections? Other notable Russell Group unis which perform disappointingly include York (2%), Warwick (3%) and LSE (4%). Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Nearly one in four of our London interviewees had an Oxbridge degree. Also, at the time the term was coined, the corporate practice at Herbert Smith (as it was known pre-merger) was focused on privatisation work, which had dried up. 'You should be on track for, or have obtained, a 2:1 degree minimum.' how they beat every UK university in the salaries table, To find out about qualifying as a lawyer from overseas, read on>>. Copyright The Student Room 2023 all rights reserved. Since employability is a factor in a universitys prestige, this is a convenient relationship for both the firms and the universities, so its hard to break. Quiz now! Its all about the grades, we hear and, rightly, firms conceal their preferences for certain universities. Even the top law firms do not specify attending a particular university, or particular group of universities in their application process. A list of the universities attended by partners at top City of London law firms has been published. At the time, Herbert Smith was languishing in the corporate stakes, and so was consigned to the outer darkness. This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos. Career change to Law contemplationwill I be too old at 33? The Chambers Student Guide survey recently published a study examining which universities law firms recruit most from. Is Clifford Chance the law firm for you? Since employability is a factor in a universitys status and funding, this is a convenient relationship for both the firms and the universities, so its hard to break. Instead they're becoming more interested in simply sourcing candidates with the right qualities to make them a great lawyer. "[1], In 2013, The Lawyer argued that Clifford Chance and Slaughter and May should no longer form part of the Magic Circle. Magic circle law firm Clifford Chance has appointed The University of Law (ULaw) to help prepare its future trainees to sit the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE), it confirmed today. This domain of this cookie is owned by Vimeo. [3], In 2004, Slaughter and May's then senior partner, Tim Clark, said: "It's a funny concept. But there are new discoveries, and questions you should ask, like what this tells us about the firms, what your prospects are and who your colleagues will be, and then deeper concerns arise about social mobility in the law. The data below is drawn from the entirety of our research in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012. 19. This page was last edited on 19 January 2023, at 22:04. But who are the Magic Circle law firms? Youve heard of the Magic Circle, but did you know that theres also a Silver Circle? Each trainee told us where they completed their undergraduate degrees. The university superduo dominated the US and magic circle firms in particular: 24% of all US firm trainees and 31% of all magic circle trainees hailed . The order of universities changes depending on the market and region of the UK. What do they look for in Clifford Chance training contract candidates? With this intriguing, informal nickname comes an increasingly high reputation; described by The Guardian writer Laura Paddison, theyre the firms that promise top graduates a glittering name on their CV, A-list corporate clients and excellent training. The link between prestigious institutions and prestigious careers is difficult to challenge. Magic Circle Interview Tips: Things to Be Aware of . The arrival in Northern California demonstrates Freshfields' rapidly-growing strength in the USA, fuelled by a significant expansion in the number of its partners through lateral hiring. Got questions about the SQE? This cookies is installed by Google Universal Analytics to throttle the request rate to limit the colllection of data on high traffic sites. The graph above implies theres a difference in average earnings between law and non-law grads, so we crunched the numbers and found this: the average NQ salary for non-law students is 72,551, 6% higher than the average NQ salary earned by law grads: 68,406. Will taking Further Maths as a third subject be a disadvantage to apply for uni? Sheikh Jassim aims to win Manchester United takeover battle with extra $1bn, Printworks: London nightlife venue to become offices as new plans revealed, UK to avoid recession but inflation wont return to Bank of England target until end of next year, Bomb like devices planted in Englands legal heartland amid 1m court wrangle with a top lawyer, Russian tycoons ex criticised by London judge for costly and destructive divorce fight with 9m bill, Bitcoin inventor court proceedings dropped in London as judge says its no longer in public interest, No firms charged with failure to prevent tax evasion in 6 years heres why. Eight musts for training contract applications, How to succeed at interviews and assessment days, True confessions of a training contract applicant. The more that firms adopt techniques like CV blind interviewing, the more pressure there'll be across the industry to broaden recruitment and adhere to new standards. This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. Solicitor Apprenticeships are one such example, and are an alternative to attending university, meaning that you can get started with a legal career without even attending university. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. and "At the end of the day we see ourselves as one of the leading global law firms, not one of the leading Magic Circle firms". There were over 107 UK universities mentioned in our data from 2010-2018. In three years the number of Oxbridge grads taken on by City firms has dipped by 2.5%. To find out about qualifying as a lawyer from overseas, read on>>, City (above including the magic circle and US firms): firms focused on City business sectors, such as finance, capital markets, corporate transactions, investment, insurance, energy. Although Oxbridge students make up less than 1% of each years graduating class, they made up a whopping 15.4% of all our trainee lawyer interviewees. The Student Room and The Uni Guide are both part of The Student Room Group. The prestige, the career opportunities, the money and the city itself combine to attract the brightest, hungriest and most gumptious graduates. [12] These firms have a lower turnover than the members of the Magic Circle, but consistently have an average profits per equity partner (PEP) and average revenue per lawyer (RPL) far above the UK average[13][14][15] (and, in some instances, higher than members of the Magic Circle). [2], The Magic Circle has been termed a "journalistic device, coined by legal reporters in the wake of the break-up of its predecessor, the 'Club of Nine'". The London-based global firm secured a role in 2020 on drugmaker AstraZeneca's $39bn acquisition of US pharma group Alexion Pharma, one of the biggest deals of the year. Magic is in the air at this Biglaw firm! It argued that Clifford Chances profitability does not match the other Magic Circle firms, and that Slaughter and May operates a different (UK-focused) model, with revenue less than half of the other Magic Circle firms. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. Hi all, After doing some research on the percentage of students from different universities at. Oxbridge, Durham and LSE dominate the US/Magic circle so that's hardly a surprise but Bristol, Exeter, UCL and Warwick also put up a good show. Number of Individuals Rankings in Chambers USA. Here are the results. Our graph below makes no distinction between UK and non-UK citizens. [citation needed] For example, graduates of Bristol, Nottingham, Kings College London and Durham account for a combined 44% of all Russell Group-educated magic and silver circle partners. Masaryk University; is it worth going as an international student? This survey gives the real story on entry requirements. End of the road: Why More Than will no longer sell car insurance as insurer RSA quits market, Could fixing workplace stress save the UK 28bn a year? Although Russell Group candidates currently dominate the universities which lawyers at Magic Circle firms recruit from, you do not need to attend one of these universities to secure a position at a Magic Circle Firm. A commitment to a career in international commercial law; A commitment to and clear articulation of why you want to work at Allen & Overy; Commercial awareness of both the law and business; Genuine interest and a motivation towards a career in commercial law; The name Freshfields was introduced by James William Freshfield. If you're currently studying at a non-Russell Group university, do not be discouraged by this report. Meanwhile, Allen & Overy also saw the arrivals of Paul Keller and Adam Sofen in 2020, from Norton Rose Fulbright and Sullivan & Cromwell respectively, while Clifford Chance added Department of Justice antitrust chief Peter Mucchetti and Linklaters welcomed Schulte Roth investment funds partner Brad Caswell last year. What universities do Magic Circle Firms recruit from. [1] In 1996, Stephenson Harwood was asked to leave the Club of Nine due to its stagnant performance, and the Club was disbanded in 2000. [8][9][10][11], Among the large firms not included in the term are Herbert Smith Freehills; Hogan Lovells; Norton Rose Fulbright; and Stephenson Harwood, which are less profitable. Durham is the best out of your choices, but all will be fine, all are Russell Group and are visited by the magic circle firms. We found that universities like Northumbria, Kent, Reading, UEA and UWE played a much greater role in supplying trainees to national and regional firms. If your university isn't ranked highly on our charts, or doesn't appear at all, don't despair: it's likely that graduates from this particular institution have had greater success bagging training contracts at smaller firms. James is a dual-qualified practitioner in both civil law (an advocate in Indonesia) and common law legal systems (a solicitor in England & Wales). It merged with Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Lober and Deringer Tessin Herrmann & Sedemund in 2000; Relevant experience in one or more of their practice areas. Initially, the Magic Circle's membership was described by commentators as comprising the UK firms with strong corporate practices or international work. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". We know that anyone can become a lawyer, regardless of where they completed their undergraduate degree. If theres a regional firm youre interested in, its still worth applying, highlighting what you would bring to the role. Conducted over a period of three years, the survey data was based on 2,300 interviews with trainees at 124 law firms. The term was coined in the 1990s by The Lawyer magazine and is based on the quintets close relationship with the Citys leading banks and stranglehold on the best corporate finance work. For example, Manchester and Nottinghams undergrad enrolments are over three times the size of St Andrews. Since our last report in 2016, we've interviewed 2,500 trainees. How likely is a UK property market crash and what IS happening with house prices? Although Russell Group candidates currently dominate the universities which lawyers at Magic Circle firms recruit from, you do not need to attend one of these universities to secure a position at a Magic Circle Firm. ", "Freshfields in the US: Don't call us magic circle", "Linklaters' Simon Davies: "The magic circle isn't what it used to be", "Revealed: The magic circle's barristers chambers of choice", "An obituary for the term 'Big 6' law firms in Australia", "Elite 'red circle' firms Zhong Lun and Jun He plot merger as consolidation grips China legal market", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magic_Circle_(law_firms)&oldid=1134664562. And our big discovery is that very little has changed in a decade. These results mostly relate to the larger commercial firms that take part in our guide. The prestige, the career opportunities, the money and the city itself combine to attract the brightest, hungriest graduates. Want regular information and advice on how to get into law? Less established US firms concentrate their recruitment efforts on the 'top' universities in order to increase their prestige and position in the London market. The firm has 570 partners and over 6,000 staff. City firms are either more selective, or targeted more heavily by Russell Group students. As firms recruit on a case to case basis, and are keen to make entering law as accessible as possible, the university you attend does not impact your application as long as you meet the rest of the criteria for that firm. Quiz, 12 Pro Interview Tips from a Magic Circle Partner, Clifford Chance Interview: From Trainee to Associate, Freshfields training contract recruiter interview, Why You Should Choose a Regional Office Training Contract, Five days of paid work experience to SPARK your law career, Interview with a STEM Trainee Associate at Herbert Smith Freehills, Students currently in their penultimate year of study, finalists and graduates of all degree disciplines, 2021/2022/2023 (March & September intakes), Penultimate or final year students; graduates, 1987, by merger of Clifford Turner and Coward Chance, 8000 (London), 7000 (outside of London), Weeks commencing 13 January and 27 January 2020, You can only apply for SPARK if you are in your first year or the second year of a four year course, Penultimate and final year law students; law graduates; GDL graduates, Winter Training Contract (Law and Non-Law), Final year law students; law graduates; final year non-law students; non-law graduates, 8000 (in London), 7000 (outside of London), Penultimate and final year law or non-law students; law or non-law graduates; law or non-law postgraduates, 1889, by William Capel Slaughter and William May, BPP University, London Waterloo + GDL Extra Programme, Law students in the penultimate year of their undergraduate degree and law students in the second year of a four year course who will be going abroad in their third year. This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. City heavies Clifford Chance and Macfarlanes set the ball rolling with 'CV blind' interviews; a recruitment method which (you guessed it) leaves interviewers in the dark about candidates' educational backgrounds. LPC? Almost half a century since crossing the Atlantic and opening in New York in 1977, leading law firm Freshfields announced the launch of its first California office in late 2020, hiring a multidisciplinary team from local firms and transferring two attorneys from Brussels and New York. Kings - English law and French law degree, Law Applicants 2023 entry - discussion thread, HKU-UCL, KCL-CUHK, Exeter-CUHK Law interviews, Cambridge Sixth Form Law Conference 2023 (CSFLC). 76.5% of trainees at the leading 130+ firms are Oxbridge and Russell Group graduates, London universities topple Oxbridge for graduate earnings in law, Non-law graduates earn 6% more than law grads, Regional firms prefer regional universities. The number of universities that trainees hailed from was up by 14% compared to our last report three years ago. One magic circle interviewee was a single mum with two kids and had graduated through the Open University. For example, Leicester runs a very well-regarded law degree, and so has a strong showing. You'll be familiar with this declaration from poring over law firms' grad recruitment pages. LLM? If youre an aspiring solicitor, youve almost certainly heard of the Magic Circle law firms.