Trainee Solicitor Opportunities

Choosing the firm you will be training with is one of the most important decisions in your career. The following introduction to our training contracts and testaments from our current and previous trainees will hopefully help you in making this decision.

We offer a comprehensive legal service which has enabled us to advise families for generations and businesses for decades. This translates to our trainee programme in many ways.

Each year we recruit three – six trainees. From September 2026, we will offer a Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) training contract which will be two years and nine months long and include the following:

• September 2026 – Office-based induction and introduction to the firm for three weeks, followed by full time SQE1 online preparation course, paid for by the firm. We would encourage you to study at least part of the time in one of our offices
• January 2027 – SQE1 exam
• January 2027 – January 2028 – Two seats of qualifying work experience, each lasting six months. Where possible, we try to place you in your preferred seat, but we always make sure that your seats are a combination of contentious and non-contentious law
• January 2028- March 2028 – Full time SQE2 online preparation course, paid for by the firm. We would encourage you to study at least part of the time in one of our offices
• April 2028 – May 2028 – SQE2 exam
• May/June 2028- June 2029 – Two seats of qualifying work experience, each lasting six months.

You will be paid your salary throughout your SQE studies, with the cost of preparation courses and exams also being met by the firm.

If you have already passed the LPC, we can still offer a two-year training contract of four six-month seats instead.

To make sure that our trainees get exposure to a wide variety of matters, most of our seats are based at different office locations. You will have the opportunity to work alongside highly experienced fee earners who will teach you not only the technical side of matters, but also our ethos of providing a personal service. You will have full exposure of matters from beginning to end and you will be assigned a mentor who will be there for individual support.

Your application

Our recruitment process commences 18 months before your training contract starts. In practice this means that the deadline for applications is the end of February of the previous year (i.e. the deadline for the August 2026 trainees is the end of February 2025).

To apply for 2026 training contracts, please submit the attached Trainee Solicitor Application Form. The job reference number is TC11. Please also attach a copy of your CV and a covering letter and send this to jobs@twmsolicitors.com.

Our trainees come from a variety of backgrounds, and what we are looking for in our trainees is a strong academic background (law, non-law related degree or GDL of preferably 2:1 or higher), along with:

• Previous relevant work experience that shows a genuine interest in law
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Evidence of a pro-active approach to work
• An ability to work as part of a team and to deadlines
• Proficient working IT knowledge including the Microsoft Office suite.

We will select a shortlist of candidates who will be invited for an assessment day. The assessment day is designed so that we can get a good insight into your written and oral communication skills and assess your ability to work in a team – you will be asked to discuss a given subject with a group of people and present your ideas to us.

You will be presented with the following tasks:

• A critical reasoning test
• A written exercise
• A group discussion, including a presentation
• An interview.

We understand that you will be nervous, and naturally you will be stronger in some exercises and weaker in others. What we will be looking for is a strong overall performance, a friendly but professional personality and someone who relates to others and uses their common sense throughout the tasks.

We encourage our trainees to join in activities outside of work, use their initiative, and demonstrate a willingness to take on additional responsibilities. We recruit people who value, and want to contribute to, the provision of top-quality legal services; possess good interpersonal skills; balance legal knowledge with commercial awareness; and are committed to professionalism in all aspects of their work.

No matter which department you join throughout your training, you will be part of a team helping to ensure that our clients receive the proactive and professional service for which TWM is well known.

Our investment in you

Currently, Year 1 trainees receive a salary of £28,130 per annum and Year 2 trainees receive £29,818 per annum. In addition, all of our employees receive group life insurance, a contributory pension, 25 days’ holiday, and optional health insurance.

For further information, please contact a member of our HR team at hr@twmsolicitors.com.

Or download a copy of our TWM Training Contract Brochure.

TWM Solicitors is an equal opportunities employer.