Trowers & Hamlins will retain 70% of its second-year trainees in newly-qualified (NQ) roles this autumn, while Withers has decided to keep 73% of its final-year group this year, both a fall from last year’s retention rates.
Seven Trowers’ trainees from ten-strong cohort will be retained to qualify into the firm’s commercial property, corporate, construction and real estate departments.
Four of those NQ solicitors will be based in Trowers’ London office, while two will be in Exeter and one in Manchester.
Trowers banking partner and training principal Anna Clark told Legal Business the firm was ’very pleased with the trainees who have stayed with us’ and described them as an ‘excellent intake.’
However, slightly fewer trainees have been retained than last year’s autumn intake, when 11 of 14, or 79% of trainees were kept on. The rate is also significantly lower than Trowers’ spring 2017 trainee retention, when it retained 11 out of 12 or 92% trainees.
The NQ solicitors are Lillian Adebayo, John Garland, Miranda Hamilton-Wood, Rachael Hershman, Emma Kirby, Jasmine Ratta and Justin Ryan.
Trowers has multiple UK offices, a Middle East and South East Asia presence, and bases in Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain. The firm is ranked by Legal 500 tier one for local government legal work.
City firm Withers’ trainee retention rate also fell slightly, as the global private client firm has offered newly-qualified (NQ) contracts to eight of its 11 second-year trainees qualifying this autumn.
In 2016, the firm retained 10 out of its 12 or 83% of its second-year trainees.
NQs at the global private client firm were paid £60,000 this year, after Withers decided to increase their salaries by 7% in October 2016, up from £56,000 in 2015.
The NQ solicitors will qualify across a number of practice areas: one in litigation and arbitration, one in contentious trusts and succession, two in private client and tax, one in charities, and three in the family law team.
Since October 2016’s pay review, first year trainees at Withers were paid £37,000, up from £34,000, with second year salaries £40,000 raised from £37,000.
Withers, which specialises in services for high-net worth individual private clients, has 167 partners, a third of them trained at the firm, across 17 offices across Europe, US, the Caribbean, Asia and Australia.
tom.baker@legalease.co.uk and marco.cillario@legalbusiness.co.uk