Legal training at Bristol’s three biggest corporate law firms has been rated “outstanding” in a national survey of more than 1,500 trainees and junior solicitors.
Burges Salmon, Osborne Clarke and TLT are among just nine firms to gain the top A* rating in the poll conducted by Legal Cheek, the UK’s leading news source for junior lawyers and law students. 
Legal Cheek canvassed the views of rookies at nearly 60 top UK corporate law firms to find out the kind of tasks young lawyers are handed to give students objective information about where to start their careers.
Respondents were asked to rank their quality of work on a one-to-10 sliding scale, with one defined as “Shouldn’t they be outsourcing this stuff to a robot” and 10 as “Every day is a vigorous yet wonderfully enriching intellectual workout”.
In a report, headed ‘It’s not all photocopying and filing’, Osborne Clarke, TLT and Burges Salmon rub shoulders mainly with their London rivals such as the UK base of elite US giant Shearman & Sterling, and international firm Mishcon de Reya.
According to the survey, TLT’s formula partially works by undercutting leading City firms on the less glamorous aspects of banking transactions, which are then handed to teams of enthusiastic youth in Bristol as well as its offices in Manchester, Belfast, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
This translates into some highly stimulating work for trainees. One TLT youngster describes it as “proper work”, while another goes further to describe it as “10 out of 10”.
However, Legal Cheek says: “In a disclaimer for entitled millennials, it’s also worth noting that at times starting your career at TLT can be ‘like any job’ and indeed ‘you do have to go looking for [work] on occasions’. Still, there’s no doubt that this is a firm that gives its young lawyers plenty of responsibility.
The report says that Burges Salmon, thinks harder than most about what sort of work it gives trainees, befitting of a firm that also scored an A* for its training.
New starters can expect a highly varied buffet of tasks, with one rookie telling Legal Cheek that “every piece of work is different”.
It’s judgment on Burges Salmon goes on to say: “As with all firms, on some days the selection is rather more chips and potato wedges, to stretch the buffet analogy dangerously close to breaking point, with ‘those all-important but deadly boring bundling or admin jobs’ also part of Burges Salmon trainee life.
“The good news, one insider tells us, is that, ‘As I get further through my TC, the work is progressively more engaging as we get more competent. There are lots of members of support staff and we are encouraged to utilise their services so we aren’t stuck photocopying for hours’.
On Osborne Clarke, the report says there is a strong feeling among its trainee and junior cohort that they are being challenged in a way designed to boost their development.
One member of that group tells the website that they “definitely had much more responsibility than my friends at other firms and also was doing work that qualified new joiners hadn’t done in their previous firm!”
The report continues: “Another says that their supervisors ‘have always been open to listening to the types of tasks I’d like to get exposure to and actively searching it out’. Expect some typical trainee tasks too, like attendance notes, document lists and board minutes, but the general mix is geared towards development over drudge.”
Also on the list of nine A* firms are Trowers & Hamlins, Mills & Reeve, Kirkland & Ellis, and Bristows.
Legal Cheek was founded in 2011 by Alex Aldridge, formerly a journalist for The Guardian and Legal Week.
