Allen & Overy is an international legal practice with over 5,000 people in 34 major centres worldwide (we have 34 offices). Our clients include many of the world’s top businesses, financial institutions and governments. We are renowned for the high quality of our Banking, Corporate and International Capital Markets advice, but also have major strengths in areas such as Dispute Resolution, Tax, Employment and Employee Benefits and Real Estate. Our partners frequently lead the field in their particular areas of law and we can claim both an enviable reputation amongst clients and unrivalled success in major deals.

Our Training Contract

Within this broad range of expertise we offer a training contract characterised by flexibility and choice – our training programme is widely regarded as the best in the City and continues throughout your career at Allen & Overy following qualification. Our aim is to recruit, train and develop successful lawyers who want to develop a long-term career with Allen & Overy.

All our future trainees take the Allen & Overy-specific LPC at The College of Law in London. The course has been specially designed to equip you with the skills and knowledge needed to be a successful solicitor, and is set in the context of the type of transactions Allen & Overy lawyers are involved in. The modules you take will focus on our core practice areas, to ensure your time at law school is the best possible preparation for your training contract with Allen & Overy. It will provide you with a sound technical and theoretical background for your career with us. The Allen & Overy LPC also means that you will develop strong bonds with your new colleagues and build friendships from day one.

You will have a tailored training contract, designed to give you the best start to your career. Given the strength of our international finance practice, we require our trainees to spend a minimum of 12 months in at least two of the following departments: Banking, Corporate and International Capital Markets. There is also the opportunity for trainees to spend three or six months of their training contract in one of our international offices or on a client secondment. The firm also now offers trainees the option of completing a litigation course. This means that trainees will no longer need to spend time in the firm’s dispute resolution or employment departments to gain their contentious experience if they are sure their interests lie elsewhere.

When to apply

We recruit around 105 trainee solicitors each year across two intakes (March and September). Applications are welcome from law and non-law graduates. Our current starting salary for trainee solicitors is £38,000, rising to £43,200 in the second year of training.

From 1st June 2010 - 31st July 2010, penultimate year law undergraduates can apply for our training contracts for interview in September 2010. We will only be accepting applications for our September 2012 / March 2013 intakes. 

Final year non-law students can apply from the 1st November 2010 - 16th January 2011 for our September 2013 / March 2014 intakes.