Our apprenticeship opportunity provides an excellent opportunity for individuals to learn and grow while gaining experience, and forging a long-term career with an award winning law firm.
Through our apprenticeship, you’ll gain the technical knowledge, practical experience and wider skills you need for your immediate job and future career all whilst gaining a professional qualification.
This will be achieved by completing a six-year apprenticeship spending 80% of your time (four days a week) working at Shoosmiths learning from our expert professionals and tackling real-life legal challenges. Simultaneously, you'll dedicate 20% of your time (one day a week) to studying relevant legal subjects and developing essential skills with our training provider.
In the workplace, you will carry out supervised work-based learning in order to meet the SRA’s competence statement and will produce a work-based assessment portfolio. In addition to examinations throughout the apprenticeship, there will also be an SRA centralised assessment that you will need to pass to qualify as a solicitor, The Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE).
You will study a range of modules online and face-to-face covering the subjects currently required by a qualifying law degree as well as vocational practice areas and skills.
The modules you will study will be based upon those modules which typically make up a law degree such as Introduction to Practice, English Legal Systems & Research, Contract Law, Public Law, Criminal Law, Tort Law, Land Law and Equity and Trusts. You will also study those modules which typically make up the Legal Practice Course such as Business Law and Practice, Property, Litigation, Wills and Administration of Estates.
You will receive support and guidance from us throughout your whole apprenticeship. In each team you will have a dedicated line manager, and you will also be paired with a buddy to help you settle into life at Shoosmiths.
You will also benefit from a Student Manager and Personal Tutor from our training provider. Your Student Manager is your dedicated point of contact throughout your apprenticeship, and their main role is to support you and monitor your progress in completing the requirements of the apprenticeship. Your Personal Tutor will meet with you when you attend face-to-face teaching sessions, and will assist you with compilation of your portfolio of workplace evidence and help you to identify how that evidence links to the knowledge, skills and behaviours required by the solicitor apprenticeship standard.
- Program length: Six years
- Location: Leeds
- Number of places: Two
- Start date: September 2025
- Salary: starting at £20,000, rising each year to match our trainee solicitor salary in year five and six.
- Work-study balance: 4 days working, 1 day studying
- Academic qualifications: Earn an LLB (Hons) in Law and Legal Practice
- Skills development: Focus on core legal knowledge, practical skills like legal writing and research, and professional ethics.
