Solicitor Training Contracts

At Osbornes, we encourage our trainees’ development through active mentorship, early client interaction, and a highly collaborative environment. Our aim is to produce highly ranked solicitors and future Osbornes Partners.

We pride ourselves on providing a bespoke experience for our clients by offering a comprehensive range of personal legal services. Across all of our departments, our solicitors excel in their fields as demonstrated both by our clients’ testimonials, and Chambers and Legal500 rankings.

Training seats are offered in the following areas: Personal Injury, Clinical Negligence, Family (Matrimonial), Family (Childcare), Conveyancing, Private Client, and Litigation.

We encourage our trainees to work with colleagues at all levels, and all training seats are supervised by one of our Partners. You can find a day in the life of one of our trainees here.

We are proud to have achieved an accreditation by Best Companies and have been ranked as an ‘Outstanding Company To Work For’ for the last two consecutive years. This accreditation is awarded after an in-depth research period undertaken by Best Companies, during which they survey all staff. The firm is then benchmarked against other firms and in the legal sector, for a firm of our size, we are ranked as the 5th best Law firm to work for in the UK.

Applicants for our training contract should have a minimum of 3 B’s at A-level and should have achieved, or be on track for, a minimum of a second class degree. If you do not meet these requirements but believe there are mitigating circumstances, we would be happy to consider your application. Please ensure to include information regarding the mitigating circumstances where relevant on the application form.

Accepted Routes

Amongst our firm, we have colleagues from all walks of life. There are career changers, CILEx professionals, foreign qualified lawyers, and solicitors who have qualified both via the LPC and SQE routes.

For our training contracts, we are currently accepting applicants who have completed or due to complete their LPC, and those intending to qualify via the SQE. Several of our trainees are also internal applicants and we encourage prospective trainees to pursue paralegal experience with us.

Provided your method of qualification is still valid under the SRA regulations, we are happy to consider your application.

Training Contract Application Process

At Osbornes, we take on 5 trainees each year.

Our Training Contract application form can be downloaded via the following link. Once completed, please provide the form via email to our Practice Manager, Sandra Hillard at Sandra.Hillard@osborneslaw.com.

Successful applicants will be invited to an interview with two of our Partners and asked to complete a written paper. The written paper is formed of three questions. Both the first interview and written paper test a range of skills through scenario-based and knowledge-based questions. Following this, we will conduct a final round of interviews to select our new trainees.

Deadlines for Training Contract applications are 31 March 2025.

Timeframes

• Deadline for applications: 31 March 2025.
• Telephone Interviews: May 2025
• 1st and 2nd Interviews: June and July 2025
• Offers: 31 July 2025

Statistics

• Partners – 29 Partners
• Equity Partners – 15 Equity Partners
• Gender diversity – 16 Female Partners
• Opportunities – 17 Partners promoted from within
• Number of staff – 178 employees
• Trainee retention – over the last 5 years, we have retained 85% of our trainees as NQs
• Partners who trained with the firm – 7

Rankings

• Chambers: 9 departments ranked; 26 solicitors ranked
• Legal500: 8 departments ranked; 42 solicitors named