Our trainee programme is your chance to build a career with a leading professional services group that values diverse insights and perspectives. At Gateley, we are committed to your personal and professional growth and we are ambitious for your success.
Our trainee programme gives you a solid understanding of the law, and enables you to develop practical skills that will stick with you for your entire career. By the end of the programme, you’ll know exactly where your strengths and passions lie. The experiences you will gain and the connections you make will lay the perfect foundation for your future career.
We recruit our all of our future trainees directly from our summer vacation placements. Over the course of one week, you get the opportunity to meet different people at Gateley and to explore whether we are the right business to help you begin your legal career.
It all starts with a week-long induction where you will meet the rest of your graduate cohort and begin to build a network of contacts across Gateley. Our induction includes various presentations, training sessions and social events, and you’ll also take part in our Gateley Graduate Getaway at Patterdale Hall in the Lake District. The Getaway involves a variety of fun activities focused on team building and developing a growth mindset. There is plenty of time for socialising too, all in the beautiful setting of Ullswater.
During your training contract, you’ll complete four six-month seats. From day one, you’ll be given as much responsibility as possible and play a crucial role in your team. You’ll work directly with clients, building your client care and communication skills. Supervision and mentoring from experienced solicitors will guide you, alongside soft skills development training and regular coaching from our learning and development team. Our professional support lawyers also provide regular technical training. Your progress and performance will be regularly reviewed, both informally and at mid- and end-of-seat evaluations. Our trainee solicitors and graduate solicitor apprentices are integral to our Gateley Gives initiatives. Over the past decade, Gateley has raised over a million pounds for chosen charities and community projects, contributing countless hours to these deserving causes.
We’re looking for prospective trainees who truly embrace the Gateley team spirit.
We want individuals with ambition, those who are driven to achieve their personal and professional goals but who can maintain a strong sense of our businesses purpose.
We believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Gateley people care and are friendly to the core. We want prospective trainees who embody this – collaborative individuals who genuinely enjoy working together as part of a team.
To work at Gateley is to enjoy challenging conventions – not for the fun of it but to deliver the best results possible for our clients and our business. We are looking for forward thinkers that are inventive and always commercial.
Stuart Evans, our Training Principal, gives an overview of training contracts at Gateley, including the two sponsored routes to qualification that are available at Gateley, how the training contract is structured and the role of supervisor.
Here, our Training Principal, Stuart Evans, gives an overview of the induction process, talks about the Gateley Graduate Getaway and discusses other initiatives that trainees and apprentices can get involved in.
Applications open annually for both our training contract and graduate solicitor apprenticeship. You’ll need to complete our online form and submit your application before the deadline. Don’t worry if you don’t hear back straightaway – we review all applications after the closing date which is in January.
Once applications close, you’ll be invited to complete an interactive online assessment. This helps us understand more about how you think and approach challenges.
Our video assessment will give you pre-set questions which will require you to record your answers in an allocated amount of time.
Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an assessment centre. As well as completing a series of interactive assessments, you’ll meet some of our senior stakeholders, current trainees and the early careers team, giving you a real feel for life at Gateley.
If successful, you’ll join us for a one-week summer placement in June or July. You’ll experience our culture first-hand, work alongside our teams, and take part in a few assessments during the placement.
Offers are made within two to four weeks of completing the placement. If you’re not successful, we’ll provide feedback to help you with future applications – whether at Gateley or elsewhere.
We also welcome applications from our internal paralegals and, on occasion, may offer paralegal roles in the two-year period before your training contract begins. If you’re interested, let us know early on so we can keep in touch.
We recruit two years in advance from the point you are offered a training contract or graduate solicitor apprenticeship.
The best way to find out more about life at Gateley and how to join us is to attend one of our in-person insight events across our offices. Find out more about our insight events.
After we have received your application, and once applications close, all applicants will be invited to complete an interactive assessment, which will have a threshold score you will need to achieve in order to progress to the next stage. This will then be followed by a video assessment, should you pass this threshold.
If you are shortlisted, you will be invited to attend an in-person assessment centre, where you will have the opportunity to meet some of our senior stakeholders, trainees and early careers team.
If you are successful, you will attend a summer vacation placement in one of our Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Guildford or Reading offices.
Training contract offers are made within two to four weeks of completion of the placement. If you are unsuccessful, we will let you know what you could have done differently or better, to support you with future applications at Gateley or elsewhere.
In the two years before you start your training contract or apprenticeship, you will be in contact with Gateley right from the start. You will be invited to various social events and will be offered the opportunity to have a buddy from our current trainee cohort, so you have a point of contact here to ask any questions you may have before joining.
Your first week with us will start with our induction and Graduate Getaway, before you get started in your department for your training contract/ apprenticeship.
You can apply for a training contract/ graduate solicitor apprenticeship if you are:
Applications for training contracts and graduate solicitor apprenticeships open in October and close in January.
Our summer vacation placements take place in our Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Guildford and Reading offices. We advise candidates to apply for a training contract/ graduate solicitor apprenticeship at the same location in which they would like to start their training as it offers a great snapshot into what life is like in that Gateley office.
We usually offer 20-25 training contracts and graduate solicitor apprenticeships, however, this is reviewed each year to ensure it meets business needs.
Academics are important and you should aim for the best school/ college and university grades as you can. However, we understand that individuals may have mitigating circumstances and there is a section on our application form where you can detail these. We always look at applications and your summer vacation placement experience as a whole. If you have shown strengths in other areas and have demonstrated elements of our Gateley Team Spirit, we will consider all university degree grades.
Our trainee salaries are reviewed annually.
The September 2025 salary for first-year trainee solicitors and graduate solicitor apprentices in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham is £31,000, increasing to £33,000 in the second year.
The September 2025 salary for trainee solicitors and graduate solicitor apprentices in our Reading and Guildford offices is £33,000 in the first year, increasing to £35,000 in the second year.
Trainee solicitors and graduate solicitor apprentices in our London office receive £39,000 in the first year and £41,000 in the second year.
Trainee solicitors in our Belfast office receive £25,000 in the first year and £26,000 in the second year.
We are now sponsoring our future trainees to complete the new Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE). If you have not already completed the LPC and have accepted a training contract offer from us, we will ask you to study the LLM in Legal Practice (SQE 1 and 2) at the University of Law. If you need to complete a conversion course and have accepted a training contract offer with us, we will sponsor you to complete the Postgraduate Diploma in Law (PGDL) at the University of Law.
If you have any extenuating circumstances which may affect where you can study we would be happy to discuss this with you.
When you accept your training contract, we will provide financial support for your law school studies. We also offer a maintenance grant, should you study the full-time LLM in Legal Practice (SQE1 and 2).
We want to help you get settled into life at Gateley as soon as possible, so you will be invited to our Gateley Graduate Get-Together events before you join to help you get to know us more and feel part of our team. You will also be assigned a current trainee solicitor or graduate solicitor apprentice buddy, and be able to contact our early careers team whenever you need to.
Our training contracts and graduate solicitor apprenticeships are made up of four six-month seats. We do our very best to ensure at least one of these is a seat of your choice, in line with SRA guidelines and business needs.
We require trainee solicitors and graduate solicitor apprentices to do seats in the following core legal areas:
Yes, in some of our offices a number of our trainees have spent very rewarding and insightful seats working on client secondments. This is not guaranteed however and you should express your interest to your training representative if this is something you’d like to do.
Everything you need to know about training at Gateley, as well as how to qualify, can be found in our Early Careers brochure.
If there are no events listed below, please check back at a later date, or contact our team.
Networking
Birmingham
In March 2023 we held our first wheelchair basketball tournament in partnership with SportsAid.
We offer apprenticeships that enable you to develop a whole range of skills and to grow as individuals; we’re passionate about supporting our apprentices to develop their skills, confidence and networks.
If you are looking for that first role after university, there are many exciting opportunities across Gateley. We provide exciting opportunities that allow your strengths and ambitions to shine.
In our ‘Introduction to M&A law’ programme with Forage you will learn all about mergers and acquisitions and assist our team with a hypothetical transaction, applying critical thinking and commercial awareness.
Article
This article explains Heads of Terms in depth and highlights key considerations in relation to the leasing of commercial propert...
Partner, Gateley Legal