Life at Hugh James 

We never shy away from a challenge

We are a leading, full-service UK law firm. Since our beginning, we have been led by the things that matter. We care about fighting for the right outcomes. Solving the seemingly unsolvable. Protecting businesses, individuals and livelihoods. Supporting our people, our communities. Safeguarding our planet. Looking for a way forward? At Hugh James, challenges – of all sizes – are readily accepted.

The Hugh James difference

Our law firm has always been guided by the idea that self-belief is just as important as skillset. Our pursuit of righting wrongs and protecting what’s important keeps us driving forwards. It’s in our roots! We won’t stop until we find the answers; the outcomes that are needed.

We are focused on the work we do, the business we run, and our culture. Our entrepreneurial spirit has taken us from humble beginnings to a strong presence across the UK with offices in Cardiff, London, Manchester, Southampton and Plymouth – servicing clients from businesses, individuals and banks to public sector organisations, property companies, education establishments and utilities providers. Our collegiate culture, our forward-looking ethos, our values serve to make us bigger, better, bolder than ever before.

A positive force in the community

Our work with charities on a local and national level plays a huge part in our day-to-day lives. We work with a large range of charities, some of which we support through fundraising, donations, volunteering and others we partner with where our areas of work cross paths. Staff, clients everyone comes together through a shared passion to do good in the community and support those in need.

We look for highly motivated individuals with an excellent academic record, common sense, good communication skills and commercial awareness.

But it’s not all about education. We work in a friendly environment and like our staff to feel at ease with our culture so we value social skills and a good sense of humour.

Because of the commitment to offering some of the best training available, we generally recruit two years in advance. Our overriding objective is to retain our trainees as solicitors and we are proud to say that many of our present partners were trained at the firm and are now leaders in their field.

Our trainees work alongside our current solicitors in up to four different seats, each lasting six months, across a variety of practice areas.

When selecting seats for our trainees, we always consider individual preferences as well as business needs. Some training contracts will follow divisional lines and remain in either our business or individual services division for the duration of the training contract.

We also offer trainee secondment opportunities with some of our corporate and business clients. 

Generally, we ensure that newly qualified posts are advertised and allocated prior to the second year trainees’ final seat transfer in March of each year. This means that the successful applicants will spend the final six months of their training contracts in the role that they will have when they qualify.

There is an established career path for our solicitors to advance to associates, senior associates and finally become partners or legal directors of the firm. Each role has a clearly defined competency framework to enable you to decide whether applying for promotion would be the right decision for you at any given time. 

If you are at least a second-year undergraduate student, enrolled on the GDL, SQE, or have completed your studies, you can apply for our summer placement schemes.

Our summer placement schemes are an integral part of our recruitment process and they are our external route to a training contract with us. This experience provides insight into the life of a trainee at Hugh James across a variety of departments.

The scheme will run over the summer between June and August. The interviews will be held in April/May.

You will benefit from your own mentor, usually a current trainee solicitor, so you’ll have a go-to person for any of your queries. Where possible, we will immerse you in the day to day life of our teams which can involve attending court and client interviews.

During your placement with us, you can usually expect to spend time in a few different departments to fully experience life as a Hugh James trainee solicitor. At the end of your placement, you will be invited to interview for a training contract with us.

During your training contract, you will have a dedicated supervisor and regular appraisals to make sure you’re getting the most from your training. You will work alongside our current solicitors and will have the opportunity to work in up to four different seats across a variety of the firms practice areas.   

Trainee solicitors at Hugh James receive excellent legal training from experts in their fields. As a firm, we realise that becoming a great solicitor goes beyond the pure legal work. Training contract plus provides our trainees the opportunity to learn valuable skills, such as client interaction, business development, financial management, commercial awareness and more. The scheme is spearheaded by the firm’s training principal and partner, Matthew Evans and is part of the wider career development programme, Hugh James Potential.

We consider applications from all ages and backgrounds. 

Applications from non-law graduates are welcomed too if you are currently taking, or have completed, the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) or the SQE.

For our trainee solicitors we support both routes to qualification currently available. For those pursuing the SQE route, funding will be available for the SQE2 training course and exam.

• Banking & finance
• Dispute resolution
• Commercial litigation
• Professional negligence
• Property litigation
• Housing management
• Commercial property
• Corporate/commercial
• Construction infrastructure & projects
• Employment & HR services
• Regulatory
• Clinical negligence
• Private wealth disputes
• Environmental
• Family
• Financial Mis-selling
• Industrial disease
• Asbestos litigation
• Military
• Serious injury
• Specialist claims
• Nursing care
• Trusts & estates Administration
• Wills & estate planning
• Court of Protection

• Corporate & Commercial
• General Commercial
• General Practice
• Niche

• Cardiff
• London
• Manchester
• Southampton
• Plymouth