I really enjoy attending the various recruitment events, both in person and online. Getting to interact with prospective candidates and hearing their insightful questions and thoughts never ceases to amaze me – each year the calibre of candidates gets better.

Mayer Brown runs two vacation schemes: one in spring (March to April); and one in summer (June). Both schemes are two weeks long and candidates spend each week in two different practice groups. The schemes take place in person in our London office.

We primarily recruit through our vacation scheme programme as we see a huge benefit, for both the firm and prospective training contract applicants, in the rich in-depth experience the schemes provide. However, we’ll always consider a pool of direct training contract applications, as we recognise that a vacation scheme isn’t a preferred, suitable or viable route for all individuals – for example, if they have parental or caring responsibilities, and/or if they’re in full-time employment.

Candidates can expect to gain exposure to live trainee tasks and projects to ensure they develop a true understanding of what it’s like to train at Mayer Brown. As candidates will complete each week in different areas of the business, we aim to ensure breadth in their experience and involve them in a range of different trainee tasks.

At Mayer Brown, we’re looking for hard working and committed individuals who demonstrate a passion for the work we do. We want our trainees to be intellectually curious and business minded. As a firm, we also pride ourselves on our culture, so we’re looking for authenticity and enthusiasm in our prospective trainees. Throughout the recruitment process, we’ll be testing candidates’ resilience, adaptability and commercial awareness, as well as placing an emphasis on their knowledge of the legal industry and, specifically, Mayer Brown.

We moved to the Solicitors Qualifying Exam (SQE) route in September 2024. Our first cohort of future trainees began studying towards the SQE in 2023 and have now completed the LLM SQE1&2 with BPP University Law School. There’ll be an 18-month transition period where we accommodate blended intakes if future trainees had already completed the Legal Practice Course at the point we offered them a training contact. BPP University is our preferred provider and all future trainees will receive a maintenance grant of £20,000 while completing the LLM SQE1&2.

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is at the heart of everything we do at Mayer Brown; it underpins our culture, core values and firm strategy. We partner with several organisations to ensure that we’re reaching a wide audience and attracting diverse talent. It’s important to note, however, that we’re not only focused on recruiting diverse talent, but retaining diverse talent too, and we strive to create an inclusive workplace. We have several internal networks, open to all employees, that focus on D&I activity, policy and strategy, and our trainees are very active (and often instrumental!) in this space. 

Throughout our application and assessment process, we’re looking for candidates to demonstrate a considered, thorough and detailed approach to their knowledge of the profession and Mayer Brown. There’s a tendency for applicants to provide generic and sweeping statements around their motivation for pursuing a career in commercial law, which can often be applied to a number of our competitors. Keep in mind that firms will likely favour quality over quantity – aim for a few developed and convincing reasons why you’re interested in training as a commercial solicitor, and make sure you’ve tailored your answer to the firm you’re applying to. 

The ongoing and continuous development of AI is something that we continue to monitor but we recognise that AI is a valuable tool. When applying to our vacation schemes and training contract, it’s important that applicants remember that we want to know who you are, individually and authentically, and that we value integrity for you to succeed in the process.

It’s key for us that applicants can confidently talk around our practice offering at Mayer Brown. While we provide a well-rounded and broad training experience, candidates should demonstrate an understanding of, and passion for, the main drivers of our business, which are finance, corporate and high-stakes litigation. We don’t want candidates to simply list cases or deals we’ve worked on – we need to see a genuine interest in the work we do, and why it appeals to them.

We adopt a hybrid approach to our recruitment season with a mixture of in person and virtual events. However, we focus on working with a range of providers, like LawCareersNet, as we want to ensure that we’re reaching students from many different universities, not just those in London and close proximity to our office. Our aim is to provide students with the right information so they can make an informed choice about whether a training contract with Mayer Brown aligns with their own values and goals.

I love a good autobiography, so I’m currently reading Viola Davies’ Finding Me. Being one of my favourite actresses, it’s been a real eye opener on her beginnings to her status as an award-winning actress.