Apprentice Solicitor Review

Each day is different as I am assisting solicitors, directors and partners with the running of their files. I frequently am asked to draft court and other legal documents such as proceedings and have lots of email and telephone correspondence with third parties such as clients, opposing solicitors and the court / tribunal. I attend client meetings, ensuring | take attendance notes for our file. I am given some short term responsibilities such as monitoring and ensuring I meet my own deadlines and providing support / training to other apprentices but do not have many more responsibilities than this as I don't run my own files and overall responsibility lies with the file handlers.

I have developed my communication and time management skills and further learnt and developed my drafting skills, particularly with regards to legal documents and the technical language often required to be included. Due to rotating departments, I have received training across various different practice areas such as personal injury, commercial litigation, real estate litigation and banking.

On a day-to-day basis from a work perspective I enjoy the programme. I am able to assist lots of solicitors with varying degrees of experience and get involved in a variety of interesting work. However, there is a lack of support from work/BPP in respect of exams and no additional study leave is given (save for Bank Holiday Mondays when university is closed and days are received back in lieu) meaning annual leave is often taken up with revision and meeting deadlines so there is very little by way of work-life balance and very few opportunities for breaks. Seat rotation process is often very stressful and disorganised. BPP prefer that we do not take annual leave in term time to avoid missing classes and usually the end of a term will coincide with seat rotation and so often work would ask us not to take annual leave then to avoid missing inductions and early stages of seats which makes it very difficult to take time off. Apprentices in the firm go largely unrecognised and there is little understanding by many of what the apprenticeship is, what it entails and the levels of work involved. Due to lack of work/study-life balance, I often feel stressed and overwhelmed with little support from work and university.

On paper the organisation and structure is good but in practice sometimes lacks. The allocated study day is very helpful and welcome but on occasion I have needed to change this upon the request of supervisors due to work commitments meaning I have missed my classes. There should be bi-monthly catch up meetings with our apprentice supervisor but these are often cancelled or pushed back. Changing teams every 6 months is great from an experience perspective but the actual process of allocating seats is often chaotic and disorganised. Exams do not fall on our allocated study day meaning additional annual leave is needing to be taken to ensure we can sit the exams and seat rotation often coincides with exam dates which is very stressful. BPP prefer that we do not take annual leave in term time to avoid missing classes and usually the exams and end of a term will coincide with seat rotation and so often work would ask us not to take annual leave then to avoid missing inductions and early stages of seats which makes it very difficult to take time off.

Communication is sometimes lacking and the apprenticeship does not seem to be well promoted internally by the firm meaning I often have to explain my role and specific requirements re. exams, study leave and non-working days. We should have bi-monthly catch up meetings with our apprentice supervisor but these are often cancelled or pushed back. There is little support by way of an allocation of study leave, meaning our annual leave is taken up on exams and revision. Generally however, if an issue is raised we are supported and work do what they can to assist with that.

Very little support is received from BPP on a pastoral level. Termly review meetings have ceased and I have gone over a year without speaking to my apprentice manager there. Tutoring is often poor as are the learning materials contained on the Hub which itself keeps going down for days at a time meaning we are unable to access the materials we need to prepare for lectures and complete tasks. Lectures are too long and start too late with little relevance to the exam itself (exams all MCQ based but very little by way of MCQ practice in lectures or on Hub) and when this has been raised, we have been told that the times can't be changed nor can the content. Very little support has been given in relation to portfolio completion.

Often the modules being studied do not link in to the teams we are placed in and therefore the actual studying of them does not assist in practice as each module is very different. When modules have coincided, being able to apply the theory from study with the practicalities of practising in this area has helped my understanding.

There are lots of clubs to get involved in albeit many of these were forced to stop due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I am aware of various groups such as the Young Professionals network which i am a member of and through the foundation, lots of CSR activities take place.

Yes

Overall the work experience gained at DWF is great. The opportunity to rotate teams provides a high level of experience and exposes you to both contentious and non-contentious work and gives you the opportunity to work with various people across the firm with differing levels of experience.

N/A