Pinsent Masons are proud to offer a comprehensive 2-year programme for trainee lawyers. This programme allows you to gain invaluable experience across various practice areas while developing the essential knowledge and skills needed to thrive in the legal profession. Our training contract is meticulously crafted to lay a strong foundation for your future career, featuring mentorship, training, and ongoing support to help you achieve your fullest potential.
Our trainees salaries are subject to review on an annual basis. The salary rates as of August 2024 are as follows:
Financial sponsorship
Candidates at our Dublin Office must undertake the Professional Practice Course (PPC) during their Training Contract.
As a firm we’re keen to recruit the most talented people, whilst ensuring fair access to the profession. That's why we cover the cost of the tuition fees for these courses.
The below shows the typical recruitment process for our Early Talent programmes in our UK, Dublin, Johannesburg and Dubai offices:
Tell us about yourself, your academic history and your employment history where applicable. We also gather information about you to support our contextualized recruitment approach.
The next stage of the recruitment process will involve completing our online blended assessment. This blended assessment incorporates situational judgment questions, a written case study and a short recorded video interview allowing us to see how well you would perform in different scenarios.
If you pass the online blended assessment, we’ll ask you to book a place at one of our in-person assessment centres. You will complete three exercises over the day – This will include a one-to-one interview, a business simulation exercise and a case study.
Whatever the outcome, we’ll let you know as soon as we can after the assessment centre. If you display the key attributes we are looking for and perform well throughout the assessment, we’ll send you an offer and talk you through the onboarding process.
The NQ recruitment process is centrally managed and includes interviews and technical skills assessments. Our Graduate Development team work with the business to identify which roles are available and circulate a list. You’ll be able to apply for a small number of relevant, available vacancies across the firm’s offices. The outcome will be based on your performance at assessment and throughout your training contract. This gives you every opportunity to further your career with a leading, well-respected firm in your chosen area of law.
To start your application, please click on apply now. Once you have registered an account, you will need to complete the following before the application closing date:
Once you have submitted all of the above, our recruitment team will review your application alongside your online blended assessment and will be in touch in due course regarding your outcome.
Our summer internship programme offers an ideal opportunity for you to understand the firm, our values and culture and vice versa. However, we understand you could have other commitments that prevent you from doing an internship, so we also run assessment centres for direct training contract candidates.
If an internship is not possible for you, our free virtual work experience programme is a fantastic alternative.
Usually, we offer around 68 training contracts each year across the UK and 4-5 training contracts in our Dublin office. We review this regularly to make sure it reflects our business needs.
It may be possible to defer your start date by 12 months. We look at any requests on a case-by-case basis, taking our business needs into account. If you want to defer, you should give us reasonable notice before your agreed start date by contacting us.
You can let us know which seat you’d prefer for each move and we’ll do our best to meet your request, in line with Law Society of Ireland guidelines and our business needs.
We aim to retain as many trainees as possible and at the moment our retention rate is upwards of 80%. We can only offer the positions which have been identified as part of our NQ process. That’s why we encourage you to keep an open mind about the practice area and location you’d like to qualify in.
For the first two years of my LLB I didn’t think I would be a solicitor. Pursuing a career as a Barrister was my initial passion. For various reasons, my mind changed in third year, so I attended my university law fair for the first time. At the law fair, I was keen to talk to as many people as I could to demonstrate my confidence and competence, but when I got there, confidence and competence turned into awkwardness. I didn’t know what to talk to people about, what questions to ask, or how to make a positive, lasting impression.
I saw the Pinsent Masons trainee programme advertised online and was attracted to them because they are international, full service and have a great reputation. I knew that if I could get a foot in the door and a feel for working in an international firm, I could hopefully also get a training contract.
I qualified in New York and I wanted to complete my training in a law firm that is truly international. I knew Pinsent Masons from an introduction evening at University of Edinburgh and thought that it would be an exciting place to work. The firm has set itself apart from others in Ireland for beingwell-connected and global.
