We sent online surveys to graduate recruitment managers at the UK's largest law firms. 130 firms agreed to take part and distributed our survey to their trainees. Once again, we had a fantastic response and ended up with over 2,400 completed surveys which, we believe, makes this the biggest survey of trainee views to date, and which provided us with a particularly robust sample to analyse. The data from the surveys was processed and analysed by the editor of this publication.

We asked current trainees to rate their firm with a score from 0 to 10 (10 being the best possible score) in ten different categories:

1. Overall job satisfaction
2. How far is your firm living up to expectations?
3. Quality of work
4. Amount of client contact
5. Stress levels
6. Work/life balance
7. Friendliness of firm
8. Social life
9. Quality of vacation scheme
10. How confident are you of being kept on?

When assessing the responses, we analysed the data against market norms and performed recommended statistical tests to ensure the analysis was valid, representative and robust. We used our professional judgement to exclude what we perceived to be outlying or unrepresentative elements in the data. For each firm we created a 'normality curve' and took a judgement from that as to which, if any, of the data was unrepresentative.

We then gave each firm a score out of ten for each category, based on the average score from the total trainees' responses. These scores are shown in 'The trainee verdict'.

We also asked the trainees for more detailed information about their experiences and their firm under the headings:

1. Why did you choose this firm over any others?
2. How does your training compare with peers at other firms?
3. Best and worst things about your firm?
4. Best and worst moments of your training?

A representative sample of what the trainees said is replicated in 'The lowdown'.

And on a fun note, this year we asked respondents if their firm were a fictional character who would it be. We were really happy to receive some creative and amusing answers to this question, which range from Samuel Pickwick to Wall-E! For each firm we have tried to name the character most frequently mentioned together with the comments which seemed most representative of the firm in question. This is of course just a bit of fun and we hope that both firms and candidates will take it in the spirit intended!