Introduction

Welcome to the third edition of The Lex 100 – the insider’s guide to the UK’s top law firms. If you want to discover what it’s really like to do your training at one of the UK’s leading legal practices, this is the book for you. We asked the people who will give you an honest answer: current trainees. 126 firms received our survey and we were, once again, overwhelmed by the number of responses. Over 2,500 came flooding in – making this the most comprehensive survey of its kind carried out on an annual basis.

We asked trainees to rate important aspects of their working life, from general job satisfaction, amount of client contact and stress levels to friendliness of the firm, social life (yes, you can still have one – but not, it seems, at every firm…) and confidence of being kept on. The results make very interesting reading – check out some of the trainees’ responses to the best and worst moments of their training! You can browse through each firm’s rankings and the trainees’ comments in the main section of the book. We have also compiled tables of the leading firms in each category of the survey in our Lex 100 Winners section.

We have gathered up-to-date commercial information about the firms from our sister publications, the renowned Legal 500 and Legal Business magazine. This uncovers for you the truth about top-ranked practice areas, clients, deals and the all-important turnover and profits.

In the final part of the book there are some helpful hints from leading recruiters on matters ranging from assessment days to getting the most out of law fairs, together with a section on LPC providers. Altogether a packed, but concise read bringing you everything you need to know at every stage of your legal education – from your first day on campus to making that final decision between those top law firms offering you a job!

We loved reading about the experiences of those already training and hope you will too. If you have any views or feedback we’d like to hear from you.

Happy reading.