Frequently Asked Questions

Applications for the 2025 Solicitor Apprenticeship Programme will open on 01 October 2024, and will close on 15 December 2024.

Applicants will need to have completed their A-Levels or equivalent by July 2025. We look for 3 A-Levels at grade BBB and 6 GCSEs at grade A*-C or equivalent, but we can be flexible with these as ultimately we look for the best candidates. Please do not be deterred if your grades are lower than this, we are looking for people who have a strong application form across the board. If you would like to discuss any mitigating circumstances, please get in touch with our early careers team. Candidates should enter their GCSE, predicted A-level (or equivalent) grades on the application form.

Absolutely. Legal work experience isn't a requirement for our application process, so please don’t be put off of applying if this is something you are yet to gain. Please refer to any experience you do have (legal or non-legal) on your application form. We're keen to hear about all of your experiences – whether this be volunteering, charity fundraising, extracurricular achievements or part time work and it’s absolutely okay for these to be unrelated to law.

The University of Law entry requirements for their Level 7 Solicitor Apprenticeship course are:

• 3 A Levels at Grade C or above, or equivalent;

• 5 GCSEs, including Maths and English, or equivalent at Grade C/4 or above.

As long as you meet these minimum grades we will consider your application. 

We want ensure that our recruitment process is accessible to everyone, and that candidates feel comfortable when completing our recruitment process. If you require an adjustment to the recruitment process for any reason (including ongoing health conditions, a disability, or you do not have the technology to complete a video interview or virtual assessment), please email us. We will provide you with an alternative that better suits your needs. 

If you do not currently have permission to work in the UK please provide full details of how you intend to qualify for this so that we can consider whether or not it is possible for us to progress your application. We will look at each application on a case by case basis. Any offer will be conditional on your right to work in the UK.

The Solicitor Apprenticeship programme is not available to those who have completed a law or non-law degree.  If you have a degree, please see our Graduates page for information on joining Mishcon de Reya through our Vacation Scheme.

Successful candidates will begin their apprenticeship in October 2025. You will start in a cohort alongside your fellow Solicitor Apprentices and you will have a week long induction to give you the opportunity to meet other apprentices ahead of starting in your first seat.

We offer spaces to our Solicitor Apprentice Open Evening, This will be an opportunity for you to ask us any question you have about the programme and life at Mishcon de Reya. You will also meet some of our current Solicitor Apprentices and the Early Careers Team. For more details please click here.

At Mishcon, we embrace technological advancements, and believe AI is here to enhance our capabilities - not replace them. We accept that candidates will be using AI tools to assist their applications but would caution you not to rely too heavily on it. It's your individual journey that really excites us, so we encourage you to share your unique perspectives and personal experiences in your submission. While AI can be a helpful starting point, we advise you to use it wisely. 

Yes, we pay the full tuition fees.

We offer a competitive starting salary, for 1st year Solicitor Apprentices the salary starts at £28,000. This salary will increase throughout the apprenticeship programme.

You will be entitled to the full range of staff benefits including:

• Private medical care
• Individual wellbeing fund
• Income protection
• Life assurance
• Employee assistance programme
• Give as you earn scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Season ticket loan

You will spend 20% of your time (1 day per week) studying towards the LLB (Hons) in Legal Practice.

During the Apprenticeship Programme we will entrust you with a lot of responsibility, and fully support you in a variety of ways to ensure you reach your potential.

• In each rotation you will be assigned a supervisor who will work with you on a daily basis, assigning you tasks and providing you with regular training and feedback.
• The Early Careers Team will support you throughout your Mishcon journey, from the submission of your application through to qualification.
• You will also be paired with a buddy who will be a current Apprentice. They will help you navigate through the first few months at Mishcon.
• A senior Solicitor in the firm will act as your sponsor.  They will mentor you through the six year programme using their knowledge of Mishcon and the legal industry.
• As well as technical legal training, the Mishcon Academy also provide you with all the professional and commercial skills required to make your apprenticeship a success.

Our tuition provider is The University of Law. They will provide all your academic training throughout the apprenticeship. You will spend 20% of your time (one day per week) studying towards the LLB (Hons) in Legal Practice.

Our ambition is to be at the cutting edge of tech transformation in the legal sector. We’re a tech-focused and tech-enabled firm which has embraced AI to speed up how we work and created entirely new ways of working. We listened to candidate feedback from previous cycles, and we know there was room for improvement with the old process, which included a long application form and one-way recorded video interview. 

Therefore, this year we’re trialling something new which puts candidates at the heart of the process, giving you a better chance to show who you are and what you’re able to bring to our firm. 

We’re keen to keep listening, too – we’ll be reaching out to all candidates to get your feedback on this new tool to ensure we continue to shape our application processes in a way which both adds value for candidates and allows our team to make the fairest decisions about the talent joining our firm. 

The contextual, personalised chat-based interview is a format we believe will offer candidates a much more positive initial application experience compared to legacy application forms and one-way recorded video interviews. 

In the past, you may have had to spend time completing a static application form, where each candidate is asked the same questions. By contrast, this interactive experience is designed to be a more dynamic and interesting exchange where the questions are tailored and contextual to you, probing you on your experiences in a conversational format. 

The interface looks and feels much like other chat-based tools you may be familiar with e.g., WhatsApp, and you can type or use voice transcription to enter short answers to questions about your motivations and experience.  

Responses do not need to be written in perfect prose and it’s better if answers are short and concise. 

In addition, you will have the opportunity for non-assessed Q&A at the end of the chat-based interview in case you have any questions about the opportunity. 

Yes – we will always support reasonable adjustments. 

During testing, we found those who normally ask for extra time as an adjustment don’t actually need to do so, given the chat-based interview is not time-limited. One of the reasons we are trialling this approach is that we believe it will support an even fairer process.  

Before you begin the interview, you will see a briefing screen with contact details for a member of our team if you do still need to ask for reasonable adjustments.  

In addition, you’ll be able to take a practice interview to become familiar with the format. There is no limit to the number of practice interviews you are allowed before taking the real one.  

During the chat-based interview, there is a ‘report a problem’ button you can use if you experience any issues.   

There is also the post-interview option to add commentary and flag any issues or concerns with the accuracy of the summary.  

To be clear, there will be no disadvantage if, for any reason, you experience an issue with the technology. We will ensure we collect the information we need from you to give you a fair chance in our process.  

Before you begin the chat-based interview, you will see a briefing screen which explains what you can expect. You will also have the opportunity to take as many practice interviews as you like.  

Please take the interview in one sitting. It is not timed or time-limited but we expect most candidates to complete it in 30-40 minutes.  

After the interview you will have a chance to review the summary notes the tool has taken and add anything important which has been missed or misinterpreted. 

Don’t worry - the AI just helps us learn more early on; real people assess all the applications and make the decisions. 

While for the purposes of the trial we will be seeing how the AI scoring compares, we will not be making any decisions based on the AI scores.  

Fairness, mitigating risk of bias and an appropriate level of rigour given the critical nature of the recruitment process has been at the heart of developing this tool from the start.  

During this trial period every single transcript will be reviewed and scored by expert manual (human) screeners. As has always been the case, all decisions will be made by humans. 

During this trial period, Bright Apply will also be learning how AI can help us make better, fairer decisions in the future. 

Bright Apply will statistically test the screening algorithms to ensure there isn’t bias in the system and use this analysis to refine and improve the AI scoring frameworks, guided by qualified and experienced occupational psychologists. Between them they have 40+ years’ experience in graduate recruitment, assessment, behavioural assessment, psychometric testing and recruiting technology. 

In the future, there will always be calibration, moderation and spot checking of results by human screening teams.  

The screening algorithm will know nothing about the candidate’s identity.  

Together with Bright Apply’s occupational psychologists, they will rigorously monitor and moderate the scoring algorithms to ensure they are at least as good and consistent as humans, if not better. 

The AI tool will not make any decisions. All applications will be screened by humans. 

Technology has been implemented in early stages of the application process for candidate screening for over ten years. Previously, static application forms and one-way recorded video interviews have been used. However, we know, based on feedback from candidates that these processes are not as user-friendly as they could be.  

We also recognise that ultimately, we need to meet the most promising candidates and thoroughly assess your potential at our assessment centre, and the assessment centre will still take place as part of our process. This chat-based interview will better enable our team to complete the initial screening stage and improve the experience for candidates. 

Every application in this trial will be screened by a human screening team who makes the decision about who progresses to the next stage, much as they would have done in the previous version of this process.  

They are trained, moderated, calibrated against each other and a thorough quality assurance process takes place, as it would regardless of whether we were using this tool, or legacy technology such as one-way recorded video interviews, or an application form alone.  

You will get the opportunity to review notes and add commentary after the interview.  

Post-interview feedback is a future feature Bright Apply is building as we know this is really important to candidates.  

Following this first phase of testing, Bright Apply will better understand how candidates use the tool which will help them as they develop the feedback feature. 

The video recording feature is primarily for identification consistency purposes throughout the interview.  

Throughout most of the interview, you have the option to either type or transcribe your response using voice.  

For one question, you may be prompted to respond with a short, recorded video answer – this is the only time you are required to respond via voice.  

We’re lucky to be in a position where we can expect a significant number of applications to our in-demand graduate and apprentice roles.  

Previously, we used application forms and one-way recorded video interview as a means to help us assess that large number of candidates.  

However, we’ve listened to your feedback on the challenges that format posed and want to make it a more personal, interactive process. We think the chat-based interview is a fair, engaging and effective way of getting to know candidates.  

The chat-based interview offers a more transparent and traceable process, which we believe will build candidate confidence in terms of the consistency of approach we will be able to achieve across all applications; this tool guarantees every application receives the attention it deserves.  

Candidates who progress beyond this initial screening will of course interact with our Early Careers recruiting team and Mishcon de Reya lawyers at subsequent stages of the process.  

Bright Apply have tested this tool and heard from candidates directly: 95% responded ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that they found it to be a fair step of the application process.  

This tool has already been tested with around 14,000 candidates for a variety of roles and experiences relevant for people who are either at university or who have recently graduated.