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Our profiles were last updated in: 2025

Information about firms

Throughout our firm profiles, we’ve focused on the headline information and key differentiators, rather than providing an onslaught of general insights that can be found via a quick Google search. After all, it’s the differentiators that you should be focusing on if you want to avoid the risk of your responses seeming generic.

It's important to note that information about firms changes all the time, from firms’ range of practice areas and sectors, to the structure of training contracts, the secondments available and firms’ pro bono initiatives. A new key deal could complete and be announced publicly at any time, as could a new office opening, award, corporate social responsibility initiative or managing partner. 

For these reasons, we can’t promise that all the content in this course is fully accurate, complete and up-to-date. We do our best to update it when new information comes to light (on that note, this course was last updated in 2022), but you should always carry out your own research to verify and supplement the information provided. 
Classification of firms

Note that the classification of firms throughout this course is subjective and fairly arbitrary in places. For example, there are firms in the Silver Circle section that, for whatever reason, are not usually associated with this label, even though they are equally as well-regarded (if not better regarded) than some of the other Silver Circle firms. There are also firms in the mid-market section that are top ranked for specific services or in specific industries. And many of them do high profile international work, as well as national work. Regional firms (meaning firms with offices in different regions of the UK) may also have a few (or dozens of) offices abroad. In other words, there's no objective criteria that can be used to neatly categorise all firms, so don't take these classifications as a true indication of which firms are "better" than others.

Note that we have focused primarily on firms that offer at least a few training contracts in the UK each year (we have generally omitted firms that only offer two or three). We have also omitted leading firms headquartered in the US or other jurisdictions that don't recruit trainee solicitors in the UK (e.g. Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan), although many of these do recruit qualified lawyers for their London offices.

Chambers Student explains the classification of firms in more detail here.

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