| Ashurst LLP: Profile |
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"Ashurst LLP has developed a unique culture, the strengths and benefits of which are appreciated by clients and staff alike. These strengths include flexibility, a constructive and commercial approach to legal problems and good communication and personal contacts, both within the firm and with clients." Address: Company Description Ashurst LLP is an elite law firm advising corporates, financial institutions and governments, with core businesses in mergers and acquisitions, corporate and finance. Our strong and growing international presence is built on extensive experience of working with clients on the complex international legal and regulatory issues relating to cross-border transactions. We have over 200 partners and around 800 other lawyers operating from 16 international offices; Abu Dhabi, Brussels, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Milan, Munich, New Delhi, New York, Paris, Singapore, Stockholm, Tokyo and Washington DC. Our main areas of practice are in Corporate; Employment, Incentives and Pensions; Energy, Transport and Infrastructure; EU and Competition; International Finance; Litigation; Real Estate; Tax; and Technology and Commercial. We believe that hierarchical management structures demotivate individuals and often prevent them from reaching their full potential. We therefore keep bureaucracy to a minimum and maintain an informal, relaxed working environment. We recruit for 55 Training Contracts each year. Your Training Contract will consist of four seats. For each, you will sit with a partner or solicitor who will be the main source of your work and your principal supervisor during that seat. You will, however, be encouraged to work with a variety of solicitors during the course of your training. Seats are generally for six months. Anything less than that will not give you sufficient depth of experience for the responsibility we expect you to take on. We ask trainees to spend one seat in our Corporate department and one seat in our International Finance department. Trainees spend their two remaining seats in our other practice areas. There are also opportunities to spend seats in one of our European offices or on secondment to one of our major clients. The precise nature of a trainee's work inevitably varies from department to department but, as you gain in experience, you will be given increasing responsibility with less direct supervision. Our philosophy is to give trainees as much responsibility as they can individually manage and a full role in servicing the needs of the clients. If you show yourself to be sufficiently able, you will meet clients, write letters, draft agreements and conduct matters without constant supervision as the Training Contract progresses. We also run a series of Easter and summer placement schemes. At Easter we have one intake of primarily final year non-law undergraduates and all graduates. This lasts for two weeks. The summer scheme has two intakes of primarily second year law undergraduates. Both last for three weeks. However, you are welcome to apply for whichever scheme is the most convenient for you. If you are offered a place, you will spend each week of the scheme in a different department, shadowing a partner or solicitor and becoming fully involved with his or her daily work. The aim is for you to get as broad and comprehensive a view as possible, over a short period of time, of life as a City solicitor. During the placement, we give a number of talks relating to the firm and our various areas of practice. We also arrange a variety of trips and, in the summer, you will have the chance to visit one of our European offices. But it's not all non-stop work. We organise several social events where you can informally meet Ashurst solicitors of different levels of seniority and from different departments. At these events, you can ask them any questions you have about life as a trainee - and beyond. There are other social events too, such as softball matches or touch rugby in the summer, as well as nights out with our trainees. |