As part of our Scottish Legal Career Launchpad partnership with the Law Society of Scotland, we carried out a survey asking all members of the Scottish legal profession about traineeships. From students to advocates and judges, the response has been incredible and the insights invaluable in protecting the future of the profession. The full results of the survey will be available later this week.
As part of the survey, we asked what the profession considered to be the biggest barriers to taking on a trainee, with 88% of respondents citing ‘cost’. Only 1% of respondents cited ‘not enough suitable applicants’ which indicates that there is a huge disconnect between talent and funding available in the Scottish legal sector.
We have partnered with The Law Society of Scotland to promote flexible traineeships across the profession and to raise awareness of flexible traineeships as an innovative way for employers to create trainee opportunities within their business and to help facilitate such traineeships .
Flexible traineeships can take different forms, including: shared traineeships, where trainees split their time between more than one employer; part-time traineeships; and multiple secondments.
Olivia Moore, Careers & Wellbeing Manager at the Law Society of Scotland, said: “Flexible traineeships are a way for employers to take on trainees outside the traditional two-year, full-time structure.
“For some employers, sharing or spreading the costs and requirements of a traineeship might open the door to being able to take someone on where it would not previously have been feasible. Meanwhile, trainees stand to benefit from a wider range of experience working with different employers or from greater flexible working opportunities with a part-time structure.
“Often employers and prospective trainees don’t know that flexible traineeships are possible, so we’re really pleased to be working with Hey Legal to spread the message.”
To help connect employers, Hey Legal is building a free database of firms and organisations that are interested in shared traineeships or multiple secondments and are looking to get in touch with other organisations to explore these opportunities. In addition, Hey Legal aims to help employers find applicants for such roles, by promoting opportunities to students and matching graduates who send in CVs to Hey Legal to the available roles.
Register your interest with us by emailing hey@heylegal.co.uk