No chicken feed here!

You clearly don’t work in private practice if you have this naive view

About tree fiddy

This just isn’t true. There are plenty of excellent trainees who are not being kept on simply by virtue of the practice areas that they want to qualify into having no NQ spots due to budgetary constraints and/or hiring freezes.

10-15+ years ago the firm was a top tier PE shop, now it’s seemingly energy and tech focussed with little to no PE partners left – all have been poached. Does some M&A here and there but it’s not the corporate power it once was… likely going to need a transformational merger to catch up to the “global elite”.

Insane

Tnx.

Ok this is clearly a troll. Readers, please do not associate this view with the left. There is no right to a six figure job, we know that.

There is no real formal structure and training at US firms.

They throw you in the deep end. You’re given a lot of responsibility on matters without much supervision.

Doesn’t always make for the best lawyers.

Elite firms (US or UK) have moral obligations to keep trainees and to provide them with a platform to develop their career. Hiring freshers as trainees and then not give them a NQ job is brutal and morally wrong.

Regulatory intervention is the only way to enforce the values of our society.

Not sure forcing businesses to keep employees on is ever a good thing. Stronger employment protections? Sure. Incentives to keep them on? Sure. Strongly worded advice/indignation? Sure. “Forcing firms to keep trainees” ? Massive slippery slope.

Why should firms be made to keep trainees on? I say this as a trainee about to qualify too. Surely a natural consequence of ever-increasing pay is that firms are going to be more brutal in their decision-making on who stays and who goes? People who would previously been a “ah go on then” will find themselves without an offer, but those who would have comfortably been retained will continue to be retained anyway.