Accutrainee accelerates its alternative training programme

The new legal training organisation Accutrainee expects to see its first cohort of aspiring lawyers embark on their training contracts in the next few months. Its training programme is radically different to the traditional model, which works on the basis of recruiting wannabe lawyers from postgraduate law schools and putting them through a series of secondments to law firms and in-house legal departments to complete two-year training contracts. Trainees will spend no more than three months on each secondment.

As reported in The Lawyer, more than 400 hopefuls have signed up to Accutrainee since it was founded by Susan Cooper, now its chief executive, in September 2011. Accutrainee operates with the aim of significantly reducing the £175,000 costs that law firms incur each time they offer a training contract to a student who is still at university. Four organisations, including Olswang, have so far committed to the programme.

Cooper said: "Even though we haven't actively started advertising yet, I'm pleased to announce that we've received several hundred applications so far, many of which are of an excellent standard, and we continue to receive a steady flow of applications every day. We hope to be in a position to have the first Accutrainees starting their training contracts within the next few months."