Michelmores is a leading full-service UK law firm where people thrive on delivering complex and challenging work on high-profile assignments for quality national and international clients. Established as a family business in Exeter in 1887, the firm became an LLP in 2007 and has continued to grow organically which is rare for law firms of our size. We have offices in Exeter, Bristol, and London, with a national and international client base.

Collaboration and teamwork are central to our strategy. We offer our trainees a high level of responsibility, together with a supportive and inclusive training environment where everyone can flourish. Our growing client base includes Santander, the Met Office, Greenland Group and Finnfund, to name a few.

We put a strong emphasis on home grown talent and retaining our trainee solicitors, who are central to our growth plans. Our trainees join us on a South West-based training contract meaning they move between our Exeter HQ and Bristol office frequently. Trainees also have the opportunity to complete a secondment in London. Trainees have the opportunity to qualify into any location to suit them. This year we have seen trainees qualify into all three of our offices. 

Our vacation scheme is a great way for you to find out what it will be like to work at Michelmores and see if this is somewhere where you would want to kick start your career. 

We run our one week summer vacation scheme placements at the end of June/start of July. The scheme is as much about you getting to know Michelmores as a place to work, as it is about us getting to know you.

You will have the opportunity to spend time in one department for the week, as we aim to give you a real hands-on insight into one area of law and life as a trainee by attending client meetings and dealing with 'real work'.

You will learn about our different departments and areas of work, and meet trainees, partners and lawyers. There are also informal lunches with trainees, which will give you the opportunity to gain a true insight into working here.

During the week you will complete a group project and present back to some partners on your final day, and also complete some assessments throughout the week with the hope that we are able to offer you a training contract by the end of your time with us. 

During your training contract with us you will complete four six-month seats across our departments. You can choose to tailor your training contract if you know where you want to qualify, or try a variety of our departments if you are trying to find what is right for you. Our training contract is flexible to ensure it meets your needs and wants, including what location you want to be based in. 

Our trainees have real responsibility from day one and work closely with our senior partners. We encourage you to be yourself and shape your training contract within a high-quality supervised environment. 

We ensure our trainees feel supported throughout their training contract, which includes allocating a buddy to support them in the lead up to joining the firm and during their training.

Whilst you'll be focused on your seat and your day to day role, we also have plenty of opportunities for you to get involved in work outside of this including firm wide projects which our trainees really enjoy and get a lot from. 

Our current approach to the SQE, is that candidates who we offer training contracts to, will complete the SQE before commencing their two-year training programme with us. During the two-year programme you will continue to rotate around four teams as we have previously done with the traditional training contract. We are taking this approach to support our future trainees to focus on their studies before commencing work with us, instead of asking them to juggle both commitments. We believe having the two years with the rotational structure before you qualify will help you become the best solicitor you can be, by having a breath of knowledge and experience to help you when building your future career and to provide the best service to our clients. 

We fully fund the SQE with The University of Law. If you choose to do your SQE in London, then we cap the amount we fund to the cost we would pay if you were to complete your SQE outside of London and you will just have to top up the rest of the cost.

We also offer a £5,000 bursary to support you financially whilst you study.

Diversity and inclusion sits at the heart of what we do, our culture and who we are as an organisation. We believe greater diversity gives us the opportunity to benefit from having people with different perspectives, creates better ways of working and helps us to be successful long term. 

As a firm we are focused on social mobility and making law more accessible to all. Our work in this area has included:

Reviewing our trainee recruitment process to move from competency based questions to scenario and strength based so those without legal work experience have a greater chance of being successful as it assesses potential rather than providing examples.

Joining the Pathways to Law Programme and signing a Prime Commitment.

Partnering with VisionPath to help us build greater relationships with schools local to our offices who have the poorest social mobility data, to make law more accessible to these students and to support them to build a career in this field if they want

Alongside our work with early careers we have also reviewed all of our policies to make them gender neutral, introduced new policies such as family leave (supporting those who experience pregnancy loss), menopause and wellbeing. We have introduced champions across the business to support with this work and to help get involved in inclusion and diversity if they are interested. 

We regularly support events throughout the year and this year had a speaker called Ali Hannon present to our organisation on Being Inclusive during Pride Month, they are now running a session around this topic at our firm wide AGM again showing our commitment to have inclusion and diversity on the agenda of important topics we want colleagues discussing.

We are partnered with Stonewall and Inclusive Employers to support with this work. 

We continue to listen to our employees and hear more about what they want and how we could do better. We are not where we want to be, there is always more to be done, but we are incredibly proud of the firmwide commitment to make a change and introduce new initiatives. 

We fully fund the LPC and SQE with The University of Law and offer a £5,000 bursary. We also sponsor the completion of the GDL. If you have already self sponsored the LPC/SQE or GDL we will reimburse you for this too. 

• Commercial litigation
• Corporate
• Commercial
• Employment
• Banking
• Restructuring & insolvency
• Tax
• Trusts & succession
• Contentious private client
• Family probate
• Projects
• Transactional real estate
• Specialist real estate
• Agricultural property litigation

• General Practice
• Corporate & Commercial
• General Commercial

• Exeter
• Bristol
• London
• Cheltenham
• Sidmouth

• Citizens Advice Bureau

• Aspiring Solicitors
• Mindful Business Charter
• Pathways to Law
• PRIME
• Stonewall
• Sutton Trust