The top 20 is dominated by Magic and Silver Circle firms which all pay £100-£110k to their trainees and offer grants of £15-20k. It can’t be HL or
NRF either as they offer similar amounts to future trainees. That’s at least 10 firms out of question, which leaves 10. 🤔
It is unlikely to be
Addleshaw Goddard,
CMS,
Simmons & Simmons,
Taylor Wessing,
Osborne Clarke or
Pinsent Masons as they also offer around £100k+ to trainees across their training contract. All these firms are top 20 UK headquartered law firms. The only exception is if OP’s TC was for a regional office, in which case it could be
Osborne Clarke or
Simmons & Simmons (Reading and/or Bristol). 🙂
The only firms it could be is one of these firms:
Bird & Bird,
Clyde & Co,
Eversheds Sutherland or RPC. I suspect it’s probably
Bird & Bird or RPC that the OP is referring to. These firms are all also in the top 20. 😮
It says the maintenance grant was in excess of 5 figures. I think this implies it was probably over £10k but below £15k, at least for the SQE grant itself. These firms have a SQE grant between that range, and/or trainee salaries above £90,000 but below £100,000 (see below):
1:
Bird & Bird trainee salary is £47,000 (1st year) and £52,000 (2nd year). This adds up to £99,000. Their SQE grant is £15,000.
2:
Clyde & Co trainee salary is £47,000 (1st year) and £50,000 (2nd year). This adds up to £97,000. Their SQE grant is around £10,000.
3:
Eversheds Sutherland trainee salary is £46,000 (1st year) and £50,000 (2nd year). This adds up to £96,000. Their SQE grant is £7,000.
4: RPC trainee salary is £46,000 (1st year) and £50,000 (2nd year). This adds up to £96,000. Their SQE grant is £12,000.
Whichever firm it is, I think it’s really unfair to not give the person at least 1 chance to retake the SQE. To then demand the cost of fees back despite being such a major UK firm, is pretty surprising tbh. 🫤
