Exclusive: Wragges trainees reject £5k offer to defer for a year
13 July 2012
Wragges has offered its prospective £5,000 to defer the start of their contracts until 2013, but not one of them has taken up the offer.

Managing Partner Ian Metcalfe stressed the offer was "entirely voluntary". He pointed to the sad state of the economy which he said was "still having an impact on the legal sector", and claimed that while the firm's turnover increased by 5% in 2010/11, it had still not hit its targets. He added "we think it sensible to ask people with a current offer to join the firm's training programme if they would like to volunteer to defer for twelve months."

While future trainees may have baulked at a year off, taking up the offer could have been a savvy move: sit on a beach for a year, spend £5k on mojitos and then return to Wragges when the market has improved and there's a better chance of being retained on qualification.

But none of the future trainees put their hands up. A spokesman for the firm confirmed that offer deadline had now passed and all the trainees will start in September.

Wragges trainees would rather be bundling

Still, despite the poor market the trainee retention results that have started to come out of City law firms are not looking too bad at all. Slaughters is currently top of the tree after keeping on 42 of its 48 trainees (87.5%). The figure is down on last September when the firm retained an impressive 100% and also down last year's 90%, but it's still far from shabby. Ashurst and SNR Denton are next, tying with 83% retention after both kept on 24 of 29 trainees. For SNRD in particular this marks an improvement from March, when it only kept on 60%.

Firm	Number of trainees	Number retained	Retention rate (retention rate March 2012)
Slaughter and May	48	42	87.5% (90%)
Ashurst	29	24	83% (78%)
SNR Denton	29	24	83% (60%)

 
If you know the retention rates at your shop, get in touch at the usual place.