Olswang is retaining just 50% of its trainees who are qualifying this September after offering five jobs to ten strong cohort.
It's not a one off event as the media specialist firm has previous form. Four years ago it made its 2011 trainee intake defer their training contracts for a year, apparently without compensation. Since then it has dramatically cut the size of its trainee intake, from 24 in 2010 to just 12 in 2018. But despite reducing its intake, the firm's retention rates have frequently been horrible. September qualifiers are particularly vulnerable to expulsion:
Valiantly polishing the turd, a spokeswoman for Olswang did not mention that 50% of trainees are being retained this September. Instead she confirmed the figure leaked to RollOnFriday by focusing on the fact that, "our retention rate for 2015 is 67%", and that, "for March, our retention rate was 88%". She said applicants for its media, commercial and litigation teams had outweighed vacancies, but that "we have and will continue to support them in their search for a new position”.
2015 is proving to be an annus horribilis for the media firm. It took out its own CEO mobster style, its whole German office quit and its Financial Director was done over by email scammers. Olswang's latest flop is good news only for Mayer Brown, which is no longer bottom of the retention table.
Meanwhile, Macfarlanes has offered jobs to 18 of its 19 qualifiers, with 14 accepting. Resulting in a not terribly impressive 74% retention rate. And RollOnFriday has learnt that WFW is keeping just nine of its 13 trainees, giving it a 69% rate. WFW training principal and corporate partner Christina Howard said that while the firm aims to retain 100%, "in reality it’s not always possible to match the practice preferences of all our trainees with the opportunities that exist". But despite that, the firm will be increasing the size of its intake to 18 next year.
If you know your firm's rate, let RollOnFriday know.
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It's not a one off event as the media specialist firm has previous form. Four years ago it made its 2011 trainee intake defer their training contracts for a year, apparently without compensation. Since then it has dramatically cut the size of its trainee intake, from 24 in 2010 to just 12 in 2018. But despite reducing its intake, the firm's retention rates have frequently been horrible. September qualifiers are particularly vulnerable to expulsion:
Valiantly polishing the turd, a spokeswoman for Olswang did not mention that 50% of trainees are being retained this September. Instead she confirmed the figure leaked to RollOnFriday by focusing on the fact that, "our retention rate for 2015 is 67%", and that, "for March, our retention rate was 88%". She said applicants for its media, commercial and litigation teams had outweighed vacancies, but that "we have and will continue to support them in their search for a new position”.
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2015 is proving to be an annus horribilis for the media firm. It took out its own CEO mobster style, its whole German office quit and its Financial Director was done over by email scammers. Olswang's latest flop is good news only for Mayer Brown, which is no longer bottom of the retention table.
Meanwhile, Macfarlanes has offered jobs to 18 of its 19 qualifiers, with 14 accepting. Resulting in a not terribly impressive 74% retention rate. And RollOnFriday has learnt that WFW is keeping just nine of its 13 trainees, giving it a 69% rate. WFW training principal and corporate partner Christina Howard said that while the firm aims to retain 100%, "in reality it’s not always possible to match the practice preferences of all our trainees with the opportunities that exist". But despite that, the firm will be increasing the size of its intake to 18 next year.
If you know your firm's rate, let RollOnFriday know.
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