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Paralegal apprenticeship

Our paralegal apprenticeship is an alternative to university for those with a passion for law!

What is a paralegal apprenticeship?

A paralegal apprenticeship is a paid role which includes a two-year training programme and leads to qualification as paralegal upon completion. You will gain a level 3 apprenticeship award and a level 4 Certificate of Higher Education (Law and Legal Practice) awarded by BPP University alongside work experience.

You will complete your study with our partner provider, BPP University Law School, with one day each week dedicated to your off-the-job training. You will put your learning into practice straight away by spending four days per week working within one of our many legal teams. As you progress through your apprenticeship you will complete tasks which gradually increase in complexity whilst supported by a robust network.  You’ll be able to test your skills across different teams within the business by completing two placements of twelve months in duration. You will be given the opportunity to learn from legal experts whilst completing high quality work with responsibility and client exposure.

We want our future lawyers to be both technically excellent and to have the skills necessary to understand our clients' businesses and our own. Therefore, you will also complete our bespoke learning and development programme throughout the two years, which has been designed to develop your core professional and business skills.

View course outline.

 

Eligibility and Criteria

You will have gained, or be predicted, 96 UCAS points and hold a minimum of five GCSEs at grade four or above including Maths and English. We do not have requirements for specific subjects. Using a contextual recruitment system, Dandi, we can identify high performing candidates who may have faced adverse impact during their secondary education. Therefore, if you have narrowly missed out on these grades, we would still encourage you to apply. We will judge each application on its own merits and so this grade criteria may be adjusted based on personal circumstances. Please contact our early careers team via email at earlycareers@weightmans.com for further information.

Why choose Weightmans?

We want to help you nurture a career you love, providing a working life and environment you’ll not only enjoy but a place where you’ll love coming to work every day. We’ll challenge you to meet your potential and support you to achieve it. And then celebrate and reward your success.

In 2023, our commitment to the development and satisfaction of our employees was confirmed with the Top Employers Institute certification for the 17th year. The independent research highlighted our dedication to a better world of work through excellent HR policies and people practices.

We are truly committed to fostering a culture of equality and diversity, where everyone in the firm is respected and recognised on merit for the work that they do.

In our offices, we have unique and open spaces accompanied by agile working for a great work-life balance. With a focus on learning and development of our people, we are proud to have consistently high trainee solicitor retention rates.

As much as we work hard, we like to play hard too! Having an appropriate work/life balance is something we value for all our people. Our social calendar is always full, from theatre visits and quizzes to office parties. Each of our offices has an active social committee who are always looking for new members to get involved. We will encourage our graduates to keep in touch as a national cohort with training and annual events.

We pride ourselves in our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) work and support a number of deserving charities, both nationally and local to our offices, including Zoe’s Place, Francis House, Simon on the Streets and many more. As part of our commitment, all staff receive two days of paid CSR leave each year, and each office has a local committee who are always looking for new members, and this may be something you would like to be a part of once you join us.

Salary and benefits

Our current 1st year salary is £22,932 (£25,207 in London).

As a Weightmans employee, you will also be entitled to our excellent staff benefits which include:

  • 28 days' holiday
  • Healthcare cover
  • Pension plan
  • Travel loan scheme
  • Employee care scheme
  • Discounted gym membership
  • Dental care scheme

How to apply

Applications for a September 2026 intake will open on Monday 6 October 2025 and will close at 4pm Thursday 20 November 2025. Please note, we are unable to accept any applications after the deadline. 

Stage 1 — Written application

At this stage, we will look at your academic grades and your answer to an open question. This question is designed to check your understanding of how a law firm, and Weightmans, works. We will also assess structure, depth, punctuation and grammar. The quality of your answer will determine if you progress to the next stage, we therefore suggest you spend some time on this and proofread before submitting. We will review all written submissions individually, in a blind marking process. 

Applications will be opening on Monday 6 October and will close at 4pm on Thursday 20 November 2025. Please note, we are unable to accept any applications after the deadline.

Stage 2 — HIPO-I interactive online assessment

If you are successful at the written application stage, you will then be invited to complete an online assessment called the HIPO-I. This assessment has been designed to test verbal and numerical reasoning, along with some situational judgement questions, to assess if our values align.

 

Stage 3 — Virtual Interview

If you are successful at the HIPO-I assessment, you will be invited to attend a virtual interview with a member of HR and a Partner or Principal Associate from the Firm. The interview will be conducted via Zoom and will include a presentation. Virtual interviews will take place on the following weeks:

  • Week commencing Monday 12 January 2026
  • Week commencing Monday 19 January 2026
Stage 4 — Assessment centre

If you are successful at the virtual interview stage, you will then be invited to attend an assessment centre. This will consist of two parts: a group exercise and a written exercise.  Before you attend an assessment centre, you will also be given the opportunity to attend a one-2-one coaching call with a member of our Early Careers team. This is not an assessed meeting but is an opportunity for the team to answer any questions you may have, we will then walk you through the day giving you some tips on how best to prepare. You will also be provided with a written brief so that you can be as prepared as possible for the day. Assessment centres will take place on the following weeks:

    • Week commencing Monday 16 February 2026
    • Week commencing Monday 23 February 2026

Our application process consists of 4 stages:

Meet us to find out more

We attend events throughout the year and host open evenings so you can meet the early careers team, our current apprentices and other members of the firm to learn more about the programme and who we are and to answer any questions which you may have.

Open evenings 2025

Our Open Evenings are for those who are interested in our 6-year Solicitor Degree Apprenticeship and 2-year Paralegal Apprenticeship. (If you are a graduate, please see our trainee solicitor pages for open evening dates tailored for our graduate programmes). 

If you are eligible to apply for our roles this year and would like to attend an open evening, please click on the links below to book your place through Eventbrite. Please note that spaces for our in-person events are limited and allocated on a first come, first served basis. You can reserve a maximum of two tickets, one for yourself and one for somebody to accompany you - you will both require an individual ticket. If you register for our virtual open evening you will be sent a link for a zoom webinar closer to the time.

If you require any reasonable adjustments whilst attending our open evening, please email earlycareers@weightmans.com as soon as possible so we can look at how to best support your request.

Online virtual opening evening, 16 October 2025, 17:00- 18:00

Application tips

Watch our video below where our early careers team provide some hints and tips for those looking to apply for one of our early careers programmes.

Read transcript

Careers fairs

This year we will be attending the following events, please come along and meet us. Please note that you will need to contact the organiser of the event to arrange a place.

If you have any queries, please feel free to get in touch by email via earlycareers@weightmans.com and follow us on Instagram @weightmansearlycareers.