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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 apprenticeship 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. 

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 2026, our commitment to the development and satisfaction of our employees was confirmed yet again by securing a Top 10 place in the Top Employers Institute certification.

Top Employers Institute CEO, Adrian Seligman commented:

“Achieving a UK Top Employer Certification for 2026 reflects Weightmans’ dedication to building an outstanding workplace that enables sustained business performance. Its strong alignment between people strategy and organisational goals, combined with a commitment to continuous improvement, demonstrates the impact of its transformative practices. We are proud to recognise Weightmans for its meaningful contribution to a better world of work in the UK.”

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 apprentices 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 £24,479 (£26,936 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 will reopen at the end of September for our September 2027 intake. Please complete the expression of interest from below and you will be notified as soon as they open.

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. 

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. 

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. 

We welcome you to contact us if you have any queries regarding this process.

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.

Our in-person autumn open evenings are listed below, please click on the relevant link to register to attend.

Birmingham – Monday 28 September – 5pm-6.30pm

London – Tuesday 29 September – 5pm-6.30pm

Newcastle – Wednesday 30 September- 5pm-6.30pm

Leeds – Wednesday 7 October – 5pm-6.30pm

Liverpool – Monday 12 October – 5pm-6.30pm

Manchester – Thursday 15 October – 5pm-6.30pm

If you are unable to attend any of the above in-person events, we are also offering an online open evening. Please use the link below to register to attend.

Online (Zoom) - Thursday 8 October – 5pm-6pm

We will also be attending the below events over the autumn. Please visit the relevant organisations website to secure your place.

Raise Up Youth Summit – Thursday 1 October

UK Uni Search:

Leeds – Wednesday 7 October

Birmingham – Friday 9 October

Liverpool – Friday 13 November

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