Solicitor degree apprenticeship Earn a law degree and qualify as a solicitor with no student debt

What is a solicitor apprenticeship?

A solicitor apprenticeship is a six-year programme that provides an alternative route to qualify as a solicitor.

As you progress with your apprenticeship you will build a portfolio of evidence of the tasks completed in your role and the experience gained whilst working in legal teams within the business. You will be learning on the job with a robust support network including a Weightmans supervisor and a dedicated buddy. You will have the opportunity to gain experience in a range of departments covering different areas of law during the six-year programme, with the potential for the programme to be tailored to your requirements and career interests.

You will complete your part-time study with BPP University Law School and upon successful completion, you will be a qualified solicitor with an LLB degree in Law and Legal Practice. One day each week will be dedicated to your learning and studies to ensure that you can maintain a good work/life balance.

View course outline

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 six years, which has been designed to develop your core professional and business skills. You will cover areas including digital literacy, marketing, change management, law as a business and project management, in a varied programme which will help to prepare you for your career as a solicitor and enable you to provide the best service to our clients.

Are you a good fit?

We are looking for a specific type of individual who will fit in well with our ethos and culture. The Weightmans solicitor apprenticeship will be an intense path, so we are looking for those who are passionate about law and committed to a career as a solicitor. You will need to show that you are a resilient individual, with the drive and determination to succeed for our clients.

You will need to have a strong academic background to undergo the learning aspect of the programme. Using a contextual recruitment system named Rare, we can identify high performing candidates by putting grades into context, acknowledging candidate academics and social background.

Whilst we are looking for candidates who have obtained or are predicted 128 UCAS points (or equivalent), 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.

Programme structure

Why choose Weightmans?

Here at Weightmans, people are an integral part of our culture and business, and your success is our success. We have great flexible working practices for ensuring a mindful and considerate working culture and as such we are signatories of the Mindful Business Charter.

In many of our offices, we have a unique and open office space, supported by our agile working approach 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.

We want our apprentices to qualify as solicitors who possess a range of transferable business skills, which enable them to not only understand our business but also be sound advisors to our clients.

Our bespoke learning and development programme has been designed to enhance these skills and alongside this, during the six years, you will have the opportunity to gain experience in our non-legal teams, this could be anything from finance to our innovation team. We believe this will help you to become a more well-rounded legal professional by providing a unique opportunity to understand how all aspects of a law firm work.

Salary and benefits

As much as we work hard, we 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 encourage our apprentices to keep in touch as a national cohort too, with national training days and 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.

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

Meet us to find out more

If you have any queries, please feel free to get in touch by email via earlycareers@weightmans.com. Thank you to everyone who attended our in-person and online open evenings in 2023.

We will be scheduling more in-person and online open evenings to take place in Autumn 2024; please keep an eye on this page for further information.

Law fairs & careers fairs (to attend, please contact the university or organisation directly):

We will be attending the following careers fairs if you would like to come along to find out more about the programme:

Tuesday 19 March 2024 — The Northwest Apprenticeship & Careers Expo — Preston Guild Hall

Thursday 1 August 2024 — Liverpool Careers Fair — Anfield

Wednesday 30 October 2024 — Liverpool Careers Fair — Anfield

Thursday 31 October — Wrexham Careers Fair — Ramada Plaza Hotel

Tuesday 26 and Wednesday 27 November — National Apprenticeship Show North West — Liverpool Exhibition Centre

How to apply

Applications for our September 2024 intake are now closed. We are unable to accept any further applications.

Applications will reopen in Autumn 2024 for our September 2025 intake.

Our application process consists of 4 stages:

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

Application tips

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

Read video transcript

Welcome to Weightmans. We're a national law firm with over 1400 people and nine offices across the UK.

My name is Marc, and I work in the Early Careers department at Weightmans. We're one of the first law firms of our size in the UK to offer a new ground-breaking pathway into law.

Our apprenticeship Academy launched in 2020.

Now you can become a solicitor, gain a qualifying law degree, earn a good salary and work in one of the top UK law firms.

Our unique application process doesn't just give us the chance to review your application fairly, but it also gives you insights about the firm. There two areas where we are going to apply scoring in your application: your academics and an open question at the end of the form. Let's look at some top tips.

Do your research on the company and the role. How do you fit the brief?

We run open evenings every autumn, so come along and find out more about us.

Take your time with the responses and start early. Don't leave it until the last minute.

The application is open for at least two months, so we would advise you to consider your answers and take your time. Don't worry, the application can be saved, so you can continue it at a later date.

Don't be afraid to ask for help. Ask someone you know to read through your application and give you feedback.

The most common reasons for loss of points are punctuation, spelling, and grammar. So make sure to double check your application.

The HiPo-i has been designed for Early Career's recruitment to identify potential in our candidates.

You are usually given around a week to complete the assessment, so make sure to find a quiet space to complete it. If you pass the online assessment stage, it's time to come and talk to us at an interview. We will ensure that you are ready for the day. A member of the Early Careers team will call you to that you're prepared.

At your interview, you will meet with two people: a member of HR and the lawyer from the firm so that we can get to know you better.

We're a friendly team and want the best for you, so we'll try our best to make you feel at ease.

Once past the interview stage, you will receive an invite to our assessment day. The assessment day is held at a Weightmans office. It includes group activities and other tasks designed to see how you respond to practical challenges, for you to show us your personality, and your problem solving skills.

It is also a good chance for you to decide if Weightmans is a good fit for you.

If you're a successful applicant, the support does not stop there.

During our week long induction in Liverpool, you will learn more about the role and you'll get to meet other apprentices.

We really look forward to meeting you all at Weightmans and we want to wish you the best of luck during your application process.

If you would like more information, please contact us at earlycareers@weightmans.com.

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

Legal insights programme

Are you in year 12 or above, in undergraduate degrees (excluding Law), or do you have a keen interest in pursuing a legal career? If so, we are excited to announce the launch of our brand-new legal insights programme. Our aim is to provide students with an insight into our law firm, the legal career pathways available and to introduce you to members of the firm to discover what they do here at Weightmans and how a law firm works.

See what our apprentices have been up to