Here are the results. US is pretty obvious except in cases where there was a transatlantic merger; wed still consider Hogan Lovells, NRF and BCLP City firms because of their strong London origins. How suitable are you and what do recruiters want? At some of the biggest and most prestigious firms in London seemingly the preserve of the university elite we encountered trainees with degrees from non-traditional institutions like Brunel, Keele and Hertfordshire. If youre looking for firsthand interview tips from a Magic Circle partner, make sure to look at our blog post 12 Pro Interview Tips from a Magic Circle Partner with all the practical advice you need to have your best interview yet! Clifford Chance, headquartered in London, is one of the world's largest law firms, both by size and revenue. 1. We caught up with Siobhan, TLP Ambassador for the University of St Andrews, who was lucky enough to secure a summer internship with Magic Circle law firm Allen & Overy in their Abu Dhabi office! The term was coined by legal reporters in the 1990s[1] and is generally considered to include the following five law firms: Allen & Overy; Clifford Chance; Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; Linklaters; and Slaughter and May. In three years the number of Oxbridge grads taken on by City firms has dipped by 2.5%. You'll notice that the Midlands and Northern-based Russell Group universities did particularly well here. Imperial College, meanwhile, concentrates heavily on science and technology subjects and so naturally features less prominently. All legal teams work best with the variety of perspectives both groups bring. Hi all, After doing some research on the percentage of students from different universities at. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. Who are the Silver Circle Law Firms? Copyright 2023 Legal Cheek Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Big Three law firms, an informal term for leading law firms in New Zealand. This cookie is set by Facebook to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising, after visiting the website. Read one of these interviews with Magic Circle employees! The short answer is no. It seems to be a term to describe the leading City firms and there is some truth in it. This cookie is set by LinkedIn and used for routing. What's more, such large law firms usually give their employees a narrower remit - meaning that they suit those who are certain of their preferred specialism. And by the way, just 1.8% of the UKs student population of 2,266,075 study at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The latter two are the only universities outside of England to rank at all. With this intriguing, informal nickname comes an increasingly high reputation; described by The Guardian writer Laura Paddison, theyre the firms that promise top graduates a glittering name on their CV, A-list corporate clients and excellent training. One of my distant relatives is a director at one of the Magic Circle Law Firms, however I am yet to contact them regarding it. The prestige, the career opportunities, the money and the city itself combine to attract the brightest, hungriest graduates. how they beat every UK university in the salaries table, To find out about qualifying as a lawyer from overseas, read on>>. Advised on the first hostile takeover in the City of London; Arranged the first Eurobond in the 1960s; Introduced one of the first schemes to allow full equity partners to work part-time; First global law firm to open an office in Morocco; The only law firm to be named the most innovative in Europe by the Financial Times 3 times. Durham has taken a slide too. Initially coined in the early 1990s, the Magic Circle is a collective term used to describe what many consider to be the leading UK-headquartered law firms - Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters and Slaughter and May. NQuids inThe university you attend does determine your employability and earning power, but prestige isnt everything, as a glance at this table below will show. Masaryk University; is it worth going as an international student? For example, Leicester runs a very well-regarded law degree, and so has a strong showing. King's College London A102 GEM 2023 Entry. They are the five UK-based firms considered to be amongst the most prestigious in the world. When we leave London, we find Oxbridge only coming in at ninth and tenth on the chart. US firms in London had the highest percentage of Oxbridge and overseas graduates in the entire survey. The term 'silver circle' implies there should be a golden shape before it. Bristol and Exeter took the lead in the South West; Nottingham and Birmingham in the Midlands; Newcastle and Durham in the North East; and Liverpool in the North West. Although Oxbridge students make up less than 1% of each years graduating class, they made up a whopping 15.4% of all our trainee lawyer interviewees. E.g. With the competition for training contracts becoming increasingly tough, candidates are becoming more conscious of their educational background as they pursue a place at a highly competitive Magic Circle firm. Barristers from it worked on 64 matters for the Magic Circle law firms since 2015. It is also worth pointing out that different firms have different strengths, and thus do not all need the same type of candidate. As readers will of course know, the magic circle comprises Linklaters, Slaughter and May, Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and Freshfields. They will be in touch with you soon! The purpose of the cookie is to enable LinkedIn functionalities on the page. YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. Oxford, Cambridge and definitely Durham dont have big legal markets. It merged with Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Lober and Deringer Tessin Herrmann & Sedemund in 2000; Relevant experience in one or more of their practice areas. They are way more likely to make it to the top of such firms than graduates of Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff, Queens Belfast and Queen Mary University of London, which each account for just 1% of Russell Group partners. As firms recruit on a case to case basis, and are keen to make entering law as accessible as possible, the . A list of the universities attended by partners at top City of London law firms has been published. Submit. The trope explained above that in the eyes of the more prestige-obsessed graduate, London is the be-all and end-all is visible here. Fladgate, Bristows, Simkins, Regional defines a firm that, you guessed it, has offices inregions that arent London, and a head office thats also somewhere not-London. That seems big and it is but its down 5% from our previous survey of the years 2013-2015, although over nine years weve witnessed a 3% drop in the Russell Groups dominance. It argued that Clifford Chances profitability does not match the other Magic Circle firms, and that Slaughter and May operates a different (UK-focused) model, with revenue less than half of the other Magic Circle firms. To put it in the same category as Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters would be inaccurate, and to say it is in a class of its own is frankly showing the firm too much deference. "[1] Then corporate partner at Herbert Smith Freehills and former investment banker Henry Raine said: "The phrase was coined by a legal magazine and referred to firms which were very strong in corporate or international work. Sign up for our newsletter to boost your commercial awareness. We then combined this with our data all the way back to 2010, when most of the current. Visit the guide page below for more information. London School of Economics and the School of Oriental and African Studies were next, with graduates earning an average of 86,885 and 80,972 respectively. But even these firms do not specify a particular university. What universities have lawyers at the top firms attended? Manchester University dominates the national firms market. LLM? The further down you go, the more erratic it becomes. What's more, non-Russell Group trainees popped up in all of our categories. Boost your law career for free. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. All of the 'Magic Circle' law firms and barristers' chambers specialise primarily in corporate law. When we overlay the two graphs, City and non-City, on top of each other, we see regional firms showing less of a penchant for any particular university. The Chambers Student Guide survey recently published a study examining which universities law firms recruit most from. If you're considering where to complete your undergraduate degree, do not let the results of this report override key considerations: a particular course youre passionate about; doors open to you by pursuing a certain course; a locations appeal and the accompanying cost of living; how close by your parents should be; the social life and your general happiness. We also found that London attracted the highest proportion of overseas graduates. Here's why", "The silver circle - Chambers Student Guide", "Ashurst, Herbies ride out tough year; BLP, Macfarlanes, SJ Berwin succumb", "Can the magic circle ward off the challenge of the US firms? The pair both took around 2% each of the 2016-2018 trainee sample. They are the five UK-based firms considered to be amongst the most prestigious in the world. The term was coined in the 1990s by The Lawyer magazine and is based on the quintets close relationship with the Citys leading banks and stranglehold on the best corporate finance work. For most firms, a 2:1 is the standard academic expectation, but neither the degree title or the university you obtain the degree from is specified. But who are the Magic Circle law firms? We meet many law firms at far-flung universities and can see the efforts they make to get in front of a diverse student group. The bottom line. The Silicon Valley outpost is headed by Chambers-ranked capital markets attorney Sarah Solum, who arrived from Davis Polk, and includes highly rated securities litigation partners Boris Feldman and Doru Gavril from Wilson Sonsini, up-and-coming corporate attorney John Fisher from Sidley Austin and Latham & Watkins' employee benefits partner Maj Vaseghi. Chambers Student, the students companion to the legal profession, gives the truth about law firms and the Bar. The coloured arrows indicate rises or falls compared to our 2012 survey. Furthermore, given some suggestions that Clifford Chance and Linklaters will follow their compatriots' lead in stateside expansion, alongside the novel options for local hiring and remote work in the post-pandemic world, it appears that this trend will only continue going forwards. [8][9][10][11], Among the large firms not included in the term are Herbert Smith Freehills; Hogan Lovells; Norton Rose Fulbright; and Stephenson Harwood, which are less profitable. Quiz now! It does not store any personal data. Our interviewees came from a total of 88 universities over the past three years. While Magic Circle firms have long been considered fixtures of the US legal market since opening their doors in New York almost half a century ago, the recent glut of hiring and lateral expansion can be seen as an acceleration of these firms' attempts to crack the US market in a much bigger and more eye-catching way. Also worth mentioning are Southampton, Edinburgh and Cardiff, which appear almost every year too. What do they look for in Linklaters training contract candidates? The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement". The subject that was studied can influence how a university appears. This cookie is used by vimeo to collect tracking information. Almost a third of lawyers at the UK's elite Magic Circle law firms attended Oxford or Cambridge universities, new data published today shows. Compared to our regional breakdowns, we saw a greater percentage of Russell Group-educated trainees, and fewer from other UK universities. If you're currently studying at a non-Russell Group university, do not be discouraged by this report. We expect that more firms will adopt techniques like this in the years ahead as they acknowledge the need to be more diverse. The purpose of this cookie is to synchronize the ID across many different Microsoft domains to enable user tracking. When we look at what replaces Doxbridge, we see universities in big cities with legal markets significant enough to keep graduates hanging around. Could someone read this and share their thoughts and corrections? [2], The Magic Circle has been termed a "journalistic device, coined by legal reporters in the wake of the break-up of its predecessor, the 'Club of Nine'". You'll be familiar with this declaration from poring over law firms' grad recruitment pages. Some firms may specify a strong 2:1, which is generally seen as achieving between 65-70%. Instead this is simply the raw data broken down. In essence, the silver circle refers to the band of firms that fall just . Privacy Policy of each partner law school I have selected above. 806 8067 22 Registered Office: Imperial House, 2nd Floor, 40-42 Queens Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 3XB, Taking a break or withdrawing from your course, http://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/where-to-start/newsletter/law-firms-preferred-universities, http://www.chambersstudent.co.uk/media/1067/what_is_a_good_university.pdf. Oxford and Cambridge moved down the chart in all areas (and sometimes disappeared from it altogether). Most sources from overseas flocked to London's largest players and US firms operating in the capital places that especially value trainees with international backgrounds and additional language skills. (Flip to the next page to read the full memo from Linklaters.) This cookie is set by Youtube. Magic Circle Interview Tips: Things to Be Aware of . Clifford Turner advised on the creation of John Lewis Partnership in 1929; Became the first major non-US firm to practice US law; In 2000, became the worlds first global law firm with the tripartite merger with Germanys Punder Volhard Weber & Axter and New Yorks Rogers & Wells. The Super Boutique law firms comprise Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Sullivan & Cromwell; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Slaughter and May; and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Guys, do you prefer to be called hot or handsome? The Russell Group dominates the market at 81.4%. Masaryk University; is it worth going as an international student? Used by Microsoft Advertising as a unique ID for visitors. ", "UK 200: Record 11 firms join the 1m PEP club", "The long read: How the silver circle shattered", "Magic Circle Law Firms: The Ultimate Guide", "The magic circle: meet the City's top commercial law firms", "Guest post - The Magic Circle is doomed. Moreover, all four Magic Circle firms with US-based operations continue to increase their presence in the 2021 Guide, notably, in areas beyond their traditional areas of expertise in cross-Atlantic transactional and regulatory mandates. For example, Manchester and Nottinghams undergrad enrolments are much higher than that of St Andrews. 19. The cookie helps in reporting and personalization as well. Conducted over a period of three years, the survey data was based on 2,300 interviews with trainees at 124 law firms. But the highest salaries in the business and top-notch commercial work also demand stamina and an appetite for long hours and hard work more than any other city in Europe. The London universities LSE, UCL and King's continued to perform well here, while Nottingham lost the dominance it maintained in the other London categories. The term was coined by The Lawyer magazine in 2005 in response to the pre-existing term, Magic Circle. ", "Freshfields in the US: Don't call us magic circle", "Linklaters' Simon Davies: "The magic circle isn't what it used to be", "Revealed: The magic circle's barristers chambers of choice", "An obituary for the term 'Big 6' law firms in Australia", "Elite 'red circle' firms Zhong Lun and Jun He plot merger as consolidation grips China legal market", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magic_Circle_(law_firms)&oldid=1134664562. All of the 'Magic Circle' law firms and barristers' Law firms' preferred universities - Chambers Student Guide Web 2016 report: what universities do law firms recruit most from? How does a non-law graduate prepare for the SQE exams? The number of universities that trainees hailed from was up by 14% compared to our last report three years ago. . Want a more specific insight into each of these firms? [22], Impact of globalisation and relevance of the term, List of largest United Kingdom-based law firms, "One Essex Court is the 'go-to' set for litigation heavyweights", "Is this the end of the 'Magic Circle' brand? As an aspiring solicitor, its likely that youll need to study a course with a leading law school in the not-too-distant future. End of the road: Why More Than will no longer sell car insurance as insurer RSA quits market, Could fixing workplace stress save the UK 28bn a year? Nearly one in four of our London interviewees had an Oxbridge degree. Sign up to our regular updates! Linklaters. Find more on our methodology, plus a few disclaimers at the bottom of this page. A second group comprising Bristol, Nottingham and Durham made up 16% of all trainees in our research. As a result, there are certain universities that you won't find mentioned here (such as Wolverhampton, Glamorgan, Birmingham City etc..) Their absence doesn't mean that these universities failed to produce any trainees in three years just that we didn't encounter any in our interviews. Freshfields and Allen & Overy now boast similar numbers of ranked partners to Clifford Chance, whose historic focus on the US market, including its merger with New York-based Rogers & Wells in 2000, had seen it edge ahead of its compatriots in the Magic Circle. Will taking Further Maths as a third subject be a disadvantage to apply for uni? 1. Out of all the Oxford and Cambridge graduates we interviewed, over 80% bagged a contract at a City firm. James is a dual-qualified practitioner in both civil law (an advocate in Indonesia) and common law legal systems (a solicitor in England & Wales). PGDL? However, entry into the Magic Circle is . The ANONCHK cookie, set by Bing, is used to store a user's session ID and also verify the clicks from ads on the Bing search engine. This year also saw Allen & Overy overtake Clifford Chance in the number of rankings the firm itself holds, aided in part through the expansion of the USA Guide's Capital Markets and Projects rankings in the 2021 edition of the USA Guide. But which universities do Magic Circle Firms really recruit from? Going to University: A Student's Perspective. Next: How to choose your perfect law firm >>. This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. Youve heard of the Magic Circle, but did you know that theres also a Silver Circle? At most firms youll meet a balance of law and non-law grads. E.g. The other vital ingredient is to make good decisions at every stage, and that where we come in: use our guidance and market intelligence to help you understand where youd find your niche in this giant profession. Exploring trainee secondments and career moves into the Asia market. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Organisations are beginning to recognise that talent is found everywhere not just in the most prestigious universities, which struggle themselves with a bias towards the privileged. [1], In contrast to the Club of Nine, the Magic Circle is no informal grouping of law firms. It really isn't about uni, firms want to distance themselves from the oxbridge stereotype and simply want the best candidates regardless of who is awarding your degree The grades you have achieved and your overall academic standard is more important than the university you attend. The Russell Group (including Oxbridge) supplied 76.5% of trainee lawyers. Guys, do you prefer to be called hot or handsome? Their elite status in a competitive industry comes from various factors, including their client base, their revenue per lawyer, their revenue per partner and the number of lawyers they have working for them. Even the top law firms do not specify attending a particular university, or particular group of universities in their application process. This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos. Non-city firms are pulling in trainees from a wider array of universities. If your university doesnt rank highly in our report, should you be concerned? All the resources you need to research law firms and barristers' chambers, We interviewed over 2,500 trainees for our True Picture reviews over the past three years and recorded the university where each one of them completed their undergraduate degree. We wouldnt recommend making life choices based only on these figures, though. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. GCSE AQA LIT. This allowed other Russell Group universities to ascend the charts: note Durham is no longer the top of the Russell Group outside the capital, giving way to Manchester. Overseas students were the top earners, according to the research, with an average newly qualified salary of 88,384. Its up there with correcting your friends pronunciation of quinoa or pretending youve never heard of Lidl producing a ranking of lawyers favourite universities is an expression of middle class Britain par excellence. The Magic Circle is an informal term describing the five most prestigious London-headquartered multinational law firms, which generally outperform the rest of the London law firms on profitability.The term has also been used to describe the most prestigious barristers' chambers in London. Take our new Which Magic Circle Law Firm is Right For Me? Any universities missing didn't produce strong enough data. A firm that has a high regional strength, for example, may be more inclined to hire a graduate from a local university and most of the applicants to that firm may, inevitably, be from the local area and may have attended a local university. The West Coast office launches, which mark the first venture into California by a member of the Magic Circle since Clifford Chance shuttered its 5-year old offices in 2007, reversed a recent trend in the London market, where expansive US-headquartered firms would frequently staff their own offices from among the partner ranks of elite UK firms. In the world of Commercial Law, you will often hear talk of 'Magic Circle' firms. Do I need a law degree to get into the magic circle? Could someone read this and share their thoughts and corrections? For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our. One magic circle interviewee was a single mum with two kids and had graduated through the Open University. You don't have to go to a top university (and by your definition the 'only top unis are Oxbridge') to work at a top law firm. [3], In 2004, Slaughter and May's then senior partner, Tim Clark, said: "It's a funny concept. DLA Piper, Eversheds, Shoosmiths, Trowers & Hamlins. Increase your chances of success at an assessment centre. Below is a chart of the top 20 most common universities that cropped up in our research over the past nine years. These firmscompete to pay the top salaries, outstripping the magic circle firms, while the style of work is not miles away from the UK elite. Follow us for breaking news and latest updates, The Trend Micro Cybersecurity Knowledge Hub, 10 services and companies to help grow your business, Slaughter and May boosts pay packet for newly qualified solicitors to 100,000 as Magic Circle pay war rages, Freshfields increases partner pay to 1.84m. Wondering what the salary is like for a Magic Circle trainee? Read more: Freshfields increases partner pay to 1.84m. If youre an aspiring solicitor, youve almost certainly heard of the Magic Circle law firms. The most noticeable change in the chart saw Manchester elevated to fourth place as opposed to tenth in London overall. [12], UK law firms, including Magic Circle law firms, have experienced increased competition from US law firms both domestically (from US law firms with a UK presence) and internationally.[16][17][18]. In all, 83 UK universities were represented in our sample an encouraging 14% increase on the total in ourprevious 2012 report, signalling attempts to attract more diverse candidates. If theres a regional firm youre interested in, its still worth applying, highlighting what you would bring to the role. The firm was swiftly joined on the Pacific Coast by Magic Circle rival Allen & Overy, which burnished its signature credentials in complex financing work through the addition of a renewables-focused project finance team from Akin Gump in Los Angeles, including ranked partners Daniel Sinaiko, Matthew Nesburn and Andrea Wang Lucan, as well as adding the highly-rated John Marciano in Washington, DC. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". At national firms those with various offices throughout the UK a clear winner emerged: Manchester took centre stage, leaving Durham some way behind. Kings - English law and French law degree, Law Applicants 2023 entry - discussion thread, HKU-UCL, KCL-CUHK, Exeter-CUHK Law interviews, Cambridge Sixth Form Law Conference 2023 (CSFLC). (Part 2), Shared bathrooms student accommodation Southampton. According to Bloomberg . You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But that doesn't mean, say, an Imperial chemistry graduate would be less likely to get a training contract than a Nottingham geography graduate. At these firms, we spoke to graduates of58 universities. We don't describe ourselves as a Magic Circle firm in any of our marketing material. Oxford supplied the most trainee lawyers in 2016-18, with Cambridge in second place, followed by Bristol, Durham, Nottingham, Exeter and Warwick. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visted in an anonymous form. You can find all of the answers to these questions using our free guide start reading below! In 1920, Linklater & Co merged with Paines Plythe & Huxtable, a firm that had been founded by a descendent of one of the founding fathers of the United States, Thomas Paine. I don't know where the term came from or who founded it. There are grads from Oxbridge, Durham, Nottingham, Brum, Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds, UCL, LSE, Kings, Sheffield, York, Newcastle, Exeter and tons more from different universities within the UK working at top law firms. The research shows 76 per cent of trainee lawyers at . The Magic Circle is an informal term describing the five most prestigious London-headquartered multinational law firms, which generally outperform the rest of the London law firms on profitability. All the resources you need to research law firms and barristers' chambers, which struggle themselves with a bias towards the privileged. Thats up from 85 in our 2013-2015 research and from 76 in our 2010-2012 research. For example, Manchester and Nottinghams undergrad enrolments are over three times the size of St Andrews. Allen & Overy. 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