Trainee Solicitor, Banking & Finance at Mayer Brown International LLP

The following is a Graduate Review for Mayer Brown International LLP.

Mayer Brown International LLP scores 3.7/5 based on 21 reviews.

All reviews are based exclusively on results of feedback from employees from Mayer Brown International LLP. Employees are asked to rate Mayer Brown International LLP on a wide range of work place topics, which is broken down through star ratings on the right hand side.

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What are the Best and Worst things about your job?

Best

The work itself is very interesting - even proofreading a document is actually quite a lot of fun. It feels a bit like a strangely addictive videogame at times (scroll scroll scroll, see red text, copy red text, scroll scroll scroll, must be quick, mustn't miss any red text, scroll scroll scroll). More broadly, the clients and the projects that I'm working on are really interesting - they do really innovative things in very clever ways. Finance can see as though it's needlessly complex but, as you learn more about it, none of the complexities are needless - they all play a vital role.

Worst

The technology is a nightmare to use and the training is nowhere near comprehensive enough. I'm on the phone to IT most days to resolve one issue or another. I don't mean that the firm is lacking in innovative technologies, it's not, the innovation team do very well. It's the basics that we can't seem to get right - they've made bespoke tool bars for Office and Outlook that mean you spend half an hour trying to find out where they've hidden a certain button (and you can't Google it because the Google answer will be for the default). At the start of my training contract, I spent more time trying to figure out the IT than actually doing the work. Never once has the work itself been so stressful or challenging or confusing that I've cried - I've cried a dozen times at the stress of trying to make the technology do very basic things.

What is the annual salary for this role?

Starting salary: £49,000 - £51,000

Current salary: £49,000 - £51,000

What hours do you actually work, on average?

Start: 09:00

Finish: 19:30

What advice would you give to someone applying to this role?

Mayer Brown hire people with a very diverse set of skills and professional backgrounds so try to ensure you have a lot more than just academics on your application. When you're looking for work experience or volunteering or extra-curricular opportunities, don't feel as though you need to seek out the same opportunities as everyone else (paralegal, volunteer at a legal clinic, etc). Whilst those experiences are obviously beneficial, they won't hire a whole intake of trainees with the exact same knowledge and experience - it just wouldn't make business sense.

Do you have any interview tips?

The firm have very high standards of what they expect from trainees in their behaviour, conduct and interactions. Hence, it's vital that you know how to interact with people on a personal level. You don't work with very many people in the department on actual client matters, you make contacts through general conversation, attending events and being friendly.