This long established American giant has been in London for 50 years. They certainly have mastered the transatlantic crossing as White & Case have found a model which allows them to frequently (successfully) compete with the Magic Circle on capital markets deals, restructuring projects and corporate projects deals. Rather than being an outpost as one of the 44 offices world-wide, the London office has a life of its own to propel this firm into the riches to be had in the English legal market. In billion £ IPOs and bond offerings, a trainee may find themselves inundated with tasks which they find to be menial. This doesn’t appear to be the case here, where, besides all the bundling and proofreading, of course, trainees are able to help draft disclosures and inform clients of what all their work means!

Pursuant to White & Case’s strengthened position of recent years, the firm has upped their training contract intakes to 50 each year. Despite this though, trainees still encounter a largely classic American experience in being thrown in at the deep end and learning from doing rather than being taught. This can be daunting to begin with but trainees on the inside vouch that this is probably the best way of learning and allows an already steep learning curve to become even steeper!  

Salaries reflect White & Case’s wish to lure talent away from the Magic Circle and will be very impressive. This is an incentive to work that extra hard and this is reflected in the average hours worked by the lawyers here which are at times eye-watering.