Law firms continue to lag accountancy giants and corporate employers in the opportunities they offer
UK graduates, according to a recent poll by
The Times.
Linklaters was placed highest of 11 law firms to feature in the newspaper’s latest annual top 100 list of the UK’s leading graduate employers, compiled from interviews with more than 17,000 new graduates to leave university this summer.
Linklaters claimed 28th place on the list, followed closely by magic circle rival Allen & Overy in 31st.
Fellow elite City firms in the rankings include Clifford Chance in 45th, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (55) and Slaughter and May (58). Lovells, Herbert Smith and Norton Rose were placed 64th, 85th and 99th respectively.
Eversheds was ranked as the leading national firm in 52nd position, ahead of Addleshaw Goddard (91) and DLA Piper (93).
The top employers were again dominated by accountancy firms, with PricewaterhouseCoopers seizing pole position for the fourth consecutive year and Deloitte and KPMG completing the top three.
Consultancy group Accenture claimed seventh, while Goldman Sachs was the highest-placed investment bank in 10th. Institutions including the BBC, the NHS and the Civil Service all feature in the top 10.
Commenting on the findings, Eversheds graduate recruitment manager Kerry Reed said: “Law firms only recruit a tiny percentage of the graduates compared to the numbers that big professional service firms take on. They have a bigger campus presence than we do.”
Talkback: Do the survey's findings just reflect the size of the accountancy giants or are the top firms under-achieving? Click here to have your say.
Legal Week Student
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These surveys are always incredibly misleading as they have an inherent bias towards the firms that recruit the most graduates. Inevitably that means that institutions such as PwC and the NHS are always at the top as these recruit huge numbers of graduates from a wide variety of disciplines and will therefore be in more graduates' minds when answering the survey. These do not in fact offer "more opportunity" to graduates as the article suggests - rather they offer more oppotunities, i.e. more jobs.
The only way to get any meaningful benefit from these surveys is to compare institutions which recruit roughly the same number of UK graduates. On this scale Linklaters and A&O would appear to have the slight edge over CC and Freshfields but the difference in places is too small to draw any great conclusions about the reputation of any of these firms among graduates.
I agree wtih the above poster. Considering the fragmentation of the legal industry, it's almost surprising that law firms rank so high in graduates' minds. Whether they deserve to be viewed so well on the basis of career opportunity they actually provide is, of course, another matter.
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