Commercial Academy

The Slaughter and May Commercial Academy is a graduate scheme for those looking to launch careers within the legal sector’s marketing, business development, legal operations and innovation, or knowledge and learning functions. It is an opportunity to work within one of the world’s most highly regarded law firms and alongside some of the sector’s most well-respected professionals. The aim is to help you decide which avenue you would like to focus on wherever your career takes you next, as well as to give you invaluable experience and connections that will help you to be successful in whatever route you decide to take.

This is a two-year programme designed to give a thorough understanding of the breadth of career opportunities available within some of the key functions that support our lawyers, and to gain experience in different disciplines. Training will be provided throughout the programme to support your development into a well-rounded professional with a broad business skillset. You will work with our talented teams in each function, learning how each specialism works and, more importantly, how they all fit together, developing technical skills, strategic understanding, and people skills along the way.

It is important to point out that this is not an opportunity for those seeking to become lawyers. The firm offers a separate process for the recruitment of its legal teams, and this scheme is not an alternative route to those processes. Those applying to this scheme should be excited by the opportunity to work alongside our lawyers and the other professionals that make up approximately 50% of the employees within a successful, modern law firm.

The programme is made up of five six-month ‘seats’, and each individual participant will complete four of the seats. The seats include:

• Marketing and Communications
• Business Development 
• Research and Analysis
• Legal Operations
• Knowledge and Learning

Each of these seats has been designed to focus on a complementary set of skills and capabilities, and a number of internal teams are involved in delivering within each area.

Your role in each seat will vary according to your skills and interests, as well as the workload at the time, but the goal of each seat will be to enable you to thoroughly understand each area and whether working within it aligns with your longer-term aspirations.

We will aim to take account of personal preferences and attributes in identifying the seats assigned to each individual, but since the goal is to provide you with a broad understanding of the different areas, we expect all participants to change seat after six months. In other words, you will be expected to complete seats in four of the five areas and you may not have the option to select the seats in which you are placed.

We will offer a wide range of training and coaching opportunities. These will be tailored to meet your individual needs and to reflect the tasks that you are involved in, but will include:

• Bespoke induction
• Practical skills programme
• Technical training
• Networking
• Peer-to-peer collaboration
• Team support and supervision
• Commercial and market awareness

We will provide further details of the programme to candidates as they progress through the application process.

We offer the opportunity to be part of a team supporting the delivery of world-class legal advice to some of the world's leading businesses. Legal services is one of the UK’s most successful industries, and English law is used as a basis for transactions and settling disputes globally. You will therefore be joining a highly successful, internationally focused sector that is helping to shape the future of the UK and global economies.

In addition, like many others, the sector is undergoing exciting, transformational change with the introduction of new technology and new ways of working. Slaughter and May is at the forefront of many of these changes, and its Commercial team, alongside its Knowledge and Learning function, is leading the thinking in many areas.

On top of this, the firm has a deep, long-standing commitment to the highest ethical standards, and to ensuring it behaves responsibly in relation to its environmental and social obligations. It is a leader within the sector in addressing issues of social mobility, inclusivity and diversity, and it was the first law to have both our near and long-term greenhouse gas carbon emission reduction targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative.

At an individual level, there are excellent benefits and facilities and a variety of development opportunities to support you. These include a variety of training courses such as time management, assertiveness, presentation, communication and team management/supervisory skills.

You can find out more about the firm and what it is like to work here on our website.

We aim to employ those with the brightest minds, regardless of what or where they have studied.

You will be supporting lawyers who are amongst the most exceptional in their legal disciplines, so the highest standards of delivery and attention to detail will be expected. Candidates should be confident and willing to challenge, able to think ahead and provide solutions to whatever problems they face, and open to learning and thinking differently. They should also be able to work well with others who have a wide range of different backgrounds and perspectives.

You will have demonstrated these values in everything that you have achieved to date and have a track record of outstanding success within whatever situations you have found yourself in.

As well as being proactive and self-motivated, successful candidates will also have the following general skills:

• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to manage multiple priorities
• Ability to work well within a team and build strong working relationships
• Comfortable handling, analysing, and presenting data
• General commercial awareness and ability to focus on achieving valuable outcomes

In terms of academic qualifications, we understand that candidates come from diverse backgrounds and will have faced unique challenges. Indeed, we value the resilience shown in overcoming obstacles. However, we seek candidates who have a strong record of academic achievement. As a result, unless there are exceptional circumstances, we are looking for candidates who:

• Have achieved BBB or higher at A-Level
• Are a final year university student or a graduate
• If an undergraduate, are on track for a 2:1 degree. If a graduate, have a minimum of a 2:1 degree.

We will consider all qualifying applicants and each will be considered on their own merits, irrespective of their chosen degree discipline. We are open to more experienced graduates as well as those who have completed their course of study more recently, and we are particularly interested in candidates who have achieved academic and other success despite challenging situations. We therefore encourage you to include details of any mitigating circumstances which may have impacted your academic results. We will also use the Rare Contextual Recruitment System as part of the application process. The system helps us identify high-potential candidates by putting applicants’ grades and achievements in the context of their social and educational background.

Applications will open on Tuesday 5 November 2024 and, to apply, you will need to complete the application form on our careers site before Friday 3 January 2025. You can apply here.

As part of the application process, you will need to answer some questions about your background and attach your CV. We will also ask you to complete a voluntary diversity and equality questionnaire.

We expect candidates to use technology in an appropriate way to support them in preparing their applications, and in particular we are open to those who use generative AI to improve and correct their statements. However, applicants that use generative AI in a way that creates generic text that has obviously not been reviewed before submission will be automatically discounted. The questions we are asking are deliberately designed to test your individual skills and capabilities, as well as your motivations and thinking processes, and generic AI generated answers will not provide us with the information we need.

Applications will be reviewed following the deadline date and candidates may then be asked to complete a number of additional online skills assessments, as well as other tasks, during January and February 2025 as part of the process. You will usually be given at least a week in which to complete these tasks, which will generally be expected to take no more than one hour each.

Successful candidates will be invited to an in-person assessment centre in April 2025.

You will be asked to confirm that you expect to be available to complete each step in the application process before applying. However, Slaughter and May is committed to ensuring that our recruitment processes are barrier-free and as inclusive as possible to everyone. This includes making adjustments for people who have a disability or long-term condition, or those who have unavoidable circumstances that make completion of any stage impossible. If you have any questions, or require any adjustments to be made to the application and/or interview process, please contact us via email here.