Clifford Chance is offering up to five training contracts to tech nerds.

The special programme is intended to provide applicants with an aptitude for tech a route to qualify as lawyers. Michael Bates, Clifford Chance's Regional Managing Partner, said doing so would "bring new thinking into the firm", which "is central to our vision of being the global law firm of choice". The scheme has been given the name 'IGNITE', which reads like an arsonist's scream and is sufficiently dire that it has already been used by a team on The Apprentice.

The Magic Circle firm said that IGNITE, which is open to law and non-law students, has been "designed for individuals who have an appetite for technology areas such as fintech, coding and AI, an ambition to become a qualified lawyer, and an interest in how law tech and digitisation are revolutionising the legal working environment". 

   

At the moment it doesn't look very different from a normal training contract. Anyone who gets onto the scheme will follow the same programme as un-IGNITED trainees, but with "time away from fee-earning to gain the necessary training, support and expertise in the field of law tech". 

There are no details of what that specialised training will comprise, probably because although fintech is a fashionable bandwagon to leap on today, no-one knows what it will look like in three years time. But if it does turn out to be 'sitting with Dave in IT mining bitcoin', that won't matter much to Clifford Chance. The firm usually offers 80 to 90 training contracts a year. In a sign of how much it is hedging its bets with IGNITE, for 2021 it is offering...95 training contracts. So even if no-one on the IGNITE pilot light scheme makes the grade, there will still be 90 normals (relative term) to call upon. Nonetheless, in a market where most other firms are reducing the size of their intakes, it is surely good news that CC is increasing the size of its cohort. Even if up to five of them will be designing AI monsters to kill and replace the rest.

Bates said,"we hope that these trainees will go to make significant change in their practice areas upon qualifying", adding "by building murderous unpaid robots who do law" (he did not add that).
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Comments

Anonymous 03 August 18 10:29

Translation - "we've realised we might have too many history and classics graduates so we want to make an effort to try and hire people who can actually do maths and aren't scared of excel!"

Anonymous 03 August 18 11:37

Lovely. Best way to challenge and disrupt internal structures at CC is to bring on 5 non-law grads. I'm sure all partners will be clearing their diaries to hear the newbies ideas and proceed to change their operational model.

Classic case of "We need to do something. This is something. Ergo, this will solve our original problem."

Good luck Oxbridge nerd bods, how long will it take you to realise you should have joined an FS outfit to build an algo....? Less politics, more money, people who might actually listen ....

Anonymous 03 August 18 11:56

Despite the poor choice of name for the scheme, having lawyers that understand tech is essential. The profession has been embarrassingly slow to embrace technology and lags far behind other professions. I'd say well done for not being a bunch of dinosaurs and much as I usually enjoy RoFs mockery, on this occasion I think it comes across as a bit shortsighted.

Anonymous 03 August 18 11:59

Nice PR stunt. As if these people will be: (a) interested in doing a job that does not in any way fit with their true passion; and (b) won't be turned into mindless NQ drones by the training contract machine in any event.

Anonymous 03 August 18 20:50

Old news. CC behind the times. Plexus Law has NQs doing a Law and tech mixed role already, doing exactly this.

Roll On Friday 06 August 18 08:53

"would "bring new thinking into the firm", which "is central to our vision of being the global law firm of choice""

Yeah, this is not a thing in law firms and indeed isn't going to be a thing for any organisation with a cabal of Mr Burnsesq ghouls who need a secretary to read emails to them creaming it off the top