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 pilotlight 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).
Tip Off ROF
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
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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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 ....
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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