Alan Roberts, Partner with responsibility for trainees.

Hello. My name is Alan Roberts; I am the Partner with responsibility for the Trainee Programme in A&L Goodbody.I want to give you a brief overview of what the Trainee Programme in A&L Goodbody comprises, and why we think it is the very best Trainee Programme available to you. Firstly, the way we structure our trainee programme is that when you join us you will sit in four different departments for a six month rotation each time. In that way you are not going to be pigeon-holed into a particular area of law too early in your career and you are going to be given the chance to discover for yourself just where your interests lie and what you are really good at.

So you will be rotated through the four main Departments in the Firm, which are Litigation and Dispute Resolution, Corporate, Banking and Property.

Throughout your time on the team, you will be working with a partner, with associates and more junior fee earners and in that way you will get to see different people with different styles and also people at different stages in their legal career which will enable you to develop all the skills that you need to be the very best commercial lawyer that you can be.

Along the way, you will be given an assessment every three months, so that’s half way through your rotation and then again at the end of the rotation. I appreciate this can be quite daunting at the start, but it really is a very valuable way for you to ascertain just how well you are going along in your rotation and to the extent that there are any issues, you are given the opportunity to discuss those with your partners and ensure that they are picked up before they become bigger issues than they really need to be.

Another point that I want to make about our trainee programme and it is a really exciting development, is that we also allow a number of our trainees to go on secondment with some of our biggest clients so this can be banks, insurance companies, IT Companies, Telecom companies, really across the range and it is a fantastic experience for trainees to be able to go out to our client organisations and learn just exactly what it is that our clients look for in their lawyers. We can think of no better way of teaching our trainees just how to best serve their clients in their future career.

I should also mention that we have two trainees in our London office at any point in time and there you will be given a chance to see what life is like in the city of London but with the support and protection of our team in our London office.

Education is a huge part of your traineeship and we take that part of your traineeship very seriously here in A&L Goodbody. We have structured an education programme which takes four broad strands. The first is where we have top lawyers, partners and senior associates in various areas in which the firm practices, come down and give trainees presentations on their areas of expertise and recent developments and upcoming developments in law in their area. This is a way we can impart the necessary legal knowledge to our trainees across a broad spectrum of our practice areas.

The next strand is where we take a more practical approach in smaller groups where seminars are led by lawyers in particular areas and we focus in on the key practical skills that you are going to need to learn in order to practice in those specific areas. So for example we will have corporate lawyers who will come down and help you negotiate and teach you how to negotiate the warranties in a share purchase agreement.

We will also have litigation and dispute resolution lawyers come down and explain precisely the steps that need to be taken in a commercial court case and proceedings before the High Court and you will get a chance to actually draft, negotiate and settle the key documents that you will need in both of those court proceedings and in the corporate mergers and acquisitions transactions which we were discussing.

The third strand is actually led by the trainees themselves where we ask trainees to simulate a client briefing or a client meetings where the other trainees act as clients and they present not so much from behind a podium or a lectern, but actually in a real live meeting room scenario and have to field questions and other comments and queries from their trainees as if they were the real life solicitor giving advice to a client.

The final part of our Trainee Education Programme is where we focus in on the on non-legal skills and again we offer seminar programmes and training sessions by our award winning knowledge team and training team here in A&L Goodbody and also with external consultants to give you all of the skills that you are going to need outside of the pure legal knowledge.

So for example we will teach you how to write in an effective way from a business point of view, we will teach you how to present with impact and we will also give you key business development tools that you are going to need as a junior lawyer and as you make your way through your career in the office.

Education is a key part of what we do here in A&L Goodbody and we put the time and resources into you to ensure that you become the very best lawyer that you can be.

A word then on the package that we offer our trainees; we offer top of the market salary. We pay all of your law society fees. We pay you while you are down in Blackhall on your professional courses. We pay an exam bonus when you pass your exams. We also give you an extra week’s holiday after each of your PPC1 and PPC2 courses down in Blackball and we also make a contribution to your health insurance costs. Finally we also have an educational bursary available to all trainees because we want to encourage people to keep learning not only inside the office but also outside.

So we will pay for you if you want to take an extra course, be that a tax course or if you want to keep up a language but it is up to you to decide how you best apply the educational bursary that we make available to you, we really do want you to become the best lawyer that you can be.

So what are we looking for in our future trainees?

Well, we are looking for people who are smart, clever, but we are not just looking for people who are just academically high achievers and nor do we limit applicants to those who have just studied law. We accept degrees from all disciplines and have done so in the past.

What we are really looking for are people who have a real zeal to learn more and develop as lawyers in a commercial law firm. We also look to our trainees to show drive and determination and also have shown themselves to have put themselves in challenging positions in what they have done up until now.

A key criterion is the ability to work on a team because this is the approach we take to all of our client problems and you need to demonstrate to us that this is something which comes very naturally to you. Clearly we need our trainees to be effective communicators with an ability to put across their message in a simple concise manner. Finally, we are looking for trainees who have shown a genuine interest in and aptitude for business because while we are lawyers, we aim to be trusted business advisors to our clients and we operate at all times in that commercial world. Above all then, we are looking for the next generation of A&L Goodbody lawyers who can lead the practice and become the new partners in future years.

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