Regional Focus: Manchester

Manchester stands out by being both a popular student and professional destination in that there is a natural progression from studying to working, without feeling like you might have outgrown the city.

Evocative red-brick buildings harking back to the city’s rapid industrialisation and newly-minted millionaires nestle side-by-side with the vast expanses of glass that surround spick-and-span modern squares. Manchester manages to contain both a sense of history and a sense of purpose within relatively small boundaries, making it attractive to trainees looking to take their first step up the legal ladder.

It is easy for students who have forged a connection with the city to carry on their professional lives here. Manchester University is part of the Russell Group and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) is home to a postgraduate law school that offers the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC).

MMU has taught the course since 1998 and 92 per cent of its BPTC staff are barristers, whose experience ranges from 9 to 25 years’ call. Considerably cheaper than studying in London, you could save around £4,000 by choosing to study in the North.

Alternatively, would-be barristers will be well catered for at BPP, which is based on Oxford Street and close to the city centre. From next September the provider will start teaching the BPTC in addition to its LPC offering. The city has seventeen chambers and offers a real alternative to London’s Holborn-centric legal district.

The College of Law (in the process of being rebranded the University of Law), which has a centre in the Piccadilly area of Manchester, is the destination for many of the trainees at the numerous firms dotted around the central, affluent districts of Deansgate and Piccadilly.

Central Manchester firm Cobbetts sends its trainees to the college for their second elective. Bradley Martin, a first-seat trainee in the firm’s property law department, says: “All the trainees from Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham do the LPC in Manchester together.

“Through that you get to be involved with other firms as well and then you get to come into Cobbetts and you know how to make contacts here because it’s eased you into that sort of lifestyle.”

Trainees also benefit from Manchester’s relatively resilient legal market. Two of the country’s best-performing law firms in The Lawyer’s UK 200, DLA Piper (rank one) and Eversheds (11), are doing well in the region, while firms such as Pinsent Masons (17), Addleshaw Goddard (21), Hill Dickinson (28), DWF (34), Pannone (59) and Cobbetts (61) ensure Manchester remains a strong second fiddle to the London market.

Manchester-based DWF announced a half-year turnover of £59m for the first half of the 2012/13 financial year following several mergers. It represents an increase of 31 per cent compared with £45m at the same point last year.

Cobbetts posted a more modest turnover increase for 2011-12, up 2 per cent to £45.4m from £44.5m, while Pannone saw turnover fall by 3 per cent from £47.5m to £46m, although average profit per equity partner rose by 8 per cent, from £207,600 to £224,000.

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Addleshaw Goddard Manchester partner Susan Garrett believes the city reflects the picture in London, albeit on a smaller scale. “There are some very strong core areas which mirror what is doing well nationally,” she argues. “Corporate and real estate are pretty busy, as is litigation and banking.”

The upside for firms is that even if business is not going so well, they can always find work. Garrett continues: “There are some people who no matter what the economy is doing can acquire plenty of businesses and there are always businesses looking to sell.

“The market is generally buoyant at the moment. It’s bizarre, the Manchester market, it seems to be a bit of an economic bubble. Manchester businesses like to use Manchester firms as it saves on travel and it’s right on their doorstep, and national businesses don’t necessarily go to City practices for everything.”

The smaller scale of the city is an attraction both for work and life outside the office. Addleshaws trainee Phil Dupres says: “For me it was a straight shoot between London and Manchester. I’ve got family at both ends of the country and in the end I chose Manchester.

“The quality of the work is just as good but the life is a lot better. I used to work in London - anything to avoid getting on the Tube.”

Fellow Addleshaws trainee Sarah Bollard agrees. “For me, London and Manchester were the main contenders as the legal hubs,” she says. “But Manchester stuck out. I think we all live about a five-minute walk from the office, whereas in London that’s just not possible.

“So it’s fantastic not having to commute but still having all the benefits of being in a bustling, interesting city. When I was looking at the two I just much preferred the Manchester lifestyle.”

David McCracken, a first-seat trainee in DWF’s corporate recovery team, details just how different Manchester is to other major legal hubs. “I live about a 15-20 minute walk away in the centre of town but it doesn’t really feel like you’re in the city centre. It’s quite tranquil along the canals and lots of people have that option of not living too far out of town.”

Close for comfort

The Manchester trainee scene is tight-knit. The Manchester Trainee Solicitors Group (MTSG) has a lot to do with this. It organises weekly events for its 400 members. These are mainly social, with the occasional training session thrown in.

Third-seat Cobbetts trainee Michelle Jenkins agrees. She thinks there is a good balance when it comes to the city’s working hours. “They’re the kind of hours where you feel like you’re getting a real workload but you still have a life outside work, and with Manchester firms there’s a lot of socialising between firms,” she says. “There’s the MTSG and they arrange a lot of events so there always tends to be something, and we’re always socialising with other lawyers because the work/life balance is quite similar. There are always events that everybody goes to.”

She stresses that despite the balanced lifestyle, trainees are still preoccupied with trying to fit all their commitments into the working week. “One of the challenges of being a trainee is trying to fit in all your extra-curricular as well as work,” she says. “You want to get your CV as developed as you can over the two years and I’m involved with so many different committees, like the CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] committee.

“On one hand you want to get involved and get as much experience as you can, and on the other you’ve got to appreciate that your fee-earning work takes priority over that. It’s trying to find a balance of pleasing everybody and making sure you’re getting a well-balanced training contract.”

Third-seat Pinsent Masons trainee Samantha Melling emphasises the in-firm opportunities. “There are always lots of different initiatives going on,” she says. “Last year we had a Dragons’ Den-style competition where you could pitch for a part of the office budget. That’s good because you get to do a different side of things which trainees don’t usually get involved with.”

Price promise

The Manchester trainee salary bracket is radically different to London’s. In Manchester trainees are paid an average of £24,000 in their first year and £25,000 for their second year, compared with the London average of £35,000 and £37,000 for first and second years respectively.

Cobbetts’ Martin can see the attractions to both cities but Manchester swayed him in the end. “I did a few vac schemes in London and applied to London firms as well but then made the decision to stay in Manchester after doing that,” he says. “After doing vac schemes there, you get the Tube at 7.30 in the morning and it’s rammed, then you get to work and there’s a perception that you do really high-quality, cutting-edge work, but it’s so technical that trainees don’t do that.

“I know that on the vac scheme I was just sat there most days waiting for the events. I just weighed it all up and decided the benefits of being paid more in London weren’t as great as the living benefits here.”

The benefits extend to working life, too. Martin says: “I’ve been doing a sale of some land on my own with supervision from a partner. It’s by auction so I’ve been involved with the auctioning process and met the client and been given responsibility. Even if it isn’t the most show-stopping piece, it’s good to be involved and develop all those skills.”

Jenkins says that the typically low trainee-to-lawyer ratio means greater responsibility for those willing to take it on.

“It’s easier in Manchester to get involved as a trainee in bigger deals because there are fewer trainees,” she says. “When you work at the London offices you have 40 people in one year and you have a lot more competition and a lot more trainees sitting in the same department, so you’re never going to get the same opportunities to sit in on client meetings and go into events with fee-earners - you’re going to be taking more of a back seat.”

Muhammed Bhaimohmed, a trainee in his first seat at Pinsent Masons, agrees. “I’m working with two partners today,” he says. “We have open-plan offices and that makes a difference because you can look across and people come over and chat to you and that’s how you get work really. The dynamic and the interaction you get with people are good.”

Despite there being an open, non-hierarchical culture at many firms, being a trainee is not without its challenges.

Addleshaws trainee Helena Drury says that the biggest issue is “not being in charge of your own time and your own workload. If you’re working on large transactions you can’t control when work comes in.

“You’ll find things will land on your desk and you will have been quiet all day, but you get more control over these things as you progress.”

Changing times

Aarti Latchayya, who is in her fourth seat in DWF’s commercial insurance department, notes that figuring out what makes a different team tick every six months is daunting but manageable.

“I think the challenge is moving around and knowing how each seat works and how people work,” she says. “They know that you’re new but they also expect things of you, so it’s getting that balance and gauging your way through it.”

Addleshaws’ Bollard believes this cycle keeps trainees engaged. “It’s a very steep learning curve as you spend six months in a seat and become quite confident and then move to a new seat and spend a few months being not quite sure of your footing but that comes with the territory,” she comments. “That in itself is quite interesting.”

The trainee experience is, of course, more exciting when working on big deals and cases, especially those that make national headlines. Rosanna Biggs, a first-seat insurance fraud trainee at DWF, says: “I get to work on a lot of interesting cases because I’m in fraud, so I’ve really enjoyed the situations you get to read about.”

Her colleague McCracken says: “I only started a few weeks ago but I’d been reading in the papers a lot about the Rangers administration, and a couple of weeks into my seat, I was told we were working on it. So I got to work on something I’d been reading about for months.”

With its compact but thriving legal market, ample socialising opportunities for trainees and lack of commute, Manchester is just the place for aspiring solicitors.