Norton Rose has offered its future trainees up to £10,000 to push back their start dates for up to 12 months.

Norton Rose has offered its future trainees up to £10,000 to push back their start dates for up to 12 months.

The firm has contacted around 100 of its prospective trainees due to start in either September 2009, January 2010, September 2010 and January 2011 via email asking if they would consider deferring for up to £10,000.

Head of HR for London Lak Purewal said: “We were reviewing our numbers for the next year to 18 months and decided that there would be too many trainees joining which would not be beneficial to either the business or for the individual.”

But the firm is not about to wave goodbye to its money easily – each trainee has to put forward a proposal as to why they should be eligible for the payment.

“We are not asking them simply to defer and go and do nothing – they have to come up with a proposal of how they are going to spend their time developing their skill set,” Purewal said.

And to make sure trainees still feel part of the firm while they are away, Norton Rose has said it will be offering short periods of work experience with its overseas offices as well as the opportunity to be involved with its many corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

The firm said there has been a good response from trainees. Graduate recruitment manager Karen Potts, who has been taking phone calls from the students, said the move would help make sure that all of its trainees were kept busy and got an equal chance of being able to qualify into their department of choice.

Potts said: “We want to make sure each trainee gets the best training experience they can from us and to do that we have to ask them to voluntarily defer so that we have a balanced intake.”

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