These days it’s far from unusual to meet a lawyer who studied a non-law undergraduate degree. Common subject choices for aspiring lawyers include English Literature, History, Politics and Modern Languages. But in recent years, an increasing number of law firms have shifted their focus to recruiting STEM -that is to say Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – graduates, which begs the question- why?

An interest in STEM graduates is not exactly new. For years companies from myriad industries and sectors have been keen to recruit individuals with this educational background because their skills and experiences are relevant and transferable to a number of roles. And the law is no different. The increasing convergence of law and technology (evidenced by firms embracing Artificial Intelligence technologies and the launch of law-tech innovation hubs) has meant that law firms too are seeking to boost their trainee intake with scientific and tech-savvy recruits. Their acute understanding of the challenges facing STEM-centric businesses means that they are well-placed to devise solutions for clients.

For many law firms, especially those with established Intellectual Property (IP) practices and clients in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and life sciences sectors, recruiting STEM graduates is high on the agenda. Matthew Royle, a partner in Taylor Wessing’s patents department explains: ‘More and more of our clients are in tech sectors and an understanding of our clients’ businesses is becoming more central to the way most law firms work – I think that automatically drives an increase in demand for STEM graduates. With most service industries – and the law is no different – actually having an interest in, and understanding your client’s business and what they’re doing, is really important to the relationships that you’re going to build and the level and quality of service that you can provide to them’.

For Bird & Bird, renowned for its work with Technology Media & Telecommunications clients, recruiting STEM students has been at the forefront of their recruitment programme for some time. Senior graduate recruitment officer Shannen Loudon expounds, ‘we’ve had a well-established IP practice for a long time, so for us it’s always been important that we attract specifically science and engineering students’. Indeed for areas like patent litigation, expert knowledge in the business area of the client and what they are trying to patent is invaluable. ‘If we’re representing pharmaceutical clients for example, it’s important we have individuals who understand and have a background knowledge of chemistry, biochemistry or pharmacology in order to deal with the technology and communicate with the client’s scientists’.

George Khouri, an associate in Bird & Bird’s IP department, echoes Loudon’s sentiment. ‘My background in biomedical engineering gives me an understanding of technical aspects of products that are sold by companies in the life sciences and telecommunications sectors. Having an understanding of some of the general scientific principles that products in these sectors are built on, such as the maths behind image processing algorithms or the physics behind an MRI machine, helps me get to grips with the ‘language’ and particularities of unfamiliar technical areas relatively quickly’.

‘The change in the market with regards to the development of new technologies’ is also a driving force behind the desire to recruit STEM graduates explains Joanne Smallwood, graduate recruitment specialist at Womble Bond Dickinson. These technologies have a profound effect on the way clients run their business and having individuals who are privy to the workings of such innovations is a significant benefit to both the firm and the client. ‘Having a solid grasp of the technology may give the client more confidence in your legal advice and help you discuss matters with expert witnesses with assurance’ says Khouri. Bird & Bird IP associate Georgina Hart expands, explaining that ‘Everyone is on an even playing field when it comes to the law but having some awareness of a particular field that a client operates in can help you when discussing technical topics’.

Aside from the knowledge and understanding of science and technology that STEM graduates bring to the practice of law, their ‘methodical and ‘logical way of doing things’ also makes them desirable to law firms, claims Royle. Loudon agrees: ‘They’ve got skills – specifically in research – that are really transferable to the role of a lawyer’.

Though STEM graduates offer a unique and valuable skill-set and expertise to the practice of law, that’s not to say law firms are sidelining candidates from other academic backgrounds, nor do they believe students who haven’t studied a STEM-related subject are lacking in any way. Gemma Barrett, IP partner at Bristows insists that non-STEM graduates should not be discouraged: ‘They’re just as able to do the work, it’s just that they might have to put a little bit more time into reading into the background so that they can get up to speed. But there’s absolutely no bar to them doing IP, we’ve got plenty of people who do really well without any kind of science background. Graduates from other disciplines just need to show that they’re interested in the area and that they’re not scared or put off. Quite often people who haven’t studied science get scared by the terminology and just run off the minute they see that – I think it’s just getting over that initial fear’.

‘In any work environment you need a mix of different people as different people bring different qualities to the team’ explains Royle. Smallwood is similarly vocal about the need for a mixed group of trainees, believing that whilst individuals who studied STEM subjects are important to recruit due to new and emerging technologies, recruiters ‘don’t disregard students from the other non-law subjects. We still very much need that diverse group of people coming through the business, that’s how you make a good team’.

Picture this: it’s 1948, New York City, springtime. On April Fools’ Day, Skadden is formed; but make no mistake, this firm is far from being a joke. What started out as a three-man legal practice taking on whatever small work came through the door, has today grown into a 23-office international firm with a 1,700+ attorney roster that dishes out expert-level advice in over 50 practice areas. This is a rags to riches story of the best kind; a story which shows explicitly that from humble beginnings one can rise to incredible levels of greatness. To celebrate the firm’s 70 year anniversary we revisit the origins of their practice; this is the story of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Marshall Skadden, Leslie Arps and John Slate were the founding partners of what has become one of the largest law firms in the world. The three-man partnership came about after all three had suffered unsuccessful partnership bids at well-established firms in New York. At the time, the top law firms in the city were akin to private members clubs – if you weren’t a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant), it was extremely difficult to get in, much less rise to the top. Thus, Skadden, Arps and Slate’s Jewish and Catholic backgrounds barred them from top-level positions. Not wanting to concede to discrimination, they ventured out on their own and set up shop. From the start, Skadden was founded from a place of difference and presented a challenge to the status quo.

In the firm’s first year, an addition to the team was made in the person of Joseph Flom. A Harvard Law School graduate, Flom joined the firm as an associate, but his influence on the firm’s growth over the years was far above the level of a young upstart. Particularly noteworthy was Flom’s work in the area of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), which the firm would eventually go on to be best known for. He helped establish Skadden as the go-to firm for advice and guidance on hostile takeovers – that is, when an individual or business seeks to purchase a target company without consent. White-shoe firms considered hostile M&A dirty business and so shied away from taking on such work, but such reluctance to engage in proxy fights spelled big business for Flom and the Skadden team who were able to call dibs on a significant share of the work in this area. That the ‘[white-shoe firms] thought hostile takeovers were beneath contempt until relatively late in the game … [and] left [Flom] alone’ meant that during the firm’s early years all through to the 1970s, Skadden gained unparalleled experience in hostile M&A transactions and built up a reputation for being able to successfully deal with large and complex business deals. The firm is now one of, if not the, most sought-after M&A firm in the world.

In 1960 the firm changed its name to include Flom’s and that of William Meagher, and opened several more offices (Boston in 1973, Tokyo in 1987 and London in 1988) signalling its onwards trajectory toward worldwide expansion. The firm also expanded its areas of expertise to include litigation, tax and antitrust (among many others) and has earned an excellent reputation for being relentless in its pursuit of success. The many accolades the firm has earnt over its 70 year history is evidence of its commitment to excellence and determination to obtain favourable results for clients.

Skadden’s London office is the largest outside of the US and celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. Much has been achieved in these few decades; the firm was ranked above all magic circle firms for M&A targeting UK companies in 2017 by Mergermarket and was the first firm to handle more than $1 trillion in global announced M&A in a single year. Skadden also boasts some hard-to-beat work highlights, such as representing Vantiv, Inc. in its $10.4 billion acquisition of Worldpay Group plc. (Britain’s largest payment processor), representing CME Group Inc. in its US$6 bilion acquisition of NEX Group plc. and representing Roman Abramovich in his successful defence of the multimillion-dollar proceedings brought against him in the English High Court by Boris Berezovsky.

Skadden is the sort of firm that individuals with resilience and tenacity want to join. The founding partners’ entrepreneurial spirit and embracement of their background and individuality extends to the firm’s recruitment practices and informs how trainees are selected. In speaking with Pete Coulton, the firm’s UK graduate recruitment partner, it becomes apparent that Skadden is interested in people who are both unique and talented. Of course ‘[certain] things are a given: intellectual rigour and academic excellence, a demonstration of teamwork, drive and ambition’. But, that said, the firm ‘looks deeper into people and what motivates them’, often recruiting those with character, who have their own opinions and don’t follow the crowd. At Skadden, individuality is sought after and praised, with everyone encouraged to carve their own path, much like the firm’s founding partners. In the words of UK training principal Danny Tricot: ‘We all have common attributes, but in terms of personality everyone is hugely different’. Deciding whether candidates have that je ne sais quoi can be difficult to do in a one-hour interview, which is why Skadden recruits trainees from a pool of candidates on their vacation scheme. This approach enables the firm to get a better feel for the candidate and likewise gives the applicant real insight into the firm and significant time to decide whether Skadden is a good fit for them.

So what’s next for the already leading legal powerhouse? Maintaining their top-tier position in the market is the goal. To this end, part of the firm’s strategy involves hiring the best talent to help develop the practice in areas old and new. With evolving teams and fresh perspectives, departments can be more innovative and develop better solutions to the various legal and commercial challenges brought to them by businesses, government organisations and individuals. With such a great history and track record, one can only assume such goals are comfortably within reach by the teams at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

To see Skadden’s full Lex 100 profile, including details of how and when to apply, click here.

Practice areas such as medical negligence, family and personal injury have traditionally been bypassed by trainee solicitors for their business-oriented counterparts. This is, perhaps, unsurprising considering the emphasis placed on corporate and finance modules on courses such as the LPC. But at Irwin Mitchell it’s a different story. The market-leading national firm offers a two-year personal legal services (PLS) stream training contract which allows aspiring lawyers to focus their training on just that: personal-focused practice areas which interest them. The programme is comprised of three four-month seats, followed by a year-long seat in the department in which the trainee wishes to qualify.

‘When I did my GDL I was very much intending to go down the corporate/commercial route’ says Lewis Ayre, a second year trainee on the PLS stream, currently sitting in Irwin Mitchell’s serious injury department. ‘It’s certainly the most heavily advertised practice area and it was very difficult to look into anything else’. But a series of vacation schemes and feedback from friends in the industry quickly convinced Lewis that the corporate route wasn’t for him.

A paralegal job in London’s West End working on industrial accident and disease matters introduced Lewis to personal legal services. ‘I connected more closely with having client-facing work and having more in-depth involvement on matters, as well as feeling as though I was actually helping someone’, he explains. It was this experience which led him to apply for a job as a paralegal, and subsequently a training contract, at Irwin Mitchell.

Chani Dhaliwal, partner in Irwin Mitchell’s serious injury group, has a similar story. ‘I actually didn’t know which area of law I wanted to go into. When I started my training contract in 2008 at Irwin Mitchell I had the typical feeling of wanting to be a corporate or commercial lawyer’. It was by chance that Chani ended up doing his first seat in serious injury. ‘It was the one seat that I thought I wasn’t going to do; I had no idea about the work I was going to be doing. But once I was exposed to it, I found it so rewarding working with seriously injured individuals and making a real difference to their lives through litigation’. Even so, Chani was still convinced that his future lay in corporate law.

A stint in the commercial property and corporate department changed his mind. ‘It just wasn’t for me. There were some really important transactions going on but what I quickly realised was that I enjoyed the contentious element of the work’. At the end of his first year, there was no question that Chani would return to the serious injury department to complete his final seat. It was clearly a good decision as he has been there ever since.

For Lewis, the benefits of deciding to pursue a particular type of law early on are manifold. High levels of responsibility, more exposure to matters and opportunities to undertake complex work are the norm for trainees in the PLS stream. ‘I’m trusted within the team to prepare court documents, statements, instructions, routine correspondence, liaise with clients directly and I assist more senior fee earners with complex, multi-million pound claims’.

Any trainee undertaking a typical six-month seat will be familiar with the frustration of joining a department mid-trial or at the end of a transaction and finding themselves unable to follow a matter the whole way through. The PLS training contract overcomes this hindrance thanks to the 12-month qualification seat, which ensures that trainees have enough time to really get their teeth into interesting matters. Lewis elaborates: ‘By the time I qualify, I’ll have experience of running my own caseload. I’ll have experience at all stages of the claims process, from initial client interview right up to trial and post-settlement matters’.

For Chani, the benefits of specialising early become clear once trainees qualify. Recruits have typically been undertaking NQ-level work for about six months before qualification and so they can hit the ground running once they obtain that coveted solicitor title. What’s more, they have proven that they are committed to their chosen practice area. ‘The candidates that we’re getting have already tested their options and they’ve already had exposure to personal injury or other fields within PLS. They are dedicated to this area of law – this is what they want to do’.

But are there any downsides to committing oneself to a specific type of law at such an early stage? ‘I wouldn’t call it a downside, but what could be a disadvantage is that having an exposure to different areas of law is really helpful, even in personal injury litigation. Having contacts in different parts of the business is useful’, says Chani.

In reality, however, PLS trainees will frequently find instances where their work overlaps with other teams within the business. Irwin Mitchell is focused on ‘client sharing’ – putting the client at the heart of everything they do and thinking about the legal services that a client may require. ‘More often than not, a client who instructs us will also want other legal services. They might need property law advice because they are buying houses and adapting them or they may have obtained a multi-million pound compensation settlement and so they need advice from our private wealth services team’, adds Chani.

Rather than specialising early, Lewis views the PLS stream more as committing to an ‘umbrella’ of a type of law, which still gives trainees a wide range of options when it comes to choosing where to qualify. ‘I think if you’re truly unsure of what you want to do it’s probably not the wisest idea, but I still don’t think it ties you to a particular route. Especially in a firm like Irwin Mitchell which has such a broad range of practice areas’.

It goes without saying that practical work experience will be invaluable for those looking to apply for a PLS stream training contract. But Lewis stresses that this does not necessarily have to be in the exact area of law applicants want to go into. In fact, any related experience speaks volumes: ‘skills such as practical case handling, drafting and experience with vulnerable clients are all helpful things to talk about at interview’.

Chani agrees. Whilst gaining some exposure or knowledge of an area of law will set you apart from other candidates, non-legal work experience should not be discounted. ‘You shouldn’t disregard things like working in Tesco during law school or university, because it’s client-facing and you’re working as part of a team. It also shows how you can manage a challenging degree with work commitments’.

Applications for 2021 training contracts at Irwin Mitchell are now open. Click here to apply.