London Careers

Recruitment

Get to know Milbank

Milbank is a premier international law firm handling high-profile, complex cases and business transactions through 12 offices worldwide. 

The firm is made up of small teams of exceptional lawyers, with big responsibilities. Challenges arrive quickly because clients bring us their toughest and first-in-class deals and issues, confident that Milbank will apply not just legal knowledge, but also judgement. This is why professional development and training, including the firm’s ground-breaking Milbank@Harvard programme, is a key priority. 

In London, we offer a range of services across various practice areas, many of which are ranked in Band 1 in Chambers & Partners. These include: Banking and Leveraged Finance, Corporate, Competition, Islamic Finance, Litigation & Arbitration, Project Finance, Restructuring, Structured Finance and Securitisations, Tax and Transportation and Space.

The firm has over 700 lawyers working in 12 offices across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States

Our Graduate Recruitment Partner Committee in London consists of:

Vacation Schemes

Vacation Schemes 2024

We will be running our Spring Vacation Scheme from Monday 18th March – Friday 22nd March 2024. Our Summer Vacation Scheme will run from Monday 24th June – Friday 5th July 2024 inclusive.

In the Spring, students choose one practice area to sit in for the week. In the Summer, the vacation scheme's duration is two weeks, so attendees will have the opportunity to sit in two different practice areas.

There will be a variety of training and development sessions to help equip you with the skills you will need as a junior lawyer. You will also be invited to attend a number of social events held throughout the scheme to help you network and build relationships at the firm.

Trainees typically undertake a variety of seats across our Finance and Corporate practices, with Litigation as an optional seat. (If you do not choose Litigation as a seat, we will arrange for you to complete a course with our external provider to cover off the contentious part of your Training Contract).

Milbank’s friendly and collaborative atmosphere left a lasting impression on me during the vacation scheme and continues to as I now join the Corporate team as an associate. I leaned towards the Corporate team because of the breadth and latitude of its practice areas and its market-leading practice advising in complex cross-border transactions. With an emphasis on practical legal advice and strategic thinking coupled with its lean and efficient teams, the Corporate team has also offered a dynamic, challenging and rewarding environment and many valuable learning opportunities.

Adam Chang, Associate

How to apply

Submission Link

We are proud to be using Rare Recruitment's Contextual Recruitment System (CRS) which allows us to consider your achievements in the context in which they were gained. We understand that not every candidate’s achievements look the same on paper – and we want to recruit the best people, from every background.

  • Applications for our 2024 Schemes closed on 7th January 2024
  • Applications will open again on 1st October 2024 (for 2025 schemes)

Please click here to apply.

If you have any questions regarding the recruiting process, please don’t hesitate to contact Sophie Sunderland, Graduate Recruitment & Diversity Advisor and Vanessa Harvey, Senior Recruitment Manager at LNRecruiting@milbank.com.

Trainees

What it takes

Our trainees work in small teams and are given responsibility from day one. Working directly with associates and partners, our trainees are an integral part of the team in every seat. The benefit of our select intake is that our trainees receive exposure to high quality work as well as first class training and supervision throughout their training contracts.

We’re looking for candidates who not only have strong academics, but who also possess excellent interpersonal and problem solving skills. Candidates will need to be ambitious, intellectually curious and have a genuine interest in our practice areas. You should also have (or be predicted to have) a 2.1 or above in any degree discipline.

Our Training Contract

Trainees will typically be expected to undertake seats across our Corporate, Finance and Litigation practices. In addition, we offer comprehensive training to help develop your technical and practice-group specific knowledge, in addition to training on key communication, career management and presentation skills.

All students who attend one of our vacation schemes will automatically be considered for a training contract. We typically recruit all of our trainees from our spring and summer vacation schemes.

Let's Meet

Event Dates

In 2024, we will be visiting the following universities across the UK:

  • University of St Andrews – (Date TBC)
  • Trinity College Dublin – (Date TBC)
  • University of Durham – (Date TBC)
  • University of Kent – (Date TBC)
  • Queen Mary University – (Date TBC)
  • London School of Economics – (Date TBC)
  • University of Oxford – (Date TBC)
  • University College London – (Date TBC)
  • University of Cambridge – (Date TBC)
  • University of Warwick – (Date TBC)
  • University of Edinburgh – (Date TBC)
  • University of Bristol – (Date TBC)
  • Kings College London – (Date TBC)
  • University of Exeter – (Date TBC)

At these events our representatives will be available to answer any questions you have about our vacation scheme and training contract opportunities, and to provide you with a greater insight into the working culture at Milbank.

Milbank’s unique focus on keeping a collaborative and open firm culture makes the optimal environment for a trainee solicitor to ask questions, learn quickly and flourish as a lawyer.

Suzanne Azim

Pay & Benefits

Our Pay & Benefits

We offer one of the most competitive trainee salaries in the London market, in addition to an array of helpful benefits. Trainees currently receive a starting salary of £57,500 rising to £62,500 in their second year (this is reviewed annually). Trainees who are yet to complete the SQE will have their course fees paid in full and will also receive an annual maintenance grant of up to £17,000 per year. Starting salaries as an Associate at Milbank are currently USD $225,000.00.

A comprehensive range of benefits including 23 days of PTO, private medical insurance, life insurance, permanent health insurance, dental plan and a season ticket loan will be confirmed when candidates receive their formal offer.

Day in the Life

Day in the Life

7:15am: I wake up and walk to the gym (my gym is, conveniently, between my flat and the office). I listen to the latest FT News Briefing podcast on my walk (the podcasts are only 10 minutes long and quite interesting – would recommend).

9:20am: I get into the office, grab some breakfast and most importantly a coffee! I will usually have checked my emails on my phone by this time and know what needs urgent (or not so urgent) attention. Once at my desk, I filter through and reply to any new emails and make a note of everything I need to deal with on a given day (and over the next couple of days) – who doesn’t love a nice list of things they need to do that they can then (hopefully) tick off as the day progresses? If more things come up that I need to work on/address, I add them to my list throughout the day so I don’t accidentally forget anything.

10am: We often have training sessions/team meetings at this time, so I walk downstairs to one of our meeting rooms and catch up with my colleagues. If there are any topics that have particularly grabbed my attention from the team meeting, I make a note of them to research them further or to catch up on them with someone else from my team.

11am: I’m back at my desk after our team meeting. I catch up with my supervisor as we are working on a deal together at the moment – we discuss what needs to be done and I crack on with my work for the day! I’m liaising with our clients to gather certain missing corporate information which will need to be sent to a notary in Luxembourg. The work undertaken by the Financial Restructuring team is very multi-jurisdictional, so you are always working with legal counsel from different countries. It’s exciting as you get to see how legal systems work across different jurisdictions.

12:00pm: I go to the atrium and grab lunch with my friends (the other trainees).

1:30pm: I join a client call with my colleagues as we are discussing the next steps in the restructuring process of the deal that we’re working on. Closing is coming up at the end of the week so we need to get things finalised, especially as we hold the pen on a number of documents (and so need to manage the signing process). I take some notes on the call for my personal understanding as I learn the most when I write things down.

2:30pm: I catch up with one of my colleagues on another deal that I’m working on – I’m helping with the transactional/document management side of that deal. As I’ve only started helping out on this deal recently, I ask him a couple of questions that I have on the overall structure of the deal and the latest updates – I love knowing what the bigger picture of anything I’m working on is as it helps give colour to what I’m contributing towards in my work.

3:30pm: I grab a quick coffee with one of my colleagues from my previous seat – now that we’re in the office it’s so nice to catch up with people in person!

4:00pm: I return to my desk and work on a pro bono project that I have been involved in over the last couple of months – I am currently drafting board resolutions that will be used by the company. The firm is very good at encouraging pro bono work and I have been enjoying helping out on a couple of different pro bono matters since joining Milbank last year.

5:00pm: We have another call – this time with the client’s financial advisers. After the call, I quickly catch up with our deal team (there are four of us working on this deal – myself, my supervisor, a senior associate and a partner). We discuss our next steps.

6:00pm: I send out a couple of emails and prepare a draft invoice email for a deal I’m working on – we send these out every two weeks. I forward my draft to my supervisor so she can take a look at it before we share it with the partner on the deal.

6:30pm: We have team dinner & drinks today so I leave the office with my colleagues to grab something to eat!

I chose to train to Milbank because the firm has a leading reputation for big ticket deals and a small trainee intake. On the vacation scheme, I saw how the firm’s collaborative culture allows trainees to take early responsibility and accelerate their professional development.

George Widdicombe