This month Burton Copeland has announced the launch of its new internship program in order to support up and coming lawyers or law students who might be considering embarking on a career in criminal or regulatory law.

Managing Partner Louise Straw said, 

“Burton Copeland has always been supportive of the younger generations and have always welcomed students and young people who want to gain some work experience. Legal aid cuts have meant that the number of people going into criminal law has been on a massive decline in recent years. We’d like to offer people an opportunity to come and experience exactly what an exciting and interesting sector this is to work in. We want to forge links with local education providers and the community”.

Rather than students completing a week or two as they would usually do if completing a college work experience placement, the internship program will provide a more structured approach with interns gaining real experience over a period of 2 – 8 weeks.

The Law Society announced recently that between 2017 and spring of 2024 more than 1,4000 duty solicitors have left the sector. Those that remain are aging with fewer than 4% of duty solicitors aged under 35 years old and the average age in 2021 was 49.

Louise said, 

“The Law Society has campaigned significantly about legal aid cuts, but individual firms need to play their part too. It is not just about encouraging law students to choose criminal law at university. There are other many roles within a solicitor’s firm such as paralegals, legal secretaries and finance and administrative support and also many different routes to qualification.”

Practice Director Deborah Jackson said, 

“We want to be flexible and offer people the opportunity to spend a longer period with us. We often find that work experience placements who stay with us for longer find that they enjoy the placement more as they settle in and get to see and experience more.

The placements will therefore be entirely flexible, we don’t want to limit the opportunities by having set periods such as only during the summer or half term holidays. 

We also don’t want to limit people applying for financial reasons so will cover payments for travel and subsistence expenses to successful applicants to ensure that they are able to gain experience without being out of pocket.”

Those who with to apply for an internship placement should email enquiries@burtoncopeland.com for further information and an application pack.