The London office of Jones Day has scored a 100 per cent retention rate in its latest round of qualifiers, with 20 offers understood to have been made to 20 trainees resulting in 20 acceptances.
Nine of the newly-qualified associates are joining Jones Day’s litigation group while the remaining 11 are spread between a variety of transactional and specialist practices.
A class of 20 is among the largest Jones Day’s London office has ever made, although its 2017 autumn class featured 21 trainees. However, the retention rate for that group was 76 per cent.
A year earlier in 2016 Jones Day’s retention rate fell to just 68 per cent although in 2015 it also managed a 100 per cent retention rate. That year’s class was just 15 strong, however.
The firm’s success in hanging on to all of the trainees to whom it offered roles is likely to be at least in part linked to the prevailing economic gloom surrounding the pandemic.
As a source close to the firm admitted, “they’re a very close group, they know each other really well and they recognise that this is not a great time to be out there looking for something else”.
The same may be true for another two firms with smaller intakes which have both recorded 100 per cent retention.
US firm Covington & Burling is keeping on all eight of its trainee on permanent contracts, while Lewis Silkin has retained four of four. At the latter firm, two trainees will join the employment group, with one each going to commercial and intellectual property. One is based in Cardiff and qualified early in March; the remaining three are due to qualify in September.
