Pros
This is a great place to start your legal career. The pupillage system may be slightly unique in that you are encouraged to spend your entire 9 months with one of the firm's teams within a department. Whilst this means you do not get to experience other practice areas that a rotation system would expose you to, it also means that you are able to truly understand how the work in one area of law works. You will also build a deeper relationship with your teammates and the partner you work for. Generally, you will work in the team under your master. The programme is particularly advantageous if you are quite certain of the practice area you intend to practice in and intend to be retained as retention rates tend to be higher than in other firms as you spend your entire 9 months with a single team. The associates and partners in the Banking & Finance and Financial Regulatory teams, and the Financial Services Department in general, are excellent people to work with. They are willing to teach, are patient and reasonable, and are almost always willing to hear your opinion if its been well thought out. The only expectations of a pupil are that you are willing work hard, you do your own research before asking questions, and you are organised. The people in the teams also connect on a personal, as opposed to a simply professional, level. The people you work for will almost always know what you are working on and, consequently, have very realistic expectations of deadlines. As with all law firms, each team will, generally, take on the personality of its partner and so who you work for will largely determine your experience. Work in the Banking & Finance team mainly revolves around drafting the facility/loan agreement, security documents and enforceable legal opinion for a loan. The practice area is very interesting as each loan is unique based on the particular structure of the loan (e.g. the loan may include currency swaps as part of the structure).
Cons
If you are unsure of the practice area you want to focus on then this may not be the pupillage programme for you. The average day starts at 9am and ends at 8pm. There are downtimes when you can leave by 7pm (6.30pm if you're lucky) and there are peak periods when you will be expected to stay until midnight or later. However, it is important to note that you are only ever expected to stay past 6pm if work requires it. Working weekends is uncommon as a pupil. However, this will change at associate level. As the firm adopts most of the internal processes of Allen & Gledhill LLP, the processes generally follow a "big firm" style. This may be tedious but generally these processes are in place to create a footprint in order to retrace the steps of your work or for staff monitoring.