Morrison Foerster
- London
Looking for a Forever firm with high-profile tech work and a Cali-cool culture? Look Mo further.
Morrison Foerster training contract review 2026
About the firm
- 14
- Trainees
- 29
- Associates
- 20
- Partners
- 17
- Overseas Offices
Meet one of us Chambers Student folk at a university law fair and we’ll all tell you the same thing: the most important thing is to find a firm that’s the right fit for you. And that doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. At MoFo, or Morrison Foerster if your grandparents are asking, the appeal was clear from the get-go: “I was definitely looking for a US firm,” one trainee explained, “I preferred the structure of how they were operating in London with smaller trainee cohorts, and getting more responsibility early-on definitely appealed.”
The firm’s reputation for tech work is also something that attracts attention: “I’m sure other industries are interesting,” one trainee wisely observed, “but tech was interesting to me from day one.” Another agreed that “I was looking at law firms that worked with tech companies and in the tech space, and it was a huge draw that the firm were working with loads of global, big tech names.”
“I’m sure other industries are interesting, but tech was interesting to me from day one.”
The firm is recognised for its strength in areas like debt capital markets and IT and outsourcing by Chambers UK, as well as boasting a full range of rankings from Chambers USA: from intellectual property and litigation to government contracts and impact investing. Across the pond, there’s very little MoFo isn’t recognised for.
Training Contract Structure
- 4x6
- Seat Structure
First seaters at the firm are allocated according to business need, and for each subsequent rotation, they submit a form with four ranked choices and a rationale for their ranking: “They usually ask around two-thirds through your current seat,” one told us, “which is enough time for you to have figured out what you want to do next.” The firm offers regular secondments, and we heard that it’s also a common occurrence for trainees to do split seats at the firm thanks to its relatively small trainee intake.
Seat Experiences
If you’ve been keeping half an eye on the news, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that trainees in MoFo’s litigation department had been heavily involved in the firm’s work relating to the Post Office inquiry and its representation of Fujitsu.
At the trainee level, the kind of work includes “drafting inquiry forms, drafting or reviewing witness statements, document review and redaction review,” as well as “making outlines of all the key people in the case, monitoring appeals and updates in the press, and keeping track of it all.” We heard that trainees had been able to attend hearings in relation to their litigation matters.
On the other side of the coin, the corporate group at MoFo is where the firm’s tech sector focus really comes to the fore, with both private and public M&A for big tech clients the firm’s bread and butter. Trainees told us that they’d been doing “a lot of due diligence, reviewing documents that have been uploaded by the target and making comments on anything that could be at risk. I’ve also helped draft the due diligence report and acted as the project manager with the specialist teams, sending out relevant points, collating responses, asking questions and getting updates.”
The drafting opportunities in the seat, we heard, were a big part of the appeal: “I’ve been helping to draft the transaction documents, updating shareholder agreements and SPAs.” Sources were pleased with the variety of work on offer, as it gave them “good exposure to a wide variety of matters. The corporate team is one of the larger and busier teams at MoFo, and we do a lot of transactional work here with some very large clients.” In one recent deal, the firm advised SoftBank on its $1 billion investment into Wayve, a UK-based developer of embodied AI for autonomous vehicles.
“It really allows you to see just how important employment is – especially when companies are merging or one company is buying another!”
Trainees with experience in employment (which usually forms part of a split seat) told us that their work is split between advisory work, corporate support, and work on contentious matters. On the advisory side of things, the work involved “lots of opportunities to draft and update employment contracts, termination notice letters, maternity arrangement letters, policies, and honestly anything you could think of to do with employment!” When it came to corporate support, a source shared that they had been “doing due diligence and getting that employment point of view. It really allows you to see just how important employment is – especially when companies are merging or one company is buying another!”
Data privacy is another area that often forms part of a split seat, covering similar types of work to employment: “There’s M&A due diligence which has made up a large part in recent years, contentious work if there’s a data breach and an advisory aspect to do with the changing EU regulatory landscape in the UK.” The team has advised on the data protection aspects of several major M&A deals, including Alpine Investors recent acquisition of Digital Origin Holdings.A trainee with experience in data privacy shared that “every day was just a new challenge, and every day a new task! I’ve worked on research bits and advisory bits, working directly with a partner and with the teams in New York, Brussels and Amsterdam.”
National security and antitrust are combined within a split seat at MoFo. It’s another seat with a lot of work relating to the corporate deals the firm is working on, so trainees regularly work to support corporate dealmaking from a national security or antitrust angle. We heard that on the antitrust side, trainees were often involved in multijurisdictional analysis, “looking at where there may be issues, researching previous case decisions and how the EU had determined the scope of the market in similar situations, and helping to draft advice for clients over the options they could take and the various related risks.”
On the national security side of things, trainees were “preparing RFIs, attending diligence calls, reviewing the archives, filing the FTI filing in the UK, drafting them and having calls with the government to mitigate any deals and explain the complex organisations we do.”
Another of the split seat options pairs capital markets with tax. It might be intimidating to imagine splitting your time between two teams, but a trainee assured us that “while there’s a lot of work, it felt like there was oversight from both teams over what I was doing for each, so I never felt like I was being overwhelmed or bombarded. I think it was well-managed.” Sources shared that tasks varied with each side of the work: “On the capital markets side, it tended to be more process-driven work, so things like getting companies house documents for companies on particular deals, or going through and proof-reading MPAs.”
In contrast, “on the tax side it tended to be more research-based tasks, so the tax partner would email me and give me an outline of something happening on a deal and ask me to look into some legislation and apply it to what’s going on in the context of a deal.” In one recent matter, the firm’s capital markets team advised pizza giant Dominos in a private placement of Senior Notes worth £100 million.
Trainee Life
Trainees were happy to brag about how nice the firm’s London office is, which was fair given that it’s “right in the heart of the city in the Scalpel building, so it’s got glass walls all around and has great views!” Sources were positive about sharing offices with their supervisors, and were impressed by the location, as “right next door we have the Leadenhall Market, which is really nice for lunch or impromptu after-work drinks.”
Trainees are expected to be in the office from Tuesday to Thursday, and we heard that “pretty much everyone works from home on Mondays and Fridays.” This can vary depending on department and business need, and an interviewee explained that “in corporate, it’s quite common if there’s a deal that you’d be in every day of the week, but that’s something the entire deal team would do, it’s not just the trainees in the office, so it would feel like a normal working day.”
For a number of the current cohort, the culture at MoFo was something that drew trainees to the firm: “It’s very non-hierarchical,” explained one, “it’s quite a small office so you work at any stage directly with the partners. It doesn’t feel like I have to go to a junior and then a senior associate, I can just go and knock on the partner’s door and everyone’s very friendly and keen to help.” Trainees also felt supported because: “at the junior level, associates are very keen to spend time going through a piece of work with you to give you feedback, so there’s a culture of trying to help people improve.”
Formal training at MoFo begins with a month-long orientation, which involves talks from different practice areas alongside the soft skills like public speaking, “which was quite cool, an expert came in to do that.” Some departments like corporate and litigation host mandatory training sessions every fortnight, as well as occasional webinars hosted from offices in the US.
The social side of things got great reviews from our interviewees, who shared that the firm’s social committee organise regular events in addition to the more typical Christmas and summer parties. Examples included an Easter egg hunt, pizza on Valentines’ Day, a bao bun evening, and ordering in food for some sports matches too.
“…you can genuinely see the diversity in the office and the people it employs.”
DEI was a hot topic, with trainees sharing that “DEI-wise, MoFo is really strong. That’s one of the things that attracted me, and you can genuinely see the diversity in the office and the people it employs.” There are a number of affinity groups for those at the firm too: “MoFo Together is the ethnic minority affinity group, and then there’s MoFo Proud, MoFo Women, one for social mobility, and one for parents and caregivers too.” Anyone can get involved in these groups, and they host regular events for celebrations including Eid and Chinese New Year.
Trainees told us that average hours at the firm were between 9.30am and 7.30pm. If they’d had to work later than this, we heard lawyers were often going home to log back on again and finish their work. “When it’s busier, it’s inevitable you’ll have to do slightly later hours, maybe working until 10pm or 11pm,” explained one trainee, “and I don’t want to say it’s rare, but it only happens when it absolutely has to. This is not the kind of firm that glorifies working late at all.”
Trainees also felt supported when the later hours began to creep in: “You’re never going to be alone, so I’ve never felt isolated, and my supervisors have always been on call and ready to check anything through.” Further comfort is perhaps found in the salary this lot are compensated. For first years receive £60,000, rising to £65,000 in their second year. Trainees can also look forward to an eyewatering $225,000 upon qualification.
Pro bono-wise, trainees were regularly working with Z2K on disability benefits appeals, to give just one example. “As the trainee, you’re the one on the call leading it,” explained a source, “you draft the submissions to court and attend the hearings, and though you have to be supervised, you’re the one running the case.”
Qualification
Come qualification time, a jobs list is released, before trainees then prepare an application for up to two teams they’d be interested in qualifying into; the firm is hiring on business need, so that’s the primary focus. Some departments have additional interview or assessment measures, whilst others base their decision solely on the opinions of partners in the group.
“The training principal Trevor is absolutely fantastic,” one told us, “and there was very much an open-door policy when anyone had a concern or query. Even if we couldn’t get the answer we wanted, we could discuss it, which I think was super important.” In 2025, the firm did not disclose the number of qualifiers.
- Undisclosed%
- Trainees Retention
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Top Figures
- £60,000
- 1st Year Salary
- £65,000
- 2nd Year Salary
- $225,000
- Newly Qualified Salary
- Undisclosed
- Training Contract Vacancies
- Firm recruits exclusively through it's vacation scheme
- Application Closing Date
