Ropes & Gray

About the firm

If you’re tied to the idea of a firm that can untangle even the most complex of private capital client knots, Ropes & Gray won’t leave you hanging. Although Ropes is a Boston-born firm, it’s made a name for itself on the London private equity scene, and its St Paul’s office is a hotbed for private transaction activity. “I wanted a firm that was high responsibility, high competency,” one trainee shared, and it’s easy to see why Ropes roped them in, because it ticks both of those boxes: with a small trainee intake and glowing PE reputation, our sources found their training contracts “very rewarding.”

“…great exposure to the top lawyers in the world. I can’t ask for much more!”

And trainees aren’t only tied up in private equity work, either. Ropes’s high-profile corporate client list offers trainees the opportunity to get up close and personal with big-name companies, from Goldman Sachs to Monster Energy – and whether dealing in coffers or caffeine, as one trainee put it, there’s “great exposure to the top lawyers in the world. I can’t ask for much more!”

There’s Gray matter aplenty at Ropes, which tends to attract “lots of bright and ambitious people,” and our sister guide Chambers UK agrees, praising the firm for its corporate crime & investigations and leveraged finance specialisms in London and its capital markets and investment funds work nationwide.

Why trainees joined the firm

Private equity expertise

“I knew Ropes had really strong PE chops,” one of our sources explained. Trainees were drawn to the fact that “every major team at the firm is in one way or another built around private capital transactions… I don’t think there is another firm in the city that does that to that extent.”

US prestige with a UK feel

Our interviewees wanted exposure to “the best legal market,” and felt that “Ropes’s culture distinguishes it from other US firms.” One trainee described how “everyone is very genuine - I had a picture in my head of a US law firm with everyone shouting at each other, but Ropes is nothing like that!”

Small trainee cohorts

The firm takes on around 12 trainees per year (rising to 15 in the near future), which stood out to our insiders, who wanted “a firm with a smaller intake, but not too small.”

Trainee satisfaction rankings

Training contract structure

Seat allocation

Sources described the seat allocation process as “informal.” The first seat is allocated blind, and for each subsequent seat, trainees submit a set of three ranked preferences to a newly introduced AI-powered online portal - RUTH. This is followed by a conversation with partners and the talent team, with third- and fourth-seat trainees being given priority in their choices. The allocation process received mixed reviews from our interviewees. As one told us: “Some people got seats they didn’t put down, that they explicitly said they didn’t want to end up in.” There was some uncertainty too around how the firm blends human input with the new AI portal. That said, the general consensus was that seat preferences are a little more likely as trainees move through their training contracts.

Client secondments

Client secondments do “come up from time to time,” but they’re “not a guarantee.” They are usually communicated through an email being sent round to ask for an expression of interest, rather than a formal process, and are available only to trainees who are not on visas. The secondment available to the current crop of trainees was a placement with Liberty Global.

International secondments

An international secondment to Dublin in antitrust was made available for one trainee last year.

Seat Experiences

Trainee life

Culture and environment

Data from our annual trainee survey

Interviewees described the culture at Ropes as “supportive and friendly,” telling us how “it’s normal as a trainee to have familiar faces in other departments. No-one is doing an impression of a mean corporate person; everyone is genuine.” One source noted that during a recent vacation scheme, looking at the cultural fit of prospective trainees was “a big point for us – no matter how exceptional you are as a lawyer, there is an expectation that you will be a nice person.” This is certainly important when you take into account the amount of time trainees will be spending with one another: “If you’re in the trenches at 4am, if you’re working with people you like, then that helps massively.”

“No-one is doing an impression of a mean corporate person; everyone is genuine.”

As the trainees did their SQEs together, there is a real sense of camaraderie – and one interviewee highlighted that the relationships between the cohort feel like “friends first, colleagues second.” Weekly informal Thursday pub trips definitely help keep morale high too. On the formal side, the firm hosts Summer and Christmas parties, and allocates a budget for social events, and trainees were pleased to report that they “get the freedom to plan those however we’d like.”

Working patterns

Data from our annual trainee survey

There’s no getting past it, hours at the firm can be intense. Trainees averaged 50 to 60 hours per week. However, hours vary a lot between seats, with sources describing how “regulatory seats are more consistent” whereas seats in areas such as private equity are “very volatile. You can go home at 5:30pm one day and at 4am the next.” Private equity, antitrust, and LEPG seats are “famously busy.” The standard arrival time is around 9:30am, with trainees tending to head home around 6pm, but staying logged on until around 9pm to midnight. That’s only if there’s work to be done, though: “if there’s nothing for me to do, I don’t feel the pressure to log back on at home,” one of our sources told us. Trainees reported however that the workload is fairly well-balanced: “There is generally not a lot of time where you either don’t have a life or have nothing to do.” When late finishes are required, the firm will also supply a taxi home and a Deliveroo.

Trainees are required to be in office four days a week, with Friday as the set working-from-home day. Our interviewees report that the remote working practice is “quite team- and supervisor-dependent.” In antitrust, for instance, you’re “expected to be in as much as you can.” One source suggested that WFH was “something that I worked up towards as I progressed in the training contract,” and that having an in-office presence is a good way to “build a reputation for reliability.” The company also has ‘work from home weeks’ twice a year.

Pay

Data provided by firm and our annual trainee survey

The general feeling among trainees is that compensation relative to the number of hours worked is “fair enough.” “They pay for our master’s, so that makes it worth it,” one interviewee reasoned. “We’re close to the top of the market,” another shared, but beyond salary, “a few of us are unhappy about [the firm] cutting down on perks,” such as reducing the number of weekly free lunches.

Supervision and training

Trainees had very positive things to say about supervision at Ropes, with one insider reporting that “I never found that a supervisor never had time to explain things to me. There’s a real culture of stewardship.” Although supervisors are naturally very busy, and often very senior, people, “you can have a lot of guidance if you ask for it.” This guidance isn’t just confined to formally assigned supervisors, with one trainee noting that “I can speak to anyone, regardless of seniority, about how I’m planning my career.” As well as providing feedback, one of our insiders told us that their supervisor took them along to a client office which was “a highlight of my training contract. I never thought I’d be able to do that in the Zoom and Docusign era!”

“I never thought I’d be able to do that in the Zoom and Docusign era!”

Trainees are provided with formal training programmes when they first rotate onto a new seat that introduce them to the practice area. In antitrust, for instance, there’s a session on how to review share purchase agreements (SPAs), and in finance, there’s one on credit agreements. Beyond these introductory sessions, training “mostly comes from doing the job itself.” In departments like PE, the team hold weekly meetings to discuss all of the live workstreams and meet every two weeks to unpack deals and cases that have recently been worked on, which acts as a form of on-the-job, “quasi-training.” As a result, “the TC really varies for each trainee. Our training could be different based on the deals that we’re on.” Trainees also attend cohort-wide sessions on general skills, which include presenting, contract negotiation, and professional development.

Pro bono & CSR

Trainees were quick to highlight that pro bono at Ropes is a “very big deal.” Everyone at the firm, from trainee to partner, has a 20-hour pro bono target, and the “vast bulk of the firm” hits it. Taking on a pro bono case often involves the firm “letting trainees run with it,” allowing them to “lead calls, and do the bulk of the work. It’s a great opportunity.” Several of our sources have given time to Ropes’s family law clinic, which offers drop-in sessions providing advice, and others were involved in the Green Tech Legal Collaborative, which helps clean technology businesses in their early stages with contracts and pitches.

Other opportunities include:

• The Caribbean Biodiversity Fund, working on the environmental protection of coral reefs

• The Windrush compensation scheme, in partnership with United Legal Access

• KIND UK’s child citizenship initiative, providing immigration support

Qualification

The process of qualifying at Ropes is “informal until it needs to be formal,” with trainees meeting with HR and the head of training to indicate two departments that they would like to qualify into in order of preference. If seats are oversubscribed, a more formal process of interviewing takes place. Some trainees had mixed feelings about this process, suggesting that interview arrangements could be short-notice, but others felt that “HR do their best to give you reassurance that you will be supported, regardless of the outcome.” Many of our interviewees told us that they are keen to remain at the firm long-term after they qualify: “It’s somewhere people stay. I worked with many people that trained here that are now mid-level or senior.”

When you’ve reached the end of your Rope…

The firm’s London office location, near St Paul’s, is “very nice,” and has a dedicated wellness room.