Training Contracts at Shearman & Sterling

Coming soon.

Shearman & Sterling Graduate Recruitment Info

Contact:
Graduate Recruitment Team
Email: graduates@shearman.com

Application Deadlines: Training Contracts: 30th June 2012

How to apply: www.shearman.com/recruitinguk/gradrecruitment/app/

Shearman & Sterling Profile & Stats

With more than 900 lawyers in 20 offices across the US, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, Shearman & Sterling is one of the world’s premier law firms – serving the domestic and cross-border needs of an impressive roster of clients. The firm has 130 solicitors in London and has a complete full-service office that actively chases all types of deals for its global clients.

A New York-based outfit by lineage, Shearman & Sterling has built a European operation, so successful, that its progeny occasionally outshines the mother-ship. Shearman opened shop in London in 1972, and has now been practising English law for over 10 years. The London office now has a significant majority of English-qualified partners – thanks to a recruitment spree a few years ago and several internal promotions – and the firm has mostly ditched the US-centric approach to billable hours or career development that still dogs some of its rivals.

Shearman & Sterling was founded in 1873, by Thomas Shearman and John William Sterling, who concentrated on litigation and transactional matters respectively. The young firm represented financier Jay Gould, industrialist Henry Ford, and cultivated a number of important business ties that would evolve into long-standing client relationships – such as with the Rockefeller family and the predecessor banks to Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. In post-war Germany, Shearman & Sterling assisted German companies, such as Siemens and BASF, restructure their debts and re-emerge as credible exporters to the United States. The firm was even given the moniker, ‘German & Sterling’, for its ability to cultivate long-term client relationships with blue chip German companies.

The firm expanded overseas relatively early, opening its first foreign office in Paris, in 1963. Shearman & Sterling has been in London since 1972, and is therefore considered one of the largest and most Anglicised of all the American firms in town. The aim of venturing into the City was to act for European companies when they were listing or raising money on the US stock markets. This US securities work was Shearman’s way into UK corporates, such as British Telecom, and brought the firm a reputation with American investment banks – so crucial to the success of any serious City law firm.

Shearman’s Middle Eastern practice has also grown, with several partners and solicitors from the firm’s preeminent offices relocating to Abu Dhabi. The firm is still building its global network; the most recent addition was the launch of its Milan office at the beginning of 2010.

Shearman’s recruitment strategy has been to resolutely chase and hire only the best-of-the-best of UK law. This unwavering approach has consequently meant that some practice areas have taken longer to build than the firm would have liked. However, the end result is a collection of some of the best individual lawyers in the business – genuine specialists in each expertise.

Primarily known for its extensive domestic and global M&A, other well-regarded divisions include technology, telecoms and private equity. And although the firm’s initial aim was to work on US securities – growing those relationships into providing English law advice – much of the domestic work is now free-standing, and generated in the UK rather than through prior US relationships. However, the London office does often work with other outposts in the global network, for advice on major international deals.

Shearman’s specialist UK practices are structured finance, projects, capital markets and M&A, although at heart it is a finance firm – Citigroup being its largest client. The firm has also represented banking savants, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, on the flotation of Yell, and advised CSFB and Morgan Stanley on financing a private equity house to buy high-street retailer Debenhams.

Much more than just a project finance and corporate firm, Shearman’s broad reach also encompasses antitrust, asset management, capital markets, banking and leveraged finance, employment, financial service, IP, arbitration, property and tax. Shearman can basically deal with almost anything that is thrown at it, without having to ask for other City firms’ support.

Gone is the divide between US and English qualified lawyers; whereas the firm used to keep them apart in London, it now operates a twinned approach of selling integrated US and UK advice to clients. Being a US firm, there is of course a slew of US lawyers, but the office is peopled by enough English solicitors that it has a feel much like any other major English law firm – albeit on a smaller scale. The office’s relatively modest size does however allow assistants and trainees more hands-on involvement in the work, and the firm is attempting to improve promotion prospects by increasing UK trainees and lowering the rate of lateral hires.