Steele Raymond scores top in national Future Lawyers guide

Steele Raymond has been named a Legal 500 Future Lawyers winner for 2024/25 in seven categories, including securing top spot in the UK for work/life balance.

Each year, the Legal 500 Future Lawyers guide publishes a list of the top UK law firms with results being based on anonymous survey responses from over 2,000 trainees from more than 100 firms.  Trainees were asked to score their employing firm on 14 aspects of both work and lifestyle.  Now celebrating its 20^th edition, the guide is highly regarded amongst students considering a career in the legal profession.

Alongside scoring top marks for work/life balance, Steele Raymond also achieved first-class results in the survey for social life; inclusiveness; quality of work; sustainability; legal technology and client contact.

Shaun Guppy, Corporate Partner and Training Principal at Steele Raymond, said:

“We are delighted to have achieved such a strong set of results in this year’s awards, not least first place in the UK for work/life balance and second place overall for inclusiveness.

“We pride ourselves on providing our trainee solicitors with a clear, structured and transparent career path, as well as a notable work/life balance.  So many people across the firm go out of their way to put time and energy into ensuring our trainees have a fantastic training experience with us and these results come as a result of that dedication.”

Steele Raymond has a long-standing track record of providing its young lawyers with a platform and an environment in which they are able to thrive.  Nurturing talent is central to the firm’s success, with five of the firm’s partners, Chairman, Tim Stone, Training Principal, Shaun Guppy, Nick Davies, Craig Hardman and Emma Stainwright all alumni of the Steele Raymond training programme, together with a number of other fee earners at various levels throughout the firm.

Speaking on the firm’s continued success, Managing Partner, Jennifer Rogerson commented: “The Future Lawyers awards are testament to the collaborative, supportive and trusting culture that we have at Steele Raymond.  We seek to recruit the very best people who love what they do and enjoy coming to work, an experience that is reflected from our trainees to our partners.”

Steele Raymond’s Legal 500 Future Leaders results in all awarded categories were as follows:

1st for Work/Life balance – 96.7 out of 100

2^nd for Social Life – 93.3 out of 100

2^nd for Inclusiveness – 90 out of 100

5^th for Quality of Work – 90 out of 100

5^th for Sustainability – 90 out of 100

Top 10 for Legal Technology (7^th) – 83.3 out of 100

Top 20 for Client Contact (13^th) – 86.7 out of 100

Interested in joining team?  Steele Raymond is recruiting now for September 2026 and September 2027 intakes of its Training Programme, alongside its 2025 LLB Undergraduate Placement Scheme to find out more, please contact Liz Phipps.