SO Legal is celebrating after an employee was awarded a training contract at the firm.

Kate Gillies is the latest in a long line of aspiring solicitors to benefit from the firm's established paralegal-to-trainee scheme - designed to bring through the next generation of legal talent.

The law firm, which opened its Ulverston office last year, is proud of its record of awarding over 25 opportunities since the scheme's inception in 2016 - with almost all trainees going on to successfully qualify for the profession.

Kate Gillies joined SO Legal’s Ulverston team as a paralegal in August 2022. She graduated from Newcastle University, having studied Law (LLB), and is now completing her Legal Practice Course with masters (LLM) at the University of Law.

Elsewhere, Catherine Mears, Dylan Leet, Hemmat Ovaisi, Jessica Barnes, Katie Bacchus, Megan Grover, and Nathalie Mackinnon are also currently undertaking training contracts with SO Legal.

Securing a training contract is one of the toughest challenges graduates and paralegals face in the legal industry. The Law Society's latest annual statistics report highlights that annual trainee registrations dropped by 2 per cent to 5,495 – the lowest in the past five years.

Trainee opportunities in Cumbria are also extremely limited - with the city of London making up over a third of all registrations in England and Wales. Collectively, with the rest of London, half of all registrations are within Greater London.

Hamed Ovaisi, managing director and co-founder at SO Legal, said: "We are delighted to announce Kate as our latest trainee. I want to congratulate Kate and all our other trainees for embarking on this important milestone in their careers, and we wish them success.

"We heavily invest in our paralegals and trainees, allowing them to build long-term careers at our firm. The number of those who choose to stay with us once qualifying is a testament to the quality of our training programme. We have a reputation for promoting from within wherever possible - several of our senior solicitors, including partners, joined us as trainees."

Co-founder Jamie Salvidge added: "When we founded the firm, a significant part of our aspiration was to provide opportunities to aspiring, ambitious young solicitors. We've seen some extremely dedicated and talented trainees come through the process at SO Legal, and I'm sure Kate will be no different. It is a proud moment for all of us."