Trainee statistics Practice year 2024/25

This year's total number of traineeships are almost identical to last years and are the highest ever on record.  Largely speaking, in terms of breakdown, the spread of traineeships looks very similar to previous years.

• 796 standard (two year) traineeships were commenced in 2024/25.  

• 2024/25 was the fifth consecutive year of record numbers of traineeships.  The current five year average stands at 765 trainees starting each year. This is in stark contract to the 5-year average from 2015/16 to 2019/20 (the record low Covid year) which was 540.

• The gender split for traineeships in 2024/25 was 70% female, 30% male.  This is reflective of the five-year average of 68% to 32% (“about two-thirds, one-third”). However, it is the biggest gender imbalance since we began tracking this split (8 years ago).

• Training contracts commenced by local authority area are very similar to last year. Our 4 major cities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee) accounted for 84% of all traineeships (exactly the same as last year however 30 more traineeships were commenced attributed to the overall increase).  Edinburgh and Glasgow accounted for 73% of all traineeships.

• 13% of traineeships (100) were in-house, compared to 13% (98 traineeship) in 2023/24 and 11% the year before that.

• The percentage of traineeships commenced in 2024/25 at firms with 1-5 partners was 33% (compared to 31% last year).  28% were at firms with 31+ partners

• This pattern is consistent with previous years:
  o    Around 10% of trainees are inhouse (slightly).
  o    Around 30% are with firms with 1-5 partners.
  o    Around 30% are with firms with 6-30 partners.
  o    Around 30% are with firms with 30+ partners.

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