Megan Boldison has become the latest member of staff at Gordons to have successfully graduated from its legal apprenticeship scheme.
The 23-year-old has qualified as a chartered legal executive in the firm’s private client team after becoming one of a handful of 18-year-old school leavers accepted to train as a chartered legal executive lawyer over five years. Gordons provided her with practical experience and academic study, as well as paying her salary and course fees.
The Leeds and Bradford-based firm launched the Gordons Apprenticeship Programme in 2011 and has taken on 19 apprentices, including its first graduate, Bryony Russell, 24, who qualified earlier this year.
“Applying for the Gordons Apprenticeship Programme was the best decision I have made,” said Boldison.
“I threw myself into the real world and got great hands-on experience alongside a senior lawyer. By the time my university friends were looking for their first job, I was one year off being a qualified lawyer.
“I hope more firms and students realise that non-university routes are a viable option to a good legal career. Gordons was one of the first firms to recognise you don’t have to go university to succeed as a lawyer and I’m so grateful they gave me a chance.”
Gordons was the first firm to offer an apprenticeship programme taking its chartered legal executive lawyers to the maximum Level 6 – an honours degree equivalent – rather than the Level 3 offered by similar schemes.
The programme has won multiple awards and led to Gordons being described as “leading the way on social mobility in the legal profession” by Social Mobility Commission chair, Alan Milburn.
Gordons partner and head of operations, Victoria Davey, said: “Megan is a bright and hardworking lawyer and a real asset to our private client team. It’s great to be celebrating her fifth year at Gordons alongside the firm’s second apprenticeship graduation.
“Megan specialises in private client services and is already halfway through a diploma with the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP). This shows that our apprenticeship scheme is spotting potential and attracting people with ambition and talent.
“We want to bring in a new generation of talented people who have a positive outlook and excellent behaviours, so in many ways it doesn’t matter where they’re from or what school they attended. At Gordons we have a maxim of people first, lawyers second and Megan is yet more proof that this approach is what our clients and colleagues want.”
