For many in-house legal teams, the challenge is no longer simply recruitment – it’s how to develop and retain junior talent in a fast-changing legal environment.
With evolving expectations from early-career professionals, increasing pressure on lean legal teams and the growing influence of AI, many organisations are rethinking how they build skills, confidence and long-term capability internally.
For Oliver Storey, Head of Legal at Metro Bank, that started with rethinking what an SQE pathway could realistically look like in practice.
“When I first looked at the SQE, I thought we’d need to shape something that looked like the traditional setup,” he explains. “I was thinking, what do we need to change about the legal team to make this work?”
The turning point came when Oliver realised the approach could be the other way around.
“You don’t need to rebuild your team around the SQE,” he says. “You can make the SQE work around the team you already have.” In many cases, the foundations already exist within in-house legal teams through shadowing, stakeholder exposure, supervised drafting and day-to-day advisory work. The challenge is often recognising and structuring that experience, rather than building an entirely new training framework from scratch. For Oliver, that was the moment the SQE stopped feeling like a law firm process and started feeling like something genuinely achievable for in-house teams.
That mindset shift changed the conversation internally significantly. Instead of asking whether Metro Bank could recreate a traditional training contract, the team started asking what meaningful development and qualifying experience could realistically look like within an in-house legal environment.
We Were Investing in People…And Then Watching Them Leave
For Metro Bank, the conversation started with retention. Like many in-house legal teams, they had invested time and effort in developing junior talent, only to lose strong people because there was no clear route to qualification.
“We’d trained people up, but eventually they wanted to progress,” Oliver explains. “If we couldn’t offer that route forward, we’d lose them and start the cycle again.”
Oliver believes expectations from junior talent have shifted significantly in recent years. Increasingly, people want visibility over progression, meaningful development opportunities and confidence that organisations are invested in their long-term growth – not simply their immediate output. Without that, retaining ambitious junior talent becomes increasingly difficult for lean legal teams.
That churn does not only impact recruitment, it also affects knowledge retention, team morale and the capacity of senior lawyers already balancing growing workloads.
“You end up repeatedly training people from scratch,” he says. “Eventually senior people get frustrated because they feel like all they’re doing is rebuilding capability.”
The SQE offered an opportunity to think differently - not by recreating a traditional training contract model, but by building something more practical around the needs of the business. It also created an opportunity to formalise development that was already happening informally across the legal team through mentoring, exposure to live matters and cross-functional collaboration.
The Moment the SQE Started to Feel Achievable
One of the biggest misconceptions Oliver sees in similar sized legal corporate teams is the belief that in-house teams must perfectly replicate private practice training structures before they can support qualifying lawyers.
“There’s this fear when you look at the SRA competencies that you need to tick every single box exactly as a traditional law firm would,” he says. “But actually, the SQE gives you much more flexibility than people realise.”
For Oliver, conversations with BARBRI helped demystify what qualifying work experience could realistically look like within an in-house environment.
Rather than trying to force a rigid structure into an already busy legal function, the focus became creating meaningful development opportunities through the work the team was already doing day-to-day. For Oliver, the conversation became less about creating a perfect legal training structure and more about creating an environment where junior talent could gradually build confidence, curiosity and practical capability through meaningful exposure to real work.
That flexibility is particularly valuable for smaller or leaner legal teams that may previously have dismissed the idea altogether.
“I think a lot of smaller in-house teams put this in the ‘too difficult’ bucket,” Oliver says. “But it’s really not as complicated as people think once you start having the right conversations.”
Importantly, he stresses that flexibility does not mean lowering standards.
“As solicitors, we still have a responsibility to make sure the people we’re signing off are genuinely ready,” he says. “But you can use your own judgement more than people think.” Rather than relying on rigid seat structures, the focus becomes whether candidates are
being given meaningful exposure to legal work, appropriate supervision and opportunities to develop over time.
Metro Bank also introduced practical ways to track development internally, helping create confidence around qualifying work experience and competency progression without overcomplicating the process.
Alongside technical legal knowledge, many in-house teams are also thinking more carefully about the broader skills junior lawyers will need as the profession evolves. As AI and automation increasingly shape routine legal work, capabilities such as commercial awareness, communication, adaptability and critical thinking are becoming more important than ever.
You Don’t Have to Figure it All Out Alone
For Oliver, one of the most important lessons has been accepting that no organisation will have every answer upfront.
“There are things you only discover once you start,” he admits. “Some challenges only appear later on - and that’s okay.” Similar themes emerged during a recent BARBRI roundtable discussion for senior in-house legal leaders, where participants shared experiences of developing SQE pathways, overcoming internal barriers and supporting junior talent within lean legal teams.
Oliver believes more in-house teams would benefit from honest conversations around what works in practice, what teams worry about and how different organisations are approaching similar challenges.
“There’s a lot of comfort in realising you’re not the only one figuring this out,” Oliver says. Within many in-house teams, the biggest barrier is not regulation but confidence - the assumption that they need a fully formed programme before they can begin. “Sometimes you just need to hear how somebody else approached it, what worked for them, and what they’d do differently.” Those conversations can be particularly valuable for smaller legal teams, where concerns around supervision, workload and resource often stop discussions before they properly begin.
For Oliver, one of the biggest benefits of these conversations is the opportunity for in-house legal leaders to connect with peers facing similar challenges - sharing ideas, discussing what works in practice and giving smaller teams the confidence to explore what might be possible within their own organisations.
“The important thing is being willing to start somewhere and build from there,” he says.
What In-House Legal Teams Should Remember
For Oliver, one of the biggest mindset changes is recognising that the SQE does not require in-house teams to replicate a law firm model perfectly from day one.
Instead, successful programmes often start with:
- The work a legal team already does
- Meaningful exposure to legal competencies
- Open conversations around support and development
- Realistic workload planning
- A willingness to evolve the programme over time
Successful programmes are rarely built perfectly from day one. More often, they evolve gradually as teams build confidence in what works for their organisation, their people and their workload realities.
It’s not about having the perfect framework from day one,” he says. “It’s about being willing to start somewhere and build from there.”
As more in-house legal teams explore how to develop and retain talent, the SQE is creating opportunities to rethink what qualification pathways can look like in practice. Oliver’s experience demonstrates that many organisations may already have the foundations in place; the challenge is often recognising existing opportunities and giving people a structured route to develop and qualify.
These are conversations continuing across the legal sector as firms and in-house teams rethink how they attract, develop and retain junior talent in a changing profession.
Oliver Storey will be exploring many of these themes as part of BARBRI’s panel discussion at CraftyFest, including how legal teams can build practical development pathways, support confidence and capability in junior lawyers, and prepare teams for the future of legal work.
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