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The corporate team at Lewis Silkin is a very friendly, approachable team based across the London, Cardiff, Belfast and Manchester offices. As a Trainee in the team, you will get the opportunity to assist on a broad range of transactions and develop your general understanding of how companies operate.
Our corporate team is consistently top-ranked for corporate M&A mid-size deals (£10m - £100m) achieving a Tier 1 ranking from Legal 500 and a Band 1 ranking from Chambers & Partners.
We deliver transactional services including public and private M&A for both buyers and sellers. This provides a fantastic opportunity for Trainees to see a transaction from both perspectives. We also advise on divestments, management buy-outs, restructurings, share capital transfers, and investments for a diverse group of clients. Our corporate clients range from start-ups to AIM-listed companies and investors, from mainly the technology, financial services, and advertising & marketing sectors.
The team also includes specialists in Banking, Partnerships and Tax. Having the opportunity to work with and alongside these specialists allows for further understanding of specific needs and considerations of a company.
Life as a Trainee
When you start your corporate seat, you are invited to a series of tutorials to explain the basics. They are run by Associates across the team, which is a great way to get to know people as well as brush up on your knowledge and understand the kind of work you'll get involved in over the six months.
Typical Trainee Tasks
(1) Drafting ancillary documents
When a company is making important decisions, they will need to pass board minutes and, depending on the type of decision, shareholder resolutions. The team may ask for your help in drafting these documents, some are straightforward (for example, handling a director resignation) and some require you to consider the numerous steps that need to be taken to get to the desired outcome.
(2) Filings
There will nearly always be forms to file at Companies House once a resolution has been passed. Each company has a profile on the Companies House website which maps out its history from incorporation to the present day. It's important that any key changes – for example to the directors, the number of shares, the company name, the company address, and so on – are recorded properly.
(3) Statutory books
Whenever there is an allotment, transfer, or sale of shares, a company is required to update its statutory books. This is essentially a bundle of tables which show who owns shares (and their type), who is a director, and who, if anyone, has significant control over the company.
You may also be asked to 'reconstitute' statutory books, where you essentially prepare the books from scratch. Here, you'll go through the Companies House records with a fine-toothed comb and piece together the history of the company.
(4) Due diligence
When a buyer is looking to acquire another company, they will undergo due diligence. This is basically a review of the target company's assets and offers an insight into how the company conducts its business. As a Trainee, there are tasks on both buy and sell side. On the buy side you may co-ordinate contract reviews across different teams or help draft the due diligence report. On the sell side you may assist with managing the data room and uploading the seller's documents.
(5) Completion and Corporate Bibles
When you are preparing and reviewing documents, it's often in anticipation of Completion. On the day of Completion there can be various tasks that a Trainee can assist with. You may be asked to conduct a Winding-Up or Insolvency Search or asked to send out documents for signature on DocuSign or asked to check the documents you have received to check they have been executed properly.
After Completion, you may be asked to put together a corporate bible along with an index. This is involves collating all the key transaction documents in one place.
The combination of a highly skilled, approachable team with a variety of work and clients makes doing a corporate seat at Lewis Silkin not only incredibly interesting but also a very valuable six months – I would highly recommend!
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