Legal profession: potential benefits for young trainee solicitors following the new exam and reform

Two written exams on a computer and an oral interview. This will be the new format for the state exam, which trainee solicitors will be required to sit. To gain admission to the profession, there will be a single annual session, comprising the drafting of a legal opinion and a legal document, and an oral examination in which candidates must resolve a practical case and demonstrate their knowledge of substantive and procedural law. In addition to the removal of a third written paper, the reform of the examination provides candidates with the option to choose the subject on which to focus when drafting the legal document and legal opinion from among private law, criminal law and administrative law, explains the coordinator of the Trainee Lawyers’ Council of the Italian Association of Young Lawyers (Aiga), Ugo Bisogno.

Even for the oral examination, trainees will be able to select a shortlist of subjects – covering both substantive and procedural law – on which they will be assessed. This approach allows candidates to ‘gain an insight into a particular area of the legal profession’, comments Luigi Bartolomeo Terzo, president of Aiga. According to Bisogno, the format of the two written exams – namely, the video-based written test – and the possibility of consulting annotated codes alongside case law represent a significant step forward.

The path to the exam, explains the coordinator of the Trainee Lawyers’ Council, has been rather tortuous: following a professional law – the 2012 Act – whose provisions had never come into force, the Covid-19 pandemic struck. And with the pandemic came a simplified version of the test. The implementation of the 2012 Act had been postponed for over a decade, but following the failure to extend the transitional arrangements in the Milleproroghe Decree, the state examination was due to take place in 2026 in accordance with the rules established 14 years ago. Among trainee lawyers, uncertainty reigned supreme. It was against this backdrop that Decree-Law 100/2026 was introduced, which incorporates Article 2 of the draft enabling bill on legal reform.

A reform which, according to Terzo, could represent a crucial starting point for young lawyers, who ‘in this context need certainty and a comprehensive regulatory framework’. According to the president, in fact, the reform ‘begins to look to the future’ of the profession, which has changed significantly since 2012. The latest striking upheaval is represented AI, which ‘is now part not only of our daily lives, but also of our professional lives’. A Copernican revolution that has ushered the legal profession into the 5.0 era.

Among the most significant changes for those entering the profession is the regulation of exclusive representation by a law firm associate, that is, someone who works exclusively on behalf of another lawyer. “‘The employment relationships of these associates,’ argues Carlo Foglieni, past president of Aiga, ‘most of whom are young, can be terminated at a moment’s notice, as happened during the pandemic, with a simple text message’.