Magic circle firm Allen & Overy is certainly doing well at attracting the graduates. The firm has just scooped not one but two graduate recruitment honours, from newspapers the Times and the Guardian. The Times Graduate Employer of Choice Award named A&O as the legal employer offering the best opportunities to graduates, while the Guardian UK 300 ranked the firm top in the solicitors’ firm category. What is it about the place that makes it the law firm most UK graduates want to work for, wonders Obiter? Perhaps it offers a particularly sympathetic transition from student life to the working world, by letting trainees rock up at midday, unkempt and hungover, clutching a hair-of-the-dog can of Carling? Or are trainees working on late-night deals given free packets of crisps in case they suddenly develop the munchies? Well, not quite. It turns out it is something to do with the ‘high regard students have placed on the quality of our training programme, what we do as a business and our graduate recruitment activities’ (yeah, yeah). How things have changed since Obiter’s day.