Last month saw mixed news for young and aspiring solicitors.

The good news is that those who compete their training contracts are 98% guaranteed employment as a solicitor; the bad news is gender-disparity in salaries, bullying and stress.The findings came in the sixth Law Society cohort study, which has followed 3,000 law degree and common professional examination students through their training and careers since 1993.

Around half replied to the latest study.While the study reported 'high levels' of satisfaction in relation to respondents' position and progress in the profession, it goes on to admit that 'the concept called satisfaction is a difficult one to measure accurately'.The report says, rather grandly, that the transition from trainee to qualified solicitor is 'symbolically very important'.

It is a rite of passage, a change of status, a culmination of several expensive years of study.

The finance of this study can be burdensome and often well nigh impossible to come by.

Banks, building societies and professional sponsors, while trumpeting their student-loan wares, often fail to deliver.It is the same old chestnut: women, those from ethnic minorities, older students and the less socially privileged fare poorly in securing sufficient funds.

These valuable, diverse groups are lost to the law and a picture starts to emerge of a rather insidiously self-selecting legal world.Here again there are similar problems, identified in previous reports, with a 'discernible' bias apparent against the same groups.

And there is a marked favour shown towards applicants who study at Oxbridge and/or the College of Law.

It seems the prejudice against those from less socially privileged backgrounds and towards Oxbridge is 'particularly marked' in City firms.

Does nobody from a socially deprived background ever go to Oxbridge?The partiality is self-perpetuating: City firms have money, make early training contract offers and can offer financial assistance to trainees early in the day.

And so the 'privileged' are set-fair - the City and large provincial firms, have their pick.One somewhat levelling finding is that newly qualified solicitors, who are from ethnic minority groups, are disabled or have attended a new university, fall behind in earnings and do not subsequently catch up with their counterparts.

However, there are lots of jobs out there.

Only 2% of trainees had failed to secure a job after qualifying.

Trainees are more likely to be sought for jobs than having to seek them.This is not the case for women trainees with children however, who find making the transition in to work more acutely than do fathers.

Women with children are seven times as likely as non-mothers to be left without employment after qualification - and this is not because they leave the profession, the study says, but because they just cannot find the jobs.For newly qualified solicitors, flexible working in order to have some contact with a small baby at home is less than encouraged.

Sensible women who want to make their way up the career ladder would be wise to keep this firmly in mind - the nanny should be securely in place by the time the baby is two months old.And what about stress, the hidden demon of the legal world? It is no surprise that newly qualified solicitors report working long hours.

Part-time working is found to be 'extremely rare'.

One-third of respondents said they work more than 50 hours a week, although those in commercial organisations and industry were more likely than those in private practice to work excessively long days.Mark Dillon is chairman of the Young Solicitors Group, which represents 40,000 members.

He says young solicitors need time to build up the 'confidence and capacity' to apply legal principles to complex situations.

One thing he has learned to value is that experienced solicitors of many years standing sometimes admit there are some things they just 'don't know'.

As a newly qualified solicitor, there is always the danger of 'giving advice when you're out of your depth'.He believes the decision to stay with the firm that trained you or to make the move after qualifying is a difficult one.

Staying in the same firm has its own challenges; it is harder suddenly to be seen as a fee-earner in your own right.

'Even though you are a qualified lawyer, you are still treated as a glorified trainee,' he says.

An advantage in staying where you qualified is the continuity and in-house support that may be available to newly qualified solicitors.

However, Mr Dillon considers one important reason for cutting free and looking elsewhere is that 'you come as a qualified lawyer with no history'.There are many anxieties and frustrations for those who are newly qualified.

Sarah, a recently qualified solicitor thinks the move from trainee to qualified is 'really scary...

when you are a trainee you are not given much responsibility and all of a sudden you are thrown on your own with your own caseload'.

And without supervision, more worryingly - 'This was definitely something my training didn't prepare me for'.In addition, trainees tend to work on aspects of a file rather than see it through from beginning to end - but once qualified they are expected to run the whole file, indeed several at once.

'Nothing quite prepares you for your own caseload...

and clients expect me to have all the answers.

I sometimes feel very inadequate.'Once qualified, the legal workplace may become a more threatening environment.

Sarah believes that she was 'cosseted' and 'a threat to nobody' when she was a trainee.

'But as soon as you stand on your own two feet, especially because you are a woman, you can start to feel you are arousing professional jealousy -sometimes in other women.

I have had several incidents during the year I have been qualified, which range from sabotaging my post to leapfrogging my dictation stacks.

I think one woman wanted to ensure she got her work done first so that she could look efficient.'Sarah had no one to support her through this situation; there is frequently no appropriate help on the horizon for those post-qualified - she felt she must sink or swim.

In her case, with two dependent children at home, she swam.Legal aid firms feel the squeeze more than most when taking on trainees.

Peggy Ray of Goodman Ray holds that the cost of training is now so 'prohibitively high' that small firms reliant on public funding can hardly afford it.So the opportunity for a trainee to gain a grounding in law from a legal aid perspective and to go on to work in this field is greatly diminished.

But the obstacles to getting into larger commercial firms can be high, as the survey demonstrates.Lara West, who qualified 17 months ago and now works at Goodman Ray, feels that working in small firms ensures newly qualified solicitors are well supervised.

'You just don't go overnight from knowing nothing to knowing everything...

and building up your own caseload is a bit of a shock for some people - it can be terrifying.'She believes that, contrary to what people may believe, small firms with smaller caseloads have the time to look over work of new solicitors.

A newly qualified friend of hers, working in the corporate department of a large City firm is left to work completely on his own.

His drafting isn't checked, his post isn't checked and he is effectively let loose on large aspects of large deals...

even the most complex letters go out unsupervised- it concerns him greatly.

He finds himself working on chunks of a deal in isolation, rather than on the whole deal at once, he's often not sure he's doing things right -it is very anxiety-provoking for him.'Mark Dillon believes that a key skill for young lawyers to develop is the capacity to know 'when you're out of your depth and need help'.

How and when to ask for help is something that is not much taught and one may fear losing face.

Nevertheless, it is an attribute that is valuable to develop.

The YSG is considering launching training courses specifically on issues encountered when negotiating the rite of passage from trainee to solicitor.

It is important to get it right, he points out.

After all the trainees of today may be the supervising partners of tomorrow.