Anyone with teenage children will appreciate the problems in understanding exactly what makes them tick – and it seems that graduate recruitment is suffering from a similar syndrome.

Since today's graduate recruitment partners were students, the economics and philosophy of higher education have changed radically, which in turn has significantly altered the outlook and priorities of students and graduates. These are the main findings of the inaugural Legal Week Intelligence Student Survey, which questioned more than 2,000 students at the Russell Group of leading UK universities, from which the vast majority of trainees are hired by commercial firms.

The cost of qualifying and student debt, a willingness to move on in order to move up, the perceived need to balance work and personal life, and a desire for greater career flexibility have dramatically changed what many graduates want from their prospective employers – compared with when today's graduate recruitment partners were applying for their training contracts.

For many law firms, however, the immediate problem is to get their names recognised by students at all. Only around a dozen law firms enjoy any significant level of name recognition among law students.

The survey asked respondents to list the firms that offered the best experience in a number of categories, including brand name, quality of training schemes, work-life balance, opportunities for women and post-qualification career prospects. In each case – even for work-life balance – the magic circle dominates the rankings.

This suggests less that students have developed an informed view of the legal marketplace, and rather more that they have not heard of many firms beyond the top five (the exception to this rule is Eversheds, which enjoys similar levels of name recognition among students to the magic circle).

One reason for this, according to some of the follow-up interviews with students, is that many say that they are unable to detect many material or cultural differences between many law firms, especially at the commercial end of the profession.

The ways that law firms target this audience ranges from the traditional – taking stands at law fairs and making direct presentations to students – through to the gimmicky, such as the firm that gave away chocolate bars containing golden tickets entitling the winners to attend an open day. But many of the traditional methods of reaching students have only limited effectiveness in establishing a firm's name and, more importantly, making it stand out in a crowded marketplace.

A common complaint is a lack of independent information about what law firms are really like.

As one respondent told the survey: "The information provided by law firms is very useful, but the downside is that they all use the same catchwords, making it difficult to differentiate between them.

"Personally, I cannot tell any difference between law firms based on their marketing alone, especially between the large commercial firms. I can only really make a distinction between large, small or medium-sized law firms, and then infer from that what the working environment is likely to entail. I generally find it hard to think of things that distinguish different law firms."

Michael Hunting, a consultant specialising in graduate recruitment, says the key for law firms to get themselves noticed is to start early – with first-year students who are often neglected by graduate employers – and tailor their efforts to what the students will find useful, such as providing skills training relevant to the stage of their academic careers.

Hunting says: "First-year students often feel left out of graduate recruiters' campaigns, but if a company or law firm makes a good impression with first-year students, then that will stay with them for the rest of their time at university."

Respondents describe law firms' websites, presentations and attendance at law fairs as useful sources of information and for most, these sources of information are enough on which to base their decisions about which firms to apply to.

When it comes to students' final decisions, however, there is no substitute for experience. Students describe work placements as by far and away the biggest influence on which firms they apply to – or indeed whether they become a lawyer at all. Getting the content and structure of placement schemes right is critical, if firms present themselves in the right way. As one student's experiences demonstrate, work placements can work both ways:

"I did two placements last year. One was a structured placement, where I spent a week spending half a day in each department and the other was more informal work experience based in one department. On the first one, I did not get the chance to really get to know people and they did not arrange any activities outside work hours. Whereas on the 'unstructured' placement, I really got to know the people and they made the effort to take me out after work. That really impressed me.

"Before I did the placements, I thought the first firm – which markets itself as a 'friendly' firm – would be the better place to work, but I now have a much better opinion of the second firm. Placements are the only way to see what it is really like to work for a firm. You cannot rely on what the firms tell you."

The most popular time for law students to take their summer placements is between their penultimate and final years of study, and one finding of the survey is how much better informed about both the profession as a whole and individual law firms final year students are than those with just a year behind them. For example, the range of law firms named in response to the questions posed about which provide the best training schemes, work-life balance, etc, differs considerably between penultimate- and final-year students.

Among second-year students, the same names kept coming up – Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Linklaters, Eversheds and, to a slightly lesser extent, Slaughter and May. Among final-year students, however, the range of law firms mentioned broadens out considerably and the leading firms in each category began to more closely resemble the order that more experienced observers of the legal profession might draw up.

Due to the competition between firms to grab the best graduates before their rivals do, many law students are recruited by law firms while still in their penultimate year. However, the survey would seem to show that if law firms want the best-informed and prepared trainees – and, therefore, those most likely to be happy with their career choices and stay at the firm – they may be well advised to look more closely at final year students.

Finding those graduates who are more likely to stay much beyond the end of their training contracts is likely to become an increasingly important aspect of legal graduate recruitment if some of the trends identified by the survey come to pass.

The big challenge for law firm graduate recruitment is how to deal with students' changing attitudes towards their careers and, in particular, the unwillingness of many prospective solicitors to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve partnership.

Fewer than six-in-10 respondents to this study who aim to become solicitors say that their ultimate ambition is to become a partner in a law firm. This is, in part, due to the large numbers of female applicants. For many women, the work-life balance sacrifices required for partnership do not appeal or fit in with possible plans to start families.

There is not yet evidence that the poor reputation that the legal profession is gaining for work-life balance is putting people off becoming lawyers. Indeed, leading commercial law firms may be finding that the quality of applicants is improving as the cost of training at and uncertain prospects offered by the Bar seem to be diverting a quite a few high-quality candidates towards the solicitors' side of the profession.

What is changing however, is that the likelihood of many of today's graduates spending a significant part of their careers with the same firm is declining sharply. This year has seen trainee retention rates at commercial firms decline not because there are not the full-time roles available for them, but because young solicitors are much more willing to up sticks and move to wherever the best opportunities present themselves – as the recent troubles at Lovells, which failed to retain one-third of its newly-qualifieds this year, have demonstrated.