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Showing posts from August, 2008

Equal opportunities and recruitment agencies

Earlier in the summer Eversheds published a report or made a press statement to say that recruitment agents ought to be forced to promote diversity and equal opportunities and that the blame for failing to do so in law firms lay firmly at the doors of recruitment consultants. (If I have misrepresented Eversheds in any way with this, please accept my apologies and Eversheds, feel free to write to me). I agree partly with Eversheds in this matter. There are very few recruitment agencies, including ourselves who measure equal opportunities and diversity when candidates register with agents on their websites or presumably by sending a CV by post. In fact, the call from Eversheds has made me think twice about it and Ten Percent will shortly be adding a selection of equal opportunities questions at the bottom of every registration form so that we are able to quantify sex, ethnic origin and possibly age as well. I have considered it before, but decided against it on the basis that some candid...

Query from potential lawyer – what are my chances?

I wonder if you can help me. I am a mortgage advisor with two to three years experience and I want to know whether it is worth me taking the law conversion course to qualify as a solicitor. What are my chances of getting a training contract and how easy will it be for me to qualify? Will it be a waste of money? This was a query raised yesterday by a caller. It’s quite a common query for people to want to raise as the cost of the conversion course is so extreme. There are very few other professions that get away with charging so much money to their potential intake in order to qualify. In fact, teachers get paid to train and so do doctors. Surveyors don’t seem to have to spend so much money and neither do architects. However lawyers get hit for rather an extreme amount. It is not even clear why the colleges have got away so long with the legal practice course being so expensive. These days with a good proportion of legal aid solicitors earning less that the other trades surrounding...

Alternative jobs for conveyancing lawyers and conveyancers

Alternative career options for conveyancers In recent times it has become a common query on our careers site for advice on alternative career options for conveyancing lawyers. In one way it is quite interesting how people get very worried in blips like the current market dips so quickly and don’t look at the longer term side of things. It is clear that there will be conveyancing jobs sooner or later, as housing markets do not tend to just collapse and never come back again. People still need to buy and sell houses, and there are also people out there who want to buy houses to let them out, particularly if the market drops and a lot of houses become available at quite a cheap price. However the query is often that they don’t want to practice in conveyancing anymore and what other options are there out there for conveyancing lawyers. The same thing happened last year when crime solicitors started to feel the pinch with the Pleasant report that was so well written by Lord Carter came int...

Should I spend thousands on going through the Legal Practice Course?

I received a request for help yesterday from a law student approaching his final exams and wanting to know whether he should commit to doing the legal practice course and spending the thousands of pounds on it and getting into lots of debt. He explained that he needed a commercial loan in order to do this. The advice in such circumstances is very simple. If you know what it is that a solicitor does and have good work experience, expect a 2:1 degree and are fully committed to a career in law, then yes, you should spend the money to do the LPC even if you do not yet have a training contract lined up. A lot of people get their training contracts whilst they are doing the LPC and it is fairly common to finish doing the LPC and then get placed. If you have no legal work experience, and are not entirely sure that you want to be a solicitor or have a predicted third class degree or low 2:2 with no hope of getting a 2:1, I would strongly advise you to think twice. Competition to get training c...