Legal Recruitment Blog

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - Online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search or download our Vacancy Database or view our Candidate Database online. Our Legal Careers Shop has eBooks on CV Writing for Lawyers, Legal Job Interview Guide, Interview Answers for Lawyers, NQ Career Guide, Guide to Finding Work Experience or a Training Contract and the Entrants Guide to the Legal Profession. To visit our Sale/Clearance section please click here . www.ten-percent.co.uk/careersshop

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - Online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search or download our Vacancy Database or view our Candidate Database online. Our Legal Careers Shop has eBooks on CV Writing for Lawyers, Legal Job Interview Guide, Interview Answers for Lawyers, NQ Career Guide, Guide to Finding Work Experience or a Training Contract and the Entrants Guide to the Legal Profession. To visit our Sale/Clearance section please click here . www.ten-percent.co.uk/careersshop

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - Online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search or download our Vacancy Database or view our Candidate Database online. Our Legal Careers Shop has eBooks on CV Writing for Lawyers, Legal Job Interview Guide, Interview Answers for Lawyers, NQ Career Guide, Guide to Finding Work Experience or a Training Contract and the Entrants Guide to the Legal Profession. To visit our Sale/Clearance section please click here . www.ten-percent.co.uk/careersshop

We have had a number of placements and interviews prior to the deadline for the recent CDS12 submission which give us the following ranges for duty solicitors and crime solicitors. Salary levels for crime solicitors currently as follows: England & Wales (excluding London) Duty Solicitors : £30,000-£37,500. We had no firms this year indicate or offer above £37,500 outside London for a duty solicitor. Duty Solicitors with Higher Rights: £32,500-£45,000. Crime Solicitors without Duty Status: £23,000-£30,000. The top end of this scale is slightly distorted. Police Station Reps: £17,500-£21,000. London Duty Solicitors : £35,000-£40,000. We did not get any firms this year indicate or offer above £40,000 in London for a duty solicitor. Duty Solicitors with Higher Rights: £40,000-£57,500. We anticipate that the top end of this scale will come down as more solicitors get their higher rights over the next 2-3 years. Crime Solicitors without Duty Status: £25,000-£30,000. Most of these were fo...

One of our candidates who has been registered with us for years who regularly gets in touch has recently been in touch to tell us that due to no fault of his own he has been unable to work for the past 4 months because of problems with the Legal Services Commission and a firm he had agreed to lodge his duty slots with. In May this candidate signed a CDS12 and submitted it to the Legal Services Commission for a specific firm in London. In June he discovered that the firm had had their contract terminated, reasons not known, and as a result the CDS12 was rejected. He spoke to the Legal Services Commission who informed him that there was nothing they could do because the deadline had gone and that he would have to work for another firm as a duty solicitor. The candidate tried explaining to the Legal Services Commission that a duty solicitor without slots is not much use to anybody and the Legal Services Commission helpfully suggested that he could apply to go on the back-up list for duty ...

Hello - our latest version of the Legal Recruitment News is available online at www.ten-percent.co.uk/Legal-Recruitment-News-Nov-2010.pdf You can also visit our www.legal-recruitment.co.uk website for further details of our online journal. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - Online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search or download our Vacancy Database or view our Candidate Database online. Our Legal Careers Shop has eBooks on CV Writing for Lawyers, Legal Job Interview Guide, Interview Answers for Lawyers, NQ Career Guide, Guide to Finding Work Experience or a Training Contract and the Entrants Guide to the Legal Profession. To visit our Sale/Clearance section please click here . www.ten-percent.co.uk/careersshop

http://www.solicitorsfromhell.com/ is a new consumer website that has attracted the attention of the Law Society Gazette and numerous solicitors firms who have had the pleasure of an entry on it. There appear to be over 500 law firms listed on it, and as far as I could see most of the complaints were not really complaints but fairly damaging comments... I recently came across it when looking for a firm of solicitor's contact details and discovered the second entry in Google was this site. The review of the firm read as follows: LEGAL LAW - London SW London SW Solicitor : Legal Eagle (details changed for obvious reasons!) " Unfortunately we have only just heard about this site, had we had a chance to do a check on him prior it would have saved a great deal of upset and stress. My female cousin went to see this ‘solicitor’ with housing problems. At the initial consultation he was extremely friendly – actually overly so when his secretary went out of the room. He asked many per...

We are starting to take calls on a regular basis from firms not knowing what the current position is in relation to the duty solicitor rotas. We have spoken to the Legal Services Commission today who have confirmed: 1. The next deadline for CDS12 submission is 8th November at 5pm. The LSC want CDS12s emailing through to them at dutysolqueries@legalservices.gsi.gov.uk 2. The LSC are apparently considering breaking the contract halfway, but in the meantime no firms are allowed to make applications for new geographic areas. We are not entirely sure how true this will be, as the LSC seem very good at changing the goalposts every few minutes, but in terms of recruitment plans we thought this may assist. It does mean as far as we can see that no firms will gain new slots outside their own geographic areas by setting up offices or taking on staff in other locations. The benefit in recruiting duty solicitors appears to be that the slots on each rota are awarded according to the number of duty ...

When a new employee starts a job there is almost always some element of nervousness and hesitancy from both sides, the existing staff and the new member of staff. Here are five ways to make the first day considerably easier. 1. Organise a lunch out for all the staff (presuming this is a small firm obviously!) including the new employee. Make sure there is no alcohol served during this meal. 2. Make sure you have some work available for the new employee when they start. There is nothing worse than joining a new firm and finding that you are sat there twiddling your thumbs. 3. Give the new employee an induction into the workings of the firm but make sure this induction is not an excuse for your HR Manager to wander off for two days and not do any work. The induction should be as short as it needs to be. 4. Give the new employee their Contract of Employment and staff handbook etc. For a free Staff Handbook Download please visit http://www.businessbusstop.com and follow the link to “free ...

Interview Guide for Lawyers & Law Students (SALE £11.99 - RRP £25 - save £13.01) Interview Answers for Lawyers & Law Students (10% off - quote discount code S1083361) Complete Guide to Writing a Legal CV (SALE £11.99 - RRP £25 - save £13.01) Legal CV Writing Template Pack (SALE £22.49 - RRP £29.99 - save £7.50) (For more Legal Careers eBooks and Careers Services please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/careersshop ) Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - Online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search or download our Vacancy Database or view our Candidate Database online. Our Legal Careers Shop has eBooks on CV Writing for Lawyers, Legal Job Interview Guide, Interview Answers for Lawyers, NQ Career Guide, Guide to Finding Work Experience or a Training Contract and the Entrants Guide to the Legal Profession. To visit our Sale/Clearance section please click here . www.ten-percent.co.uk/careers...

Very pleased to say that the recent deadline for firms with speculative bids for various contracts with the LSC has now expired so we can stop fielding telephone calls for Children Panel members. We had one firm who were very persistent until we found them someone and harsh reality sunk in that the salary level would be about £45-50k... The firm suddenly went very quiet indeed on us. Not sure how much some partners think Children Panel members get paid but there we go.... Knowing our luck though this will probably be the same as last time - the LSC changed their deadline and we were back to square one fielding calls for impossible job vacancies for a few days... Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - Online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search or download our Vacancy Database or view our Candidate Database online. Our Legal Career Shop has eBooks on CV Writing for Lawyers, Legal Job Interview Guid...

I am gradually forming the opinion that the LSC is run by a bunch of clowns. I cannot be more blunt or rude but we are getting telephone calls by the dozen from firms of solicitors who have stuck speculative tenders in for Mental Health and Family contracts without having the solicitors in place to run them and looking to recruit (obviously not having the money to pay the solicitors as well), but at the same time firms who have operated for many years with well established departments being refused (as I am writing this I have just taken 3 calls for MHRT lawyers). We understand a firm in Colchester have been offered a contract covering Chelmsford but do not have a presence there, but firms in Chelmsford have been turned down. We have heard the same thing across England and Wales, time and again. A team of performing monkeys and circus clowns could probably have produced a more coherent response than that undertaken by the LSC. Who on earth set the criteria for the recent contract award...

Take a look at http://ten-percent.co.uk/careersshop This site was built in less than 24 hours and is fully functioning for payment processing. We took our first order via the site within another 24 hours, and the software handles immediate downloads of our eBooks. Total cost = £0 Actual installation knowledge required = understanding of ftp. Setting up the shop = basic understanding of what ftp, html and php script all mean and how to apply them to a website. Online payment system = 3% of each sale, plus a handling charge of 20p. How did we do it? 1. We have our own hosting package using http://www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk/ 2. As part of the hosting package we have the ability to install by one-click a whole range of open source software that previously was outside the range of a small business due to the IT knowledge required. 3. One of these packages is Prestashop. 4. We downloaded the software onto our hosting package (it takes one SQL database and a bit of space). 5. We set up ...

Career Question – I have been offered a job in an insurance company but have been told by a law firm that they may have a job coming up in the next two weeks. How do I hurry the law firm up so that I can see if they are going to make an offer before I start the job in insurance? I am a solicitor who has struggled to find work for the past few months and need money urgently to pay my mortgage. The answer to this is fairly simple. There is nothing to stop you taking the job with the insurance company, and then at a later stage if another post comes up handing in your notice and moving from one to the other. Whilst this is not exactly very helpful to anyone from the employer side, it does give you the option of taking a more suitable position without compromising your income and earning capability. In most jobs these days you have a contract that stipulates there is a probationary period of 3 months. During those 3 months your employer can give you one week’s notice to leave for pretty mu...

From June 2010 onwards Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment are introducing a new service - the bi-monthly salary review. We will publish our salary guides for all levels of solicitor, both in the regions and London. If you would like an advance copy of the review please email us: cv@ten-percent.co.uk - our Reviews will be emailed out to all our clients next week. In the meantime, if you email us at cv@ten-percent.co.uk with your details, we would be very happy to do a full salary review for you.

1. Why should I join your firm? 2. What is your business plan? 3. Have you got an exit strategy? 4. Do you have a marketing plan? Have you got plans to recruit a business development manager? 5. How do you see the use of IT and office technology changing within your firm in the next 3 years? All of these questions display a certain air of nonchalance, and some are certainly not for the faint hearted. However a lot of employers like to see some thought along these lines as it does indicate a) confidence, b) a business mind, c) enthusiasm. It also indicates that you are able to think in the same way as they inevitably will. Another technique is to call the offices beforehand and ask to speak to the secretary of the person interviewing you. Ask them what hobbies the partner has and you can then drop these into the conversation during interview. A fairly risky strategy as the secretary may well tell the partner! Jonathan Fagan is MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, www.ten-percent.co.uk ....

On Wednesday 16th June 2010, Jonathan Fagan MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, Solicitor (non-practising) and Recruitment Consultant, will be at the St Pancras Novotel in London. You can come and see him with any queries regarding your CV, your career, future plans, leaving the profession, changing fields of law, getting into the profession, forthcoming interviews etc.. The maximum time for a session on this day is 1 hour. The price is £3 per minute. You will get copies of our CV Guide and Interview Guide, a free CV review and 20% off any of our careers services. To register an interest and book a slot, please email us: cv@ten-percent.co.uk with the subject heading "16th June" and we will email you back with available slots. www.ten-percent.co.uk/career.htm for further details.

I read your article on www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com and was wondering if you could give me some advise on the following matter. I achieved a 2:2 in Law 8 years ago, for about 6 months after my degree I went on to work in 2 law firms as a temporary office administrator. I learned a few things and was even more interested in pursuing a career in law, after the contract was finished and the fact that I couldn't get another job straight away I decided to go on and do other things and among this was opening my own limited company - facilities management company. The company is still in existence and have been in business for over 3 years now, but after learning that my degree will be stale after 7 years I then decided to go on and dothe LPC as I always knew I was going to continue and finish off to qualify as a solicitor at some stage in my life. My main concern is what are my chances of securing a Training Contract especially after being out of college for so long, and the situat...

www.tenpercent.co.uk/low-cost-legal-recruitment.html In March 2010 Ten Percent Legal Recruitment introduced Ten-Percent Unlimited, a revolutionary concept giving law firms the chance to recruit directly using our database resources with a one-off fee for a 12 month period. We will allow you to contact as many candidates as you want to through our database, whether by letter, e-mail or telephone, and to recruit without any further charge. To use the service effectively, you need to consider the following: 1. Recruitment is turned on its head. You are playing the part of the legal recruiter (ie us!), and hence you need to be very nice indeed to candidates. 2. Most of our candidates are always interested in hearing about positions, and lawyers tend to be flattered if they think they are being headhunted. This is the best way of approaching them. 3. Keep all communication as short and vague as possible - candidates tend to be put off by specifics when in fact a position can suit them perf...

Writing a legal CV is fairly easy providing you remember the following: 1. Put your name at the top of the page. (about 1% of all CVs omit this rather important information. 2. Include your date of birth if you feel it is an asset to you. 3. Include a profile underneath your personal and contact details. In this profile put your jobtitle (tailored to the post you are going for), the number of years experience you have, where you are looking for work, how much money you want and when you can start. Keep it very brief indeed. 4. Include your date of qualification if relevant and also date of admission. Dont forget the PSC if you are a solicitor. 5. For your work experience write as much as possible in bulletpointed format. This is by far the most important section on the CV. Facts and figures wherever possible. 6. Dont forget your job title in the work experience section. Again - tailor it where possible. 7. Put your computer skills on the CV. Case management systems always welcome. 8. A...

Locuming requires you to almost certainly register as self-employed with the HMRC (a very easy procedure - see their website) and to be prepared for periods out of work (see above). It used to be very lucrative but not so much these days due to the market being so much tighter. You do not need to do anything in order to provide locum services, but it is probably worth making a decision whether you want to work through an umbrella company or go self-employed directly to firms. Some agencies offer employed locum work, but Ten-Percent does not deal on that basis. Do not turn any locum work down to start with if at all possible. http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/locum.htm

Locum Season starts - 10 tips for getting ease of mind - Register Locum Vacancies We often get asked by firms who rarely use locums how exactly they go about using them, so below are our ten top tips for getting the most out of locums and effectively using them. 1. Give as much notice as you can to the locum agency, regardless of who you use. Good locums tend to get booked up a long time in advance... 2. Do not think that a locum will work on the same wage levels as a permanent member of staff. They won't. As a rule of thumb, most locums work 7-9 months out of 12 and cannot afford to negotiate too far down on daily rates. It used to be a very lucrative line of work, but not anymore as work has got harder to come by. 3. Do not use a locum to clear up a mess unless you have specifically told them beforehand that this is the assignment. We know of locums who have walked straight out of assignments like this on the first day for fear of the mess affecting their practising certificates....

Hello - Sundip has contacted us and asked if he can keep everyone who reads the Legal Recruitment Blog updated with his progress, as well as get support and advice as required. His first post is below: first thing i would like to say is thank you for setting up this blog, its fantastic and very informative. I would like to say, i have decided i will be undertaking the ilex route into the profession. The main reason is because I would like to gain hands on experience and also study at the same time. I have been a special constable for the police for 6 years now, and i feel its time for me to work on the "other side" as they call it, i am fully aware that criminal solicitors do not get paid as much compared to solicitors in other areas, So i am still in a decision as to what field i want to qualify in. But i think most likely it will be the criminal side as I already have advocacy practice being in the police. I would just like to add, what advice would you give me in order to ...

Key points from March survey: Strongest growth of permanent placements since October 1997. Temporary/contract staff billings rose at sharpest rate for thirty-four months. Growth of vacancies eased but remained marked. Further rise in candidate availability. Wages and salaries increased again. This is one of the most positive reports on the recruitment industry for some time, although it has to be said that the strongest growth bit is a little bit of a red herring as the market has been stunted for so long it wouldnt be hard for it to expand rapidly! The main findings for March are: Permanent placements rose at fastest pace for over twelve years... The number of permanent staff appointments made by UK recruitment consultancies increased again in March, with growth picking up to the strongest since October 1997. Higher placements were underpinned by a further expansion of permanent staff vacancies, albeit the slowest in three months. ...while temp billings also increased at sharper rate ...

Do followings actually exist? Difficult question... Yes, on some planets followings do exist. On others, including Earth, 9 times out of 10 they do not exist. A 'following' is an interesting concept. For example, we often get called up by firms requesting a conveyancing solicitor with a following for a particular position. Think about it - how exactly does a conveyancing solicitor get a following? Most people tend to only move houses a maximum of once every five years, if that. Developers tend to go with a firm rather than a particular solicitor, and estate agents now want money to refer customers through to solicitors assuming they do not have their own call centre paralegal run conveyancing operation going on. Another one is for a family solicitor to have a following - again - most people tend to only get divorced once or twice in a lifetime, so how on earth does a family solicitor pick up a following? Commercial litigation, debt recovery, crime and company commercial solicit...

This article is also available on the Ten-Percent site at www.ten-percent.co.uk/weeklyreport.htm March 2010 has been a very good month for Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and we are now not only optimistic of the market picking up, but also are aware that legal recruitment is back up and running at high speed. We have watched as vacancies are suddenly grinding to a halt in some areas, particularly for duty solicitors and family panel members, as there is a lack of fresh talent coming onto the market. In March we had 37 vacancies posted for a whole range of different areas including Conveyancing, Commercial Property, Wills & Probate, Crime (lots), Family (lots), Industrial Disease, Personal Injury, Agricultural Property, Housing, Child Care and Civil Litigation. Commercial still seems to be running at a fairly slow speed. We could go down the route of other agencies and post the generic mailing lists with commercial posts in that some of the bigger firms send out to 100 recruiters an...

One of the key searches for the Ten Percent Legal Recruitment site is for interview questions and strategies for lawyers and legal and interviews. This article covers the various resources available on the Ten Percent sites and also external sites. Interview Questions The main location for interview questions on the Ten Percent Site is the Top 100 Interview Questions for Lawyers which can be found here . This page contains 100 questions used by law firms up and down the country and also refers to sources for suggested answers in places. We know that these questions are used by law firms because they telephone us to ask permission from time to time to print them off. We have also been advised by candidates going for interviews that the questions have been on the table in front of them. Other sources on the internet include http://www.wikijobs.co.uk/ and http://www.interview-skills.co.uk/ . We strongly recommend the latter website because it contains over 200 questions in a compe...

"Tell me how you would market our firm if you joined us". No.1 Interview Question for the Recession? Horrible interview questions do not come much worse... I have recently asked this question in a range of interviews for a fairly heavy sales & marketing role and been astonished at the complete lack of ideas that most of the candidates had. It is true that perhaps some people would be wary to give any information for fear of the firm using it without employing them, but so many people do not seem able to grasp the need for sales & marketing at the forefront of most of the job vacancies and interviews currently taking place in the legal profession. We advise candidates to do the following: 1. Have an idea in your mind of possible opportunities and potential techniques for sourcing work. If you have a look through the back articles in the Legal Recruitment online magazine , it will give you some ideas. 2. Offer to produce a mini-business plan if the firm is interested i...

Ten Percent Legal Recruitment has been at the forefront of online recruitment since 2000, introducing the UK’s first agency candidate database for law firms to look through and see which candidates we have on the books and to request CVs for them. We have decided for 2010 to introduce a new way of working which probably suits small to medium firms who may be looking to recruit more than once within a 12 month period. For a one of fee we will allow you to contact (via us) as many candidates as you want to through our database, whether by letter, e-mail or telephone, and to recruit without any further charge . The service will not give you direct access to our candidates and it preserves the candidate’s anonymity until they give consent for you to know who they are. Once authorised, you get to see a CV for each candidate as well as a brief description outlining their skills and experience. You can also communicate with the candidate without them knowing who you are and vice versa. For ...

Legal Job Market Summary - 11th January 2010 As one would expect, December slowed down considerably in the run up to Christmas. However, again we have seen vacancies coming into us, including conveyancing, wills & probate, family, commercial litigation, crime and housing. These are not the usual emails from large firms with a multitude of parties being sent the same jobs, but actual vacancies from small and medium sized practices. The geographical mix of vacancies shows that the regions are at present starting to pick up before London and the Home Counties. The majority of the posts have been spread across the UK, but because of the overspill of London into neighbouring areas the Home Counties are taking longer to get back up to speed. Over Christmas, as candidates make New Year resolutions to move, we are seeing increasing numbers of grade A candidates registering with us, including for example a senior commercial property solicitor with a following and looking for a salary of abo...