Recently
www.legalcheek.com (a legal blog) ran a series of articles discussing
whether graduates should consider paying for training contract advice
after the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) strongly advised against it.
Although we no longer provide careers advice ourselves, we were
approached for comment as we still sell training contract advice packs
via one of our websites. This was the comment we added:
Ten-Percent
Legal Recruitment provided legal career coaching services from 2001 to
2014 and worked with a very wide range of clients from paralegals and
entrants into the legal profession through to senior barristers,
solicitors, partners and people looking at judicial appointments. We
dealt with bullying, career progression, getting out of law, finding
training contracts, entering the legal profession, getting out of the
city, getting into the city and lots more besides. I offered the service
personally because I enjoyed helping people and recruitment can be a
bit office based and quite dry. When I started out in recruitment I
missed the advice element of being a solicitor (I have been
non-practising for about 15 years now). We now refer people on to an
external consultant (a former barrister/solicitor who very selectively
takes clients on) and we take no financial benefit of any kind from the
referral.
When
we did offer it, our paid legal career coaching prices started at about
£450 plus VAT and went upwards depending on the client and complexity
although all of them included a 2 hour consultation. We have also
provided career coaching to unemployed graduates free of charge via our
charitable trust from time to time. Testimonials on all our services can
be found here: https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/feedback/
Our
company still sells CV Writing Packs, Interview Training Guides and
Interview Video Packs, together with a Training Contract Pack, via our
website www.legalcareercoaching.co.uk. If you want to see any of these
please let me know and I’ll send you over complimentary copies. There
are a couple of free guides on the site as well.
I
think anyone who claimed to guarantee a training contract when paying
for advice would have to be insane. How on earth can anyone decide the
inner workings of a senior partner’s mind when deciding who to recruit?
Certainly something we have never offered and after 17 years in the
recruitment business I can say that it is virtually impossible to
predict! There is so much anyone can do though to improve their chances
of success.
So
far as paying for training contract advice is concerned it is only like
paying for extra tuition to get a good grade at A Level or GCSE etc.. I
note from your website that there have been some pretty toxic comments
about people who want money for advice on getting a training contract,
and I have to ask the question – why not pay? If you want a training
contract and someone has good quality advice to give – why not invest
some money in your future and get some decent advice to improve your
chances? Is it fair? Quite possibly not. But is it fair that some people
go to Eton and Harrow and have better life chances than others?
We
still offer 100s of pages of free advice on our website and also answer
legal careers questions at no cost via our monthly newsletter -
www.legal-recruitment.co.uk – but I certainly wouldn’t ever have been
able to spend 2 hours coaching someone or writing their CV or reviewing a
covering letter without being paid. However when we used to offer legal
career coaching a lot of people would have very specific circumstances
they were looking for assistance with. For example someone with a 3rd
class degree wanting to know how to break into law, someone coming from
another jurisdiction, or retraining as a solicitor after a career in
something completely different. Not things you can often surf the web to
get advice on. The Junior Lawyers Division doesn’t have time to sit
down with anyone for hours on end drafting CVs, providing specialist
advice etc.. so not really going to be able to assist unless they have
now started offering this service and have a source of funding in place
for it.
I
used to find that the careers service at most universities was woefully
lacking and some terrible advice was being given, although difficult to
comment now as we don’t provide career coaching and haven’t for some
time. Some years ago I lectured on legal careers as a guest speaker at a
university in Yorkshire and the information on how to write an
application form or prepare a CV was virtually non-existent from the
university and where it was given the advice was often clearly
incorrect.
So
to get an advantage to start a legal career I can see why someone would
be prepared to pay and if someone who has been through the experience
or has specialist knowledge is able to offer the advice at a cost – why
not pay for it? After all the career most law graduates are going to
have is all about making money and having a comfortable existence
(unless you are a crime solicitor or plan to work for a charity). Not
many people enter the legal profession out of philanthropic intent.
The
original article can be found here:
https://www.legalcheek.com/2017/11/dont-pay-for-training-contract-advice-junior-lawyers-division-urges/
Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a non-practising Solicitor. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment provides online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals.
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