Legal Recruitment Blog

24.04.07 Paralegal and graduate jobs in law - where are they and how do I find them? It is the time of year again when 1000's of law students start intensive revision for their examinations, and at the same time sit back and wonder where they are going to look for a job once qualified. It is also the time of year again when we get inundated with telephone calls from them asking "have you got any training contracts" or "where shall I look for a paralegal post", or just "um er have you got any jobs?" There are now even more people looking for legal work, and even less jobs, partly as a result of the demise of criminal law and the opportunities there being tightly monitored by firms at present, and also because law is becoming more accessible at universities, and there appear to be more and more people from previous years still on the lookout. First thing to do is to brush up your CV (quick ad here for our CV Services), secondly to sit back and realise th...

Regional Variations in Legal Recruitment We often get enquiries from solicitors wanting to relocate, and when this happens, invariably when going from the south to the north the salary range is impossibly high to source posts, and when going from the north to the south the salary range asked for is impossibly high to source posts! Why? There is an element of Dick Whittington when people move south - the streets of Croydon or Guildford are paved with gold aren't they? After all, the average house costs a million, and therefore someone has to be earning good money. When people move north they think about flat caps, ferrets, terraced houses for £18,000 and serious deprivation. Got to be serious money to be made there - someone has to be dealing with the companies and the people working in all that industry? We have advised firms on numerous occasions to give relocation packages when offering candidates coming a long way to find a new post. It is a good tax efficient way of ge...

Crime Solicitor Recruitment - end of an era? We are slowly starting to see the writing on the wall for the criminal solicitor firms and jobs that we have been dealing with for many years. One of our important strands of work when we first set up was crime, as a result of our specialist knowledge of the market, and our ability to speak the same language. However, what has happened in the last few months is quite astonishing from a recruiter's perspective. We have had duty solicitors call us in tears after firms have called them into advise that there is no future at the firm, others call up to say that their firms are not sure of their future, and wondering where their next mortgage payment is going to come from, duty solicitors informed that their salaries and package levels are going to be reduced as soon as the new measures come in or with immediate effect, firms making widespread redundancies of anyone earning over a certain level, and generally a state of despondency has ...

Sales calls in the off peak season I can usually tell when recruitment is going through a quiet period - we get sales calls from all and sundry. I have been in the trade for 7 years now, and prior to this practised as a solicitor, and you can almost guarantee that whenever the office goes quiet, someone phones up to sell something. In all that time I have never purchased any of their services, and even ones that sound interesting have never sent through their details in writing when requested. On one occasion in practice when I was a solicitor I pretended to have a heart attack halfway through the conversation and then hung up. The salesman was so cross he called the senior partner and complained that I had shown a lack of professionalism on the telephone! I usually allow sales calls about 10 seconds of my time, and then hang up. If you take the calls you are wasting billable hours, and each call takes you away from whatever you were concentrating on, and as a result this affects ...

How to get travel expenses paid for job interviews Firstly, be aware that a lot of employers want to do the decent thing when it comes to interviews, and are open to requests. They are highly unlikely to offer to pay travel expenses unless you ask! This boils down to the same issue arising throughout my legal job advice notes below - you have to prepared to be proactive in interviews, and not expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. Usually as recruitment consultants we recommend asking at the end of the interview whether the firm have a policy on travel expenses for interviewees, and see what the response is. You will get an idea as to how the partners will be to work with as well as possibly getting your expenses reimbursed. If the interviewers get shirty with you and ask why you want your travel costs paying, it is clearly a firm you may not want to be spending your hours working at! If they reasonably explain that the firm has no policy but that they do not normally pay ...

Asking technical questions in a legal job interview As recruitment consultants, we are not sure that this is good practice. Firstly, at an interview a candidate is nervous and slightly wary, secondly partners of law firms are notorious for asking questions that no-one on the interview panel knows or understands, and thirdly the questions tend to be so long that the interviewee has forgotten what the start of the question was before you get to the end! We think the better option is to have a file of work ready, hand it to the interviewee, and ask them what they would do in a particular scenario. You can then keep adding extra tasks or problems as you go on. You can also ask the interviewee to explain particular matters arising from the file, and assess their abilities to interact with clients, handle files, deal with their caseload, and how they deal with a stressful situation. Jonathan Fagan, MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - no.1 online UK legal recruitment agency - save time, ski...

New legal jobs into us over the last week as follows: 3217 Charities solicitor sought by Sheffield practice. Full job description available. Sheffield, South Yorkshire Charity 3216 Bath firm seek a private client lawyer to join their practice. Bath, Somerset, South West Wills & Probate 3215 Senior conveyancing solicitor sought by central London firm. Central London Conveyancing 3214 Residential and commercial conveyancing solicitor sought by commercial practice in central London. Looking for someone to bring a bit of work ideally at senior level, and continue with their commercial property and residential conveyancing work. Niche area of care homes currently dealt with as part of the caseload. Central London Conveyancing, Commercial Property 3213 2 conveyancing roles - first one in Kingston, Surrey - looking for someone to join a department, and the second in Barnet, Herts to join a small team and give supervision in a caseload including new build and residential work. Kingston, Su...

04.04.07 Help, I've been made redundant - what do I do? In the current LSC climate, this is starting to happen quite regularly in London particularly, amongst groups of solicitors not used to redundancies! Duty solicitors are being hit quite badly, as firms seek to offload them and reduce their costs. Suddenly people are being handed P45's and told to find another post, and this is something of a shock, especially when you have a mortgage to pay.. The first thing to do is not panic and jump at the first job that comes along. In crime, this is easier said than done, as duty solicitors are not finding any jobs, let alone the first one that comes along! You need to take stock of the situation, and sit back and have a think about where you want to be in a few years time - with another firm, retired, another field of law, a different occupation? Have you been looking to have a break in recent years and never got round to it? Wanting to travel? See the occasion as an opportunity rat...

Legal Interview Question 10 - What is your alternative career, should law not be the avenue for you? This is a loaded question really - on the one hand you can say - well, I don't expect to be anything but a solicitor, and I always get to be what I set out to be, and on the other hand you may feel this smacks of arrogance, and say that you would like to be an accountant, as you are pretty good with numbers. Hard to give a definite response to the question - you could try the humour route, and say you would like to play for Aston Villa or be a rock star, but interviews with lawyers tend to be pretty humourless experiences, and some partners have a very peculiar sense of humour! My best advice is to aim for something fairly vague - to try and avoid giving too much indication that you have thought much about it (ie you think you may fail to get work as a solicitor) and go for either something business related (eg set up a small business) or lighthearted - eg a legal secretary! Jonatha...