Legal Recruitment Blog

Law centres v. Law Firms Is there any difference between doing a training contract at a law centre or working for a part of your career at a law centre, than working in a law firm? This question obviously relates to anyone about to progress or currently in a high street legal career as opposed to a city firm or commercial practice. Is there any difference between work you would do at a law centre or the training there or a local or small high street practice? In terms of a career move, you will probably find that if you work in a law centre, you will get greater exposure and depth to a range of legal issues than you would working in a high street practice. It is also possible that the work you would do would be slightly more interesting than the work in a high street practice as law centres are more likely to pick up more interesting cases. However, the types of law you would deal with in a law centre are dramatically different to those you would expect to be covering on a daily basis ...

What do I do if my training contract is terminated? This started to happen a few years ago when some crime firms were struggling following new reforms by the Legal Services Commission. When a firm got into difficulties or thought they were about to the first thing they did was to terminate training contracts. Another scenario is when firms in recent times have trainee Solicitors due to start 12 months or 24 months in the future and then realise that their finances are not going to permit it. Training contracts are withdrawn and suddenly someone who had made a firm decision to join one particular firm and turned down others finds that they no longer have any training contracts to choose from at all. The first thing to do is not to panic if this happens to you, quite a lot of the time over the years we have seen Trainee Solicitors who have training contracts terminated walk into another post within a few months. Other firms who are still in business or not struggling financially see t...

Dealing with Bullies in the Workplace - A Guide for Employed Lawyers Bullying colleagues and employers can be an absolute nightmare for lawyers. The legal profession is rife with them, particularly as the pressure to achieve targets and billing levels gets higher and higher in difficult economic circumstances. One of the major issues we deal with from candidates and career coaching clients is how to handle bullying colleagues and employers: Bullying is about power and control and the results can be absolutely devastating. At worst the target will eventually leave to work somewhere less unpleasant; at best they will stay; grit their teeth and get more and more miserable, and less and less productive. It is estimated that workplace bullying affects 1 in 4 people at some point in their career. Bullying is about actions that are deliberate, debilitating and repeated. The target will be bullied until they either leave the organization or is totally subjugated. And then the bully will find t...

This comment was sent through by a reader. I should emphasise that it is a comment - I had problems with my blogspot software and hence have had to post it as a blog entry. The comment does not represent my experience or views. Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment . "Very interesting article on bullying in the workplace. In the legal profession there is, in my experience, a higher proportion of female bullies than in other walks of life. that's not to say more women are bullies than men - just that a larger number of the women in the profession have bullying traits. Perhaps that is down to the nature of the job, perhaps it is because it can be harder for a woman to make her mark and feels she has to adopt certain tactics. I experienced bullying from a female solicitor when I was an articled clerk in London; best thing in that case was to get out - which is what brought me up to Yorkshire (apart from my wife). Thereafter the bullies all tended to be men, not prevale...

Bullying colleagues and employers can be an absolute nightmare for lawyers. The legal profession is rife with the problem as far as we can see (we get a lot of calls to our career coaching service specifically on this subject), particularly as the pressure to achieve targets and billing levels gets higher and higher in difficult economic circumstances. Bullying is about power and control and the results can be absolutely devastating. At worst the target will eventually leave to work somewhere less unpleasant; at best they will stay; grit their teeth and get more and more miserable, and less and less productive. It is estimated that workplace bullying affects 1 in 4 people at some point in their career. Bullying is about actions that are deliberate, debilitating and repeated. The target will be bullied until they either leave the organization or is totally subjugated. And then the bully will find their next target. How to Identify and Deal with Bullying: 1. Understand what bullying is a...

Legal Job Market Report just released 1st March 2009 - http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/weeklyreport.htm