Legal Recruitment Blog

Philanthropy Really, Really Hurts We have just gone through the very painful process of transferring money from our company current account through to the Ten-Percent Foundation.  Every year since 2000 we have committed as a company to donate a percentage of our annual profits to charity. This includes any subsidiary companies and operations. So far, for 14 years, our board of directors has agreed to setting this at 10% (after all, how on earth could we carry on with our name which is Ten-Percent?). We have donated over £66,000 to the Ten-Percent Foundation, a small sum in the general scheme of things, but a lot of money for a company the size of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment. This last year we have just transferred just over £13,000 from our current account into the Ten-Percent Foundation charity bank accounts, and I have to say that it really, really hurt. I know it shouldn’t cause pain, and as a company and a group of people together we ought to be delighte...

We appreciate entirely the difficulties law firms have when trying to take on new staff. How do you know a candidate is going to stop with your firm and not turn out to scare all your clients away or worst still set up on their own across the road and poach all your existing clients? The answer is that you don't know what a candidate is going to be like, but you can certainly undertake a few tests. Here are our recommendations: 1. When interviewing, try to make the candidate sweat. Not literally (you'll probably sweat as well if you turn up the heating!). Try to get them under pressure. Ask awkward questions and probe their answers. Someone who handles you politely and fairly comfortably is probably going to do the same in a work situation. A candidate who gets distressed or aggressive will almost certainly do the same with your clients when faced with confrontation. 2. Get the candidate to meet your staff on the day of interview day. You may think that yo...

We have had a Guide on our Legal Careers Shop for many years, but after 8 years we have decided it is probably time to update and upgrade it, particularly when the previous version talks about writing letters to law firms (no mention of email, which until c.2010 was still alien for a lot of law firms).  This work is now complete and you can view the guide by visiting our Legal Careers Shop and downloading it. There is no charge and the guide includes the following: A guaranteed failsafe technique for getting both work experience and a training contract.  Answers queries you may have about legal recruitment agencies and whether they can help.  Guides you to improving your chances on getting work experience or a training contract.  Download the guide at www.legalcareercoaching.co.uk and then visit www.ten-percent.co.uk and read some of the 100s of articles on preparing your CV, completing application forms, attending interviews, tactics for improving respon...

The Easiest and Quickest Way to Grow your Business There are 5 ways to grow your business – increase customers, get customers to buy more, increase the value of each transaction, increase prices or increase efficiency. By far the quickest and easiest way, according to expert pricing accountant Peter Hill, is simply to increase your prices. He issues a challenge to businesses – if you want to increase your profits in one, easy step, increase your prices by 5% immediately. A quick example would be a conveyancing quote I recently had. We contacted three law firms to get a price on selling a field (sale transaction is less than £20k) and got quotes of £475, £400 and £200. Thinking about it now – if the £200 quote had been £210 it still would have been the lowest price, and if I had been a bit distrustful of the low quote I would still have gone with the medium quote with a 5% increase at £420. Applying this to our own business does not really work, because in recruitment most of our busin...

Cut the Clutter on your Desk and save time I recently read an article about saving time – with tips including outsourcing everything you possibly can, delegating as much work as possible and avoiding meetings. One of the tips was to reduce the clutter on your desk because looking for documents and items can take up so much of your time. These are the three things to do with paperwork on your desk: 1. Delegate It 2. File it 3. Bin it Apparently most of the stuff we file away never gets seen again and in fact it would have been better to bin it from the outset. There is a professor in the USA who tips all his paperwork each month into a desk drawer and at the end of the month he throws the whole lot into the bin. I think this is extremely brave and would never dare to be so bold, but it is certainly one way to get rid of stuff off your desk! There should be no paperwork on your desk at the end of the day – instead it should be in a filing tray, an action tray or the bin. Stationery ...

We received a press release not that long ago from a well known telephone answering service - AlldayPa ( www.alldaypa.com - this is not a sponsored link - we don't get paid if you click it - but we are and have been clients for over 10 years now). They have released figures to say that 'The legal sector has seen a 60% increase in out of hours calls' - which has consequences for many law firms across the country. More and more clients are expecting calls to be answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it seems logical to suppose that this is a direct result of increased online and offline advertising. TV and Radio adverts are becoming commonplace, and it is natural for a client to call straight away, rather than wait for office hours.' They have not published any figures demonstrating the 60% increase in the past few years (which is as vague as it gets), but the crux of their research is promoting the fact that it may be worth firms considering out of hours call...

A new survey has been commissioned showing that 4 out of 10 solicitors would NOT encourage anyone to follow in their footsteps. Wesleyan for Lawyers managed to get hold of 103 'lawyers' to conduct this poll, which is pretty poor considering there are over 120,000 solicitors on the Roll in the UK and considerably more support staff and non-qualified fee earners. Very unrepresentative and a bit of a non-news story!  However I suspect the real figure is something above 60%. Why? 7 reasons. I cannot imagine anyone who deals with the Legal Aid Agency wanting to encourage anyone else to follow in their footsteps.  High street solicitors who have not got to partnership status are unlikely to suggest to anyone else that it really is a good idea to run up debts of £44,000 going through the education and training bits before earning a maximum salary of £40,000 for the remainder of their career.  City lawyers in my experience seem to hate their jobs, themselves, the lo...