Legal Recruitment Blog

Ten Percent Foundations - Charity Donations 1 2018 Our trustees met a few weeks ago and we have decided to make the following donations: First Steps - £2,500 Centre 63 - £2,500 Kilimatinde Trust - £2,200 British Stammering Association - £2,000. Full article to follow next month on the decisions made, but we have realised our charitable donations are going to drop dramatically as of next month due to the changes to the tax structures of companies (the Dividend Tax in particular) and as such our profit levels are going to be considerably lower. This has meant that in the current round of donations we have not been able to support the nominated charities from candidates and clients, but instead make our payments committed already - the four projects are all on 5 year terms ending next year. The charity still retains about £8,000 and we will revisit the donations in the summer to see if we can free up some more money to additionally donate. Thank you to all those who nominated charities...

We have been involved in two cases recently where we queried status and issues with the Modern Slavery Unit, which I understand is a charity operating a helpline on behalf of the National Crime Agency. 1. The first situation was where we had concerns about a disabled solicitor being exploited by a solicitors firm. Payment made to this lawyer for his services was less than £5k for 2 years. 2. We had a request from a law firm to advertise unpaid trial periods to staff for 4 weeks before a paid permanent job was offered. I rang the Modern Slavery Unit to get advice on these two situations. What powers did they have and whether these two issues came within their remit? The advisor informed me that the unit was able to only investigate in scenario 1 if the disabled solicitor in question referred themselves to the unit. At that point they would be able to investigate and assist if necessary. So far as the second scenario is concerned employers are perfectly able to offer unpaid trial period...

Predictions for 2017 - how correct was a top UK Psychic (as seen on TV)?   Craig Hamilton-Parker is our company's favourite psychic. Every year he produces a list of predictions for the coming year and we note them and check up 12 months later to see how well he has done. He does not give up and we admire him for this, although we do sense he is a fervent Brexiteer and Trump supporter! Mr Hamilton-Parker's predictions for 2017: 1. Hillary Clinton will resign from politics because of the release of documents that reveal financial corruption and falsification of government documents. (0/10 - she's still there!). 2. Denmark and Italy pull out of EU as Euro crashes. 2017 sees Italy in serious economic problems. (0/10) 3. Economic chaos in Europe (and America) with riots in many European capital and big cities (Rome, Madrid, Berlin, Paris and Prague) In these places many people are suffering serious poverty and food shortages due to the failure of the ...

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 b...

A number of PR companies have identified Ten Percent Legal Recruitment as being a news provider. With this in mind we get regular press releases from law firms, universities, companies, government departments and lots more besides. Most of this is probably about as interesting as our newsletters, but occasionally it is possible to spot a trend. The recent trend has been ‘relocating to Ireland’ to do legal work and Irish solicitors firms offering UK clients their services for future work in the EU. With reports of some larger solicitors firms recruiting large numbers of staff in Dublin, it looks likely that some movement of business over to Ireland from the UK is going to occur. I very much doubt there is a lot of Irish legal work to compete for but relocating to Ireland and then servicing UK clients seems to be the idea. Whether the whole relocation thing has any longer term effect once the whole EU departure thing is completed is another matter entirely. So re...

CV Blooper of the Month Never depend on spellcheck when writing your CV! Taken from a finance CV. The candidate also forgot to include his name. 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 . Visit our Website to search our Vacancy Database.

CV Blooper of the Month Extract from Paralegal's CV - more "incomprehensible waffle" than a "blooper" but included nevertheless! Profile: I am a highly motivated, focused, determined, enthusiastic person with a sophisticated acquaintance of grasping beyond what individuals reckon in a brief conversation. Startling communication skills that allow me as an interlocutor to predict and endeavour to persuade clients. I have a confident pro active character which enables me to use my own initiative at work, a stereotypic ideas changer with ability of generating new ones. I can work proactively in a complex and busy environment. I am a quick learner who is able to absorb new ideas. HR departments - seen any good bloopers recently? Send them over to cv@ten-percent.co.uk and if I publish them I'll send you a £10 Waterstones voucher by way of thanks. Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a non-practising Sol...