Legal Recruitment Blog

Welcome to the December 2021 edition of Legal Recruitment News. It includes our legal job market report, locum hourly rates, advice on DIY legal recruitment, changing locum hours mid-assignment, making sure you are not the asset in a law firm sale, careers advice and suggested interview answers. http://www.legal-recruitment.co.uk/legal-recruitment-news-december-2021/ 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, Licensed Conveyancers, Legal Cashiers, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search our Vacancy Database.

Here is our summary of the current state of the legal job market: Locum Recruitment - Busy The locum market still remains busy for this time of year than ever before, with a 100% increase in the number of assignments last month compared with the same time last year. We are starting to see availability for just about every assignment coming our way which remains a huge improvement on the summer season. Conveyancing locums are available in most areas now. Other fields of law are generally not too bad at all, although family locums are a little scarce at the moment. Most corporate and commercial areas still attract a lot of interest, whether in private practice or in house. Locum assignment updates here: https://www.interimlawyers.co.uk/category/locum-solicitor-updates/ Permanent Recruitment - Busy There remains a shortage of good candidates for most jobs and we are now into the traditional dip in the market prior to the Christmas break. Most people have better things to do than apply for...

A recent law firm sale process has got us thinking about an issue that comes up quite regularly when it comes to selling a law firm, which is that very often a lot of the business coming into a firm for sale is flowing through and sourced by the person selling the practice. A practice might have a senior partner, two or three consultants, junior fee earners and support staff. The owner will probably do the vast majority of the work but also it is likely he/she will also be the person who doesn’t want to carry on working once the sale has gone through. Sellers tend to expect a lump sum to be paid for the practice upfront and for themselves to leave and stop working within a period of a maximum of six to nine months. Buyers on the other hand instantly see things differently. Feedback after some initial meetings can be that as far as they can see all the value is in the seller and there is very little else up for sale. The buyer cannot understand why a £400,000 turnover practice is for sa...

Legal Recruitment Newsletter November 2021 from the Ten Percent Group of websites. Includes our legal job market report, locum solicitor hourly rates, article on high PII affecting the value of law firms, rewards & benefits in the legal sector, bad A levels and a 2.1 law degree - what to do and an interview question & suggested answer. https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/legal-recruitment-news-november-2021/ 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, Licensed Conveyancers, Legal Cashiers, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search our Vacancy Database.

  We have had a careers enquiry in from a third year law student asking us what he should do about his A levels. He has C C D at A level and is currently in his third year at university and expects to graduate with a 2:1 degree. He has been looking at job applications and noticing that a lot of law firms require very high A levels in order to apply. He has asked the question whether he should return to college and complete his A levels again in order to get the grades, or just apply anyway. Advice Our advice is to do neither. I think it is simply a case that this particular student needs to accept that because he has not got the A level grades required for specific firms it is unfortunately going to be their loss and his gain if he ends up somewhere else. This of course does not help the particularly candidate in question, so looking at practicalities we think the best option for him would be to aim simply to qualify as a solicitor, and the route probably availabl...

Legal Recruitment Newsletter October 2021 from the Ten Percent Group of websites. Includes our legal job market report, locum solicitor hourly rates, a long read article on the state of the conveyancing job market, how to explain bad things on a CV and an interview question & suggested answer.   https://www.interimlawyers.co.uk/legal-recruitment-news-october-2021/ 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, Licensed Conveyancers, Legal Cashiers, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals . Visit our Website to search our Vacancy Database.

  Conveyancer Shortage - the Perfect Storm (and a lengthy read) There is a huge shortage in the conveyancing job market at the moment, with a shortfall of conveyancing lawyers in most law firms and increased amounts of work coming in. As I write this article in September 2021 we have already had reports from industry experts that the market would crash or drop after June and the end of the stamp duty holiday, and subsequently that the market would drop or crash at the end of September 2021 at the end of all support to the property market. What these reports and predictions don’t take into account is that there have been seismic shifts in the numbers of conveyancers either looking for work or currently in roles. A Brief History According to Ten Percent Legal In order to explain the conveyancing job market a bit of history is needed. Back in the mid 1990s conveyancing was starting to be seen as the poor cousin to most other areas of law on the high street. The gover...