Legal Recruitment Newsletter for Candidates July 2011
Important Announcement from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has recently completely changed (Monday July 11th) into a membership service. Over the 11 years we have been in the recruitment business we have constantly been asked: “Why do you charge so much?” or “Why should we give you £6,000 plus VAT for just sending us a CV and arranging an interview?”
An interview only occurs once each time 20 CVs are sent out. For every 7 interviews arranged, only 1 results in a job offer. 33% of candidates reject each job offer and 5% leave within a week or fail to start. So whilst the work done in sending one CV to an employer is extremely minor, because of the way contingency fees work the client basically pays for all the work done on at least 100 other candidates and 6 other law firms. We have worked out that each of our clients pays for work done on at least 10 other vacancies and 100 candidates.
This is the thinking behind our membership service. Instead of paying a large, one-off hit for recruiting a candidate, members recruit at no cost.
It is important you are aware of this change as it means the following for any candidates on our database:
1. Our service remains the same, except that in future any vacancies you see on our site will be from member firms.
2. None of our consultants will be receiving any commission for selling you to a law firm. We will get the same whether you find a job or not.
3. There will be a transition period whilst we move older vacancies onto the new system and remove others from firms who do not wish to sign up.
Point 3 is the most important for candidates. There are plenty of you out there who have applied for vacancies through us where firms have advertised without any real intention to recruit and just wasted everyone’s time. We hope that the new system will remove this, as every firm will have paid to advertise and recruit through us and by doing so we will have become the number one choice for any CVs submitted. Our clients will almost remain with us for five years, which means that we will know them well.
If you want to see further details of the service, please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services
Legal Job Market Report 13th July 2011
The job market in June has shown conflicting signs. At various intervals we have picked up vacancies from good, reputable firms, looking to pay salaries and not after a following which rarely exists in the profession. At other times it has been very quiet. Conveyancing is clearly making a comeback (again) and we are starting to see a good number of posts coming through in the field, which is good news indeed. Once conveyancing work increases, so will other fields of law. There have been a number of false starts here, so we hold our breath!
Corporate commercial posts have increased, particularly at the 0-3 year PQE salary bracket, and a number of NQs from last year are starting to find employment now. Support staff posts continue to come in steadily. Ten-Percent has been developing a niche in legal cashiers for some time and we see plenty of vacancies coming on stream Crime solicitors are also starting to get enquiries and we anticipate quite a few firms looking to expand their duty solicitor numbers before the next CDS12 deadline.
In June Ten-Percent Legal had 17 vacancies registered and 73 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates).
Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment.
Links:
Register Vacancies Online
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
How much are Law Firms paying for Professional Indemnity Insurance?
We have recently emailed out a flyer to over 8,000 law firms and employers offering a solution to reduce professional indemnity insurance (PII) by either 10% if they stay with their existing provider, or 20% if they move to a new provider (please contact us if you would like details – email
cv@ten-percent.co.uk). This is a scheme being operated through a new provider, one of the largest insurance companies in Europe.
Unsurprisingly a large number of firms have responded to request further details.
The variation in PII premiums being charged to firms is quite amazing. We thought lawyers may be interested to know what sort of premiums get charged. Some examples:
A sole practitioner in the South East – £3,500
South East 3 solicitor practice – £22,000
North West 3 solicitor litigation practice – £11,000
Central London small practice – £11,000
Midlands firm with <10 solicitors – £30,000
London 5 solicitor practice – £22,000
Midlands practice – <10 solicitors – £60,000
South East practice – 10-20 solicitors – £110,000
Surrey practice – 15 solicitors – £185,000
Most sole practitioners not undertaking property work appear to be able to get PII for around £3,000 – £5,000.
Many years ago, when I was training, I recall that the profession was going through the process of opening the PII market up to private providers. The arguments being put forward included the notion that competition was healthy and good, encouraging good firms and dissuading bad ones. In recent times I hear time and again from firms that insurance premiums rocket sky high every year and it is almost impossible to change providers if a claim is made against you. It seems to be the case that PII insurance in the legal profession is reaching astronomical levels for some firms and must eat into a huge percentage of turnover each year. I have heard a horror story of a 20 solicitor practice being quoted £1.5 million to renew.
Surely there are firms out there somewhere who are doing something about this state of affairs? Have any law firms looked into purchasing their insurance together as a syndicate? To use a rather weak analogy our local community council recently got the village playing field insured for free when they discovered they could include the playing field on the village pond insurance costing £250, saving around £900 per year…. Has the profession acquiesced to insuring their practices for a high premium and simply got used to paying it? Have PII premiums in fact gone up very much since private competition was introduced 10 years ago? Medical PII used to cost around £500 per month per practitioner, in what could be seen as an extremely high risk profession. Recruitment PII costs around £600 per year for a small company not employing temps directly. Is it cheaper for solicitors to obtain PII insurance individually rather than as a firm?
We are going to look into offering access to PII as part of the new Ten-Percent Recruitment Service, recently launched (see article below). If we get anywhere, I will keep you posted.
Outsourcing Secretarial Work – 10% discount on first order Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews-for-lawyers-ten-percent-legal-recruitment.html
TP Transcription is an Online Transcription & Typing Service with offices in London and North Wales with a team of 20 UK based transcribers offering digital file and tape transcribing services worldwide. Established in 2001, the company has been handling bulk orders (including over 500 hour projects) and one-off assignments for legal and non-legal clients including a large number of solicitors firms, B&Q, Endemol, the Office of Fair Trading, Sony, Dundee University, Cartridge World, University of Oxford, NHS Tayside, the British Medical Journal, Marie Curie and many more.
We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.
It is now possible to outsource secretarial work at very low cost. We supply the software which includes an online portal. The set up cost can be less than 200 per user including hardware and with no ongoing costs (other than the actual transcription).
We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit
http://www.uk-transcription.co.uk/, call 01352 751945 or email
pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Formed in April 2000, Ten-Percent is an innovative recruitment membership service run online for law firms and employers across the UK and offshore offering free recruitment to members. Over 1,300 law firms and companies have used our services, and we have over 8,000 solicitors & legal executives registered for opportunities, as well as other fee earners and support staff. We donate 10% of our annual profits to charity.
http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/
Please email us details of any vacancies to
cv@ten-percent.co.uk or register the vacancy online on our website.