Legal Recruitment Newsletter August 2011
Legal Job Market Report 3rd August 2011
Still blowing hot and cold, the job market in July is still showing conflicting signs. One day we get 3-4 vacancies posted for similar fields (for example last week we had four litigation posts in the South West all posted on the same day) and others we get nothing. Locum assignments have been quiet this year as well, as a number of firms simply make do without cover over the summer to save costs. To a certain extent this is assisted by better remote working solutions, which means a partner can go away for two weeks but stay in touch with the office via remote access, but there is definitely a reluctance to pay locums to cover at some firms.
Conveyancing still seems to be picking up in some areas – central London has attracted a number of vacancies, together with other South East locations. Corporate fields still very quiet and a number of firms seem to change their spec every few weeks, particularly in larger regional practices. Following remains a strong requirement, and we are still getting this as part of a lot of job specifications.
Corporate commercial posts still picking up, litigation appears to be getting stronger, but certain fields are not seeing very much movement at all. Crime and other LSC funded fields appear to be on hold whilst the latest stream of directives from the Ministry of Justice sink in and cuts start to be specific rather than generally referred to. 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.
In July the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment Service had over 25 vacancies registered and 58 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates). A number of new firms and existing clients have now signed over to the new £60 a month scheme and we anticipate reaching 100 member firms before Christmas.
Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment.
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About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
£60 a Month Recruitment Service
0108111 Police Station Rep – 8 years accredited, looking in London and Croydon.
010811 Licensed Conveyancer. 5 years PQE. Experienced team leader, most recently handling plot sales. West Kent and Central London.
280711 Office Manager, exp in defendant PI firm, high street/commercial firm and public sector. Looking in Liverpool and London. Lexcel exp.
280711 Employment & Property Solicitor, 1 year PQE, looking around London and the South East.
280711 Paralegal with over 5 years experience in Commercial Contracts, Family, Private Client, Commercial Property and Litigation. East Midlands.
270711 Solicitor, 3 years PQE in Property Litigation work. London.
260711 Legal Secretary, 5 years experience, based in Reading. Temporary or permanent.
210711 Police Station Rep looking in the West Midlands.
210711 Duty Solicitor, Salaried Partner and Higher Court Advocate looking for work in North Yorkshire and Leeds.
200711 Employment Solicitor, 1 year PQE looking around Greater London and Home Counties.
200711 Duty Solicitor looking to move to a medium-large firm in London or Essex.
200711 Property Solicitor, residential and commercial, 5 years PQE. High net worth experience. London and Home Counties.
190711 Clinical Negligence Executive (with general PI), 20 years experience, looking around Essex and London.
190711 Insolvency Solicitor, 5 years PQE, looking around the Home Counties.
190711 Residential and Commercial Conveyancing Solicitor, 2 years PQE, Middlesex and London.
190711 Conveyancing and Litigation Solicitor, 1 year PQE. With own following. West Midlands. Salaried role sought.
190711 Duty Solicitor looking around Gloucester and Bristol.
190711 Conveyancing locum fee earner available for assignments around Oxfordshire.
Statistics from the Ten-Percent Candidate Database – full access to all members for £60 a month.
1,421 Property Solicitors with 3 years PQE or more.
465 Private Client Solicitors with 3 years PQE or more.
310 Commercial Litigation Solicitors within 30 miles of central London.
105 Legal Cashiers.
285+ Crime Duty Solicitors registered, 85 with Higher Rights.
519 Company Commercial Solicitors.
80 Intellectual Property Law Solicitors.
134 Solicitors describe themselves as ‘In House’.
108 Clinical Negligence Solicitors
217 Professional Locums covering a wide range of legal fields.
To access the Candidate Database, please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is now a service for member firms and employers only. We aim to have 100 legal employers signed up to the service by Christmas 2011 and are well on the way to achieving this. £60 a month for five years covers all your locum, permanent, temporary and contract employment, legal support staff, qualified or unqualified fee earners. You get full access to our CV database and a range of job boards as part of the service. Further details on our website at www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services. To go ahead and sign up please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membershipterms. Click the button, fill out a form, and we will send you over a welcome pack including the code to instantly access our Candidate Database.
As the new PII year gets closer we have now referred over £750k worth of premiums through to our accountants, who are part of a network responsible for 10% or 20% discount schemes on all PII renewal quotes. If you would like to receive details of this, please reply to this email with your firm name, contact name, current premium or renewal quote, and we will forward this through to our accountants who will get in touch to explain the schemes in further detail.
We recently undertook an assignment for a central London law firm handling high net worth property work. Over 120 applications were received for the post, which was a conveyancing clerk role – around 3 years experience required and salary levels c.£26-28k. The quality of the applications was mostly good, and it took a considerable time to sift through these to shortlist 12 candidates to go forward to the firm to be considered.
Part of the process includes telephoning the candidates and gauging their commitment to the post and firm, which is imperative when making sure that we only put forward those certain to go ahead. All 12 candidates sounded keen, interested in the post and very suitable. We forwarded the CVs through, and got the expected feedback that the firm wanted to interview 6 of the candidates.
On telephoning two of the candidates, their tone completely changed when we advised them that the firm wanted to interview. Suddenly instead of commitment, interest and enthusiasm we got hesitation, uncertainty and concerns. It was immediately apparent that we had Serial Job Applicants on our hands….
So what is a Serial Job Applicant? They can be fairly easily spotted.
1. They have been with the same firm for about 3-5 years.
2. It is fairly clear from the CV that they have not progressed with their careers during that time.
3. Their current firm is a happy place or at least not a bad place to be.
4. Often have strong family commitments.
They usually like the idea of being in demand and want someone to care about them. Their current firm probably do not give them any encouragement or praise so instead they use job applications to get this. After all, what could be easier than sending a CV off, speaking to a recruitment consultant and finding out that they have been selected for shortlisting and then interview.
I reckon that most recruitment consultants can spot them within about 10 minutes of talking and instinctively know that they may turn out to be useless. On this occasion however, I completely missed them both!
If only all legal employers took care of their staff and were nice to them occasionally, we would not see this problem as often as we do. Sod’s Law naturally dictates that at least one of the best candidates for the job we are recruiting for will be a serial job applicant.
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.
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
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
Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/
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/
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.
Legal Recruitment News
For older editions of the Legal Recruitment News, and free articles on recruitment, legal careers, training, SEO & Web Marketing, please visit https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/ . You can also visit the http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/ for over 200 articles on Legal Recruitment including advice for candidates.
For older editions of the Legal Recruitment News, and free articles on recruitment, legal careers, training, SEO & Web Marketing, please visit https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/ . You can also visit the http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/ for over 200 articles on Legal Recruitment including advice for candidates.
Legal Recruitment News and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Email: cv@ten-percent.co.uk
Website: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/ : https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/
Tel: 0207 127 4343
Email: cv@ten-percent.co.uk
Website: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/ : https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/
Tel: 0207 127 4343