Legal Job Market Report October 2nd
Good morning and welcome to the October edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group. Our websites include Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, Crime Solicitor Recruitment, Interim Lawyers, Legal-Recruitment and many more.
The market report for September is a little more detailed than July/August. The locum market has quietened down – instead of the usual 10-15 new assignments we have been getting in over the summer the number has gone down to about 3 or 4. September can often either be busy because of interviews running over from the summer or very quiet as law firms get back to the day to day life after taking holidays in the summer or spending more time working out child care for the kids.
Commercial Law Firms and In House:
Quiet, very quiet would be the quick response. We have seen very little recruitment on this side of things. Employers seem to have been holding back in recent times and not much activity spotted at all. We have had a few commercial litigation posts in and a couple of employment locum posts but that is all.
On the High Street:
Redundancies are still occurring. There seems to be an increasing number of crime solicitors registering with us and currently earning £45k, looking for a move. Suspect the vast majority of these are under threat of redundancy as law firms work out the harsh economic realities of not being paid very much more than this by the LSC!
Conveyancing, private client and commercial property is busy. We keep taking locum bookings from firms taking on locums to cope with the extra demand. It seems that large amounts of buying and selling of houses is going on in some parts of the country.
Family – we are expecting a wave of new recruitment as it is almost 12 months from the last round of LSC contract signing. Private family law work seems to be very quiet, although we have recruited a few on this front in recent months.
Our £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are (very) gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 60+ firms are already estimated to be around £250,000. Over 60% of members undertake LSC funded work in some capacity and 33% have less than 2 partners. The service is restricted to firms with less than 100 staff. September saw our fastest ever recruitment – a firm signed up and had recruited a senior solicitor within 48 hours. Total cost to date: £60.
In September 2012 we had 99 new solicitors register with us, together with just short of 600 paralegals and non-qualified staff (in response to specific law firm member vacancies). We restrict our candidate database to ensure we only register qualified or suitably experienced staff.
Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme
The Legal Services Commission – are they for real?
We have recently received a very interesting letter from the LSC regarding the duty solicitor rotas. Ten-Percent Legal owns another website called Crime Solicitor Recruitment. This year we decided to incorporate a page on this where we could list all the duty solicitors and firms looking for a move, whether on a freelance or salaried basis. We used the words “duty solicitor rota slot shop” and mentioned the possibility of duty solicitors selling their slots. – see http://www.crime-solicitor.co.uk/dutysolicitorrotaslotshop.htm
Having been a crime solicitor many years ago, I was astounded at the speed the LSC moved. A director of communications sent us a letter within 3 days of the page going live, explaining that duty solicitors do not own their slots, duty solicitors cannot be under a contract of service and duty solicitors have to work for a minimum of 2 days per week for a firm in order to comply with the contract.
I have posted the letter on the website as I think it is very helpful to law firms to know how the LSC is thinking! We have since changed some of the wording on the site so as to take out the offending bits about selling rota slots, although this is of course in reality what most duty solicitors do every time they have to go through the 6 monthly CDS12 deadlines.
At the same time as this we have also recently received an email from an LSC family supervisor saying that she has recently been to a course where the LSC made clear that supervisors cannot be external and must be employed FULL TIME by the contracted firm.
I suspect the LSC really do not have a clue how firms are surviving on the hourly rates paid. The answer is that everything, particularly staff salaries, have to be shed in order to do this.
Looking at the current rates for family law, the rate for London for advocacy, attendance and preparation is £48.74 per hour. Even if a solicitor was managing to bill 7 hours per day at this rate for 48 weeks of the year, the maximum amount it is possible to earn doing LSC funded family law per solicitor is £81,883.20.
Working on the one third rule, ie 1/3 profit, 1/3 salary and 1/3 costs, the maximum salary a solicitors’ firm can possibly pay to a solicitor in London to be their LSC family supervisor is £27,294.40. This would require someone to be working 10-12 hour days due to the non-billable work, for 5 days a week, flat out.
Are the Legal Services Commission seriously suggesting that a 15 year PQE LSC Supervisor with Panel membership or Resolution accreditation is going to work a 60 hour week for £27,294.40? Apparently, according to the letter we received, the only exception to salaried status is for partners. How lucky they are!
I suspect one of the reasons the LSC is claiming they are going to crack down on consultancy arrangements (which in reality keep the whole LSC work going as solicitors go off and find better remunerated work to support them including plumbing) is that it is stopping the LSC from shifting the work over in the longer term to companies able to offer economies of scale by using vast armies of paralegals and advocates.
One of the reasons law firms and solicitors spend time trying to work out arrangements that include monthly retainers and hourly rates is so that both can survive. If the LSC were more realistic as to the rates being paid at present for legally aided work it may remove a lot of the need for lawyers to work out ways of working that legitmately fit the LSC contractual requirements.
After all, I don’t hear of many senior LSC staff working for £27,294.40…. Happy to retract this comment of course if they are all working 60 hour weeks for £25k.
Jonathan Fagan is MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a former, fairly inept, crime solicitor with plenty of experience dealing with the LSC! Further articles on all topics available at www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com
Search Engine Marketing – is it still possible?
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has been online since April 2000. We worked out long ago that content is king and anything else tends to have little effect on search engine rankings. In recent times however Google has started bringing out updates every other week and tweaking the famous algorithm to try and remove various websites they dont like. This included a website that was providing answers to just about everything but has now disappeared almost completely because Google decided that some of the articles were commercially motivated.
At the same time, these changes have made SEO very difficult indeed. A recent Google update called the EMD update has taken out as many smaller sites as possible and focussed more on larger, generic sites to provide content for exact match searching (eg; where can I find a conveyancing solicitor in sutton coldfield?). It is now generally believed that sites who pay for Google Adwords and are signed up to all the various Google tools – Analytics and Webmaster etc.. are going to get traffic, and those who are not will be excluded from the top of search engine listings.
In a nutshell, if you want your site noticed on Google you need to make sure you have an Adwords account, are signed up for all the various Google tools and consider opening a Google + account even though most people in the UK use Facebook for that kind of thing!
Article written by http://www.chesterwebmarketing.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
Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/
Low Cost Digital Dictation Outsourcing
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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.
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.tptranscription.co.uk call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.
Candidate Update 2nd October
There are over 9,250 lawyers registered with us looking for permanent work and 750 locums available for assignments in all areas of the country. Register vacancies on our website, email cv@ten-percent.co.uk or call 0207 127 4343.
Selection of Candidates registered in the past 2 weeks:
21049 Costs draftsperson with over 20 years experience. Looking for a post in South Wales.
21051 September 2012 qualified criminal barrister with police station accreditation. Looking for criminal advocacy posts in London. Solicitor
21052 1996 qualified self employed consultant litigation solicitor with experience in civil litigation, debt recovery, landlord & tenant, personal injury and clinical negligence. Looking for locum posts, preferably in Kent and South East London. Solicitor
21053 Paralegal with experience in clinical negligence, catastrophic injury and personal injury. Looking for a paralegal post in Kent and South East London. Speaks Gujarati and Hindu. Fee Earner – all
21055 2004 qualified solicitor, experienced in residential conveyancing, landlord & tenant and wills & probate. Looking for locum posts in the West Midlands Solicitor
21056 Legal compliance manager with over 5 years experience. Looking for a post in London Legal Support
21057 1996 qualified family solicitor with previous family panel membership. Looking for a post in West Yorkshire or Manchester. Solicitor
21058 Paralegal with experience in IP and commercial litigation. Looking for a paralegal post in Central and Greater London. Fee Earner – all
21059 October 2012 qualified solicitor with experience in insolvency, commercial property, commercial litigation and property litigation. Looking for a post in the Midlands. Solicitor
21060 Senior crime solicitor with police station accreditation and higher rights of audience. Looking for a post in the West Midland, Worcestershire or Telford. Solicitor
21062 September 2006 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation and duty status. Looking for crime post anywhere in the UK. Able to relocate. Solicitor
21063 May 2007 qualified litigation solicitor, experience in general civil litigation, claimant personal injury (RTA, EL, OL), landlord & tenant, debt recovery, consumer law and some commercial litigation. Looking for a litigation post in Hampshire. Solicitor
21064 July 2011 qualified solicitor, with experience in commercial and residential conveyancing, immigration, family and housing law. Looking for a commercial or residential conveyancing post in Middlesex. Solicitor
21066 Immigration caseworker with additional experience in crime, family and residential and commercial conveyancing. Has over 3 years legal experience. Looking for a paralegal, fee earner or caseworker post in Essex. Fee Earner – all
21070 Paralegal with around 6 years legal experience in general company commercial law, commercial and civil litigation, landord & tenant, employment law, housing litigation, contentious probate, family law and debt recovery. Looking for a post in Middlesex and North London. Fee Earner – all
21080 2008 qualified FILEX legal executive, specialising in wills and probate and with STEP membership. Looking for a wills & probate post in Sussex and surrounding counties. Legal Executive
21081 March 2012 qualified solicitor specialising in banking and finance litigation, corporate compliance and financial regulation and white collar crime. Looking for a fraud or regulatory law post in London. Solicitor
21082 Residential conveyancing paralegal with over 2 years experience. Looking for a post in Kent or South East London. Fee Earner – all
21083 2004 qualified crime solicitor with higher rights of audience. Also experienced in licensing. Looking for a crime post in Greater Manchester or Lancashire. Solicitor
21084 December 1995 qualified litigation solicitor, experienced in commercial and civil litigation, debt recovery, landlord & tenant, property litigation and contentious probate. Looking for a post in Middlesex. Solicitor
21086 Legal assistant/paralegal specialising in family and child care law and with experience in both public and privately funded cases. Looking for a post ideally in Hetfordshire but willing to relocate. Legal Support
21088 September 2011 qualified family solicitor with experience in privately funded cases. Additional experience in wills & probate, personal injury, commercial litigation and company commercial law. Looking for a family post in London or Essex. Solicitor
21089 Senior litigation solicitor experienced in personal injury, landlord & tenant, debt recovery, property litigation, general civil litigation and professional negligence. Looking for locum litigation posts in Surrey. Solicitor
21091 March 2002 qualified solicitor, experience in corporate finance, company commercial and IP law. Looking for a flexible or part time post within commuting distance of Oxted (Surrey, Sussex or Kent). Speaks German. Solicitor
21092 2005 qualified FILEX legal executive with experience in personal injury, insurance law, mental health and clinical negligence. Looking for a post in Surrey, Hertfordshire or West London. Legal Executive
21093 2001 qualified crime solicitor with duty staus, looking for a post in South East London or Kent. Duty Solicitor
21094 May 2009 qualified solicitor with experience in family law, conveyancing and wills & probate. Looking to specialise in family law and searching for a post in London. Solicitor
21095 January 2012 qualified crime and mental health solicitor with police station accreditation and member of the Mental Health Accreditation Scheme. Looking for a post in Essex. Solicitor
21097 2006 dual qualified criminal solicitor, barrister and higher court advocate with police station accreditation and duty barrister status. Looking for duty posts in the UK. Speaks Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi. Solicitor
21099 Paralegal with experience in defendant and claimant personal injury and regulatory law. Looking for a post in South Wales or Bristol. Speaks fluent Welsh Fee Earner – all
21106 Paralegal/overseas lawyer and level 2 accredited immigration caseworker. Looking for an immigration post in London or Kent. Fee Earner – all
21107 1990 qualified family solicitor with supervisor status, panel membership and experience in both public and privately funded files. Looking for permanent or long term locum family posts in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, London, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. Solicitor
21108 Paralegal with experience in clinical negligence. Comes from a nursing background. Looking for a clinical negligence post in Central London. Fee Earner – all
21110 December 2010 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation and duty status. Looking for a duty post in London. Solicitor
21111 February 2011 qualified family solicitor with LSC supervisor status and law soceity family panel membership. Looking for a family post in London. Solicitor – LSC funded
21113 Employment and litigation lawyer with extensive experience in claimant and respondant contentious employment law as well as civil litigation, debt recovery and insolvency in both Scotland and England. Looking for locum posts anywhere in the UK. Salary £25 to £30 per hour. Solicitor
21115 Civil and commercial litigation paralegal with further experience in regulatory law. Looking for locum posts in North or Central London or Hertfordshire. Fee Earner – all
21116 1999 qualified crime and wills & probate solicitor with higher rights of audience. Looking to move completely into wills & probate from crime and willing to sell her duty slots. Looking for a post in South West London, Hammersmith or Wimbledon. Solicitor
21117 Paralegal with over 3 years experience in fraud and insurance litigation. Looking for a post in London. Speaks Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Mirpuri. Fee Earner – all
21118 Paralegal with experience in crime, fraud and civil litigation. Looking for a post in Essex or East London. Fee Earner – all
21119 September 2006 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation, duty status and higher right of audience. Looking for a crime post in South Wales. Speaks Welsh. Duty Solicitor
21120 2009 qualified litigation solicitor, experienced in civil and commercial litigation, professional negligence, landlord & tenant, debt recovery and contentious probate. Looking for a litigation post in Sussex. Speaks Italian and French. Solicitor
21123 2011 qualified litigation solicitor via QLTT with experience in civil litigation, property litigation, personal injury and insolvency as well as residential conveyancing and wills & probate. Looking for a post in South Wales. Solicitor
21124 June 2008 qualified solicitor, experienced in housing, community care, public law and welfare benefits. Has LSC housing and community care supervisor status. Looking for a post in London. Solicitor
21125 2005 qualified crime and fraud solicitor with police station accreditation, duty status and higher rights of audience. Looking for a consultancy or salaried post in West London. Duty Solicitor
21126 2000 qualified family and child care law solicitor, experienced in mainly privately funded cases. Further wills & probate experience. Looking for a privately funded family/child care law locum posts in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire or Northamptonshire. Solicitor
21127 2011 qualified solicitor with experience in commercial litigation, debt recovery, professional negligence, property litigation and contentious probate. Additional experience in family law and residential and commercial conveyancing. Looking for a litigation post in Hampshire, Surrey or South West London. Solicitor
21128 Wills & probate paralegal with over 4 years experience. Looking for long term locum or permanent posts in Surrey. Fee Earner – all
21129 1995 qualified family and child care solicitor with both publically and privately funded experience. Looking for locum posts in South and West Yorkshire or North Derbyshire. Solicitor
21130 2002 qualified solicitor, experienced in crime and fraud. Has higher rights of audience for crime and is a VHCC supervisor. Looking for a crime post in Cheshire, the Wirral or Manchester. Solicitor
21131 1996 qualified family solicitor with Law Society Childrens Panel membership and a rsolution accredited specialist in private childrens law and domestic violence. Deals with both public and privatelly funded cases. Looking for a family or child care post in Kent East Sussex or London Solicitor
21132 February 2009 qualified property solicitor with experience in residential and commercial conveyancing. Looking for a post in East, Central or West London. Speaks Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. Solicitor
21133 2010 qualified solicitor (qualified in South Africa in 2008), experienced in company commercial, IT, commercial contracts, commercial litigation and all in house legal counsel work. Looking for an in house, company commercial, IT role in London. Solicitor
21134 Conveyancing fee earner with experience in residential conveyancing and some further experience in wills & probate, civil litigation and commercial property. Looking for a residential conveyancing post in Norfolk. Fee Earner – all
21136 2006 qualified FILEX legal executive, specialising in family law and with over 20 years expereince. Experience in both publicly and privately funded cases. Looking for a post in Berkshire or Surrey. Legal Executive
21140 Personal injury fee earner with around 18 mths experience in claimant RTA cases. Looking for a post in Cheltenham/Gloucestershire area. Fee Earner – all
21142 November 2006 qualified freelance duty solicitor and police station accredited representative. Looking for a freelance duty post in Manchester or the North West. Solicitor
21143 Litigation fee earner, experienced in claimant personal injury handling RTA case files. Has over 10 years experience. Looking for a claimant PI post in Kent. Fee Earner – all
21145 October 2010 qualified FILEX legal executive, specialising in wills & probate law and looking for a post in South Wales or Bristol. Has over 10 years experience. Legal Executive
21146 Experienced litigation paralegal dealing with commercial litigation, debt recovery and personal injury (RTA). Looking for a post in London. Fee Earner – all
21149 Residential conveyancing fee earner with over 20 years experience. Looking for a post in Surrey. Fee Earner – all
21150 Paralegal with experience in banking litigation and corporate finance. Looking for a post in London Fee Earner – all
21151 Paralegal with experience in landlord & tenant, welfare benefits, immigration, civil litigation and personal injury. Looking for a paralegal post in London. Speaks Greek, Italian and Spanish. Fee Earner – all
21153 1996 qualified senior litigation solicitor, experienced in dispute resolution, civil litigation, property litigation, professional negligence, contentious probate and employment law. Looking for a permanent post in Central London and Hertfordshire. Solicitor
21154 Paralegal/legal administrator with over 3 years experience in criminal prosecution cases and further experience in civil litigation, housing law, consumer credit and insolvency. Looking for a paralegal post in London, West Sussex, Surrey or Hampshire. Fee Earner – all
21155 Senior qualified solicitor, experienced in family and child care law with law society panel membership and previously LSC supervisor status. Looking for a practice merger, locum family/child care work or a practice manager post. Solicitor
21156 1985 qualified solicitor, experienced in company commercial law and general in house legal counsel work, commercial contracts, consumer credit, M&A and IP. Looking for a post in South Wales. Solicitor
21158 Legal administrator with over 4 years experienced dealing with leasehold administration and commercial property. Looking for a commercial property paralegal post in London or Hertfordshire. Legal Support
21160 1993 qualified crime solicitor with duty status and higher rights of audience. Looking for a full time post in Hampshire or West Sussex. Solicitor
21161 Litigation fee earner with over 4 years experience in both claimant and defendent work including personal injury, industrial disease and clinical negligence. Has additional experience in commercial litigation, contentious and non-contentious employment law and general company commercial law. Looking for a litigation post in London or the South East. Speaks Polish and French. Fee Earner – all
Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme
Legal Recruitment News is produced by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – you can view all versions of the e-newsletter at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment was established in 2000 and donates 10% of profits to charity, hence the name.
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