Legal Recruitment Newsletter Sept 5th
Legal Job Market Report September 5th
Good morning and welcome to the September 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 August is brief. We have been extremely busy on the locum front, both for member firms and clients using our Interim Lawyer service. The Olympics hit the permanent trade, along with annual leave, poor weather and adverse news reports (yet again!). Redundancies are still occurring but not in any great number and tend to affect mid level solicitors earning around £40-50k in high street practices.
At the same time though, we have had a string of locum conveyancing posts in, some from firms with fee earners taking annual leave or needing time off, but more interestingly from firms who are extremely busy on the property side of things. As most of the economy seems to feed off the housing market, this is surely a positive sign for things to come?
Our £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 60+ firms are already estimated to be around £225,000. 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.
In August 2012 we had 68 new solicitors register with us, together with just short of 900 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
Candidate Update 5th September
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:
21000 Paralegal with experience in immigration, employment law, residential conveyancing and civil litigation. Looking for a post in London or Greater London.
21001 2002 qualified immigration solicitor, looking for immigration posts in ideally South East London. Speaks French, Portuguese and Spanish.
21002 September 2012 qualified solicitor with experience in employment law, dispute resolution, corporate and commercial law, wills & probate, tax and trusts. Looking for an employment law post in London or the South East.
21003 1974 qualified conveyancing solicitor, experienced in both commercial and residential property as well as company commercial law. Looking for locum posts in Sussex or London.
21004 February 2006 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation, prison law supervisor status and duty status. Looking for a crime or prison law post in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire or Bedfordshire.
21009 April 2008 qualified criminal solicitor, experience in fraud and prison law. Looking for a crime, fraud or prison law post in West Yorkshire. Fluent in Urdu, Mirpuri and Punjabi.
21011 2004 qualified solicitor with experience in crime, civil litigation and family law. Looking for a post in London
21012 September 2012 qualified solicitor with experience in child care law, family law, community care, education and public law. Looking for a post in London.
21015 1993 qualified solicitor, experienced in crime and family law. Looking for family law post in London. Speaks Turkish.
21017 2000 qualified employment solicitor with experience in contentious and non-contentious law. Looking for a post in Kent or Central London.
21020 1996 qualified commercial litigation solicitor, experienced in commercial litigation, commercial property and commercial property litigation, media and entertainment law, maritime and employment law. Looking for a permanent or consultant post in London. Speaks French
21022 Legal executive with over 20 years residential conveyancing experience. Looking for a post in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire or North/Central London.
21023 July 2011 qualified solicitor, experienced as an in-house legal counsel in company commercial and corporate finance, IP, regulatory law and commercial litigation. Looking for a post in London. Speaks French.
21024 June 2008 qualified family solicitor with LSC supervisor status and experience in both family and child care law. Looking for a post in London or Kent.
21025 May 2006 qualified property solicitor, experienced in commercial property and landlord & tenant (non-contentious). Looking for a post in the North West.
21026 February 2001 qualified crime solicitor with duty and supervisory status. Looking for duty posts in Central or South East London.
21028 Experienced community care and housing law caseworker with LSC supervisor status. Looking for a post in South East London.
21034 Paralegal experienced in working in house dealing with compliance issues and commercial property for a renewable energy firm. Also has experience in immigration, residential property, employment and housing law. Looking for paralegal posts in London.
21036 1992 qualified family law solicitor with experience in private and publically funded cases, panel membership and supervisor status. Looking for posts in West London.
21040 1981 qualified solicitor, experienced in in house company commercial law, compliance, commercial litigation, corporate fraud and professional negligence. Looking for a post in East Anglia but willing to travel for right post.
21042 Senior employment solicitor with over 25 years experience in contentious and non-contentious employment law. Looking for locum posts in the UK.
21044 March 2007 qualified property solicitor with experience in residential conveyancing and landlord & tenant. Looking for a conveyancing post in London.
21049 Costs draftsperson with over 20 years experience. Looking for a post in South Wales.
Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme
Top 10 Tips for Locums and Law Firms
Interim Lawyers and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment’s Guide to Surviving as a Locum. 10 Top Tips for Lawyers and Law Firms.
Here are our ten top tips for surviving work as a locum – tips for locums and for law firms.
Locums – make sure you turn up.
Always useful. If you don’t turn up, you may be surprised when your locum agency decides not to offer you any more assignments and in fact may even choose to ignore you….
Locums – when you turn up, make sure you are smartly dressed.
Turning up to work wearing a pair of jeans and trainers can be beneficial if you are planning to work for Google, but in a law firms these items of clothing are only seen on partners at weekends, and even then only when they are mucking out their horses or wandering around Legoland.
Locums – be nice to the secretaries and support staff (TOP TIP)
This is our top tip. Think about it. When you leave the firm after completing your assignment and your legal locum agency requests a reference, who will the partners ask for feedback? The solicitor or fee earner you have covered for or their secretary who you have worked with? Most secretaries are very nice to locums and appreciate the difficult position they are in – parachuting into a firm and trying to assimilate to local working practices etc.. etc..
Others will hate you more than they hate their own bosses. Not only do they fail to get a relaxing two week break whilst their normal boss is on holiday, they get pestered by you asking where the stationery cupboard is. There is nothing to do but remain professional, polite and calm, even if someone is fairly hostile back again. Professional locums who work in firms all year round seem to handle this kind of atmosphere extremely well and almost let it wash over them. After all, you won’t be there in two weeks!
Do not view the secretaries as being inferior. Big mistake. They are not – the secretaries hold the key to your future work as a locum. See above re references…
Locums – try to work hard.
May seem obvious but some locums appear to believe they are there simply to fight any fires that crop up. Most firms do not want a locum to do this. They want the locum to work as if the normal fee earner was there. The normal fee earner will not sit back in his/her chair and wait for work to cross their desk. They will be proactive and ask about if there is anything they can do.
Locums – do not fail to complete the assignment.
Similarly applies to locums who accept assignments they are not experienced enough to handle. Rarely happens, but just occasionally it does. See ‘don’t fail to turn up’ above for your future work prospects.
Law Firms – do not expect miracles.
I get the impression that some partners at law firms put the locum lawyer on a target at the end of the range and attempt to shoot them down. Locums generally are either semi-retired lawyers looking to generate a bit of income, professionals who spend 9 out of 12 months in the year locuming and 3 months skiing or sunbathing (ie lifestyle choice), or unemployed lawyers who cannot find permanent work. You are not going to get the perfect lawyer to cover your vacancy – ie you will not find a mirror image of yourself!
Law Firms – pay the locum.
It always helps if you pay the locum on time, not 6 weeks later. Can be a trifle annoying for the locum to have to break into their overdraft!
Law Firms – avoid cancelling the assignment with 24 hours notice and then reposting a few days later.
This can lead to a lack of any applicants. Most locums are registered with various agencies and not just one. You will get a bad reputation and potentially struggle to recruit in future.
Locums – don’t use the opportunity to sell your services to other law firms.
It is generally considered poor practice bordering on a breach of various data laws to advertise your wares as a locum to lots of different law firms on the other side whilst working on an assignment.
Locums – be nice to estate agents and other introducers.
Your client law firm is very dependent on estate agents and other referrers of work. If you do not remain on good terms with these people, however horrible they are, they will not refer work through to your client law firm. This will almost definitely result in a poor reference, which will almost inevitably result in you not getting a lot of work in….
Generally, be nice to everyone, and you will probably find they are nice to you. Similarly work hard and don’t ask obvious questions…
Jonathan Fagan, Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and InterimLawyers.co.uk
Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme
Duty Solicitor Season Starts – are there any left?
Yes, is the very quick answer, despite the LSC’s best efforts! 14th November 2012 is the next deadline and the mad rush to recruit duty solicitors will start very shortly.
Recruitment appears to fall into the following categories for most firms:
Firms looking to become ‘the daddy’.
Firms looking to expand without risk (freelancers)
Firms looking for replacements or in house (salaried)
Firms looking for new signings to bolster their squad (football managers)
Firms in categories 1 and 4 tend not to be particularly profitable business for us – mainly because most candidates respond with a ‘no thank you’ whenever we send the vacancies through, but we are always happy to assist with options 2 and 3!
We were horrified to hear of one firm who fall into category 1 above – they recruited lots of new duty solicitors before the last deadline…..and made them all redundant again about 4 weeks later!!
Needless to say, the LSC were not exactly very helpful to these duty solicitors when it came to transferring slots to other firms…
To register a duty solicitor or HCA vacancy, please visit our website – www.ten-percent.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/
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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.
Interim Lawyers – www.interimlawyers.co.uk
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk
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E: jobs@ten-percent.co.uk
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