Legal Recruitment News January 8th 2013

Legal Job Market Report January 8th

Good morning and a Happy New Year to you. Welcome to the January edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group. Our newsletter includes articles on how to get rid of customers without even seeing them, candidate lists, predictions for 2013 from a psychic, common myths regarding locums and the top 10 New Year resolutions.

Our websites include
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment,
Interim Lawyers,
Legal-Recruitment.

The market report for January is extremely short.

December was possibly one of the quietest months we have ever seen in 12 years of trading. Whether this is because the staff at most law firms (and ourselves) spent half of it Christmas shopping is of course another matter entirely!

Both locum and permanent recruitment was down a very long way, although this pattern is very common for recruitment. This year the dip was bigger than usual,
although our company has relocated offices and our local electricity board decided to cut down trees for 2 days, switching us off for the day each time!

Company News
Interim Lawyers, our locum service, has now opened offices in Manchester, London, Basingstoke and Gloucester (see our last newsletter for details of our swift office opening techniques!).
We cover the whole of the UK, offering swift and cost effective services for any law firm looking for temporary or contract law staff at all levels. We guarantee to make a locum available for every assignment posted with us (provided the assignment is reasonable – obviously we will struggle to recruit a Welsh speaking 20 year PQE solicitor to work for £5 per hour in the Outer Hebrides!).

Ten-Percent Legal’s £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 70+ firms are already estimated to be around £275,000. 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.

Candidate Update January 8th 2013
Many thanks to Dinesh Raja at Bowling & Co for suggesting we split our candidate lists up into regions.

London and Home Counties
06011836 Commercial Contracts Paralegal – 2 years exp. – London.
06011803 Private Client & Immigration Solicitor, 3 years exp. East London.
05011544 Residential and Commercial Conveyancing Locum. 20 years. Guildford.
05011511 Residential and Commercial Conveyancing Locum. 25 years. London and Surrey.
04010955 Private Immigration – part time. Level 2 & Solicitor.
03012220 Residential and Commercial Conveyancing Locum. 20 years. London and Home Counties.
03011842 Litigation Locum – available for hearings and work in London and Home Counties.
02012242 Legal Secretary and Legal Assistant – High Street, 2 years exp. Hounslow.
02011959 In House Solicitor, General Commercial and Investment Management exp. 1 year PQE.
21121034 Commercial Property Solicitor Locum, 20 years PQE. Central London.
18121728 Personal Injury Locum, 15 years experience. Essex, London and Suffolk.

14121113 Family Solicitor, LSC supervisor, Part time or full time salaried only. London, Kent and Essex.

19122302 Duty Solicitor and HRA, West London, Salaried roles sought.
07012218 Police Station Rep – East Midlands and London.
02011625 Duty Solicitor Crime, 4 years PQE. Available for temporary work until next rotas.
01011137 Housing Solicitor with LSC Supervisor status. Looking for salaried role. Sussex and London.

Kent
02011316 Employment, Wills & Probate, Litigation, Commercial Contracts Locum, Kent and London. 25 years experience.
01011233 Legal Cashier returning to profession. 10 years experience.
18121320 Legal Cashier, over 10 years experience looking for a move in Kent.

East Anglia
30122152 Wills & Probate Solicitor Locum. Over 15 years PQE. East Anglia and Hertfordshire.
27121054 Locum Secretary with experience as an ILEX in residential development and construction. Norwich and surrounds.
18121728 Personal Injury Locum, 15 years experience. Essex, London and Suffolk.

Yorkshire & Manchester
30120143 Duty Solicitor based in Sheffield but looking to relocate if needs be. 3 years PQE. £30k salary.
28121600 Practice Manager with over 15 years experience. Manchester, Yorkshire and Lancs.
17122104 Personal Injury Locum looking around the North West and Yorkshire.

Liverpool & Merseyside
07011708 Commercial Property Solicitor – locum/contract – available 2 days pw.
19121556 Personal Injury Paralegal – Team Leader and Case Handler.

South West
07011556 Locum 5 year PQE Solicitor covering Corporate Finance, IP, Commercial Property, Company Commercial and Employment.
28121848 Employment Lawyer with Conveyancing. 6 years experience. Cardiff, Somerset and Bristol.
21121132 Crime Solicitor, 1 year PQE, Hereford or Leominster.
20121314 Conveyancing and Wills & Probate Locum, 25 years PQE. Bristol and South West.
17120715 Employment Solicitor with over 10 years experience, Bristol and Somerset.

Midlands
29120223 Costs Draftsman with Personal Injury experience looking in the Midlands.
07011207 Prison Law and Police Station Rep. 3 years experience.
02011420 Competition/Regulatory Solicitor, 15 years PQE. £100k salary.
05011044 Crime Solicitor looking in Hull, North Lincs, South Yorks and Derby/Nottingham.
28121324 Personal Injury Solicitor, 1 year PQE, Claimant, East Midlands.
26121854 Duty Solicitor with slots to transfer – Birmingham rotas.

Wales
01012243 FILEX Family and Personal Injury Lawyer. Cardiff & Bristol area.

How to get rid of 80% of your customers without speaking to them

I recently made a number of telephone calls to businesses in the Chester area to get a quote for conveyancing services. Out of 6 solicitors firms I called, none put me through to a solicitor and all relied on their receptionists to give me a price.

Responses included:

“the solicitor has gone to the loo and he might be a while calling you back.”
“the usual price is £600 for a sale and £500 for a purchase – does that answer your question?”
“he’s busy at the moment (no mention of who ‘he’ is).”
“the person who usually deals with this is out – can he call you back (he didn’t).”
“oh, just a minute. I’ll put you on hold. (on hold for 5 minutes). Now, what did you want again?”
“£500 all in. Is that OK?”

In actual fact, my query was very specific – I needed advice on sale of part of a property, retention of agricultural land and the possible later sale of a barn for development. Not one person I spoke to was qualified to handle the query and none of them let me ask the question or were prepared to put me through to the right person. In the end I went online, found a specialist in the Legal 500 and called him directly.

How much do you throw away from not handling initial queries effectively?

Assuming your business gets 10 requests for quotations every week and you convert 2 of them into business, how much extra business would you be gaining if you could convert the remaining 8 requests into actual orders?

It doesn’t take much at times. In all the examples above, the firms in question simply needed to put me through to a solicitor who could demonstrate his or her knowledge, show me a bit of understanding and then give me a price to reflect his or her worth. What the firm did not need to do was let me speak to a secretary or receptionist who clearly didn’t care less whether I used their services or not.

So make a resolution for the new year – train the people who answer your telephone calls to sell your business to every person who makes a call.

Jonathan Fagan is MD and recruitment consultant for Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and Interim Lawyers. His blog is at www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com and all our articles are published here and also at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk – our monthly newsletter site.

New Year Predictions
Last year we carried an article in our January Newsletter about predictions from 2011 by the experts (and ourselves) on the state of the legal profession, the economy and general life.

This year, for something different, we have included a list of predictions from a
self-professed online pyschic, Craig Hamilton-Parker (taken from www.psychics.co.uk).

War in the Middle East – February. Israel will attack Iran.
Terrorist attack on Chicago in the summer.
Syrian uprising to continue. Iran to invade.
Poor grain harvest to occur in Russia.
Robert Mugabe will be assassinated in the Autumn.
Revolution in China – June 2013. China to split up.
Google will be attacked by terrorists.
Search engine to be released in Europe – funded by the EU.
Spain’s economy to fall apart.
Ed Milliband to be replaced by Yvette Cooper.
NIck Clegg to fight off a challenge from Vince Cable.
Victoria Beckham to launch a range of maternity clothing.
Kate Middleton to announce she is pregnant in May 2013.
Simon Cowell to become more spiritual.

Number 13 looks as if it may have been written a little prematurely…

It would be very interesting to hear of Mr Hamilton-Parker’s methodology for predicting these events – does it involve reading tea leaves, studying the stars or simply writing random thoughts in his head after reading the newspaper?

New Year Predictions

Here are the top 5 predictions you will not keep and suggestions for making them work. Article abridged and taken from www.forbes.com.

Go on a Diet

Some weight loss experts will tell you flat out, diets don’t work. For many people, unfortunately this is very true. Diets only work for a while – usually for as long as you stick to the carefully regulated plan. And studies show, after awhile, most people get tired of following such a strict regimen and go back to eating pretty much what they ate before. Sadly, diets also make many people gain weight!

What Does Work: Making small changes to your eating habits. Here are a few small changes that pack a big calorie punch. Giving up a daily habit – eg stop drinking a latte every day at 10.30am…. Switch from whole milk to semi skimmed milk.

Stop Smoking

If you’re waiting for that perfect day when you’ll just be able to stop because you promised yourself you would, it’s not going to happen.

What Does Work: Who knows! Lots of different techniques…

Get More Exercise (Related Resolution: Join a Gym)

The problem with this one is, it’s too vague. In other words, it’s too easy to make a stab at, and then let yourself slide because it’s cold outside, or it’s too dark when you get home, or your muscles hurt, or the gym’s too crowded and the equipment smells sweaty.

What Does Work: To make a significant lifestyle change and make it stick, you need to replace an old habit (being a couch potato or workaholic) with a new one. You also need to make it pleasant, or at least not too unpleasant. A few ways to do this are to start a new sport, one you actually like, or join forces with someone else to keep you motivated.

Lose a stone

Like quitting smoking, it’s not that you shouldn’t lose weight. If your body-mass index is over 25, you qualify as overweight and you want to tip the scales downwards. But the typical promise, “I’m going to lose 20 pounds by June so I can wear a bathing suit,” is not going to be kept. Just ask anyone who made this resolution last year.

What Does Work: Not attaching a number to your goal. That’s not to say you shouldn’t watch the scale. Recent studies suggest that regular weight checks are important for keeping any weight loss program on track.

What really works: calories in < calories out.

Stop Biting My Nails, or Twirling My Hair, Or….

It’s almost impossible to break a physical habit with willpower alone, experts say. That’s because we’ve been doing it so long (hence the name habit…) that we’re no longer aware of it.

What Does Work: Becoming aware of the cues that trigger our habits, even when we’re not paying attention.

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

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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

T: 0207 127 4343
E: jobs@ten-percent.co.uk

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Legal Recruitment News January 8th 2013

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