Newsletter
Welcome to the May edition of Legal Recruitment News, including a Legal Job Market Update, locum availabiity and new candidates. Legal Recruitment News is written by Jonathan Fagan, MD and non-practising solicitor of the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment group (Interim Lawyers, Ten-Percent, Ten-Percent Legal Careers and TP Transcriptions).
Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
Job Market Update – May 8th
April-May 2014 – summed up in a few sentences:
* Permanent vacancies up
* Locum vacancies up in April
* Conveyancing up – severe shortage of NQ-5 year PQE solicitors
* Commercial Property – severe shortage of all candidates
* Continued increase in vacancies attracting only poor quality or very few applications.
* Market outlook – still buoyant.
Statistics
Current live vacancies: 550
New permanent vacancies added in April 2014: 44
New candidates registering: 105
Average ‘Job Strength Factor’ for new vacancies in April: 3
Increase/Decrease in new vacancies from previous month: -15%
Increase/Decrease in new candidates from previous month: -14%
CIPS UK Services Report for past 4 weeks:
* Activity and new business both increase at sharp rates
* Employment up sharply in line with positive expectations for growth
* Cost inflation continues to weaken
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment publishes the number of new vacancies, new candidates and indicate the increase or decrease from the previous month. We aim to assist the legal profession by showing the market from our perspective. Traditionally our clients have been high street law firms and smaller niche commercial practices.
The average job strength gives a good indication of the market because:
1. A Poor Job Strength on vacancies indicates a struggling market. When trade is bad, employers seek options for increasing turnover which usually also involves contacting recruitment agencies in the hope that they have candidates with their own following and not looking for a salary.
2. A Strong Job Strength on vacancies indicates a buoyant market, particularly if it is in connection with an increase in numbers of new vacancies.
Vacancies are each graded 1-5, with 5 being a very strong vacancy and 1 being a very weak vacancy.
Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and regularly writes the Legal Recruitment blog, an award-winning selection of articles and features on legal recruitment and the legal profession. You can contact Jonathan at cv@ten-percent.co.uk or visit one of our websites.
4 in 10 Lawyers would not encourage anyone to follow in their footsteps
A new survey has been commissioned showing that 4 out of 10 solicitors would NOT encourage anyone to follow in their footsteps.
Wesleyan for Lawyers managed to get hold of 103 ‘lawyers’ to conduct this poll, which is pretty poor considering there are over 120,000 solicitors on the Roll in the UK and considerably more support staff and non-qualified fee earners. Very unrepresentative and a bit of a non-news story!
However I suspect the real figure is something above 60%.
Why? 7 reasons.
1. I cannot imagine anyone who deals with the Legal Aid Agency wanting to encourage anyone else to follow in their footsteps.
2. High street solicitors who have not got to partnership status are unlikely to suggest to anyone else that it really is a good idea to run up debts of £44,000 going through the education and training bits before earning a maximum salary of £40,000 for the remainder of their career.
3. City lawyers in my experience seem to hate their jobs, themselves, the long hours and the lack of much of a life, even though they are getting paid considerable sums of money. Whilst they may want to attempt to glamourise their roles in the firms and essentially call it a vocation, I suspect a lot would not suggest following them.
4. Newly qualified solicitors outside the Magic Circle firms must look at their loans and overdrafts and wonder how and why on earth they ever got to the position they are in.
5. Lawyers who have gone off to work in local authorities and as lecturers must again look at how hard they worked, what they gave up and the debts they have had to work through and pay off and wonder why they ever bothered.
6. Partners who spend about 70 hours in the office each week with work at the weekends as well catching up with paperwork are hardly likely to want to encourage anyone else to follow them.
7. Any lawyer who has the pleasure of regularly dealing with the Courts is not exactly going to speak about their experiences with any glowing reference.
So assuming there are 120,000 solicitors in England & Wales, I reckon this must surely account for over 60,000 of them. With this in mind, I think the Wesleyan survey is probably not too far away.
How many lawyers have called for a plumber or electrician to come and do some work, discovered their daily rate is not far off and sat back and wondered if only?
There again, if the same poll was undertaken with GPs and consultants, how many of them would encourage anyone to follow in their footsteps?
Are we as professionals always liable to winge about our existence, regardless of how good or bad it is?
Jonathan Fagan is a Solicitor (non-practising) and Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment.
Permanent Candidate Registrations in the last 3 days
Email us to request a CV or register vacancies by clicking here – Locum or Permanent
23057 November 1994 qualified crime solicitor with duty status and higher rights of audience. Looking for freelance duty or HCA posts in the North West.
23060 2007 qualified commercial property solicitor looking to return to the profession post career break. Looking for a part time post in North East Hampshire, Surrey or Reading. Speaks fluent German.
23061 Conveyancing paralegal with over 2 years experience. Looking for a post in Central London.
23062 September 2014 qualified solicitor with experience in family and child care law, residential property, property litigation, mental health and regulatory law. Looking for a family law post in London or Surrey.
23063 June 2014 qualified crime solicitor and accredited police station representative with further experience in VHCC work, regulatory law and family law. Looking for a crime or fraud post in London.
23064 September 2014 qualified local authority solicitor experienced in all aspects of in house local authority work including planning, commercial property, commercial contracts and commercial and civil litigation. Looking for a planning post in London and the Home Counties.
23065 1988 qualified commercial property solicitor. Looking for locum post either in house or in private practice following short career break. Looking for posts in West Yorkshire, Manchester and Derbyshire or the Midlands.
23066 Conveyancing paralegal with experience since October 2012. Looking for a post in Manchester and the North West.
23067 July 2011 qualified immigration solicitor and senior immigration caseworker with OISC Level 3 accreditation. Looking for a post in the Midlands.
23068 Highly experienced company commercial lawyer with experience dating back to 2006. Experienced in commercial contracts, IP and trademarks and commercial litigation. Looking for a company commercial or IP post in London, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
23070 Personal injury fee earner handling own caseload of RTA, EL and PL claims. Over 14 years experience. Looking for a post in South or Mid Wales or around the Bristol/Bath areas.
23071 2001 qualified wills & probate solicitor dealing with will drafting, lasting powers of attorney and probate matters. Looking for a post within a 45 minute commute of Slough.
23076 September 2006 qualified employment law solicitor experience in both contentious and non-contentious matters. Looking for a post in London, Essex or North Kent.
23077 Conveyancing paralegal with over 12 months experience looking in London.
23080 Legal assistant and legal receptionist with conveyancing and wills & probate experience. Looking for a post in Central London.
23081 Legal cashier with over 3 years experience. Looking for a post in the Midlands.
23088 Legal executive specialising in conveyancing with experience dating back to 1990 in residential, commercial and agricultural property. 5 years experience working in the property department of the LA as well as private practice experience. Looking for a post in Shropshire, West Midlands, South Cheshire or North and Mid Wales.
New Locums
22953 1974 qualified senior litigation solicitor, working as a professional support lawyer covering insurance law and regulatory law. Looking for similar locum post as a professional support lawyer, document reviewer and legal support. Looking for posts in London and the South East. Speaks French and some knowledge of Spanish and Italian.
22959 2009 qualified FILEX legal executive specialising in claimant personal injury, RTA, OL, EL. Looking for locum or permanent posts. Willing to travel as far as Worcester, Swansea or Cardiff for contract position or around Herefordshire for a permanent post.
22961 2003 qualified family law solicitor experienced in all aspects for family and child care law, both privately and publicly funded. Further experience in residential conveyancing. Looking for family/child care locum posts in South, North or West Yorkshire.
22962 1990 qualified corporate commercial solicitor with extensive experience in corporate finance, non contentious trademark work, compliance and company secretarial work. Looking for locum or permanent posts in the South West of England including Wiltshire or London.
22967 December 2002 qualified wills & probate solicitor. Looking for locum posts anywhere in the South East, Oxfordshire and surrounding counties.
22993 1980 qualified property solicitor with experience in both residential and commercial conveyancing. Looking for locum posts within a 40 mile radius of Northampton.
23000 1983 senior commercial litigation solicitor looking for locum posts anywhere in the UK.
23012 March 2003 qualified conveyancing solicitor with a further 16 years as a qualified FILEX legal executive Experienced in residential conveyancing, wills & probate and light commercial work. Looking for locum or permanent posts in the West Midlands.
23049 November 1999 qualified employment law solicitor with over 6 years specialist experience and a background in general civil litigation. Looking for locum posts in the North East of England.
23053 1988 qualified highly experienced commercial and residential property solicitor. Looking for locum posts in London and the South East and available immediately. Hourly rate – market rates.
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
We are a specialist legal recruiter, covering the whole of the UK. A large proportion of our vacancies are based in London and the South East, but we do assist firms elsewhere on a very regular basis. Over 10,500 lawyers are registered with us and we have access to a range of external and internal job boards and websites where we do not have candidates available ourselves. We also assist with recruitment advice and assistance, regularly advising partners and practice managers on suitable salary and package levels.
Our company is unique for a number of reasons, including the fact that we are not shy to publish our fee structure and also donate a chunk of our profits to charity each year. We offer unlimited permanent and locum recruitment for a fixed fee of just £60 per month (terms apply) or 15% one-off fees for permanent and 18% for locum. We donate 10% of our profits annually to charity, hence our name.
At present we have three recruitment consultants, Jonathan Fagan, Clare Fagan and Pete Gresty, together with our finance director Pearl McNamara. Together we have over 40 years of experience in the legal profession. Jonathan Fagan is a qualified solicitor and still (reluctantly!) undertakes litigation on behalf of the company when required. He also provides a career coaching service to qualified lawyers and law graduates, although this is on a very selective basis.
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment also owns Interim Lawyers, a specialist locum service, charging 18% fees for placements. We also own a further 45 domain names and websites. We operate an outsourced UK based typing service as well and are preferred suppliers to a number of institutional clients and law firms across the UK and overseas.
The Ten-Percent Group of Legal Recruitment websites gives 10% of annual profits to charity (hence our name). We have carried on with this tradition since we formed the company 14 years ago. So far over £51,000 has been donated to charities in the UK and Africa including LawCare and the CAB.
We hope you have enjoyed reading our newsletter and look forward to hearing from you if we can assist further.
Warm regards
Jonathan Fagan
Consultant
Jonathan Fagan is a solicitor, qualified recruitment consultant and Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment. His LinkedIn profile can be viewed here – www.linkedin.com/in/jbfagan
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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