Legal Recruitment News

Legal Recruitment News March 2015

March 4, 2015

Legal Recruitment News – March 4th 2015

Contents
▪ Legal Job Market Report
▪ Locum Hourly Rates – 2015 Guide
▪ Register Locum Jobs
▪ Unusual Family Locum Vacancy – involves a military flight offshore
▪ The Annual Maternity Phenomenon
▪ Annual donations for 2015
▪ Register Permanent Jobs
▪ Legal Salary Reviews Online

Newsletter
Welcome to the March 2015 edition of Legal Recruitment News, including a Legal Job Market Update, current locum hourly rates and articles. Legal Recruitment News is written by Jonathan Fagan, MD and non-practising solicitor of the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment group (Interim Lawyers and Ten-Percent).

Legal Job Market Update
February has been a month of two halves as usual. We spend the first week watching the post-Christmas recruitment spike recede and then skiing holidays together with half term breaks kicking in. Locum work has dropped off towards the end of the month, although we have taken a number of bookings for later in the year. Most locum assignments coming in are either firms looking to expand and take on additional fee earners whilst there is plenty of work, or alternatively it is sick leave cover. The winter season generates the largest number of sick leave assignments, although this is probably not surprising.

Permanent vacancies are up, which is always good. However this month we have seen a rise in the number of firms contacting us for self-employed consultant roles – not something that has been very common for quite some time. These tend not to be regarded as good quality vacancies by candidates.

Salary levels are a bit mixed as well. Some firms are expecting candidates to take similar salary ranges to existing staff and are not budging at all on these, but other firms are taking a more pragmatic approach. If a solicitor indicates an interest in their vacancy and is the only solicitor to take an interest, salary levels are probably going to have to match the applicant’s expectations if they want to recruit. There is also still a lack of awareness that candidates do not move for the same salary or less unless they are desperate. Career moves inevitably result in a pay rise.

We think that that in 2015 we will start seeing salary levels going up, after all there haven’t really been any major increases in salaries for solicitors for a good number of years, but this is not evident at the present time in legal job vacancy advertising generally.

Most high street vacancies are still coming in at around the £30-45k mark, even though on £45k you cannot afford a mortgage on more than a single room apartment in most parts of London. We still get firms requesting locally based solicitors for central London and then offering salaries of £30k.

Conveyancing has gone a bit quieter but there is a clear lack of good candidates. By good candidates I mean those that are based locally to the firm, have a steady employment history and reasonable salary expectations. Interestingly this month we have seen a few conveyancing candidates becoming available after their firms have let them go. There is no obvious reason for this.

Wills & probate is busy but there is a discrepancy between salary expectations and salaries being offered. This may well resolve itself later in the year.

Commercial property is very similar. I sense a growing number of vacancies going unfilled as there is such a dearth of candidates for them. In particular there is a dearth of applicants prepared to work for the wages being offered.

Family law has gone extremely quiet. We have picked up a family locum assignment in the Falkland Islands for 2 months in May if anyone fancies it – you fly out on a military plane and stay in Stanley to deal with the work before flying home again 2 months later. Apparently the islands are beautiful at this time of year. See below.

Crime is almost non-existent. In some ways we enjoy this – doing crime recruitment has always been a bit adversarial – partners seem to struggle to switch off from the court room when dealing with recruiters, although I appreciate we must sometimes feel lik the enemy!

Litigation – both civil and commercial – is very quiet. Not a lot going on at all. Corporate commercial comes in bursts for us. We are never going to be the type of agency to recruit partners into city firms and we tend to do more on the high street and in house. Both are quiet at the moment.

Employment law work seems to have all but disappeared. We are starting to see solicitors at all levels of the legal profession seeking work – from partners of city firms down to high street – as the fees for employment tribunals kick in and redundancies occur. Still seems strange that in a time when the economy is picking up there are areas of law where it is a struggle to get employment.

It will be interesting to see how the new court fees for civil claims affect recruitment in this area, although surely the future now has to be alternative dispute resolution for claims over £20k, avoiding the courts at all costs? I seem to recall fee hikes in the 1990s, with warnings of impending collapse of all litigation work, but that never happened.

Work will get very busy in the next two weeks, with the lead up to Easter, but then as we go into Easter we enter the zombie phase of recruitment – this tends to be the quietest time for recruiters apart from Christmas. Firms are too busy dealing with the year end, clients are too busy dealing with the Easter break, and candidates are presumably fairly busy eating Easter Eggs…

March 2015 – Summary:
* Permanent vacancies up
* Locum assignments down
* Conveyancing vacancies busy, Commercial Property vacancies very busy
* Wills & Probate vacancies up
* Commercial and Civil Litigation vacancies – still very few
* Family vacancies – down
* Commercial Property Solicitors now very difficult to source. Experienced and reliable conveyancers difficult to find for permanent roles. Locums still available in all fields, although getting harder to source for Wills & Probate.

* Market outlook – increasing.

Recently agreed hourly rates:
* London – Litigation Locum – £25 per hour
* Surrey – Conveyancing Locum – £28 per hour
* Leeds – Property Locum – £30 per hour
* Surrey – Conveyancing Locum Ongoing – £30 per hour

Statistics
Current live vacancies: 546
New permanent vacancies added last month: 26
New candidates registering: 97
Average ‘Job Strength Factor’ for new vacancies last month: 3
Increase/Decrease in new vacancies from previous month: +1.9%
Increase/Decrease in new candidates from previous month: -20%

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 for the Ten-Percent website and 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.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Hourly Rates of Pay for Locum Solicitors and Legal Executives
Locum hourly rate payment varies widely according to the demand, length of assignment, level of experience and advance notice available. Hourly rates go up during the summer (June-September).

NB: These rates are intended as a guide only. Hourly rates can vary according to the location, duration and level of expertise.

March 2015 Private Practice Law Firm Rates:
* Conveyancing Locum Solicitors – 1-5 years PQE, handling residential standard sale price only – £20-28 per hour (slight variation for central London – £25-28 per hour).
* Conveyancing Locum Solicitors & ILEX – 5-35 years PQE, handling all levels of conveyancing including managing a department – £26-35 per hour, including central London.
* Commercial Property Solicitors – 1-40 years PQE – usually mainly light commercial conveyancing rather than light and heavyweight. £29-40 per hour. Occasionally in the past we have had candidates up to £46 per hour.
* Wills & Probate Solicitors and Executives – 3-35 years PQE – £30-40 per hour. Add on an extra 20% to the price for a STEP member. For a lawyer experienced in tax and trusts add an additional 20%.
* Family Solicitors – 4-40 years PQE – £22-30 per hour. Very occasionally this goes up to £35 per hour for short notice or a few days cover. Family locums tend to be LSC supervisors and/or panel members.
* Civil Litigation – 1-35 years PQE. £25-35 per hour. Really depends on the type of litigation you have – these rates cover mainstream litigation – eg county court and small claims matters. Rates considerably higher for high court work.

Hourly Rate, Weekly Rate and Salary Equivalents:
£20 per hour = £750 per week or £36,000 per annum (assuming a 7.5 hour day and a 48 week year).
£25 per hour = £937.50 per week or £45,000 per annum.
£30 per hour = £1,125 per week or £54,000 per annum.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Locums Available Immediately
We have over 700 candidates registered for locum work. Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent

The Most Unusual Locum Vacancy in 2015 – Family Law in the Falkland Islands

A new vacancy has arisen with a small solicitors firm based in Stanley in the Falkland Islands.

They seek a family solicitor to join them from May 10th to the 17th July. This may be extended by an additional month but at present this is unclear.

We have worked with the firm before a few years ago. Basically you fly from the UK to Stanley on an RAF flight (I think it was from Brize Norton last time), work in Port Stanley before flying home again the same way at the end of the assignment. It is a long journey and for anyone not aware of where the Falklands are it is worth looking before expressing an interest…

The firm have used us before and last time they paid for flights and accomodation. I understand that the Islands are particularly nice at this time of year and you are there before the winter sets in.

If you are interested please send me your most recent CV to forward across to the firm.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

The Annual Baby Boom Phenomenon and Locum Cover

Every year we see a surge in maternity leave cover and requests for locums. This is known as the ‘Baby Boom’ time slot. For 6 weeks in March and April we go through a time when partners and HR managers call us to enquire about cover. It seems there is a peak time for fee earners giving notice of their intentions to go off on maternity leave in July or August. There is no need for us to go into specifics – one of my children was born in September (!) – but the Baby Boom time slot and subsequent maternity leave always follow the New Year and the Christmas breaks. The colder the winter, the higher the number of pregnancies, or so the theory goes.

The initial maternity cover telephone calls usually sound quite panicky. Partners or Practice Managers tend to instantly pick up the phone to book a locum and seem to think the sky is about to fall on their heads. Quite often we get demands for locums to start immediately even though the maternity cover is not needed for another 3-4 months. Partners panic and think that a pregnant solicitor is instantly going to disappear forever and not return.

So a lot of pressure can be put on us as recruiters to source a locum to start almost immediately and the firm will call us incessantly until we supply a CV.

In about 50% of cases, as soon as we send a CV the partners seem to take a step back from the recruitment (usually when they have had sight of the hourly rates) and decide to put the process on hold. Others will try and get salaried (and hence cheaper) cover, which is very difficult. Some firms actually tell us they are thinking things over but others will simply ignore us for a few months.

By mid-April everything gets back to normal. We enjoy the calm before the storm…

However we then get to June/July time. The phone call at this time of year tends to again by quite panicked. The maternity leave is happening and the partners have become aware that they are going to have to cover the work of the fee earner off ‘enjoying’ themselves on maternity!

We get asked to supply a locum urgently for 9 months starting a week on Monday (in July). This is a nightmare scenario because most professional locums will have annual leave cover already booked in for weeks here and there and most locums remaining are either new to the business or quite junior. Firms always seem surprised when we struggle to source anyone (after all a few months earlier we may have had 3-4 locums available to cover), and hourly rates go higher. This is the 2nd phase of the Baby Boom timeframe and thankfully the end of it until the following March/April.

Are there any lessons to be learnt? Yes.
1. Maternity leave is not the end of the world. It usually lasts 9 months.
2. Admittedly some lawyers will not come back to work, but most seem to.
3. Locums are much better booked in advance.
4. Salaried temporary staff do not really exist unless you are very lucky.
5. Don’t leave arranging cover until a week before maternity leave is due to start.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Our 10% Donations for February 2015
The trustees of the Ten-Percent Foundation (a charitable trust) have met and decided on the following donations for Spring 2015:

Knowsley Domestic Violence Service – £1,000.
Centre 63, Merseyside – £300.
Unicef – £100.
Chester Zoo – £60.
LawCare – £1,000.
Y Care International – £300.
British Stammering Association – £500.
Ace of Clubs – £500 (suggested by Hanne & Co)
Standalone – £200.
Hughes Syndrome Foundation – £100
Time Out Group – £200. (suggested by Chafes)
St Johns Seminary, Tanzania (providing the funding for 5 students to attend school) – £2,200.

Total amount donated so far in 2015 – £6,460. We have a good chunk of money still in the bank and we plan to work out expenditure of this in mid-Summer 2015.

We will get details of how the money has been used by each charity and send out details in the next newsletter. Some of the above charities have been suggested by candidates and clients. Others are linked to our trustees’ own interests.

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 monthly fee or one-off fees depending on the job. 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.

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment also owns Interim Lawyers, a specialist locum service. We operate an outsourced UK based typing service as well – www.uk-transcription.co.uk 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 £66,000 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

E: jbfagan@tenpercentgroup.com

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.

Interim Lawyers – www.interimlawyers.co.uk
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk
Legal Recruitment Newsletter – www.legal-recruitment.co.uk

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Monthly News

Legal Recruitment News February 4th 2015

February 4, 2015

Legal Recruitment News – February 4th 2015

Contents
▪ Legal Job Market Report
▪ Locum Hourly Rates – 2015 Guide
▪ Register Locum Jobs
▪ Paralegals – a nightmare to recruit
▪ Checking and Verifying Candidates
▪ Our 10% donation to charity – trustees meeting 6th February
▪ Register Permanent Jobs
▪ Legal Salary Reviews Online

Newsletter
Welcome to the February 2015 edition of Legal Recruitment News, including a Legal Job Market Update, locum hourly rates and articles on recruiting paralegals and candidate checks. Legal Recruitment News is written by Jonathan Fagan, MD and non-practising solicitor of the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment group (Interim Lawyers and Ten-Percent).

Legal Job Market Update
Comments on the current market from Jonathan Fagan, MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment:
“Since Christmas we have seen a resumption of the recruitment demand that has not really slowed down since the market picked up in 2012. Firms are still recruiting, candidates are out looking for permanent posts and locum assignments have been the busiest for January we have ever seen. The Law Society Gazette has seen an increase in job postings since the New Year and so have we. Locum demand is up (although you would expect this as it really drops off over Christmas), permanent vacancies have been posted in increasing numbers, but interestingly we have also seen a number of redundancies occurring in law firms around Christmas in the Midlands and North West. Family law and support staff seem to have been two main areas for this.”

February 2015 – Summary:
* Permanent vacancies up
* Locum assignments up
* Conveyancing vacancies still busy, Commercial Property vacancies busy
* Wills & Probate vacancies down
* Commercial and Civil Litigation vacancies – still very few
* Family vacancies – down
* Commercial Property Solicitors difficult to source. Experienced conveyancers difficult to find for permanent roles. Locums currently readily available in all fields.
* Market outlook – increasing.

Recently agreed hourly rates and salaries:
* South Coast – Conveyancing Locum – £30 per hour
* London (not central) – Property Solicitor – £35k.
* London (not central) – Conveyancing Locum – £30 per hour
* Wiltshire – Conveyancing Locum – £35 per hour
* North West – Commercial Property P/T – £33k
* Thames Valley – Locum Legal Cashier – £40 per hour
* Anglia – Conveyancing Locum – £28 per hour
* Home Counties – Family Locum – £25 per hour

Statistics
Current live vacancies: 536
New permanent vacancies added last month: 60
New candidates registering: 121
Average ‘Job Strength Factor’ for new vacancies last month: 3.1
Increase/Decrease in new vacancies from previous month: +25%
Increase/Decrease in new candidates from previous month: +133%

Key points from the Markit/CIPS UK services survey for February 2015 are as follows:
* Activity and new business both register stronger rises in January
* Employment rises at near-survey record pace
* Prices pressures dissipate
The UK service sector started 2015 in a strong fashion as activity and new business both increased at accelerated and above survey average rates. Companies were suitably encouraged by these trends to hire additional staff at the joint second-fastest rate in the survey history, using their additional capacity to try and clear backlogs and prepare for further business expansion in the coming months.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Hourly Rates of Pay for Locum Solicitors and Legal Executives 2015
Locum hourly rate payment varies widely according to the demand, length of assignment, level of experience and advance notice available. Hourly rates go up during the summer (June-September) and at times when there is an increase in maternity leave cover, which in our experience is usually April/May and October/November.

NB: These rates are intended as a guide only. Hourly rates can vary according to the location, duration and level of expertise, but the figures quoted are quite accurate for the majority of short to medium term locum assignments across the UK. There has been an annual increase in hourly rates since 2011.

2015 Private Practice Law Firm Rates:
* Conveyancing Locum Solicitors – 1-5 years PQE, handling residential standard sale price only – £20-28 per hour (slight variation for central London – £25-28 per hour).
* Conveyancing Locum Solicitors & ILEX – 5-35 years PQE, handling all levels of conveyancing including managing a department – £28-37 per hour, including central London.
* Commercial Property Solicitors – 1-40 years PQE – usually mainly light commercial conveyancing rather than light and heavyweight. £29-40 per hour. Occasionally in the past we have had candidates up to £46 per hour.
* Wills & Probate Solicitors and Executives – 3-35 years PQE – £30-40 per hour. Add on an extra 20% to the price for a STEP member. For a lawyer experienced in tax and trusts add an additional 20%.
* Family Solicitors – 4-40 years PQE – £22-30 per hour. Very occasionally this goes up to £35 per hour for short notice or a few days cover. Family locums tend to be LSC supervisors and/or panel members.
* Civil Litigation – 1-35 years PQE. £25-35 per hour. Really depends on the type of litigation you have – these rates cover mainstream litigation – eg county court and small claims matters. Rates considerably higher for high court work.

Local Authority Hourly Rates
For all areas of law tend to be around £35-55 per hour (£45 per hour salary equivalent to £81,000 per annum). In recent times local authority lawyer locum recruitment has been outpricing the general market due to the questionable practice of using an interim management company to control and restrict the agencies who have access to that particular local authority law department. Hourly rates are preset and those we have seen tend to be well above the levels elsewhere in the profession for the same level of locum. The agencies pay the candidate through interim management software (eg Matrix and Comensura) and get a percentage cut per hour. The interim management company also takes an hourly cut.
Presumably this system is used because the local authorities are paying for the interim management company to do the work they used to do themselves (after all how long does it really take a HR Manager to call round 5-6 specialist agencies to get a locum booked for the following week), but there we go!

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Locums Available Immediately
We have over 700 candidates registered for locum work. Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent – www.interimlawyers.co.uk

Paralegals are a Nightmare to Recruit
We have always charged flat rates regardless of salary, as for some reason it is usually easier dealing with senior solicitors and executives than it is sorting out paralegals. In fact after our last two experiences on paralegal roles I am wondering about turning our fee structure around and charging more to source paralegals and less to recruit solicitors and senior staff.

Some recruitment agencies (well most actually) charge increased fee structures for higher level appointments. So for example Randstad charge 17% for salaries of less than £20k, 20% for salaries of £30-40k and 25% for salaries of £40k+.

Paralegals are a nightmare.

Every time we get a vacancy in for a paralegal I involuntarily shudder.

Applicants for paralegal roles can be the most wishy-washy, non-committal, half-hearted, barely-interested candidates we have the pleasure to work with. Don’t get me wrong. I know the fun and games of being a paralegal – low pay, debts to service, constant eye out for training contracts and unkept promises of future promotion that rarely materialises. However the vast majority of paralegal applicants are absolutely dire and it is not surprising they do not progress any further in their careers.

Take a recent role we have had with an in house legal department. I should start by saying that they are not particularly going out of their way to be accommodating and offers have been on the lower side, but that is by the by. Looking back at my own legal career, if someone had offered me the chance to interview for a role like this one, I would have been there like a shot.

We take instructions from the client. They are a service company with an in house legal department and looking for a litigation paralegal with at least 6 months experience in defendant civil litigation and good knowledge of CPR rules and the small claims track. Salary levels are up to the mid £20ks depending on experience.

Incidentally the word ‘paralegal’ is defined in general terms as anyone who isn’t a qualified solicitor, barrister or legal executive but who does fee earning work in a law firm. Forget the claims about qualified paralegals and paralegal qualifications – someone will be making money out of it somewhere…

We post the vacancy across our system and email our registered candidates.

Within a few hours – success! Our first applicant. He lives in South London and the post is about 70 miles away. We ask him to doublecheck the location (confirmed OK), we check his salary requirements (fine) and also get further details about his litigation experience. A CV is forwarded across to the client, who immediately gets back to ask us whether the candidate is going to relocate to work. We email the candidate to check on this point – 5 weeks and lots of chasing up – no response.

The second applicant comes from a job board. She is a hairdresser who lives locally to the client. The third is a welder, the fourth works in a conveyancing department and fancies a change into litigation. And so on. In fact I think to date we have had to filter about 50 CVs from candidates who do not have any legal experience at all but thought they would apply nonetheless.

Candidate number 52 looks good. She lives within an hour’s commute, does not have a job after being made redundant and is available immediately. We get her salary expectations and send a CV over. The client immediately interviews and makes an offer at the level requested. The candidate turns them down. Firstly she has decided they are further away than she thought and secondly she has other job interviews to attend and for posts where she may get paid a lot more. Not job offers – just job interviews.

Back to the drawing board.

We send over another 3 or 4 CVs and arrange interviews. Another candidate goes for the post – indicates his salary – looking to return to a litigation role from administrative work. The firm offer him his current salary after interview and indicate that there is future promotion possible. The candidate turns them down. Wants more money and not prepared to give up administrative work for the opportunity to return to a fee earning role.

Back to the drawing board again.

Finally a candidate who had an interview arranged with the client, but then cancelled with 3 hours to spare because her firm offered her a promotion to stay, has got back in touch. She thinks she may have made a mistake – the opportunity may benefit her career more than her current role – and now wants to attend an interview. Can we set one up? The client was slightly hesitant, understandably so, but has agreed to meet. Another candidate also waits in the wings.

I don’t think this attitude is prevalent in many other professional industries, but every time someone posts paralegal vacancies with us this is a fairly common process. Half-hearted applications (so many CVs have spelling mistakes or just miss out basic information – name, current role, qualifications etc..), half-hearted commitment to attend interviews, a complete lack of interest in career progression or planning and no recognition of the need for professionalism. There also seems to be a lot of interest in what employers can do for candidates, but not vice versa. Are graduates encouraged to only think about themselves so much that they fail to appreciate jobs are not offered to them solely for their benefit and not the employers?

Perhaps one of the problems is the general lack of a decent level of salary to justify the expenditure on training? Who knows. I do know that very often there is a reason why some people remain paralegals for a long time and are unable to get a training contract. It involves the words ‘commitment’ and ‘lack of’.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Checking and Verifying Candidates
How do we check and verify candidates?
Firstly, the Law Society maintain an online directory of all solicitors with current practising certificates. This means that a solicitor can instantly be identified and confirmed to be holding a practising certificate covering them for the time of either the introduction for permanent vacancies and for assignments on a locum basis. This is a very easy check, and although our terms of business for both permanent and temporary work put the onus of checking onto our clients we do make sure that solicitors have practising certificates in place.

Secondly, because solicitors with practising certificates have had their identity checked, or right of residence and also for proof of identity, we do not need to undertake additional identity checks on solicitor candidates for permanent vacancies. Again the onus is on clients to double check everything, but a practising certificate is usually evidence in itself of identity and residence. Problems can arise with non-solicitor candidates or solicitors working on a non-practising basis.

Are there Dodgy Locums?
There are at least two locums out there who purport to be lawyers/legal executives/executives/legal advisers who have convictions and long spells of detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Both are struck-off solicitors and both are still doing the rounds and trying to obtain legal work. One has covered his tracks so well that it is difficult to work out from his CV that he has ever been a solicitor and spent a number of years in prison having committed a multi-million pound fraud. The other one is easier to spot because the CV does not make sense, but both have altered their names slightly to avoid detection from background searches. We only discovered one after a client tipped us off having received the CV. The other one keeps submitting a CV for various vacancies we advertise from time to time and also calls firms directly on a speculative basis. Because there is no central register for non-qualified lawyers, these types of candidate require us to be a little bit more careful with background checks.

Permanent candidates are very different, basically because there is always time between job offer and a start date to do any background checks or searches, but for locums we have a system in place to try and pick up any issues.

The Locum Verification Process
When a locum registers with us we do a Google search of their name and a few variations – this applies for solicitors, legal executives and licensed conveyancers, as well as non-qualified staff. The Institute of Legal Executives maintains a register of legal executives who have been reprimanded and we consult this from time to time. For solicitors we also telephone the SRA and ask for disclosure of any practising certificate conditions or issues that have arisen. Although the SRA do not keep any records after a certain time, which cleans any solicitor’s record, there is a website that collects the data and keeps publishing the fact that a solicitor has been before the SDT or had sanctions applied by the SRA although they do not appear to be able to give any details anymore. The SRA information online is not always as thorough as one would expect. For example they seem to take a considerable time to publish decisions and also neglect to give information on certain types of sanctions that have been applied.

Every locum is expected to provide us with proof of ID and proof of residence. This is usually undertaken prior to the commencement of an assignment, but in some cases where the placement is urgent we have to source this detail whilst the assignment is ongoing.

References are also obtained or at least set in motion. We usually have at least one reference on file for each locum and we usually get these wherever possible from a recent locum assignment. Again if we have a new candidate then our efforts to obtain a reference can be ongoing at the start of the assignment. A lot of locums keep a ‘to whom it may concern’ reference which makes life a lot easier.

Could we be more thorough?
There are recruitment agencies out there who go through every piece of employment by a candidate over the last 10-15 years. We decided a long time ago that we did not think this necessary and presented more problems than it solved. Firstly a lot of law firms change hands, close down, open up, move on and tracing staff can be difficult. Secondly the administrative burden of doing this would require a considerably higher fee for any placement. Thirdly if you were approached by a recruitment agency about a member of staff you employed 15 years ago would you ever get round to replying to them? I certainly wouldn’t.

We have a system in place whereby a further check is done by way of background check every 12 months on each locum to make sure nothing has arisen in the meantime.

What information do we disclose to our clients?
Everything. Absolutely everything we find. The last thing we want to occur is for one of our clients to discover something about a candidate and call us with the detail. Its embarrassing to say the least. We disclose any practising certificate conditions, details of any bankruptcies, details of any appearances before the SDT or investigations by the SRA. We do not withhold any information, although we do have to find it out first in order to disclose it!

For locums we make our clients aware of anything we come across that might affect their decision to take that candidate on. If a check throws anything up we pass it across to our clients. Sometimes this is easier said than done.

For example one of our locums had an issue occur after our initial check was undertaken and before we conducted our first annual check 12 months later. It was only by coincidence that we happened to look into their background in the interim and discovered something we felt needed to be disclosed. This we did immediately, even though it threatened to scupper a long term assignment. Our reputation as a straight-talking legal recruitment agency is more important to us than short term profit (although it is of course tempting at times to cross over to the dark side and put this first!).

The best type of locum candidate is one who has a wealth of repeat bookings to their name, and the sign of a good permanent candidate is one who has not moved very often in their career. Naturally it is rarely as simple as this, but a few simple checks at our end can really make the difference in ensuring candidates are who they say they are.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Our 10% Donation – Friday 6th February decisions
Every year since 2000 we have committed as a company to donate a percentage of our annual profits to charity. This includes any subsidiary companies and operations. For 14 years our board of directors has agreed to 10% (after all, how on earth could we carry on with our business name?). We have now donated over £66,000 to the Ten-Percent Foundation, a small sum in the general scheme of things, but a lot of money for a company of our size. Our trustee meeting is set for Friday February 6th. If you have any suggestions to add to those already put forward by our clients, law firms and candidates, please please feel free to email them across to me at cv@ten-percent.co.uk. We look for small charities preferably with interesting projects we can support on an ongoing basis.

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

E: jbfagan@tenpercentgroup.com

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

Interim Lawyers – www.interimlawyers.co.uk
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk
Legal Recruitment Newsletter – www.legal-recruitment.co.uk

T: 0207 127 4343

Interim Lawyers
27 Old Gloucester Street
London
WC1N 3AX

Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
2nd Floor
145-157 St John Street
London
EC1V 4PY

Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited (Head Office)
Derwen Bach, Glyndwr Road, Mold CH7 5LW

Monthly News

Legal Recruitment News January 14th 2015

January 14, 2015

Legal Recruitment News – January 14th 2015

Contents
▪ Legal Job Market Report
▪ 2015 Predictions from a Professional Psychic and his results for 2014
▪ Top 4 Queries from Law Firms and Solicitors in the New Year
▪ Over 40? Your brain is shrinking. 5 ways to improve brain power
▪ Our 10% donation to charity – deadline approching

Newsletter
Welcome to the January 2015 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 and Ten-Percent).

Job Market Update
Comments on the current market from Jonathan Fagan, MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment:
“January is a difficult month to give a job market update for. Basically, from the start of December, most new work drops off as everyone goes christmas shopping, attends parties and slows down. In my 15 years of experience in recruitment I have known so many pre-Christmas job interviews to go ahead but produce absolutely nothing. Partners are not in the right frame of mind to recruit, candidates are not able to make decisions and after Christmas everyone changes their mind and the whole thing falls through! For the first time in 14 years we took a considerable number of vacancies in the first week back in January. This has been exceptional. Usually workloads do not pick up until the end of January and then drop off again as partners and solicitors head to the ski slopes. As a result I predict that the legal job market will stay strong for the foreseeable future.”

We have not included the usual Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment statistics in this newsletter as December is so slow, but key points from the KPMG and REC Job Market survey for December 2014 are as follows:
▪ Stronger growth of permanent placements
▪ Temp billings increase at sharpest rate in three months
▪ Strong pay growth underpinned by tight candidate availability

Commenting on the latest survey results, Bernard Brown, Partner and Head of Business Services at KPMG, said:

“A strong year for the UK jobs market finished with a flourish as temporary roles saw an upswing in popularity. More than 1 in 3 recruiters suggest that employees looking for short-term roles are being increasingly spoilt for choice as organisations search for help in an effort to fulfil customer orders. Good news for candidates also extends into the pay packet. Once again, a shortage of skills in key areas has led to a rise in the starting salaries on offer. It could mean that 2015 becomes the year in which the candidate finally becomes king.”
▪ Permanent placements rise at faster rate… Recruitment consultants signalled a further increase in permanent staff appointments during December. The rate of expansion was strong, having picked up from November’s 18-month low. However, the number of job vacancies available to people seeking permanent roles rose at the slowest pace since July 2013.
▪ Temporary staff billings growth also accelerates Short-term staff appointments increased at a sharper rate in December. The latest rise in temp billings was the strongest in three months.
▪ Pay growth remains marked Average starting salaries awarded to people placed in permanent jobs continued to rise, with the rate of growth little-changed from the strong pace recorded in November. Temp pay meanwhile increased at the sharpest rate in three months.
▪ Candidate availability remains tight The availability of staff to fill permanent job roles continued to fall in December. Although easing to the slowest in eight months, the rate of deterioration remained marked. Temp availability decreased sharply, with the latest reduction faster than that recorded in November.

This review is undertaken by KPMG and the REC (a recruitment agency trade body) who contact 100s of recruitment agencies across the UK to undertake a monthly questionnaire. We are part of the panel and get exclusive access to the report.

We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Locums Available Immediately
We have over 700 candidates registered for locum work. Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent

A Psychic’s 2014 New Year Predictions Revisited
Last year we carried an article in our January Newsletter about predictions for 2014 by an expert online psychic, Craig Hamilton-Parker (taken from www.psychics.co.uk). We have also included his 2015 predictions below to see how he does when we revisit in 2015. Mr Hamilton-Parker charges £1.53 per minute for his services via telephone consultations.

Online Psychic Predictions for 2014 – how many did Craig get right?
1. The Dalai Lama will be taken seriously ill (incorrect).
2. Pope Francis will initiate a new spiritual mission to help the mentally ill (incorrect).
3. Syria will be partitioned into Alawite and Sunni provinces. Assad will go into hiding. (incorrect).
4. Gunman rampage in Kansas. Similar attack on the London underground. (incorrect).
5. Strange luminous plankton seen under the sea that cannot be explained by scientists (incorrect).
6. Remains of an ancient civilisation uncovered in Greenland (incorrect).
7. Oprah Winfrey launches new spiritual chat show bringing many world religious leaders to book (incorrect).
8. UK postal strikes backed by other trade unions and transport brought to a standstill. (incorrect).
9. Nick Clegg resigns (incorrect)
10. Massive fire in Mexico City (incorrect).
11. New Orleans flooded again (incorrect)
12. Factory explodes in Southern USA causing a chemical cloud (incorrect).
13. Australia has biggest bush fire ever (incorrect).
14. Japan builds a nuclear bomb (incorrect)
15. US economy soars ahead (correct – US economy grew by 5% in last quarter)
16. Massive riots at the Brazilian World Cup (incorrect).

Score: 1 out of 16.

Craig Hamilton-Parker’s Predictions for 2015
1. Prince Harry will get engaged
2. Major volcanic eruptions in Japan and Hawaii
3. National Health and Police strikes with riots in London
4. Joan Collins dies
5. Royal family death
6. Strange fluctuations in the Earth’s Magnetic Field Detected
7. A Nuclear submarine will get into serious problems.
8. 2015 will be a year with a lot of Maritime problems and there could be a very serious disaster – akin to the sinking of the Titanic.
9. Economically, India will rise faster than China in the coming years
10. Josefina Vázquez Mota will become the first female president of Mexico.
11. There will be a bad earthquake during 2015 in Mexico City.
12. Many countries may see terrorist attacks from loan gunmen. I ‘see’ Berlin, Rome and Paris as targets but a simultaneous London attack with be thwarted.
13. There will be a celebrity kidnapping and an attack on a member of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family
14. The Conservatives will win the UK election by a whisker. Cameron will be ousted just after the election despite his electoral success.
15. During 2015 Jeb Bush will gain popularity and will win the American Election in 2016.

I suspect litigation lawyers may make good psychics – after all they spend a lot of time dealing with client enquiries about the strength of their cases. If you can read the mind of a judge surely you can produce better predictions than a professional psychic?

If you would like to make your own predictions for 2014 please email us or visit our blog (http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.co.uk) and add your comment to this article. We will then revisit all predictions in January 2015.

New Years Resolutions for Lawyers
Every year we get a number of calls and emails from lawyers relating either to a change in practice or job, expansion or contraction, or new year resolutions – both employers and candidates. These are the top 5 queries since December 29th 2014:

1. “I am a partner of a small practice. I’m tired of doing all the work myself and have decided to expand. I am looking for a partner to join me and share the workload. They’ll need their own following and we can agree a profit share arrangement.”
Great. The vacancy from hell! Firstly, why would anyone want to change jobs to hand over their clients and take on half the administration for a firm where the partner is fed up of doing it himself or herself? What is in it for them exactly? Secondly is this really going to assist the partner in the long term? Would he or she not be better off employing a more junior member of staff to deal with the administration or take on another solicitor to handle workload in order to free him/her up to do more business generation work? A PA with fee earning experience can be a low cost option, or alternatively an NQ solicitor. Despite the full page adverts in the back of the Gazette from a fee sharing law firm it remains one of the hardest types of candidate to find. The current market makes it that much harder..

2. “I’ve decided over Christmas that in the New Year I want to stop practising in conveyancing on the high street and start doing shipping law in the city. Can you help?”
So many lawyers see greener grass on the other side of the fence when it comes to their own practice area. Well paid city lawyers envy the perceived easy lifestyle of their high street colleagues. After all you get to go home at 6pm if you work in a high street firm. High street lawyers see Magic Circle lawyers earning mega-bucks and fancy a bit of it themselves. In House lawyers think private practice offers more earning potential – private practice lawyers think in house lawyers have it easy – flexible hours, pension, career stability etc..
Whatever the change is going to be – make it one based on fact. Never change fields of law without experiencing it first. Whenever I have coached lawyers in the past regarding a change, I have always advised taking a week off work and getting some shadowing or work experience under your belt. Then make decisions that may affect the rest of your career, not beforehand. Finally, accept that some aspirations are impossible. If you do conveyancing in a high street law firm and have a 2.2 and low A levels, you are always going to be up against it when trying to break into city firms.

3. “I want to do locum work because I am looking for flexibility in my career.”
Locums are perceived to earn huge amounts of money by their salaried counterparts. Very often because the salaried counterparts see them receiving hourly rates that vastly exceed their own salaried positions. Locums get an easy life – they work for a few weeks, take time off, travel, pursue other interests, do another few weeks here and there when they need a bit more money. What fun! Unfortunately, unless you are a professional locum conveyancer or private client lawyer this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is true that because of the way local authorities and their staff approach recruitment (I suspect considerably more time is spent on sick leave in local authority legal departments than in house or private practice) there are opportunities to earn good money on an ongoing basis out of being a child care lawyer for a local council. However for all other fields of law locums do not tend to be able to pick and choose assignments if they want to work all year round. A lot of professional locums will travel as well – a good number spend every week away from home around the country. Even then, 9 out of 12 months work is considered a good level to be aiming at. Quite a bit of time is spent indicating an interest for posts and pitching an hourly rate to secure it. This can be quite demoralising when you start out.

4. “I’ve decided to get out of law and become an accountant/nails technician/pilot. Can you find me a job please.”
Again, this is a New Year’s resolution that needs to be based on fact. Get work experience, do the maths, think about it very carefully. Think again. Decide based on clear economic and objective grounds backed up with a little bit of subjectivity… Our first advice is always to think carefully as to whether it is the law you hate or your circumstances. Can you change your circumstances? If you are a solicitor who hates your boss, can you find a new boss? If you are a boss who dislikes your surroundings, workforce or lack of profit, can you do something to change these? Drastic decisions are sometimes made for the wrong reasons.

5. “I am a graduate looking for work.”
Unfortunately we get this one quite a bit. I am sure a lot of law firms experience the same thing as well. We have managed to reduce numbers of calls quite drastically in the last two years by applying filters to our website. On our contact page we ask LPC and LLB graduates to follow a link before they call us. On our site we also offer a work experience scheme whereby anyone without experience can sign up. After candidates have registered we notify them automatically that if they are students or graduates we will not be able to help but they can visit our resource centre with advice and articles to read. This has taken about 75% of these types of calls away from our telephone lines.

Over 40? New Study says that your Brain is Shrinking

Research suggests that our brains start slowing down from the age of 42. The ways in which most of us currently work and live actually exacerbates the problem. Obvious triggers include poor diet, a lack of sleep and not doing enough exercise, but there are more insidious factors at play, too. Letting your brain switch to autopilot to deal with repetitive tasks can slowly kill your ability to innovate, while focussing too heavily on memorising information “depletes limited brain resources better used for functions that promote independence throughout life, such as problem-solving, decision-making and critical reasoning,” say the researchers. Higher-performing brains are those that have learned to block out what they don’t need. Attempts to multitask lead to a build up of the stress hormone cortisol, which slowly kills off brain cells, ruins memory and plays havoc with your immune system. Trying to deal with every text and email as it arrives is similarly damaging. Our brains work best when they are encouraged to focus in on a problem and actively engage with it, not when they are subjected to masses of competing stimulus.

Fortunately, there are ways to save your mind from the ravages of time and office politics. The report highlights five major tips for keeping your brain at its best:
1. Step away from the problem. A five minute break from what you are doing, five times a day, can help clear your mind and help you solve problems more effectively.
2. Don’t multitask – this just slows things down. When we’re interrupted, it can take 20 minutes to get back on track, stretching a 25 minute task into several hours
3. Prioritise – pick the two most important things on your to-do list that you must crack today. Then, dedicate uninterrupted time to doing them.
4. Shake yourself out of routine – doing the same things and thinking the same thoughts day after day will send your brain into a living coma.
5. Innovate or die. Your brain needs to keep creating in order to stay young.
University of Texas BrainHealth Centre
Above study quoted in SMEInsider.com – 13th Jan

Our 10% Donation
Every year since 2000 we have committed as a company to donate a percentage of our annual profits to charity. This includes any subsidiary companies and operations. For 14 years our board of directors has agreed to 10% (after all, how on earth could we carry on with our business name?). We have now donated over £66,000 to the Ten-Percent Foundation, a small sum in the general scheme of things, but a lot of money for a company of our size.

The deadline for our trustee meeting approaches. If you have any suggestions to add to those already put forward by our clients, law firms and candidates, please please feel free to email them across to me at cv@ten-percent.co.uk. We look for small charities preferably with interesting projects we can support on an ongoing basis.

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

Interim Lawyers – www.interimlawyers.co.uk
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk
Legal Recruitment Newsletter – www.legal-recruitment.co.uk

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

Interim Lawyers
27 Old Gloucester Street
London
WC1N 3AX

Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
2nd Floor
145-157 St John Street
London
EC1V 4PY

Monthly News

Legal Recruitment Newsletter – December 2014

December 3, 2014

Legal Recruitment News – December 3rd 2014

Contents
▪ Legal Job Market Report
▪ New Candidate Registrations in last 3 days – click here
▪ Locums available now – click here
▪ Our 10% donation to charity – gIving money to charity is harder than you think!

Welcome to the December 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 and Ten-Percent).

Job Market Update – December 3rd

For our Job Market Report please visit the main Ten-Percent website – http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/legal-job-market-update-december-3rd-2014

Last 10 Candidate Registrations
02121356 Locum Residential and Commercial Conveyancing Solicitor available to cover in London.
02121111 Locum Commercial Property Solicitor looking around central London.
02121006 Civil Litigation and Employment Solicitor looking for locum work in Hampshire and West Sussex.
02120956 Residential Conveyancing Solicitor looking to return to the profession and work around Bucks and Herts. 5 years PQE. Permanent, part time.
01122213 Practice Manager looking for work around Cheshire and the North West.
01121729 Wills and Probate Solicitor, 2015 qualifier, looking for work in the North West.
01121346 Wills and Probate Solicitor looking for posts in Middlesex. Has a following of clients. Salary or locum equivalent sought.
01121127 Locum Wills and Probate Executive available for work in and around London.
30112119 Crime Duty Solicitor available for work in and around London. Aware deadline missed and happy to look at consultancy arrangements.
28110846 Specialist Pensions Lawyer looking for locum work in and around London.
We have over 10,500 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

Locums Available Immediately
We have over 700 candidates registered for locum work. Visit www.interimlawyers.co.uk

Our 10% Donation – gIving money to charity is harder than you think!
Last week I transferred just over £13,000 from our business current account into the Ten-Percent Foundation charity bank account and I have to say that it really, really hurt.

I know it shouldn’t cause pain, and as a company and a group of people together we ought to be delighted to see our money going towards worthy causes, but I am afraid it does. I get extremely depressed for at least a few days, thinking about all the money and what it could have been spent on if I had taken it as a dividend (I am a shareholder in the business as well), but no, it is going to charitable causes.

I wish the founders of Ten-Percent had not sat in a café in Leicester in 1999 and decided to set up a recruitment agency whereby 10% of our profits would be donated to charity.

I wish I hadn’t got so annoyed by a recruitment consultant working for a national agency loftily informing me that as a newly qualified solicitor I was lucky to get the £20,000 just offered by one of his clients and that he would be taking £4,500 plus VAT in commission.

I wish I had taken time to set up the company, researched the market, looked at profit margins, realised that giving away 10% of profits to charity was definitely not a good idea from a business perspective and gone more corporate with our approach. I am sure I could have learnt to speak business b***ks and I do keep practising (but to no avail).

I also wish I had got so annoyed with the first charity we tried to donate money to that I instantly gave up and didn’t give any money away again. Some charities are an absolute nightmare to donate to – lots of hoops to jump through – for example many years ago Wateraid wanted to charge us a fee to include their logo on our website after we had donated £2,500 to a project in East Africa.

Unfortunately we didn’t do any of this and set up overnight, winged just about everything (I operated the business in the evenings (and into the night) whilst working flat out as a solicitor in a high street firm), spending 6 months getting our first candidate into a role (she managed 2 hours before walking out – at the old Abbey National bank), and working for the following 14 years building Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment into what it is today including its continued commitment to a charitable donation.

Every year since 2000 we have committed as a company to donate a percentage of our annual profits to charity. This includes any subsidiary companies and operations. For 14 years our board of directors has agreed to 10% (after all, how on earth could we carry on with our business name?). We have now donated over £66,000 to the Ten-Percent Foundation, a small sum in the general scheme of things, but a lot of money for a company of our size.

This year (2014) is the first year we have managed to catch up with our charitable donations since 2007. Between 2007 and 2014 our company has been postponing the donation from time to time because of the difficulties in balancing financial survival with the charity commitment, but now job markets appear to be slightly better it has been easier to get the money out.

It feels good for us to be up to date with our 10% donation, and it also feels good to be one of only a tiny minority of companies who have such a commitment; but it still hurts.

Are we philanthropists? I have read around the subject and discovered there is a college in the USA teaching philanthropy (to rich people perhaps?) and a fellowship of philanthropists exists in the UK. I wonder whether this is either astonishingly rich people getting together for a self-appreciating pat on the back from each other for giving away money they have made already, or a similar organisation to the Lions or the Rotary Club of time donation rather than financial support, or simply whether it is elderly folk worrying about easy passage into heaven (if they have religious convictions and are concerned about admission from whichever angel is on duty) and hence coughing up shed loads of cash for good causes.

So now we have a bulging charity bank account for the first time in years, and start the process of avoiding large national charities with CEOs on salaries and packages higher than those of a doctor or headteacher, and keep our eyes open for smaller charities with identifiable projects, particularly those with links to the legal profession.

If you have any ideas, please feel free to email them across to me at cv@ten-percent.co.uk. We look for small charities preferably with interesting projects we can support on an ongoing basis.

How much difference can we make to the world and what do we benefit personally from making donations? I have learned over time that the only benefit really is to your own sense of justice, satisfaction and duty. No commercial or financial gain ever seems to come our way by donating a percentage of our profits to charity. Just a general feeling of depression followed with a warm glow of satisfaction in a few months…

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

Interim Lawyers – www.interimlawyers.co.uk
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk
Legal Recruitment Newsletter – www.legal-recruitment.co.uk

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

Interim Lawyers
27 Old Gloucester Street
London
WC1N 3AX

Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
2nd Floor
145-157 St John Street
London
EC1V 4PY

Monthly News

Legal Recruitment News November 4th 2014

November 7, 2014

Legal Recruitment News – November 4th 2014

Welcome to the November 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 and Ten-Percent.

Job Market Update – November 4th

For the current job market update please visit

http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/legal-job-market-update-november-7th-2014

Last 10 Candidate Registrations
04111022 Locum Conveyancing Solicitor living on a barge and looking for winter work whilst moored up. Nationwide. 30 years experience but nothing in last 4 years. Reasonable hourly rate.
03112302 Personal Injury Solicitor looking for permanent work around London. 15 years PQE in claimant PI and clinical negligence.
03112352 Immigration and Employment NQ Solicitor looking around London. Permanent.
03111625 Conveyancing locum looking around London. Low hourly rates due to less experience. Available immediately.
03111248 Corporate Commercial Solicitor, 3 years PQE, looking for locum work initially around London. £30 per hour rate. SME background.
03111101 Mackesys demise victim (!) – duty solicitor looking for posts nationwide.
02111748 Locum Conveyancer looking around London. £200 per day.
30101224 Conveyancing locum looking around North and West Yorkshire. Junior level.
30100700 Corporate Commercial Solicitor with pharmaceutical industry background for past 5 years. Bristol and London.
27101045 Company Commercial Solicitor with 2 years PQE looking around London. SME background.

We have over 10,000 lawyers registered with us. To request CVs for a specific vacancy please register your vacancy – Locum or Permanent

5 Ways of Lowering Risk when finding new staff

For this article please visit http://legalrecruitment.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/5-ways-to-avoid-recruiting-duff.html

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. We operate an outsourced UK based typing service as well – www.uk-transcription.co.uk 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

Interim Lawyers – www.interimlawyers.co.uk
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk
Legal Recruitment Newsletter – www.legal-recruitment.co.uk

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

Interim Lawyers
27 Old Gloucester Street
London
WC1N 3AX

Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
2nd Floor
145-157 St John Street
London
EC1V 4PY

Monthly News

September 2014 Candidate Newsletter

September 15, 2014

Legal Recruitment News – September 15th 2014

Contents
▪ Legal Job Market Report
▪ Search Our Vacancies Online – click here
▪ How to cut a better deal with your current firm

Welcome to the September edition of Legal Recruitment News, including a Legal Job Market Update and a guide on improving your value to your employer. Legal Recruitment News is written by Jonathan Fagan, MD and non-practising solicitor of the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment group (Interim Lawyers and Ten-Percent.

Job Market Update – September
Summer 2014 – Summary:
* Permanent vacancies up
* Locum assignments up
* Conveyancing vacancies up, Commercial Property vacancies up
* Crime vacancies gone, Personal Injury vacancies disappearing
* Employment Law vacancies – non-existent
* Commercial and Civil Litigation vacancies – few here and there
* Family vacancies – up
* Further increase in proprerty vacancies attracting very few applications. Commercial property solicitors extremely difficult to source. Conveyancers difficult to find.
* Market outlook – still very buoyant. Salaries now rising.

Statistics
Current live vacancies: 593
New permanent vacancies added in August 2014: 32
New candidates registering: 91
Average ‘Job Strength Factor’ for new vacancies in May: 3.8
Increase/Decrease in new vacancies from previous month: -8%
Increase/Decrease in new candidates from previous month: -12%

Key points from the KPMG Job Market survey for August 2014:
▪ Stronger growth of permanent and temporary staff appointments
▪ Record decline in availability of permanent candidates
▪ Starting salary growth close to June’s survey-high

Bernard Brown, Partner and Head of Business Services at KPMG, said:
“For the first time in months we are witnessing churn in the labour market. It seems that
employees are finally beginning to wake up to the opportunities available to them, with the
rates of growth of both permanent and temporary placements accelerating simultaneously. Perhaps it’s true that ‘every person has their price’ because the movement in labour is
coinciding with another rise in starting salaries. Just a few months ago employers couldn’t
tempt staff to switch roles, but indications are that employees’ caution over change is being
replaced with hunger for something new.”

This review is undertaken by a market research company who contact 100s of recruitment agencies across the UK to undertake a monthly questionnaire. We are part of the panel and get exclusive access to the report. KPMG report that the Midlands is the place to be for candidates moving and employers paying good money to get them, but this is far from reality for the legal profession – the Midlands is not a prime area for recruitment and never has been!

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.

How to Cut a Better Deal with your Current Firm and Stay Put

Slightly unusual article for a legal recruitment agency, but then we are slightly unusual!
Working in a solicitors firm you like and at the same time being paid the salary you feel you deserve are very often two separate things.

You probably accepted a salary offered when you first started with the firm some time ago and have seen little movement since. Indeed, our own anecdotal evidence from speaking to candidates is that the vast majority of solicitors firms in the UK have not offered their staff pay increases for a very long time.

Quite often the only way to get a pay increase is to threaten to move firms, be seen to be in the market to move firms, or to actually move firms. However once you go down this route it is usually irreversible – even if you remain with your current practice after handing in your notice or looking for other work it is very likely your relationship with colleagues will have deteriorated.

You will be back looking for alternative employment in no time at all (our recruitment software actually has a category for this type of candidate as it is a recognised industry rule of thumb that you will seek alternative work within 6 months).

So what if you could improve your package with your existing firm and not have to bother with the pantomine of pretending to move firms or the upheaval of actually moving firms?

Tips for Staying Put and Increasing Your Worth
1. Make sure you advertise yourself to your bosses. In my local cricket team one of our players always emails the captain at the end of the season to point out how many runs he has scored (if he has done well). He hopes to keep his batting position for the following year. When was the last time you reminded your boss of your value to the business, whether through mentioning a transaction you have just concluded, or the value of a case that has just been costed?
2. Keep an eye on your billing levels and once you are exceeding any targets start to advertise this to everyone else in the firm. The more people are aware of your ability to generate income, the higher the value of goodwill is in your own personal brand (business speak for ‘you’).
3. Insist on an annual or 6 monthly review of your performance. Don’t waste your time in this. Make sure you attend equipped with plenty of statistics and facts to promote your value to the firm. Do not let your boss take it over with comments about your work – make sure you stick to salary levels etc..
4. Work out how much you actually want to earn and aim to get to this level quickly. So – for example – if you want to be on an income of £45k within 5 years – what do you need to do? You will know yourself what billing levels are currently being achieved – how much extra work will you need to get in to generate the required amount? Is it ever going to be possible or do you need a plan B? Does the plan B include becoming a partner or shareholder in the practice? What level of investment will you need to take?
5. Have a long term plan. So many solicitors spend the middle part of their career stuck in a rut and fall into mediocrity without realising they are there. Retain some of your ambition and keep an eye on the future as it tends to be the past before you know it…

If necessary, make a move, but don’t just do it to show your current firm that you are valued elsewhere. Think very carefully before changing firms and ask yourself if you are making the move for the right reasons. Some candidates seem to move simply to spite their old boss, but in fact really like their current place of employment and then start feeling very unhappy in their new firm.

Cut the Clutter on your Desk and save time

I recently read an article about saving time – with tips including outsourcing everything you possibly can, delegating as much work as possible and avoiding meetings. One of the tips was to reduce the clutter on your desk because looking for documents and items can take up so much of your time.

These are the three things to do with paperwork on your desk:
1. Delegate It
2. File it
3. Bin it

Apparently most of the stuff we file away never gets seen again and in fact it would have been better to bin it from the outset. There is a professor in the USA who tips all his paperwork each month into a desk drawer and at the end of the month he throws the whole lot into the bin. I think this is extremely brave and would never dare to be so bold, but it is certainly one way to get rid of stuff off your desk!

There should be no paperwork on your desk at the end of the day – instead it should be in a filing tray, an action tray or the bin. Stationery should be in a desk tidy or drawer. Go and buy some trays at lunchtime and invest in a desk tidy for your pens. It makes the world of difference turning up to work to find a blank slate rather than piles of papers.

The Easiest and Quickest Way to increase your billing levels

There are 5 ways to increase billing levels – increase customers, get customers to buy more, increase the value of each transaction, increase prices or increase efficiency.

By far the quickest and easiest way, according to expert pricing accountant Peter Hill, is simply
to increase your prices. He issues a challenge to businesses – if you want to increase your profits in one, easy step, increase your prices by 5% immediately.

A quick example would be a conveyancing quote I recently had. We contacted three law firms to get a price on selling a field (sale transaction is less than £20k) and got quotes of £475, £400 and £200.

Thinking about it now – if the £200 quote had been £210 it still would have been the lowest price, and if I had been a bit distrustful of the low quote I would still have gone with the medium quote with a 5% increase at £420.

Applying this to our own business does not really work, because in recruitment most of our business is on a percentage basis and varies according to the salaries being paid, not the work put in. However to an hourly rate firm (ie a solicitors practice) this could make a big difference.

Assuming your firm (limited company) turned over £100k last year with £60k profits and paid corporation tax at 20% on the profits, you would have managed to make £48k after tax. If you increase your prices by 5% you would have turned over £105k, with £65k profits and made £52k after tax. The extra 5% price would have generated you £4k in net profit.

Not bad for just adjusting your prices slightly upwards.

The downside is of course the annoyed customer who wants to know why the price has just gone up. Peter Hill suggests that you should ignore them and concentrate instead on the vast majority of clients who are happy with the service and as a result will pay to stay.

Are you brave enough to try it? We are going to give it a go with one of our non-recruitment businesses. I’ll keep you posted with the results in 12 months time.

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.

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

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