Monthly News

December 2012 Legal Recruitment Candidates Newsletter

Legal Job Market Report December 12th
Good afternoon and welcome to the Candidate December edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group. Our websites include Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, Interim Lawyers, Legal-Recruitment and many more.

The staff at Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment wish all our clients and candidates a very peaceful break and a prosperous New Year.

The market report for December is fairly short. Permanent recruitment has been very quiet indeed since the traditional half term break at the end of October. We had a spurt of family and children panel member posts coming in, probably to do with yet another Legal Services Commission deadline cropping up.

There seem to be quite a lot of Children Panel member vacancies floating around – the LSC appear to have gone through one of their contract deadlines again and a number of firms are hunting around for a supervisor.

The locum market has quietened down as it always does at this time of year. Locums quite often book off November and December in their diaries as they expect to be off in any event and this can make it harder to source a lawyer even with less work around.

Commercial Law Firms and In House:
Quiet still – we are getting news of redundancies here and there, but a lot of the larger law firms now have contracts tied up with larger recruitment agencies and don’t tend to put a lot through the smaller companies like ourselves. Employers seem to have been holding back in recent times still and not much activity spotted at all. We have had a few commercial litigation posts in and a couple of employment locum posts but that is about it. We do find that even with in house counsel recruitment the HR departments put out requests for CVs and then decide not to proceed.

On the High Street:
Redundancies seem to have stopped, although we are starting to notice a new pattern emerging in business of partners dismissing permanent members of staff and reverting to locums and contractors. Recently we have had a locum assignment in from a law firm in London where we knew the departing permanent member of staff. We were told by the firm that the locum was needed to cover sick leave, whereas in fact the locum had been recruited to take over the caseload of the solicitor who had been laid off.

Conveyancing, private client and commercial property temporary and contract work has been busy up until the middle of November. Conveyancing still occurring, which is a good sign that the market has now changed and property is starting to move again.

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

Ten-Percent Legal’s £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are (very) gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 70+ firms are already estimated to be around £275,000. Over 60% of members undertake LSC funded work in some capacity and 33% have less than 2 partners. The service is restricted to firms with less than 100 staff.

In October/November 2012 we had 143 new solicitors and legal executives register with us, together with just short of 900 paralegals and non-qualified staff (in response to specific law firm member vacancies). We restrict our own legal candidate database to ensure we only register qualified or suitably experienced staff.

10% CV Discount
To celebrate the fact that it is Christmas, and we are full of cheer, general excitement and near total exhaustion handling very excited children (!), we would like to offer all registered candidates a 10% discount on our CV services. If you are thinking of getting your CV revamped or checked out in the New Year, simply log onto our Legal Career Shop Site, purchase a CV service (CV Reviews and CV Preparation both included) and we will give you 10% cashback within 24 hours. Email us straight after your purchase to let us know. No catches or terms, unless you can think of any!

LinkedIn and Ten-Percent/Interim Lawyer Vacancies
From January 2013 onwards we will be posting all our vacancies directly onto LinkedIn as updates to Jonathan Fagan’s profile. To receive instant updates from us, simply request a connection from Jonathan Fagan – uk.linkedin.com/in/jbfagan and we will agree to connect. LinkedIn is a very useful source in any event, but well worth connecting to get updates from us.

Locum Q&As
We have recently put together a collection of Frequently Asked Questions and guidance on hourly rates for our locum site – www.interimlawyers.co.uk – if you would like to take a look please visit the site or click the links below:

http://www.interimlawyers.co.uk/about/faqs
http://www.interimlawyers.co.uk/about/locum-solicitor-rates-of-hourly-pay-2013

Questions answered on Locum work include:
Am I considered self-employed or as an employee?
Am I covered by Professional Indemnity Insurance if I work as a locum?
What are the rates of pay for a Locum Solicitor or Lawyer?
What are the Terms and Conditions of Employment for a Locum?
How, when and what will I be paid for my locum services?
Will I get any travelling allowance whilst working as a locum?
Will working as a locum affect my chance of permanent employment in future?
Can my locum contract be checked?
What do I do if I have had change in circumstances or a change of contact details?
How do I register for work as a locum solicitor with Interim Lawyers?
Once I am registered how do I get booked to work as a Locum?
Who do I contact if I become available for more Locum work?
How do you communicate with your locums?
Why work as a locum?
How much do I as a locum have to pay you the agency?
Who pays my tax and National Insurance?
What do I do if I can’t fulfill an assignment?
What is the cost of having a locum?
How far ahead can I plan my locum cover for holidays?
How can I be sure you will send a fully qualified Locum Solicitor?
The Locum we used was not as good as expected, what can we do?
How are locum solicitors screened – what qualifications do they have?

You can also comment on any of the answers – we will gladly publish any corrections or additions.

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews

Legal Recruitment News is produced by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – you can view all versions of the e-newsletter at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment was established in 2000 and donates 10% of profits to charity, hence the name.

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

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

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

Monthly News

December 2012 Employers Legal Recruitment Newsletter

Legal Recruitment News Dec 5th 2012 – Ten-Percent Legal

Legal Job Market Report December 5th
Good morning and welcome to the December edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group. Our websites include Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, Interim Lawyers, Legal-Recruitment and many more.

The market report for December is fairly short. Permanent recruitment has been very quiet indeed since the traditional half term break at the end of October. We had a spurt of family and children panel member posts coming in, probably to do with yet another Legal Services Commission deadline cropping up.

The locum market has quietened down as it always does at this time of year. Locums quite often book off November and December in their diaries as they expect to be off in any event and this can make it harder to source a lawyer even with less work around.

Commercial Law Firms and In House:
Quiet still – we are getting news of redundancies here and there, but a lot of the larger law firms now have contracts tied up with larger recruitment agencies and don’t tend to put a lot through the smaller companies like ourselves. Employers seem to have been holding back in recent times still and not much activity spotted at all. We have had a few commercial litigation posts in and a couple of employment locum posts but that is about it. We do find that even with in house counsel recruitment the HR departments put out requests for CVs and then decide not to proceed.

On the High Street:
Redundancies seem to have stopped, although we are starting to notice a new pattern emerging in business of partners dismissing permanent members of staff and reverting to locums and contractors. Recently we have had a locum assignment in from a law firm in London where we knew the departing permanent member of staff. We were told by the firm that the locum was needed to cover sick leave, whereas in fact the locum had been recruited to take over the caseload of the solicitor who had been laid off.

Conveyancing, private client and commercial property temporary and contract work has been busy up until the middle of November. Conveyancing still occurring, which is a good sign that the market has now changed and property is starting to move again.

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

Ten-Percent Legal’s £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are (very) gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 70+ firms are already estimated to be around £275,000. Over 60% of members undertake LSC funded work in some capacity and 33% have less than 2 partners. The service is restricted to firms with less than 100 staff.

In October/November 2012 we had 143 new solicitors and legal executives register with us, together with just short of 900 paralegals and non-qualified staff (in response to specific law firm member vacancies). We restrict our own legal candidate database to ensure we only register qualified or suitably experienced staff.

Register Locum Vacancies
Register Permanent Vacancies
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

Expanding your Firm Quickly – Marketing Ideas

We have recently taken the decision to expand Interim Lawyers, our online locum recruitment service, and increase our locum offerings across the UK and overseas.

In order to do this, we researched the different options available for our marketing spend, and I thought this may be of interest to law firms thinking up ideas to expand business and increase their client base.

As a company, we have taken the following steps:

  1. Opened offices in Basingstoke, Gloucester, Manchester and London.
  2. Made sure our web presence reflects this (work in progress – more below!).
  3. Increased our Google Adwords account spend in the keywords we are looking to offer our increased service in – ie conveyancing locums, family locums, Manchester solicitor locums, London locum services, Hampshire locums, etc.. etc.. Our keyword list is about 150 long at the moment and it may be increased now to well over 300 with the new office addresses.
  4. We have added extra web pages and started to look for additional backlinks online.
  5. Law Society Gazette advertising for early 2013.

Opening up offices is not exactly a difficult option, although I appreciate that there will be issues with the SRA in terms of supervision for solicitors firms.

For recruitment agencies it is possible simply to purchase a virtual office address with local meeting room facilities and the cost is minimal. Our Manchester office has cost £34.99, our Basingstoke office £65 and our London office £100. Each of these means that we get extra geographical coverage in search terms whenever a law firm types in ‘Manchester solicitor locums’ or similar.

Our Adwords account costs are also fairly low cost – we pay around £5 per day for all our advertising, and this picks us up enough leads to make it worthwhile. I know of companies who spend over £75,000 a year on Google Adwords, but we are not one of these. After all, if I write an article on legal recruitment, Google very kindly publish it for me and our company picks up extra visits to our various websites as a result.

We had a think about advertising and decided the best read journal was the Gazette and if I had been looking to recruit a locum when in practice, this would have probably been the first port of call. Advertising does not need to cost the earth, although it sometimes feels like it….

I often get asked by solicitors in career coaching sessions how much should a company spend on marketing and advertising, and I think the answer remains the same – spend what you need to in order to generate enough business each month. This varies depending on your circumstances and is often very hit or miss, regardless of what the marketing experts say… Obviously if there is a magic formula I am not aware of, please let me know and I will publish it everywhere possible! .

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

LinkedIn Offer – Backlink worth up to £250
Our Christmas offer for December 2012: Simply request a link to Jonathan Fagan – uk.linkedin.com/in/jbfagan and we will give you a backlink at http://www.businessbusstop.com/index.php/business-directory – Google Page Rank 3. These links cost around £250 on some sites. When you request the link, simply put the words ‘Link please’ in your description.

Click Here to Request a Link

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews

Low Cost Digital Dictation Outsourcing
TP Online Transcription & Typing Service with offices in London and North Wales. We have a team of 20 UK based transcribers offering digital file and tape transcribing services worldwide. Established in 2001, the company has been handling bulk orders (including over 500 hour projects) and one-off assignments for legal and non-legal clients including a large number of UK Solicitors, B&Q, Endemol, the Office of Fair Trading, Sony, Dundee University, Cartridge World, University of Oxford, NHS Tayside, the British Medical Journal, Marie Curie and many more.

We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.

We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit http://www.tptranscription.co.uk call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.

Candidate Update 5th December

There are over 9,250 lawyers registered with us looking for permanent work and 750 locums available for assignments in all areas of the country. Register vacancies on our website, email cv@ten-percent.co.uk or call 0207 127 4343.

Selection of Candidates registered in the past 2 weeks:

21305 Legal secretary and legal practice manager with over 5 years experience within residential conveyancing. Looking for a post in Central London, Ealing, Uxbridge or Hounslow.
21304 2010 qualified solicitor with experience in civil litigation, family law and residential conveyancing. Looking for a post in Surrey and South/West London.
21303 2001 qualified commercial solicitor with experience in corporate commercial law, M&A, IT and IP. Looking for a post in London.
21302 Paralegal with over 18 months experience in commercial and some civil litigation. Looking for a post in Hertfordshire, North or Central London.
21299 1992 qualified crime and serious fraud solicitor with further experience in civil & commercial litigation. Looking for either locum litigation posts or permanent civil litigation, crime or fraud posts in Warwickshire and the West Midlands.
21298 Barristers clerk with 3 years experience. Has criminal billings experience. Looking for a crime paralegal, clerk or billings post in Kent or South East London.
21295 Legal practice manager and accountant with 3 years as a legal practice manager and a further 20 years business development experience. Looking for a post in the South West.
21294 2003 qualified accredited police station representative and crime paralegal. Looking for a post in the West Midlands.
21292 Conveyancing assistant/fee earner with over 7 years residential & commercial conveyancing experience both in private practice and in house. Looking for a conveyancing post in Berkshire, Surrey or West London.
21291 October 2008 qualified solicitor experienced in dispute resolution, crime and civil litigation. Looking for a civil litigation or dispute resolution post in North West London, Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire.
21289 October 2001 qualified solicitor, looking to return to work following a career break. Has experience in child care law, family law, crime, employment law and residential conveyancing. Looking for part-time family or child care posts in London.
21288 March 2006 qualified commercial property solicitor with further experience in landlord & tenant. Looking for a locum or permanent commercial property post in the East Midlands or Birmingham. Speaks Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi.
21287 Legal secretary with over 20 years experience. Looking for locum or permanent posts in London.
21286 Paralegal with around 18 months experience in corporate, company commercial law, banking & finance, energy and commercial litigation. Looking for a post in London and the South East. Speaks French and Spanish.
21285 September 2001 property solicitor with experience in commercial property, landlord & tenant and projects. Looking ideally for part time commercial property posts in Hertfordshire.
21284 1977 qualified commercial solicitor experienced in shipping, insurance, international trade and finance litigation. Looking for a long term locum or permanent post in the London or the South East.
21283 October 2012 qualified solicitor and fully accredited police station representative with experience in crime, prison law and immigration. Looking for a post in London or Hertfordshire.
21282 Fee earner with over 30 years residential conveyancing experience. Looking for a conveyancing post in the North East of England
21281 Family law paralegal with child care law experience. Looking for a post in South Wales, Bristol or Bath.
21280 Legal administrator/conveyancing assistant with over 10 years experience. Also has some wills & probate experience. Has legal secretarial skill. Looking for a post in Kent or South East London.
21279 February 2012 qualified accredited police station representative with a background of over 30 years in the police force. Looking for an accredited rep post anywhere in West London, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex or Hertfordshire
21278 Legal practice manager with 12 years experience of managing a large legal firm. Looking for a post in the South West
21277 May 2012 qualified barrister dealing with crime and mental health law. Looking for a post in the Midlands.
21276 September 1993 qualified property solicitor returning to the profession with experience in commercial & residential property. Looking for a locum or part-time permanent post within 20 miles of Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
21275 2005 qualified property solicitor, experienced in commercial and residential conveyancing. Looking for a post in the North East.
21273 Conveyancing paralegal with over 2 years experience in residential conveyancing and further experience in crime, housing and family law. Looking for a residential conveyancing post in Berkshire or Middlesex. Speaks Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi.
21272 1997 qualified barrister specilising in fraud and white collar crime. Looking for an in house or private practice post in the Midlands.
21271 Legal assistant/paralegal with 5 years experience in residential conveyancing. Looking for locum posts in the North East of England
21270 Paralegal with around 2 years legal experience in residential and commercial conveyancing, personal injury (RTA, EL, PL) and family law. Looking for a paralegal post in Buckinghamshire or Berkshire.
21268 Billings clerk/legal cashier with 12 months experience. Looking for a post in Central, North or East London or Essex.
21267 Litigation paralegal with over 5 years experience in crime and prison law, personal injury (RTA, EL, PL), clinical negligence, debt recovery, housing law and general civil litigation. Looking for a locum or permanent post in Central, West or South West London, Twickenham, Kingston or Sutton.
21266 March 2005 qualified crime and civil litigation solicitor with police station accreditation and higher rights of audience. Experienced in serious crime and fraud and member of VHCC panel. Obtained VHCC case manager status. Looking for crime or fraud posts and willing to relocate.
21265 2004 qualified criminal solicitor with police station accreditation, duty status and higher right of audience. Looking ideally for a HCA post in South London but will travel further afield.
21264 Crime and family law paralegal/fee earner and accredited police station representative with over 2 years experience. Looking for a post in the Midlands.
21263 Costs draftsperson with over 2 years experience, looking for a post in Essex, North or East London.
21262 Febrary 2011 qualified solicitor with experience in housing law, welfare benefits and debt advice and some further experience in residential conveyancing and family law. Has LSC welfare benefits supervisor status. Looking for a post in South Wales, Bath or Bristol.
21261 Paralegal with experience in residential and commercial conveyancing and a small amount of family law and wills & probate experience. Looking for a permanent or locum property post in London.
21260 2008 qualified litigation solicitor, experienced in claimant and defendant personal injury work including RTA, EL and PL. Has managerial experience. Looking for locum posts in Cheshire, Manchester, Mersyside and the North West of England.

Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

Legal Recruitment News is produced by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – you can view all versions of the e-newsletter at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment was established in 2000 and donates 10% of profits to charity, hence the name.

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

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

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

Monthly News

Legal Candidate News October 2012

Legal Job Market Report October 2nd
Good morning and welcome to the October edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group. Our websites include Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, Crime Solicitor Recruitment, Interim Lawyers, Legal-Recruitment and many more.

The market report for September is a little more detailed than July/August. The locum market has quietened down – instead of the usual 10-15 new assignments we have been getting in over the summer the number has gone down to about 3 or 4. September can often either be busy because of interviews running over from the summer or very quiet as law firms get back to the day to day life after taking holidays in the summer or spending more time working out child care for the kids.

Commercial Law Firms and In House:
Quiet, very quiet would be the quick response. We have seen very little recruitment on this side of things. Employers seem to have been holding back in recent times and not much activity spotted at all. We have had a few commercial litigation posts in and a couple of employment locum posts but that is all.

On the High Street:
Redundancies are still occurring. There seems to be an increasing number of crime solicitors registering with us and currently earning £45k, looking for a move. Suspect the vast majority of these are under threat of redundancy as law firms work out the harsh economic realities of not being paid very much more than this by the LSC!

Conveyancing, private client and commercial property is busy. We keep taking locum bookings from firms taking on locums to cope with the extra demand. It seems that large amounts of buying and selling of houses is going on in some parts of the country.

Family – we are expecting a wave of new recruitment as it is almost 12 months from the last round of LSC contract signing. Private family law work seems to be very quiet, although we have recruited a few on this front in recent months.

Our £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are (very) gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 60+ firms are already estimated to be around £250,000. Over 60% of members undertake LSC funded work in some capacity and 33% have less than 2 partners. The service is restricted to firms with less than 100 staff. September saw our fastest ever recruitment – a firm signed up and had recruited a senior solicitor within 48 hours. Total cost to date: £60.

In September 2012 we had 99 new solicitors register with us, together with just short of 600 paralegals and non-qualified staff (in response to specific law firm member vacancies). We restrict our candidate database to ensure we only register qualified or suitably experienced staff.

Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

The Legal Services Commission – are they for real?
We have recently received a very interesting letter from the LSC regarding the duty solicitor rotas. Ten-Percent Legal owns another website called Crime Solicitor Recruitment. This year we decided to incorporate a page on this where we could list all the duty solicitors and firms looking for a move, whether on a freelance or salaried basis. We used the words “duty solicitor rota slot shop” and mentioned the possibility of duty solicitors selling their slots. – see http://www.crime-solicitor.co.uk/dutysolicitorrotaslotshop.htm

Having been a crime solicitor many years ago, I was astounded at the speed the LSC moved. A director of communications sent us a letter within 3 days of the page going live, explaining that duty solicitors do not own their slots, duty solicitors cannot be under a contract of service and duty solicitors have to work for a minimum of 2 days per week for a firm in order to comply with the contract.

I have posted the letter on the website as I think it is very helpful to law firms to know how the LSC is thinking! We have since changed some of the wording on the site so as to take out the offending bits about selling rota slots, although this is of course in reality what most duty solicitors do every time they have to go through the 6 monthly CDS12 deadlines.

At the same time as this we have also recently received an email from an LSC family supervisor saying that she has recently been to a course where the LSC made clear that supervisors cannot be external and must be employed FULL TIME by the contracted firm.

I suspect the LSC really do not have a clue how firms are surviving on the hourly rates paid. The answer is that everything, particularly staff salaries, have to be shed in order to do this.

Looking at the current rates for family law, the rate for London for advocacy, attendance and preparation is £48.74 per hour. Even if a solicitor was managing to bill 7 hours per day at this rate for 48 weeks of the year, the maximum amount it is possible to earn doing LSC funded family law per solicitor is £81,883.20.

Working on the one third rule, ie 1/3 profit, 1/3 salary and 1/3 costs, the maximum salary a solicitors’ firm can possibly pay to a solicitor in London to be their LSC family supervisor is £27,294.40. This would require someone to be working 10-12 hour days due to the non-billable work, for 5 days a week, flat out.

Are the Legal Services Commission seriously suggesting that a 15 year PQE LSC Supervisor with Panel membership or Resolution accreditation is going to work a 60 hour week for £27,294.40? Apparently, according to the letter we received, the only exception to salaried status is for partners. How lucky they are!

I suspect one of the reasons the LSC is claiming they are going to crack down on consultancy arrangements (which in reality keep the whole LSC work going as solicitors go off and find better remunerated work to support them including plumbing) is that it is stopping the LSC from shifting the work over in the longer term to companies able to offer economies of scale by using vast armies of paralegals and advocates.

One of the reasons law firms and solicitors spend time trying to work out arrangements that include monthly retainers and hourly rates is so that both can survive. If the LSC were more realistic as to the rates being paid at present for legally aided work it may remove a lot of the need for lawyers to work out ways of working that legitmately fit the LSC contractual requirements.

After all, I don’t hear of many senior LSC staff working for £27,294.40…. Happy to retract this comment of course if they are all working 60 hour weeks for £25k.

Jonathan Fagan is MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a former, fairly inept, crime solicitor with plenty of experience dealing with the LSC! Further articles on all topics available at www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com

Document and Template Precedents Wanted
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has a link to BusinessBusStop.com, a rapidly expanding online document store, and the site is looking for precedent legal documents and templates to add to their business shop – you can view the shop and current documents for sale at www.businessbusstop.com/shop.

Most solicitors and fee earners build up a high quality precedent bank over their careers. BusinessBusStop.com offers you the chance to make money from any documents, precedents or ebooks you may have on your computer. Each item is sold separately and commission paid to the document creators.

To make further enquiries, please email enquiries@chesterwebmarketing.co.uk or complete the form online at
http://www.businessbusstop.com/index.php/about-us/business-documents-purchased.

Locums – are you getting updates from us?
A quick note to say that if you are a locum or looking for locum work you should be getting regular updates from us. In the last month we have had family, conveyancing, wills & probate, employment, commercial litigation and civil litigation locum assignments in. All the locums on our lists should have had details of these for the relevant areas. If you have not received anything please email us at cv@ten-percent.co.uk and check that we have you listed as a locum.

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews

Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/

Interview Question & Answer – Where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?

This question is difficult to answer if you are giving honest answers in an interview.

Hopefully you will not be giving honest answers in an interview setting but rather answers that you think the interviewer wants to hear. The honest answer to both this question and the “Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time” question is probably that you either intend to retire, work for yourself, set up a different firm or be happily plodding along in a firm where you are being paid a good salary.

This is not however what the employer often wants to hear.

They want to hear that you would be happy to be working in the post you are currently interviewing for or possibly having done such a good job you are in line for promotion to a different position.

This is because when employers recruit they do not see just the first few months or the first few years in their heads, they see the next decade or so with you working in the same position.

This does change a little bit with larger employers who are naturally expectant of you to be considering promotion at some stage, but smaller employers invariably are looking for someone to be committed to their firm and the position they are applying for.

One of the main points given for feedback when somebody is unsuccessful in a job interview is either that they are too experienced or too inexperienced for the post they have applied for. The excuse is often given that the employer feels that the person will be bored in the role because it is too junior, or that they do not think the position will stimulate the person enough or vice versa.

This question of where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time is often used to determine how committed you are to this type of role.

A sample answer is:

“In 10 years’ time I would be happy to be still working in this position for your firm or in any position that you have deemed me fit for in the meantime. I am looking for stability and in return I am happy to commit to your firm for the long term”.

A sample answer for a trainee solicitor or training contact would be:

“I aim to qualify and remain with the firm I have worked with as a trainee for a considerably long time. I hope that I am able to exceed your expectations in the short term and remain with you for the long term.

(Interview Question and Answer taken from the forthcoming Ten-Percent Careers book – 100 Legal Interview Questions and Answers. Release date is Dec 1st 2012.

Vacancy Update 2nd October

New in today – Cost Draftsman (self employed) – Cardiff, Family and Housing Paralegals – Cardiff. Duty Solicitor – salaried or freelance – Woking/SW London. Monthly retainer duty solicitors – Peterborough and all areas of London.

14685 Small firm based in the Kingston upon Thames area are looking for a freelance duty solicitor, required for SW London, Surrey or Woking. Full or part time hours available. Salary available.
14683 Firm in Enfield, Greater London are looking for salaried crime solicitors with duty slots or freelance duty solicitors to work for a monthly retainer and split fee arrangement.
14682 Firm in Dorset are looking for a wills & probate solicitor for a permanent, full time post based initially in Shaftesbury and then moving on to Sturminster Newton. The firm are looking for an experienced candidate, ideally with around 4 years PQE.
14681 Highly experienced legal cashier/legal accounts person needed by established Kent firm. Initially full time but likely to become part time as role progresses
14680 Established Kent firm are looking for a crime solicitor or similar with LSC supervisory rights for a crime franchise including prision law. They must be very familiar with the contracts. Part or full time roll-option of court work and police work is available. The firm will consider salaried or freelance employees.
14679 Established firm in Reading with a number of offices in the South are looking for a duty solicitor to work on a salaried basis. Salary 35K.
14678 Established firm in South West London are looking for solicitors from any fields to join their team. The ideal candidate MUST have a client following. The firm will consider all option – salaried, fee split etc.
14677 Established firm in South West London are looking for solicitors from any fields to join their team. The ideal candidate MUST have a client following. The firm will consider all option – salaried, fee split etc.
14676 East London firm seek an immigration lawyer with supervisor status. Looking for someone who has Level 3 accreditation and hence is on the IAAS.
14675 Duty Solicitors sought – firm looking to pay Duty Solicitors a retainer of £1,300 per month plus an hourly rate. Central London – large practice.
14674 Immigration Supervisor – Level 2 or Level 3 – need to have IAAS Supervisor status. Firm are medium sized and based in South West London.
14673 West London (Hammersmith) firm interested in receiving CV’s from crime solicitors. They are looking for people who would be content to attend out of hours police station work as they are trying to reduce their reliance on outsource agencies for this work. Will of course consider all applicants as long as they are happy to be running around London in the middle of the night and at weekends. Ideally with duty solicitor status but also without considered.
The firm would also consider Police Station Reps.
14672 Legal cashier or costs draftsman sought by central London firm near to Waterloo station. Medium sized practice with both privately funded and LSC funded clients. Well regarded and fairly high profile. LSC billing is the main part of the post.
14671 Firm in Cheltenham seek a specialist child care solicitor specifically to undertake work for parents of children with Special Educational Needs primarily dealing with appeals to SENDIST (the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal). They are looking for anyone with some experience in this area, solicitor, legal executive, paralegal, locum or secretary and will look at part or full time, permanent or temporary. Generous salary.
14670 Firm in East Sussex are looking for duty solicitors to work either on a salary or for a monthly retainer and percentage fee split.
14669 Oxford firm are looking for duty solicitor to work on a salaried basis or for a monthly retainer and percentage split.
14668 Middlesex firm are looking for a crime solicitor with duty status who can also deal with another area of law – immigration, employment law, personal injury, clinical negligence, family or general civil/commercial litigation.
14667 Small, North London firm are ooking to recruit a solicitor with 1-3 year PQE who is also a qualified lawyer in India to head their India Desk. The ideal candidate should have knowledge of UK laws and Indian Laws and should be able to advice commercial laws of both jurisdictions.
The person must be willing to travel to India.
14666 A high street law firm in North West London is looking for a freelance duty solicitor to work on a monthly retainer plus percentage fee split. The firm will be responsible for the renewal of the practising certificate.
14665 Our clients, a firm of solicitors based in Skegness, handle a broad spectrum of industrial disease work including, lung conditions, noise induced hearing loss, repetitive strain injuries, asthma and dermatitis. Their team is rapidly expanding and we are looking for the right candidate with a minimum of 2 years experience of handling their own industrial disease caseload, in particular noise induced hearing loss claims.
14664 Full time duty solicitor required for specialist criminal practice in Reading. The ideal candidate must be a confident and engaging individual capable of working as a team member whilst also taking responsibility for his/her own case load. They must be willing and able to attend police station in unsocial hours. This is a salaried post.
14663 Experienced commercial and residential conveyancing solicitor needed for busy firm in Norwich to assist head of department. Partnership prospects for the right candidate. Salary based on experience.
14662 Large firm in Kent are looking for an experienced wills & probate solicitor. Ideal candidate should have at least 5 years PQE.
14660 Crime duty solicitor required for up and coming firm in Shepherds Bush, West London. Higher rights of Audience would be a distinct advantage. Either in house or on a freelance basis. Generous package offered to the right candidate.
14659 Family Solicitor or Fee Earner sought on a part time basis – looking for someone to be in the office and handle a caseload. LSC and privately funded work.
14658 Duty Solicitors sought on freelance basis by Bromley firm. Monthly retainer plus hourly rate.
14657 Family Supervisor sought by Bromley firm – on a consultancy basis. Will need to have SQM LSC Supervisor status.
14656 Children Panel member and LSC supervisor sought by SW London firm. Looking for someone urgently who complies with the SQM supervision standards for the LSC. Salaried or freelance arrangement possible.
14655 Firm in Tamworth are looking for a duty solicitor with at least 1 yrs PQE. Knowledge of francise and higher rights an advantage. The bulk of work is in the Staffordshire area (Burton, Tamworth, Lichfield, Cannock and Nuneaton). Candidate should be considering long term committment to the area and must have own vehicle. Full range of criminal work handled, never a dull moment, good career prospects for the right person.

Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
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Legal Recruitment News is produced by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – you can view all versions of the e-newsletter at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment was established in 2000 and donates 10% of profits to charity, hence the name.

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

E: jobs@ten-percent.co.uk

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Monthly News

Legal Recruitment News October 2012

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Legal Job Market Report October 2nd
Good morning and welcome to the October edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group. Our websites include Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, Crime Solicitor Recruitment, Interim Lawyers, Legal-Recruitment and many more.

The market report for September is a little more detailed than July/August. The locum market has quietened down – instead of the usual 10-15 new assignments we have been getting in over the summer the number has gone down to about 3 or 4. September can often either be busy because of interviews running over from the summer or very quiet as law firms get back to the day to day life after taking holidays in the summer or spending more time working out child care for the kids.

Commercial Law Firms and In House:
Quiet, very quiet would be the quick response. We have seen very little recruitment on this side of things. Employers seem to have been holding back in recent times and not much activity spotted at all. We have had a few commercial litigation posts in and a couple of employment locum posts but that is all.

On the High Street:
Redundancies are still occurring. There seems to be an increasing number of crime solicitors registering with us and currently earning £45k, looking for a move. Suspect the vast majority of these are under threat of redundancy as law firms work out the harsh economic realities of not being paid very much more than this by the LSC!

Conveyancing, private client and commercial property is busy. We keep taking locum bookings from firms taking on locums to cope with the extra demand. It seems that large amounts of buying and selling of houses is going on in some parts of the country.

Family – we are expecting a wave of new recruitment as it is almost 12 months from the last round of LSC contract signing. Private family law work seems to be very quiet, although we have recruited a few on this front in recent months.

Our £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are (very) gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 60+ firms are already estimated to be around £250,000. Over 60% of members undertake LSC funded work in some capacity and 33% have less than 2 partners. The service is restricted to firms with less than 100 staff. September saw our fastest ever recruitment – a firm signed up and had recruited a senior solicitor within 48 hours. Total cost to date: £60.

In September 2012 we had 99 new solicitors register with us, together with just short of 600 paralegals and non-qualified staff (in response to specific law firm member vacancies). We restrict our candidate database to ensure we only register qualified or suitably experienced staff.

Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

The Legal Services Commission – are they for real?
We have recently received a very interesting letter from the LSC regarding the duty solicitor rotas. Ten-Percent Legal owns another website called Crime Solicitor Recruitment. This year we decided to incorporate a page on this where we could list all the duty solicitors and firms looking for a move, whether on a freelance or salaried basis. We used the words “duty solicitor rota slot shop” and mentioned the possibility of duty solicitors selling their slots. – see http://www.crime-solicitor.co.uk/dutysolicitorrotaslotshop.htm

Having been a crime solicitor many years ago, I was astounded at the speed the LSC moved. A director of communications sent us a letter within 3 days of the page going live, explaining that duty solicitors do not own their slots, duty solicitors cannot be under a contract of service and duty solicitors have to work for a minimum of 2 days per week for a firm in order to comply with the contract.

I have posted the letter on the website as I think it is very helpful to law firms to know how the LSC is thinking! We have since changed some of the wording on the site so as to take out the offending bits about selling rota slots, although this is of course in reality what most duty solicitors do every time they have to go through the 6 monthly CDS12 deadlines.

At the same time as this we have also recently received an email from an LSC family supervisor saying that she has recently been to a course where the LSC made clear that supervisors cannot be external and must be employed FULL TIME by the contracted firm.

I suspect the LSC really do not have a clue how firms are surviving on the hourly rates paid. The answer is that everything, particularly staff salaries, have to be shed in order to do this.

Looking at the current rates for family law, the rate for London for advocacy, attendance and preparation is £48.74 per hour. Even if a solicitor was managing to bill 7 hours per day at this rate for 48 weeks of the year, the maximum amount it is possible to earn doing LSC funded family law per solicitor is £81,883.20.

Working on the one third rule, ie 1/3 profit, 1/3 salary and 1/3 costs, the maximum salary a solicitors’ firm can possibly pay to a solicitor in London to be their LSC family supervisor is £27,294.40. This would require someone to be working 10-12 hour days due to the non-billable work, for 5 days a week, flat out.

Are the Legal Services Commission seriously suggesting that a 15 year PQE LSC Supervisor with Panel membership or Resolution accreditation is going to work a 60 hour week for £27,294.40? Apparently, according to the letter we received, the only exception to salaried status is for partners. How lucky they are!

I suspect one of the reasons the LSC is claiming they are going to crack down on consultancy arrangements (which in reality keep the whole LSC work going as solicitors go off and find better remunerated work to support them including plumbing) is that it is stopping the LSC from shifting the work over in the longer term to companies able to offer economies of scale by using vast armies of paralegals and advocates.

One of the reasons law firms and solicitors spend time trying to work out arrangements that include monthly retainers and hourly rates is so that both can survive. If the LSC were more realistic as to the rates being paid at present for legally aided work it may remove a lot of the need for lawyers to work out ways of working that legitmately fit the LSC contractual requirements.

After all, I don’t hear of many senior LSC staff working for £27,294.40…. Happy to retract this comment of course if they are all working 60 hour weeks for £25k.

Jonathan Fagan is MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a former, fairly inept, crime solicitor with plenty of experience dealing with the LSC! Further articles on all topics available at www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com

Search Engine Marketing – is it still possible?
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has been online since April 2000. We worked out long ago that content is king and anything else tends to have little effect on search engine rankings. In recent times however Google has started bringing out updates every other week and tweaking the famous algorithm to try and remove various websites they dont like. This included a website that was providing answers to just about everything but has now disappeared almost completely because Google decided that some of the articles were commercially motivated.

At the same time, these changes have made SEO very difficult indeed. A recent Google update called the EMD update has taken out as many smaller sites as possible and focussed more on larger, generic sites to provide content for exact match searching (eg; where can I find a conveyancing solicitor in sutton coldfield?). It is now generally believed that sites who pay for Google Adwords and are signed up to all the various Google tools – Analytics and Webmaster etc.. are going to get traffic, and those who are not will be excluded from the top of search engine listings.

In a nutshell, if you want your site noticed on Google you need to make sure you have an Adwords account, are signed up for all the various Google tools and consider opening a Google + account even though most people in the UK use Facebook for that kind of thing!

Article written by http://www.chesterwebmarketing.co.uk

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews

Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/

Low Cost Digital Dictation Outsourcing
TP Online Transcription & Typing Service with offices in London and North Wales. We have a team of 20 UK based transcribers offering digital file and tape transcribing services worldwide. Established in 2001, the company has been handling bulk orders (including over 500 hour projects) and one-off assignments for legal and non-legal clients including a large number of UK Solicitors, B&Q, Endemol, the Office of Fair Trading, Sony, Dundee University, Cartridge World, University of Oxford, NHS Tayside, the British Medical Journal, Marie Curie and many more.

We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.

We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit http://www.tptranscription.co.uk call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.

Candidate Update 2nd October

There are over 9,250 lawyers registered with us looking for permanent work and 750 locums available for assignments in all areas of the country. Register vacancies on our website, email cv@ten-percent.co.uk or call 0207 127 4343.

Selection of Candidates registered in the past 2 weeks:
21049 Costs draftsperson with over 20 years experience. Looking for a post in South Wales.
21051 September 2012 qualified criminal barrister with police station accreditation. Looking for criminal advocacy posts in London. Solicitor
21052 1996 qualified self employed consultant litigation solicitor with experience in civil litigation, debt recovery, landlord & tenant, personal injury and clinical negligence. Looking for locum posts, preferably in Kent and South East London. Solicitor
21053 Paralegal with experience in clinical negligence, catastrophic injury and personal injury. Looking for a paralegal post in Kent and South East London. Speaks Gujarati and Hindu. Fee Earner – all
21055 2004 qualified solicitor, experienced in residential conveyancing, landlord & tenant and wills & probate. Looking for locum posts in the West Midlands Solicitor
21056 Legal compliance manager with over 5 years experience. Looking for a post in London Legal Support
21057 1996 qualified family solicitor with previous family panel membership. Looking for a post in West Yorkshire or Manchester. Solicitor
21058 Paralegal with experience in IP and commercial litigation. Looking for a paralegal post in Central and Greater London. Fee Earner – all
21059 October 2012 qualified solicitor with experience in insolvency, commercial property, commercial litigation and property litigation. Looking for a post in the Midlands. Solicitor
21060 Senior crime solicitor with police station accreditation and higher rights of audience. Looking for a post in the West Midland, Worcestershire or Telford. Solicitor
21062 September 2006 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation and duty status. Looking for crime post anywhere in the UK. Able to relocate. Solicitor
21063 May 2007 qualified litigation solicitor, experience in general civil litigation, claimant personal injury (RTA, EL, OL), landlord & tenant, debt recovery, consumer law and some commercial litigation. Looking for a litigation post in Hampshire. Solicitor
21064 July 2011 qualified solicitor, with experience in commercial and residential conveyancing, immigration, family and housing law. Looking for a commercial or residential conveyancing post in Middlesex. Solicitor
21066 Immigration caseworker with additional experience in crime, family and residential and commercial conveyancing. Has over 3 years legal experience. Looking for a paralegal, fee earner or caseworker post in Essex. Fee Earner – all
21070 Paralegal with around 6 years legal experience in general company commercial law, commercial and civil litigation, landord & tenant, employment law, housing litigation, contentious probate, family law and debt recovery. Looking for a post in Middlesex and North London. Fee Earner – all
21080 2008 qualified FILEX legal executive, specialising in wills and probate and with STEP membership. Looking for a wills & probate post in Sussex and surrounding counties. Legal Executive
21081 March 2012 qualified solicitor specialising in banking and finance litigation, corporate compliance and financial regulation and white collar crime. Looking for a fraud or regulatory law post in London. Solicitor
21082 Residential conveyancing paralegal with over 2 years experience. Looking for a post in Kent or South East London. Fee Earner – all
21083 2004 qualified crime solicitor with higher rights of audience. Also experienced in licensing. Looking for a crime post in Greater Manchester or Lancashire. Solicitor
21084 December 1995 qualified litigation solicitor, experienced in commercial and civil litigation, debt recovery, landlord & tenant, property litigation and contentious probate. Looking for a post in Middlesex. Solicitor
21086 Legal assistant/paralegal specialising in family and child care law and with experience in both public and privately funded cases. Looking for a post ideally in Hetfordshire but willing to relocate. Legal Support
21088 September 2011 qualified family solicitor with experience in privately funded cases. Additional experience in wills & probate, personal injury, commercial litigation and company commercial law. Looking for a family post in London or Essex. Solicitor
21089 Senior litigation solicitor experienced in personal injury, landlord & tenant, debt recovery, property litigation, general civil litigation and professional negligence. Looking for locum litigation posts in Surrey. Solicitor
21091 March 2002 qualified solicitor, experience in corporate finance, company commercial and IP law. Looking for a flexible or part time post within commuting distance of Oxted (Surrey, Sussex or Kent). Speaks German. Solicitor
21092 2005 qualified FILEX legal executive with experience in personal injury, insurance law, mental health and clinical negligence. Looking for a post in Surrey, Hertfordshire or West London. Legal Executive
21093 2001 qualified crime solicitor with duty staus, looking for a post in South East London or Kent. Duty Solicitor
21094 May 2009 qualified solicitor with experience in family law, conveyancing and wills & probate. Looking to specialise in family law and searching for a post in London. Solicitor
21095 January 2012 qualified crime and mental health solicitor with police station accreditation and member of the Mental Health Accreditation Scheme. Looking for a post in Essex. Solicitor
21097 2006 dual qualified criminal solicitor, barrister and higher court advocate with police station accreditation and duty barrister status. Looking for duty posts in the UK. Speaks Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi. Solicitor
21099 Paralegal with experience in defendant and claimant personal injury and regulatory law. Looking for a post in South Wales or Bristol. Speaks fluent Welsh Fee Earner – all
21106 Paralegal/overseas lawyer and level 2 accredited immigration caseworker. Looking for an immigration post in London or Kent. Fee Earner – all
21107 1990 qualified family solicitor with supervisor status, panel membership and experience in both public and privately funded files. Looking for permanent or long term locum family posts in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, London, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. Solicitor
21108 Paralegal with experience in clinical negligence. Comes from a nursing background. Looking for a clinical negligence post in Central London. Fee Earner – all
21110 December 2010 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation and duty status. Looking for a duty post in London. Solicitor
21111 February 2011 qualified family solicitor with LSC supervisor status and law soceity family panel membership. Looking for a family post in London. Solicitor – LSC funded
21113 Employment and litigation lawyer with extensive experience in claimant and respondant contentious employment law as well as civil litigation, debt recovery and insolvency in both Scotland and England. Looking for locum posts anywhere in the UK. Salary £25 to £30 per hour. Solicitor
21115 Civil and commercial litigation paralegal with further experience in regulatory law. Looking for locum posts in North or Central London or Hertfordshire. Fee Earner – all
21116 1999 qualified crime and wills & probate solicitor with higher rights of audience. Looking to move completely into wills & probate from crime and willing to sell her duty slots. Looking for a post in South West London, Hammersmith or Wimbledon. Solicitor
21117 Paralegal with over 3 years experience in fraud and insurance litigation. Looking for a post in London. Speaks Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Mirpuri. Fee Earner – all
21118 Paralegal with experience in crime, fraud and civil litigation. Looking for a post in Essex or East London. Fee Earner – all
21119 September 2006 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation, duty status and higher right of audience. Looking for a crime post in South Wales. Speaks Welsh. Duty Solicitor
21120 2009 qualified litigation solicitor, experienced in civil and commercial litigation, professional negligence, landlord & tenant, debt recovery and contentious probate. Looking for a litigation post in Sussex. Speaks Italian and French. Solicitor
21123 2011 qualified litigation solicitor via QLTT with experience in civil litigation, property litigation, personal injury and insolvency as well as residential conveyancing and wills & probate. Looking for a post in South Wales. Solicitor
21124 June 2008 qualified solicitor, experienced in housing, community care, public law and welfare benefits. Has LSC housing and community care supervisor status. Looking for a post in London. Solicitor
21125 2005 qualified crime and fraud solicitor with police station accreditation, duty status and higher rights of audience. Looking for a consultancy or salaried post in West London. Duty Solicitor
21126 2000 qualified family and child care law solicitor, experienced in mainly privately funded cases. Further wills & probate experience. Looking for a privately funded family/child care law locum posts in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire or Northamptonshire. Solicitor
21127 2011 qualified solicitor with experience in commercial litigation, debt recovery, professional negligence, property litigation and contentious probate. Additional experience in family law and residential and commercial conveyancing. Looking for a litigation post in Hampshire, Surrey or South West London. Solicitor
21128 Wills & probate paralegal with over 4 years experience. Looking for long term locum or permanent posts in Surrey. Fee Earner – all
21129 1995 qualified family and child care solicitor with both publically and privately funded experience. Looking for locum posts in South and West Yorkshire or North Derbyshire. Solicitor
21130 2002 qualified solicitor, experienced in crime and fraud. Has higher rights of audience for crime and is a VHCC supervisor. Looking for a crime post in Cheshire, the Wirral or Manchester. Solicitor
21131 1996 qualified family solicitor with Law Society Childrens Panel membership and a rsolution accredited specialist in private childrens law and domestic violence. Deals with both public and privatelly funded cases. Looking for a family or child care post in Kent East Sussex or London Solicitor
21132 February 2009 qualified property solicitor with experience in residential and commercial conveyancing. Looking for a post in East, Central or West London. Speaks Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. Solicitor
21133 2010 qualified solicitor (qualified in South Africa in 2008), experienced in company commercial, IT, commercial contracts, commercial litigation and all in house legal counsel work. Looking for an in house, company commercial, IT role in London. Solicitor
21134 Conveyancing fee earner with experience in residential conveyancing and some further experience in wills & probate, civil litigation and commercial property. Looking for a residential conveyancing post in Norfolk. Fee Earner – all
21136 2006 qualified FILEX legal executive, specialising in family law and with over 20 years expereince. Experience in both publicly and privately funded cases. Looking for a post in Berkshire or Surrey. Legal Executive
21140 Personal injury fee earner with around 18 mths experience in claimant RTA cases. Looking for a post in Cheltenham/Gloucestershire area. Fee Earner – all
21142 November 2006 qualified freelance duty solicitor and police station accredited representative. Looking for a freelance duty post in Manchester or the North West. Solicitor
21143 Litigation fee earner, experienced in claimant personal injury handling RTA case files. Has over 10 years experience. Looking for a claimant PI post in Kent. Fee Earner – all
21145 October 2010 qualified FILEX legal executive, specialising in wills & probate law and looking for a post in South Wales or Bristol. Has over 10 years experience. Legal Executive
21146 Experienced litigation paralegal dealing with commercial litigation, debt recovery and personal injury (RTA). Looking for a post in London. Fee Earner – all
21149 Residential conveyancing fee earner with over 20 years experience. Looking for a post in Surrey. Fee Earner – all
21150 Paralegal with experience in banking litigation and corporate finance. Looking for a post in London Fee Earner – all
21151 Paralegal with experience in landlord & tenant, welfare benefits, immigration, civil litigation and personal injury. Looking for a paralegal post in London. Speaks Greek, Italian and Spanish. Fee Earner – all
21153 1996 qualified senior litigation solicitor, experienced in dispute resolution, civil litigation, property litigation, professional negligence, contentious probate and employment law. Looking for a permanent post in Central London and Hertfordshire. Solicitor
21154 Paralegal/legal administrator with over 3 years experience in criminal prosecution cases and further experience in civil litigation, housing law, consumer credit and insolvency. Looking for a paralegal post in London, West Sussex, Surrey or Hampshire. Fee Earner – all
21155 Senior qualified solicitor, experienced in family and child care law with law society panel membership and previously LSC supervisor status. Looking for a practice merger, locum family/child care work or a practice manager post. Solicitor
21156 1985 qualified solicitor, experienced in company commercial law and general in house legal counsel work, commercial contracts, consumer credit, M&A and IP. Looking for a post in South Wales. Solicitor
21158 Legal administrator with over 4 years experienced dealing with leasehold administration and commercial property. Looking for a commercial property paralegal post in London or Hertfordshire. Legal Support
21160 1993 qualified crime solicitor with duty status and higher rights of audience. Looking for a full time post in Hampshire or West Sussex. Solicitor
21161 Litigation fee earner with over 4 years experience in both claimant and defendent work including personal injury, industrial disease and clinical negligence. Has additional experience in commercial litigation, contentious and non-contentious employment law and general company commercial law. Looking for a litigation post in London or the South East. Speaks Polish and French. Fee Earner – all

Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

Legal Recruitment News is produced by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – you can view all versions of the e-newsletter at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment was established in 2000 and donates 10% of profits to charity, hence the name.

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

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

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

Head Office:
Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
Nant
Village Road
Llanferres
CH7 5LU
Monthly News

Legal Recruitment News September 2012

Legal Recruitment Newsletter Sept 5th

Legal Job Market Report September 5th
Good morning and welcome to the September edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group. Our websites include Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, Crime Solicitor Recruitment, Interim Lawyers, Legal-Recruitment and many more.

The market report for August is brief. We have been extremely busy on the locum front, both for member firms and clients using our Interim Lawyer service. The Olympics hit the permanent trade, along with annual leave, poor weather and adverse news reports (yet again!). Redundancies are still occurring but not in any great number and tend to affect mid level solicitors earning around £40-50k in high street practices.

At the same time though, we have had a string of locum conveyancing posts in, some from firms with fee earners taking annual leave or needing time off, but more interestingly from firms who are extremely busy on the property side of things. As most of the economy seems to feed off the housing market, this is surely a positive sign for things to come?

Our £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 60+ firms are already estimated to be around £225,000. Over 60% of members undertake LSC funded work in some capacity and 33% have less than 2 partners. The service is restricted to firms with less than 100 staff.

In August 2012 we had 68 new solicitors register with us, together with just short of 900 paralegals and non-qualified staff (in response to specific law firm member vacancies). We restrict our candidate database to ensure we only register qualified or suitably experienced staff.

Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

Candidate Update 5th September

There are over 9,250 lawyers registered with us looking for permanent work and 750 locums available for assignments in all areas of the country. Register vacancies on our website, email cv@ten-percent.co.uk or call 0207 127 4343.

Selection of Candidates registered in the past 2 weeks:

21000 Paralegal with experience in immigration, employment law, residential conveyancing and civil litigation. Looking for a post in London or Greater London.
21001 2002 qualified immigration solicitor, looking for immigration posts in ideally South East London. Speaks French, Portuguese and Spanish.
21002 September 2012 qualified solicitor with experience in employment law, dispute resolution, corporate and commercial law, wills & probate, tax and trusts. Looking for an employment law post in London or the South East.
21003 1974 qualified conveyancing solicitor, experienced in both commercial and residential property as well as company commercial law. Looking for locum posts in Sussex or London.
21004 February 2006 qualified crime solicitor with police station accreditation, prison law supervisor status and duty status. Looking for a crime or prison law post in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire or Bedfordshire.
21009 April 2008 qualified criminal solicitor, experience in fraud and prison law. Looking for a crime, fraud or prison law post in West Yorkshire. Fluent in Urdu, Mirpuri and Punjabi.
21011 2004 qualified solicitor with experience in crime, civil litigation and family law. Looking for a post in London
21012 September 2012 qualified solicitor with experience in child care law, family law, community care, education and public law. Looking for a post in London.
21015 1993 qualified solicitor, experienced in crime and family law. Looking for family law post in London. Speaks Turkish.
21017 2000 qualified employment solicitor with experience in contentious and non-contentious law. Looking for a post in Kent or Central London.
21020 1996 qualified commercial litigation solicitor, experienced in commercial litigation, commercial property and commercial property litigation, media and entertainment law, maritime and employment law. Looking for a permanent or consultant post in London. Speaks French
21022 Legal executive with over 20 years residential conveyancing experience. Looking for a post in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Leicestershire or North/Central London.
21023 July 2011 qualified solicitor, experienced as an in-house legal counsel in company commercial and corporate finance, IP, regulatory law and commercial litigation. Looking for a post in London. Speaks French.
21024 June 2008 qualified family solicitor with LSC supervisor status and experience in both family and child care law. Looking for a post in London or Kent.
21025 May 2006 qualified property solicitor, experienced in commercial property and landlord & tenant (non-contentious). Looking for a post in the North West.
21026 February 2001 qualified crime solicitor with duty and supervisory status. Looking for duty posts in Central or South East London.
21028 Experienced community care and housing law caseworker with LSC supervisor status. Looking for a post in South East London.
21034 Paralegal experienced in working in house dealing with compliance issues and commercial property for a renewable energy firm. Also has experience in immigration, residential property, employment and housing law. Looking for paralegal posts in London.
21036 1992 qualified family law solicitor with experience in private and publically funded cases, panel membership and supervisor status. Looking for posts in West London.
21040 1981 qualified solicitor, experienced in in house company commercial law, compliance, commercial litigation, corporate fraud and professional negligence. Looking for a post in East Anglia but willing to travel for right post.
21042 Senior employment solicitor with over 25 years experience in contentious and non-contentious employment law. Looking for locum posts in the UK.
21044 March 2007 qualified property solicitor with experience in residential conveyancing and landlord & tenant. Looking for a conveyancing post in London.
21049 Costs draftsperson with over 20 years experience. Looking for a post in South Wales.

Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

Top 10 Tips for Locums and Law Firms
Interim Lawyers and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment’s Guide to Surviving as a Locum. 10 Top Tips for Lawyers and Law Firms.

Here are our ten top tips for surviving work as a locum – tips for locums and for law firms.

Locums – make sure you turn up.
Always useful. If you don’t turn up, you may be surprised when your locum agency decides not to offer you any more assignments and in fact may even choose to ignore you….

Locums – when you turn up, make sure you are smartly dressed.
Turning up to work wearing a pair of jeans and trainers can be beneficial if you are planning to work for Google, but in a law firms these items of clothing are only seen on partners at weekends, and even then only when they are mucking out their horses or wandering around Legoland.

Locums – be nice to the secretaries and support staff (TOP TIP)
This is our top tip. Think about it. When you leave the firm after completing your assignment and your legal locum agency requests a reference, who will the partners ask for feedback? The solicitor or fee earner you have covered for or their secretary who you have worked with? Most secretaries are very nice to locums and appreciate the difficult position they are in – parachuting into a firm and trying to assimilate to local working practices etc.. etc..

Others will hate you more than they hate their own bosses. Not only do they fail to get a relaxing two week break whilst their normal boss is on holiday, they get pestered by you asking where the stationery cupboard is. There is nothing to do but remain professional, polite and calm, even if someone is fairly hostile back again. Professional locums who work in firms all year round seem to handle this kind of atmosphere extremely well and almost let it wash over them. After all, you won’t be there in two weeks!

Do not view the secretaries as being inferior. Big mistake. They are not – the secretaries hold the key to your future work as a locum. See above re references…

Locums – try to work hard.
May seem obvious but some locums appear to believe they are there simply to fight any fires that crop up. Most firms do not want a locum to do this. They want the locum to work as if the normal fee earner was there. The normal fee earner will not sit back in his/her chair and wait for work to cross their desk. They will be proactive and ask about if there is anything they can do.

Locums – do not fail to complete the assignment.
Similarly applies to locums who accept assignments they are not experienced enough to handle. Rarely happens, but just occasionally it does. See ‘don’t fail to turn up’ above for your future work prospects.

Law Firms – do not expect miracles.
I get the impression that some partners at law firms put the locum lawyer on a target at the end of the range and attempt to shoot them down. Locums generally are either semi-retired lawyers looking to generate a bit of income, professionals who spend 9 out of 12 months in the year locuming and 3 months skiing or sunbathing (ie lifestyle choice), or unemployed lawyers who cannot find permanent work. You are not going to get the perfect lawyer to cover your vacancy – ie you will not find a mirror image of yourself!

Law Firms – pay the locum.
It always helps if you pay the locum on time, not 6 weeks later. Can be a trifle annoying for the locum to have to break into their overdraft!

Law Firms – avoid cancelling the assignment with 24 hours notice and then reposting a few days later.
This can lead to a lack of any applicants. Most locums are registered with various agencies and not just one. You will get a bad reputation and potentially struggle to recruit in future.

Locums – don’t use the opportunity to sell your services to other law firms.
It is generally considered poor practice bordering on a breach of various data laws to advertise your wares as a locum to lots of different law firms on the other side whilst working on an assignment.

Locums – be nice to estate agents and other introducers.
Your client law firm is very dependent on estate agents and other referrers of work. If you do not remain on good terms with these people, however horrible they are, they will not refer work through to your client law firm. This will almost definitely result in a poor reference, which will almost inevitably result in you not getting a lot of work in….

Generally, be nice to everyone, and you will probably find they are nice to you. Similarly work hard and don’t ask obvious questions…

Jonathan Fagan, Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and InterimLawyers.co.uk
Register Vacancies – Locum or Permanent
£60 Per Month Recruitment Scheme

Duty Solicitor Season Starts – are there any left?

Yes, is the very quick answer, despite the LSC’s best efforts! 14th November 2012 is the next deadline and the mad rush to recruit duty solicitors will start very shortly.

Recruitment appears to fall into the following categories for most firms:

Firms looking to become ‘the daddy’.
Firms looking to expand without risk (freelancers)
Firms looking for replacements or in house (salaried)
Firms looking for new signings to bolster their squad (football managers)
Firms in categories 1 and 4 tend not to be particularly profitable business for us – mainly because most candidates respond with a ‘no thank you’ whenever we send the vacancies through, but we are always happy to assist with options 2 and 3!

We were horrified to hear of one firm who fall into category 1 above – they recruited lots of new duty solicitors before the last deadline…..and made them all redundant again about 4 weeks later!!

Needless to say, the LSC were not exactly very helpful to these duty solicitors when it came to transferring slots to other firms…

To register a duty solicitor or HCA vacancy, please visit our website – www.ten-percent.co.uk

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews

Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/

Low Cost Digital Dictation Outsourcing
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We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.

We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit http://www.tptranscription.co.uk call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.

Legal Recruitment News is produced by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – you can view all versions of the e-newsletter at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment was established in 2000 and donates 10% of profits to charity, hence the name.

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

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

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

Head Office:
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Nant
Village Road
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Monthly News

Sept 26th New Candidate List Update

Locum and Permanent Solicitor Update – Sept 26th

Register vacancies on the sites above, email cv@ten-percent.co.uk or call 0207 127 4343.
National coverage.

Permanent – Regions
26090814 Crime Solicitor, Duty. Monthly retainer £1500 sought in London or North East.
25091908 Clinical Negligence and PI Solicitor. Defendant. 5 years+ PQE. Manchester and nationwide.
25091409 Commercial Litigation Solicitor. Associate/Partner level. Full range of experience. Hertfordshire and London. Salaried roles.
23091355 Litigation Solicitor 3 years PQE. Lives near Bournemouth and New Forest.
21091441 Costs Draftsman and Solicitor looking in London. 3 years experience.
21091318 Costs Draftsman and Billing Clerk. London or Manchester. 12 years experience.
20091856 Wills & Probate ILEX. 10 years experience. Cardiff and Newport area. £25k.
19092143 Duty Solicitor with HCA looking for salaried role in South Wales.
19092035 5 years PQE In House lawyer looking for role as share scheme administrator and company secretary.
19091036 Family Executive with property experience. Berkshire and Middlesex.
18091838 Conveyancing Executive – 3 years experience. Norwich and surrounds.
19090949 Family Solicitor – 10 years PQE. Partner in practice. Children Panel (adult and child), Resolution Accredited for Children Law and Domestic Violence, qualified collaborative lawyer. Looking in and around Kent, East Sussex and London. Keen on more private client work.
17091356 Duty Solicitor. VHCC Supervisor. Looking for more work in VHCC matters. North West or home based consultancy considered.
06091320 Corporate Commercial, IP. 10 years PQE. P/T 4 days. City background. SURREY, SUSSEX KENT. Salaried role.
17091240 Personal Injury (Claimant) Executive. Over 10 years experience. KENT area.
15092108 Commercial Litigation Solicitor. Looking in and around SOUTHAMPTON. 1 year PQE.
12091620 Duty Solicitor and HCA. LONDON, MIDDX, HERTS. £45k salary negotiable.
12092041 Duty Solicitor and HCA – WORCS, WEST MIDS, DEVON. £40k salary levels. No freelance.
07091546 Conveyancing FILEX and legal cashier. EXETER, TORBAY.
07091046 Mental Health Solicitor – MHRT accredited, with crime also. ESSEX LONDON.
05091625 Duty Solicitor with HCA. Looking in SUNDERLAND and NEWCASTLE.
04090856 Costs Draftsman and Litigator. WEST MIDLANDS.

Permanent – London
25091409 Commercial Litigation Solicitor. Associate/Partner level. Full range of experience. Hertfordshire and London. Salaried roles.
24091438 Family Panel member. North, East and Central London. Salaried roles.
19092014 Duty Solicitor looking to lodge slots with central London firm.
19091828 Professional Negligence Solicitor. 3 years PQE. London.
19091027 Commercial IT Solicitor. In House to date, 4 years experience. Home Counties & London.
18091715 ILFM Legal Cashier – 5 years experience in medium, large and smaller sized practices. Available immediately. Hammersmith based.
1109942 Wills & Probate Solicitor – looking for a part time role. Has duty crime slots to sell on monthly retainer.
11091007 LSC Family Supervisor – looking for a role – part time or full time.
11090031 Duty Solicitor – 2 years PQE. Salaried £30-34k.
10091815 Clinical Negligence Paralegal and Nurse. 1 year experience.
10091759 Duty Solicitor and HCA. 5 years PQE. Salaried or consultancy.
08090017 Duty Barrister with HCA. NQ. £30k salary.
07091617 Duty Solicitor looking to sell duty slots for January 2013.
06092028 Duty Solicitor looking to sign duty slots to firm for Jan 2013.
12091620 Duty Solicitor and HCA. London, Middlesex, Herts. £45k salary negotiable.

Locums (you can search our locums online at www.interimlawyers.co.uk)
25092225 Employment Locum. South East and London. £30 per hour.
20092017 Wills & Probate Locum. Northern Home Counties. STEP member.
18091550 Property Locum. National coverage. £22 per hour. 7 years PQE.
18091005 Property and Probate Locum. Home Counties & London. £25 per hour.
18091034 Family Panel member locum. Looking for long term assignments. National.
18091214 Commercial Property and Corporate Commercial Locum. National coverage.
17091321 Conveyancing Locum. Over 5 years experience. West and South Yorkshire. £16 per hour.
17091136 Family, Wills & Probate and Contentious Probate Locum. Bucks, Beds and Northants. £20 per hour.
17090831 Litigation Locum – mediator and senior solicitor. Agricultural, commercial and complex personal injury covered.
10091726 Commercial & Residential Property Locum, Beds, Herts, London. £20 per hour.
07081600 STEP Wills & Probate Locum. Yorkshire. £30 per hour. 3 days pw.
07081555 Commercial Property & Construction Locum. North West. £30-35 per hour.
07081450 Residential & Commercial Conveyancing Locum. North West. £25-30 per hour.
07081635 Property and Private Client Locum. Anywhere. £30 per hour.
06081621 Employment Locum. London and Kent. £30 per hour.

Click here to register locum vacancies – 600 available, email cv@ten-percent.co.uk or call 0207 127 4343.

Members of the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment £60 monthly scheme get their locum and permanent recruitment at no cost as well as full access to the Duty Solicitor Rota Slot Shop and Crime Solicitor Recruitment. Over 65 law firms have signed up since August 2011 and saved considerable sums in advertising and recruitment costs.

We also supply our standard recruitment services via www.JonathanFagan.co.uk – suitable for larger practices ineligible to join Ten-Percent Legal and law firms/in house legal departments who do not want to commit to the £60 monthly payment scheme. No fee if no placement.

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

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

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

Head Office:
Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
Nant
Village Road
Llanferres
CH7 5LU

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