03.12.07 Winter Newsletter for Candidates
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment Winter Newsletter 2007 London: 2nd Floor, Tel: 0207 127 4343 Head Office: Nant, Village Road, Llanferres CH7 5LU Tel: 01352 810 850
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Welcome to the Winter 2007 of our Newsletter. It has been a very busy year on the recruitment front, and a year also filled with seismic changes in the legal job market, particularly in the Legal Services Commission sector. Contents: 1. Legal Recruitment Market Report - updated 26/11/07 2. 5 recent reasons for Solicitors joining new firms 3. Online Legal Blog (www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com) 4. Vacancy Database Online and the 10 most recent posts registered (not yet on the database) 5. 2007 Charitable Donations – LawCare and the Ten-Percent Foundation 6. Your registration with Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - what do we do? 1. Market Report (full report - http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/weeklyreport.htm) There has been a slowdown in the number of posts registered by firms in recent weeks. Over 150 new solicitors registered in October & November (excluding QLTT, paralegals and other applicants), and over 150 vacancies. We have seen a rather large increase in the number of firms wanting wills & probate solicitors, conveyancing lawyers, locums and a slow rise in crime solicitor requests even. Standard for the time of year though - nothing extraordinary in terms of numbers.For permanent placements the fields of law are shifting, but there are posts there in all areas for all shapes and sizes of firms. Still no sign of the conveyancing job market crash that has been predicted with the HIPs and the Northern Rock collapse. LSC work slightly picked up thanks to announcement that an announcement will be made in January 2008. Plenty of firm closures and mergers though as a result of the LSCs complete and utter disregard for making rational decisions! The pre-Christmas run up is always quiet - and pretty much everyone decides to go Christmas shopping instead of staring at legal recruitment pages. We wait with anticipation every year for all those solicitors who get to New Years Eve, think through the previous year's events, and make a brave but determined decision the following day to up sticks and move onto pastures new. 2007 has been a very busy year for most recruitment companies, as the market has expanded in most sectors, and contracted somewhat in the LSC funded work areas. For permanent placements the fields of law are shifting. Crime remains awful, although picking up slightly. Conveyancing is good - lots of work on both the temporary and permanent side coming in - although again London central not moving very fast. Other areas appear to have a bit of a shortage. Employment has picked up in the regions, but personal injury and litigation remain at a low level. TP Locums, our expanding temporary department, http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/locum.htm- is finding increased numbers of assignments out there as firms continue to struggle to attract new blood into firms, and find it easier to take locums for contract work in the interim. 2. 5 reasons given in November for moving firms (further articles can be found at http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/legal-recruitment.htm) Our anecdotal evidence for staff remaining with firms or moving on is usually fairly simple, and not necessarily financially motivated. In a nutshell, if you have contented and motivated staff, they tend to stop with their firm for long periods of time, whereas if you don’t, they tend to move on. So what does this mean in practice? Our recent 10 placements have had the following reasons for upping sticks: 1. No prospects of career advancement or possible partnership – this can be a real issue for someone 4-7 years PQE. 2. Distance commuting to their place of work – it may be that this person only took their post as a stopgap.. 3. Opportunityto do a different angle on their legal field – you can’t really do anything about this! 4. Salary levels increased rather dramatically on a move – existing firm should have been aware of this before the solicitor considered options. 5. Personality issues with one of the partners – basically the candidate didn’t like the way they were being treated. Apart from the move to a different approach to the law (ie private practice to government), the others can be avoided. Firms sometimes forget that that the cost of recruiting a new solicitor whether through legal recruitment consultants or the LSG pages is at least £4,000 in time spent interviewing, training and the start up period… Certainly makes interesting reading. I am sure that often every employer takes their employees for granted, and this can have an effect on their attitude towards them over time. It is important to ensure that you have an employer who connects with you on a personal level, and ensure that they are fully aware of what your end game is - ie are you looking to relocate home to your family, are you wanting to invest in the practice, or are you just looking for a post that will continue for many years at the same level due to other commitments (eg children).. 3. Legal Recruitment Blog We regularly add articles to our online blog about legal recruitment techniques and guidance on interviews, firms, CV preparation, recruitment processes, salary levels, increasing fees, marketing, advertising etc.. You can view the blog by clicking here. 4. Vacancy Database Online The 10 most recent posts registered (not yet on our database) are as follows: Employment - Leamington Spa, Wills & Probate - Chesterfield, Crime - Oxford, Employment - Coventry (Locum and Permanent), Conveyancing - Hertfordshire, Wills & Probate - Central London, Crime - Central London, Family & Immigration - London Bridge. You can search our database for permanent posts by clicking here 5. Charitable Donations Having just had a copy of the Law Care News through the post for Autumn 2007, I thought it may be topical to mention this aspect of the Ten-Percent Foundation's ongoing support. The Foundation pays for one copy of the newsletter to be sent out every year with the associated printing, postage and stationery costs. The newsletter goes out to a wide spectrum of lawyers across the board - both users and supporters. There is an article this month about Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is basically a form of depression based on the gloomy weather and dark nights. For full details please visit the Law Care website at http://www.lawcare.org.uk/. A very worthwhile charity - there are so many pressures on solicitors in practice and rarely any support available in firms. Further details of the work of the Ten-Percent Foundation can be found here We have also donated to a solicitor's charity for the education of orphans in Uganda, and hope to continue our support for that charity for some years to come as it is the size we like to get involved with. 6. What does your registration mean with Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment? I thought it might be worth just including a bit of information as to how we work, and also how you can help us be proactive on your behalf if that is required (a number of our candidates just like to be informed of vacancies and receive a newsletter from us every now and then). If you have registered with us with the intention of finding a job at all costs, and want to ensure maximum effect, you need to make sure we are aware of this. What often happens with new registrations is that we get a set geographic area and type of law, work to this, and if nothing happens we put a candidate onto our update system for future jobs. However, if for example you were prepared to consider relocating for work, it is important to let us know, as you will be registered with us for one specific area and not others. The same applies for locum work. If you decide to look at locum posts as well as permanent, if we are not aware of this you will not get updates from us relevant to this. Some candidates have remained with us for many years, whether just through being informed of new posts arising, or through changing jobs every now and then. The whole ethos about the company is not to place a candidate and then end our relationship there and then, but to ensure that you come back to us in future. We always delete email addresses after a placement however, so until a solicitor contacts us again to re-register, they will not get any correspondence from our company in the meantime. I look forward to hearing from you if we can assist. Over 4,500 solicitors and legal executives have registered with us since April 2000, and we offer our services to all UK firms, large or small. Regards Jonathan Fagan LLM Cert RP MREC Solicitor (non-practising) |
Author: Jonathan Fagan MREC Cert RP LLM Solicitor (non-practising) - Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment (www.ten-percent.co.uk) - save time, skip the legal job boards and register with us! www.ten-percent.co.uk/register.htm Jonathan Fagan is a specialist legal recruitment consultant, author of the Complete Guide to Writing a Legal CV and the Guide to Interviews for Lawyers. He has recruited for law firms across the UK and overseas in all shapes and sizes. If you have any questions that we have not covered above, please email us at cv@tenpercent.co.uk