19.02.08 Shortfall of 3 year PQE solicitors
One of the reasons that law firms struggle to recruit when they are looking for lawyers of more than 3 years PQE is because when lawyers spend 3 years or more in private practice, they have either:
a) got set on a career path to partnership with their current firm.
b) seen the light and finally realised that the law is not for them, and gone onto pastures new outside the profession, or
c) become or always have been not very good and unemployable.
If you fall outside of these three areas, ie you don't like your firm or employer, or want to make a move yourself to pastures new within the profession, you are probably in the minority. It would be very interesting to do a research study to see what percentage of solicitors drop out of the profession at this stage and how many stay on.
If our anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, I reckon that the percentage will be something around 50/50. Families, relocation, level of prospects would be the top three reasons for leaving.
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