For years we have very patiently advised clients contacting us to request solicitors with a following, ie the ability to bring their own work and files to a new firm, that there is the small matter of a Restrictive Covenant ever present in most contracts of employment. As anyone knows, you cannot simply walk out…
Advice This question is one of the easiest to give a response to and does not appear to carry any risks at all with the response. Quite obviously you do need to indicate that you are willing to travel as if this was not part of the job then presumably the employer would not have…
Advice This question is often asked where an interviewer has identified that you have a specific weak point on your CV, for example you have a low grade at A Level or have a Third Class Degree. The question is designed to pick you up on whether you respond negatively or positively to this question.…
Legal Recruitment – still an uncertain market Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the extreme political uncertainty. In May 2019 we saw a 42% decrease in the number of new permanent…
This is one of the number one questions asked by clients who instruct Ten Percent Legal to seek a buyer for their law firm or accountancy practice. If I retire what can I get for my business and by implication how long have I got before I run out of money once I have retired?…
Advice A fairly straight forward question in most circumstances as it is easy to give a fairly noncommittal response. Very often the question is asked of people who live in different areas to the company they have applied to or alternatively live a fair distance from the company but still potentially commutable in the short…
Question 21 – Describe a situation when you had to communicate a message to someone knowing that you were right and they were wrong and reluctant to accept your point of view. Advice This type of competency based interview question is more difficult because you need to think of a situation when there has been…
Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the extreme political uncertainty. In April we saw a 50% decrease in the number of new permanent vacancies compared with the previous year. How was…
If you are a South African qualified lawyer who has decided to come to the UK to experience our high quality weather, our stable political system and our well functioning courts, congratulations! You may have spent 20 years practising in a good quality South African law firm undertaking high quality legal cases and you may…
We have written about this before some years ago, but it seems that there are solicitors firms out there who are trying to rip off duty solicitors and this is advice on how not to get scammed by crime firms recruiting duty solicitors. It seems that there are a couple of firms in England who…
Advice This is the classic competency based interview question that gets asked time and time again in some form or another. It does not matter who you are and what your circumstances, there must have always been a time when you were a member of a team and you are able to give this information…
Advice This is another relatively easy question because if you have prepared your approach to interview effectively you should have a number of examples that will cover this question already stored in your mind. It is a good time to get over the point that you are a team player who contributes effectively to a…
Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the extreme political uncertainty. In April 2019 we saw an decrease of 51% in new permanent vacancies compared with April 2018. We also saw a…
There are a lot of different terms used for the work of a childcare solicitor. You will often see them described as solicitors with care proceedings experience, solicitors who do publicly funded family law work (just about the only thing left now that is publicly funded is care work), social services family lawyer, local authority…
You are a solicitor who has been in your job for at least 3 years. You completed your training contract and then found a permanent job to move into. You may have moved once or twice since then and perhaps if you are on the high street you are probably earning between £30,000 and £45,000;…
Advice This is a relatively easy question, mainly because the question is so short and gives you plenty of scope in terms of material and circumstances. It is likely that just about everybody can answer this question, whether through an example from work, an example from a sporting activity or personal interest or from their…
Advice This is an answer that most people can probably conjure up from somewhere as most of the workforce will have dealt with difficult customers. Everyone has had to deal with some sort of confrontation in their lives, whether in a sporting, academic or work environment. Try to think of a work-based example as these…
Summary – An Uncertain Market Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the extreme political uncertainty. In February we saw a 50% increase in the number of new vacancies from 2018. Did…
When you locum it is sometimes the case that the assignment you thought you were working on changes and the client shifts the goalposts quite dramatically. This doesn’t happen that often, particularly where a client has spoken directly to the locum to discuss the role beforehand, but it does happen. Recently we have come across…
Every week we get lots of permanent vacancies and locum assignments from solicitors’ firms and in house legal departments. They’re often looking for a specific type of solicitor, with sufficient experience to do a specific job. Lets take a recent example. A firm in the South East of England are looking as follows: Permanent, Full…
Advice This is a STAR competency based interview question. STAR stands for “Situation, Task, Action and Result” and this particular question is a strong example of where using this technique is so effective. Firstly it is probably almost impossible to answer this type of question without having thought about it before attending the interview. It…
Advice This type of question is competency based and involves using the STAR technique (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Manna from heaven for any Six Sigma practitioners or business change managers. For everyone else it is a very difficult question indeed as the majority of professionals do not spend their working lives dealing with conflict in…
Summary – An Uncertain Market Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the political uncertainty. In February 2019 we saw an increase of 52% in new permanent vacancies compared with February 2018.…
Here are the Ten Percent Legal Recruitment top tips for becoming a lawyer in the UK. Firstly, bear in mind that there are quite a few different types of lawyer working in the UK, including barristers, solicitors, “non-qualified fee earners”, legal executive, licensed conveyancer, will writers and paralegals. In case it assists, a “non-qualified fee…
Interview Question 14 – Describe a time where you had to drive a team through change. How did you achieve this? Advice A difficult question if you have not had a very long managerial career or this question is asked at a time in your career when you have not really had to deal with…
Demonstrate an understanding of underlying organisational issues. Advice A very difficult question if you are not used to dealing with managerial speak! This is a question involving the STAR technique of firstly identifying the situation, secondly identifying a specific task, thirdly identifying your action as part of that task and finally confirming what the result…
Summary Each month we run a comparison between the last calendar month and the same time period in 2018 to see if there has been any noticeable difference in view of the political uncertainty. In January 2019 we saw a decrease of 52% in new permanent vacancies compared with January 2018. The number of new…
The first thing to say in relation to interviews for in-house roles is to expect the unexpected, because every company is governed by its HR department. If you have never worked in house before you will find that some HR departments seem to govern just about everything and come up with the most complex recruitment…
“I don’t want to do that type of law, it’s boring” Unnamed Mental Health Law Paralegal, December 2018. This topic of conversation could keep law students and lawyers going for years to come, but today we had an email from a paralegal who was enquiring about a job. He asked what specific area of law…
Advice This question is probably more relevant to some professions and posts than others but in essence the answer has to be the same. You need to have at least 3 different examples of different types of audience you have had to speak to. For example a useful selection would be probably the workforce, the…