Legal Job Market Report

Summary

January 2018 has been the busiest January on record for us since we started 18 years ago. All sectors have been busy – locum and permanent, qualified and non-qualified. There has been a surge in demand for solicitors in all areas of law, although we have heard from partners at London firms reporting that conveyancing lawyers are being peddled by the bucket load by a number of other recruitment agencies after large scale redundancies at a couple of volume operators in the capital. We haven’t heard this ourselves and I am not aware of any firms reducing headcount.

Law Firms Wanted and For Sale
17011435 Conveyancing Solicitors Firm based in Greater London looking to explore options for sale.
15111344 Well established high street law firm with 2 offices in Middlesex looking to take on a partner, sell or merge due to retirement of partners. The practice undertakes family work, conveyancing and probate. 40% family and children work, 20% conveyancing and 35% probate and estate management. Longstanding leasehold premises available.
Ref 25101117 Birmingham law firm – immigration and family law looking for a merger, particularly with a larger practice if possible.
Ref 06111648 Reading firm looking to buy or merge with other practices. Happy to look at options. Smaller sized high street firms likely.
Ref 21090941 Leicester law firm looking for a sale. 5 staff, £150k turnover. Litigation firm, well established.
Ref 20092238 West Midlands law firm looking to buy up small practices and sole practitioners in the area. Funds in place to expand.
Ref 08061231 Buyer looking to purchase will banks in London and Home Counties.
Ref 04071347 Buyer looking to purchase a solicitors firm with a crime or family legal aid contract in Beds, Bucks, Northants or Herts.

Hourly Rates of Pay for Locum Solicitors and Legal Executives

Rates are now at their lowest levels, but will start to go up as we get into Spring. Bookings for the summer are at summer rates. Up to £35 per hour in Conveyancing is still the norm for most locums, although the current competitive level for longer term assignments are £30.

Click here for full rates for January 2018.

Discrimination in Recruitment – is it rife?

I write this article from a personal perspective and it is an expression of opinion only. I often get asked by candidates if they think firms discriminate against them and this article is about our experiences of behaviour that is both overt and implied.

Discrimination against Law Firms
Law firms often think that as recruiters we have a special list of candidates that we only introduce to our favourite clients and not any old Tom, Dick and Harry. This is incorrect. Such a list does not exist. What does exist is a database showing us exactly what type of firm a candidate is looking to work for, in which location and at what price. Often smaller law firms confuse this for some kind of discrimination against them on the grounds of size.

Permanent Vacancies in last 14 days

To search our current vacancies please visit https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/vacancies/. Vacancies in the last 14 days are as follows:

VAC-17639 Litigation Solicitor A medium to large sized West Midlands firm are looking for a litigation lawyer to manage a varied caseload of commercial and civil litigation work at their Tamworth office.

VAC-17638 Legal Accounts Manager A medium to large sized West Midlands firm are looking for a legal accounts manager to work at their Tamworth office.

VAC-17637 Dispute Resolution Ombudsman A government approved Ombudsman is looking for a law graduate to work as an Ombudsman at their busy offices in Stevenage. The role will be full-time, permanent and salary will be around the 25k mark.

VAC-17633 Duty Solicitor An established law firm with offices across the Kent region have an opening for a full time, salaried, permanent crime solicitor with duty status.

VAC-17623 Accredited Police Station Rep Firm in South East London looking for a crime paralegal with police station accreditation to work at their Greenwich office. Post is full-time, permanent and salary will be negotiable depending on experience.

VAC-17622 Family Panel Member Firm in South East London looking for a family lawyer with law society family panel membership to work at their Greenwich office.

VAC-17621 Duty Solicitors Firm in South East London looking for duty solicitors to cover police stations, magistrates courts and crown court hearings on a case by case basis.

VAC-17620 Child Care Solicitor A law firm based in Basildon, Essex have an opening in their Children Department for a specialist Child Care Law Solicitor.

VAC-17619 Part-time Family Lawyer A well established Cheshire firm are looking for a family lawyer to work part-time at their Altrincham office.

VAC-17618 Senior Family Lawyer A very well established and well respected Hertfordshire law firm are looking for a senior family lawyer to work at their St Albans office.

VAC-17617 Flight Delay Claim Paralegal Specialist litigation firm in Manchester are looking for a paralegal to work at their office located within a 10 minute walk of Piccadilly Station.

VAC-17616 Actions Against the Police & Public Authorities Supervisor A well established firm with offices across North Yorkshire are looking for an Actions Against the Police and Public Authorities Supervisor.

VAC-17614 Duty Solicitor North Wales firm looking for a duty solicitor to work on a salaried basis.

VAC-17611 Commercial Property Lawyer A well established East Sussex firm are looking for a junior commercial property lawyer to work at their Shoreham office.

VAC-17610 Senior Conveyancer A well established East Sussex firm are looking for a senior conveyancing lawyer to manage a residential caseload at their Shoreham office.

VAC-17608 Head of Conveyancing A well established Surrey firm are looking for a conveyancer to work as team leader of the conveyancing department at their busy Kingston office.

VAC-17607 Conveyancing and Wills & Probate A well established firm with offices across Essex are looking for a solicitor to work at their Maldon office on the coastal side of Chelmsford.

VAC-17605 Property Solicitor A small but very well established Bedfordshire firm are looking for a conveyancing lawyer to work at their Leighton Buzzard office.

VAC-17604 Child Care Solicitor A medium sized Buckinghamshire firm are looking for a family/child care lawyer to work at their Milton Keynes office. Home working possible.

VAC-17603 Commercial Property Lawyer A medium sized firm are looking for a commercial property lawyer to manage a caseload at their Bedford office.

VAC-17601 Commercial Property Solicitor West Midlands Legal 500 firm are looking for a commercial property solicitor to work at their busy Coventry office.

VAC-17600 Residential Conveyancer West Midlands Legal 500 firm are looking for a conveyancer to work at their busy Coventry office.

VAC-17599 Social Care Solicitor A Sunderland based firm specialising in Care of the Elderly are looking to take on a solicitor on a part time basis to work initially 2 days per week.

VAC-17594 Wills and Probate Paralegal Wills and Probate Paralegal with possibility of a training contract in future (not confirmed..). Salary levels £18,000-£20,000 per annum depending on experience

Ask a Recruitment Consultant – questions this month on our chat bot

Questions sent to us via our Chat service online, together with general career questions emailed across. We do our best to answer all queries, sometimes after a fairly lengthy delay if we are busy!

Q: I am a paralegal and would like to set up a business. How do I go about doing this?

A: A timely question as a few days ago we received a press release from the National Association of Licenced Paralegals all about setting up a paralegal practice – there is an article all about this from Amanda Hamilton, CEO of NALP. I have abbreviated it and included the advice below.

HOW TO SET UP IN BUSINESS AS A PARALEGAL PRACTITIONER
By Amanda Hamilton, NALP
With solicitors and barristers charging upwards of £150 per hour, many people are now turning to Paralegals who can do much the same as a solicitor or barrister (with e few exceptions) but for a fraction of the cost. Paralegals are currently a growth area with lots of demand for their services. Now is a good time to set up your own Paralegal practice – but before you do so, here are some dos and don’ts.

Paralegals are not statutorily regulated and therefore you may come up against people who tell you that anyone can call him/herself a ‘Paralegal’ and it is not necessary to gain any training or qualification to carry out paralegal services.

So the very first thing you need to do is gain a paralegal or legal qualification or at the very least get some paralegal training and then, as much experience as possible. Once you have gained some knowledge of law and legal procedure and have gained three or more years’ relevant legal experience, you need to decide whether you wish to specialize in one area of law or would like to be a general practitioner.

Setting up in practice:
Being a member of NALP entitles you, subject to the requisite qualifications and/or experience and fulfillment of eligibility criteria, to apply for a Licence to Practise in the areas of law in which you can provide evidence of experience. This means that NALP has done its due diligence on you and thoroughly vetted you and your credentials.

Eligibility Criteria to gain a Licence to Practise:
1. Qualifications – you must have a minimum Level 3 qualification and a minimum of three years’ experience
2. Experience only – you may not have qualifications but can provide evidence of a minimum of five years’ experience
3. Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII): covering you for the work that you do.
So, you have your Licence to Practise, now what do you do?
You should ensure that there is no inference in any marketing for your business, whether via a website of Facebook Page, that you are a solicitor or barrister. This is what is known as ‘Holding Out’ and is illegal. So, in all your marketing you have to make it clear that you are a paralegal and not a solicitor or barrister. Even if you do not mention this specifically, you may be held accountable if consumers can make an assumption.
You must also be very much aware that there are certain activities you are unable to perform. You must know these ‘reserved activities’ (as defined by S12 of The Legal Services Act 2007) back to front and ensure that you do not undertake such activities. For example, you cannot buy and sell property for a client. Apart from the ‘reserved activities’, you can operate in much the same way as a solicitor, e.g. you can operate as a Paralegal Firm and have partners.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Hamilton is Chief Executive of the National Association of Licenced Paralegals (NALP), a non-profit Membership Body and the only Paralegal body that is recognised as an awarding organisation by Ofqual (the regulator of qualifications in England & Wales).
http://www.nationalparalegals.co.uk
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-hamilton-llb-hons-840a6a16/

Q: I am currently seeking advice on a career change into legal work. I am currently in my final year of an LLB course with the OU (Open University). I have been studying part time while in the armed forces for 11 years and I am 29 years old. I am considering enrolling for an LPC course in 2018 and wondering what options I have and possible routes to qualify as a solicitor as I am not taking the normal conventional route. Your advice in this matter would be much appreciated.

A: You don’t say whether you have legal experience. If you haven’t got any legal experience how do you know you want to be a solicitor? Is it worth spending £000s on the LPC if you don’t know? Options include looking at the ILEX route (you can work whilst qualifying), the part time study training contract (again you can work whilst qualifying although it seems to take forever when you are doing it – I qualified via this route), or simply go to work in a law firm and do the LPC when you have decided this is the career for you.

Q: Hello Sir, I am a poor man so please grant me a job.

A: I would love to assist, but I am afraid I am a relatively poor man too and lack the magical power to grant people jobs.

Legal Job Market Report

Summary

November has been a quiet month again, but this is fairly normal as we approach Christmas. We will be writing the same thing for December! Locum assignments have actually picked up a bit, which is unusual, but permanent roles remain down. The increase in conveyancing candidates last month has now ended.

Full article at https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/legal-job-market-update-dated-16th-december-2017/

Law Firms Wanted and For Sale

Ref 19101402 BVI law firm with licence for sale or rent or merger etc… Particularly topical following the recent Panorama investigation!
Ref 25101117 Birmingham law firm – immigration and family law looking for a merger, particularly with a larger practice if possible.
Ref 06111648 Reading firm looking to buy or merge with other practices. Happy to look at options. Smaller sized high street firms likely.
Ref 21090941 Leicester law firm looking for a sale. 5 staff, £150k turnover. Litigation firm, well established.
Ref 20092238 West Midlands law firm looking to buy up small practices and sole practitioners in the area. Funds in place to expand.
Ref 08061231 Buyer looking to purchase will banks in London and Home Counties.
Ref 04071347 Buyer looking to purchase a solicitors firm with a crime or family legal aid contract in Beds, Bucks, Northants or Herts.

Hourly Rates of Pay for Locum Solicitors and Legal Executives

Rates have now decreased slightly as we get closer to Christmas – we expect them to go down further still. Up to £35 per hour in Conveyancing is still the norm for most locums, although a good proportion are dropping to £28-32 per hour to get the assignments.

Full info at https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/legal-locum-hourly-rates-december-2017/

Relocating to Ireland – What’s the Craic?

A number of PR companies have identified Ten Percent Legal Recruitment as being a news provider. With this in mind we get regular press releases from law firms, universities, companies, government departments and lots more besides. Most of this is probably about as interesting as our newsletters, but occasionally it is possible to spot a trend.

The recent trend has been ‘relocating to Ireland’ to do legal work and Irish solicitors firms offering UK clients their services for future work in the EU. With reports of some larger solicitors firms recruiting large numbers of staff in Dublin, it looks likely that some movement of business over to Ireland from the UK is going to occur. I very much doubt there is a lot of Irish legal work to compete for but relocating to Ireland and then servicing UK clients seems to be the idea. Whether the whole relocation thing has any longer term effect once the whole EU departure thing is completed is another matter entirely.

So relocating to Ireland – how easy is it to open a company, get a postal address and get going in Ireland?

http://legalrecruitment.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/relocating-to-ireland-whats-craic.html

Restrictive Covenants – do they put employees off?

We have recently introduced a candidate to an employer where a restrictive covenant was used which must surely fall foul of rather a lot of employment regulations!

The role is a fairly junior fee earner position and not senior management or director level.

The restrictive covenant was actually called a “non-compete clause” and included the following:

1.	Not to directly or indirectly compete with the business of the company…during employment or for a period of 3 years after termination of employment.

2.	Not allowed to contact…any client or prospective client the employee had dealings with during employment.

“Not compete” is defined as the employee not owning, manage, operate, consult or be employed in a business similar to or competitive with the company.

Full info at https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/restrictive-covenants-do-they-put-employees-off/

Free Marketing Advice for Law Firms in January 2018

Have you got a marketing question you want answering? How much of your turnover should you spend on marketing? Is LinkedIn or Google Adwords more efficient? What keywords should I use to get the most business? How relevant is traditional marketing as opposed to digital? Is Facebook a waste of time (we think so!)?

We often get emails from Nick, a non-practising solicitor, advertising his marketing services. We have asked him to write a few articles for Legal Recruitment News and he has agreed. He will provide free marketing advice to any law firm who contact us with a specific or general question regarding law firm marketing, with publication in next month’s edition. Simply email your query to jbfagan@ten-percent.co.uk and I’ll pass it on. We get no financial benefit from this link up.

Paralegals are more likely not to turn up for Job Interviews than any other staff. Why?

Out of 5 job interviews arranged for paralegals and junior fee earners, we estimate that 1 candidate will not turn up. For solicitors and legal executives we think the figure is closer to 1 in 20. Why? Here are our top reasons.

1.	It is much easier to apply for a job than it is to explain in person why you should be given it.

2.	Paralegals lack confidence in their legal knowledge and skills. Are they going to look silly when they attend the interview?

3.	Romford to Luton as a daily commute looked fine when they applied.. Location is a key issue – paralegals don’t seem very good at identifying a reasonable distance to travel.

4.	The thought of actually going out to work is considerably harder to contemplate than staying at home.

5.	Whilst £18k sounded good when applying, the train fare will remove the first £3k of this.

6.	Qualified solicitors and legal executives have jumped through a lot of hoops, worked very hard and actually attended job interviews to get where they are. A lot of potential paralegals and junior staff fail at the first hurdle.

Full article here:https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/paralegals-are-more-likely-not-to-turn-up-for-job-interviews-than-any-other-staff-why/

Should Law Graduates Pay for Careers Advice?

Recently www.legalcheek.com (a legal blog) ran a series of articles discussing whether graduates should consider paying for training contract advice after the Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) strongly advised against it. Although we no longer provide careers advice ourselves, we were approached for comment as we still sell training contract advice packs via one of our websites. This was the comment we added:

http://legalrecruitment.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/should-law-graduates-pay-for-careers.html

Vacancies

To search our current vacancies please visit https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/vacancies/

Ask a Recruitment Consultant – questions this month on our chat bot

Questions sent to us via our Chat service online, together with general career questions emailed across. We do our best to answer all queries, sometimes after a fairly lengthy delay if we are busy!

Q: I am a New Zealand qualified solicitor looking for paralegal opportunities with an immediate start. Can you assist?

A: No – very unlikely. We have been recruiting for UK law firms since April 2000 and I can count the number of New Zealand lawyers we have successfully assisted on one finger. For some reason UK law firms want UK qualified or experienced staff. Try Hays, Michael Page or LawStaff.

Q: I am being considered for a property locum role for 6 months in -house for a housing association. It is not a transactional role. Would the fact that it is non transactional and with a housing association harm my chances of getting commercial property transactional locum work afterwards with private practices?

A: Hard to say – yes to a certain extent because your in house experience will be the last thing on your CV, and law firms tend to want locums who have private practice experience. However if you have 15 years private practice experience prior to this then you shouldn’t have a problem.

Q: How do I find work as a McKenzie Friend?

A: Not a clue – I don’t think I have ever come across anyone advertising for them! Have you tried approaching a body like the Citizens Advice Bureau to get work that way?

Q: I want to get the Legal Knowledge. Can you help me?

A: I did wonder whether this person is actually after a taxi firm. Naturally the answer is no. I have been searching for the Legal Knowledge since law school 20 years ago.