Legal Recruitment News November 2017

Legal Recruitment News – November 8th 2017

Legal Job Market Report

Summary

October has been a quiet month again, which is fairly normal but the legal job market seems very subdued at the moment. We are active in both legal & accountancy recruitment and accountancy is currently booming so quite a contrast! Locum assignments have dropped (as is usual for this time of year) and permanent roles have also dropped. We have noticed a real drop in demand for conveyancers and a trickle of conveyancing candidates starting to appear on the market. Not sure yet which way this is heading.. The sale and purchase of law firms has increased, although this is a fairly new area for us.

Full Article here – https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/legal-job-market-report-november-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 24102155 Offshore solicitor looking to purchase a wills & probate practice somewhere in the UK. Has gone quiet in last 2 weeks but supposedly still looking.
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.

November 2017 Locum Rates :
Residential Conveyancing Locum Solicitors – 1-5 years PQE, £28 per hour (no variation for central London).
Conveyancing Locum Solicitors & ILEX – 5-35 years PQE, handling all levels of conveyancing including managing a department – £28-35 per hour, including central London.
Commercial Property Solicitors – 1-40 years PQE – £35-50 per hour.
Wills & Probate Solicitors and Legal Executives – 3-35 years PQE – £35-45 per hour.

Family Solicitors – 4-40 years PQE – £25-34 per hour.
Civil Litigation Solicitors and ILEX– 1-35 years PQE. £28-35 per hour. These rates cover mainstream litigation.
Commercial Litigation Solicitors – 3+ years PQE – £35-50 per hour. Occasionally this is higher.
Company Commercial Solicitors – 3+ years PQE – £35-70 per hour.
Employment Solicitors – 3+ years PQE – £24-30 per hour (minimal amounts of work).
Personal Injury and Clinical Negligence – 3+ years PQE – £18-£35 per hour. Work very sporadic.
In House Legal Department Rates: 0-3 years PQE – £25-32 per hour (wide range due to variables in legal department work), 3+ years PQE – £30-80 per hour (very wide range due to the nature of in house work).
Local authority rates: write some numbers between 24 and 65 on a piece of paper, close your eyes and point at one. Local authority rates seem to be calculated by total randomness and they remain one of the wonders of the recruitment world…

NB all rates exclude agency fees. The rates are for self-employed locums billing firms directly on a weekly basis. We have over 11,000 lawyers registered with us.

How much do Sole Practitioners Earn – careers question?

A recent law graduate has asked an extremely pertinent question regarding future career plans:

“In your professional opinion, how much do sole practitioners (on the high street working in family/conveyancing) tend to make annually? Also more generally, would you say, despite the over supply of law graduates and the SRA’s soon to be new route to qualification, that law as a career is still worth pursuing, e.g. can you still make a good living?”

To read the full article please click here – https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/how-much-do-sole-practitioners-earn/

CV Blooper of the Month

Never depend on spellcheck when writing your CV! Taken from a finance CV. The candidate also forgot to include his name.

blooper november 2017

Permanent Vacancies registered in the last 28 days

North, Scotland and Wales
VAC-17444 Personal Injury Paralegal Warrington
VAC-17473 Civil Litigation Solicitor Stockport
VAC-17465 Commercial Litigation Solicitor Manchester
VAC-17438 Commercial Litigation Solicitor Manchester
VAC-17451 In House Commercial Legal Support Llandudno
VAC-17437 Residential Conveyancing Llandudno
VAC-17456 Company Commercial / Commercial Property Solicitor Hull
VAC-17432 Personal Injury Fee Earner Halifax
VAC-17448 Family Law Solicitor Cardiff
VAC-17442 Residential Conveyancer Blackburn

South and Midlands
VAC-17452 Civil Litigation Paralegal West-Central London
VAC-17457 Investment Fund Solicitor West London
VAC-17410 Prison Law West London
VAC-17409 Duty Solicitor West London
VAC-17423 Litigation Solicitor Watford
VAC-17470 NQ Solicitor or Trainee Solicitor for Cornwall and/or London Truro
VAC-17431 Duty Solicitors Southall
VAC-17411 Commercial Property Solicitor South East London
VAC-17466 Family Locum Solicitor Reading
VAC-17468 Crime Solicitors – Duty in Cornwall and Devon – consultancy percentage split arrangement Plymouth
VAC-17419 Senior Wills & Probate Solicitor Oxford
VAC-17418 Wills & Probate Solicitor Oxford
VAC-17467 Commercial Property Lawyer x 2 in Norwich Norwich
VAC-17430 NQ Family Law Solicitor North West London
VAC-17417 Conveyancer North London
VAC-17462 Litigation Executive Milton Keynes
VAC-17443 Private Immigration Solicitor Milton Keynes
VAC-17429 Commercial Contracts Lawyer Milton Keynes
VAC-17428 Insolvency Lawyer Milton Keynes
VAC-17449 Family Law Solicitor Maidstone
VAC-17455 Mental Health Solicitor Luton
VAC-17454 Clinical Negligence Solicitor Luton
VAC-17453 Family Law Supervisor Luton
VAC-17421 Paralegal Luton
VAC-17414 Commercial Property Secretary Ipswich
VAC-17413 Personal Injury Secretary Ipswich
VAC-17412 Employment Solicitor Ipswich
VAC-17450 Wills and Probate Consultant Harrow
VAC-17440 Private Immigration Lawyer Harrow
VAC-17436 Residential Conveyancing Locum East-Central London
VAC-17427 Civil Consultant East-Central London
VAC-17426 NQ Crime Solicitor East-Central London
VAC-17425 Crime Paralegal East-Central London
VAC-17471 Family/Child Care Law Solicitor East London
VAC-17464 Residential Conveyancing Locum East London
VAC-17404 Crown Court Litigator Coventry
VAC-17433 Wills & Probate Solicitor Chelmsford
VAC-17447 Senior Commercial Property Solicitor Bristol
VAC-17446 Senior Residential Property Solicitor Bristol
VAC-17445 Conveyancing Bristol
VAC-17422 Residential Conveyancer Brighton
VAC-17420 Wills & Probate Solicitor Brighton
VAC-17424 Wills & Probate Solicitor Bournemouth
VAC-17458 Family Solicitor Birmingham
VAC-17439 Commercial Property Solicitor Birmingham
VAC-17405 General Litigation Solicitor Locum Birmingham

Any interest in getting further information? Please email cv@ten-percent.co.uk and we’ll get back with firm names etc..

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!

live chat

Our New Chatbot

Q: I wonder if you have any advice or comment on the following. a sole practitioner has been asked by a lender panel to give details of a locum who the principal would have on call if the worst happened and the firm was left without a solicitor at short notice. Do you have any suggestions?

Q: I am considering making a career in legal services and am simply writing for a few lines of advice. Recently, I overheard a stranger describe their solicitor as, “a pain in the backside to deal with, which makes her fantastic at the job she’s done”. This struck me as exactly the kind of praise I would want to receive for a job well done. However, after wavering for years over which academic route to follow, I have just earned a masters degree in linguistics and still have not settled on an end goal. I am about to turn 25 and the thought of a conversion degree followed by an LPC brings up the concern that by the time I am able to practice, I will be nearly 30 and difficult to employ relative to the bright young graduates in competition within the same job market. How realistic are these concerns? Is it common for someone to switch to a legal career late and succeed?

Answers to both questions here – https://www.ten-percent.co.uk/questions-for-our-recruitment-consultants/

Low Cost Recruitment for Solicitors – Ten Percent Unlimited

Ten-Percent Unlimited is a service offering unlimited recruitment for a set monthly fee. It was set up by us back in 2011 with the aim of making the use of a recruitment agency cost-effective in a time of great financial difficulties for all in the profession. It is still going strong – we have had over 110 clients signed up to date – most of whom have been sole practitioners or smaller sized law firms.

The Unlimited Recruitment service offers law firms the chance to recruit as many permanent or locum candidates as needed over a period of 2-5 years in return for a monthly payment. There are no restrictions on numbers (although salaried vacancies have to exist and we do operate a fair usage policy – so far never used) and no other costs. No other similar services exist in the recruitment industry.

For example you may recruit a few locums for cover each year, a replacement conveyancing solicitor, a couple of legal secretaries, possibly a paralegal or two and have a look to expand the firm into a new area of law with an additional fee earner. All of this would cost considerable amounts in advertising and/or recruitment agency fees. However with Ten Percent Unlimited you simply pay a monthly fee.

One of our recruitment consultants works full time on our Ten Percent Unlimited member firms’ recruitment needs and is always happy to talk about the service. If you would like a chat with Clare Fagan, please give her a ring on 0207 127 4343 or email clare.fagan@ten-percent.co.uk. www.tenpercentunlimited.co.uk.

How to be a Locum – pdf guide

We have produced a guide on how to be a locum. This includes sections on getting work, realistic expectations, hourly rates, popular fields of law, payment, insurance, umbrella companies and much more. Available for download or to read online from www.interimlawyers.co.uk.

About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

We are a specialist legal recruiter, covering both permanent and locum roles across the whole of the UK. Over 11,000 lawyers are registered with us and we have access to a range of external and internal job boards and websites where we do not have candidates available ourselves. We also assist with recruitment advice and assistance, regularly advising partners and practice managers on suitable salary and package levels.

Our company is unique for a number of reasons, including the fact that we are not shy to publish our fee structure and also donate a chunk of our profits to charity each year. We offer unlimited permanent and locum recruitment for a fixed monthly fee or one-off fees depending on the job. We donate 10% of our profits annually to charity, hence our name.

We have three recruitment consultants, Jonathan Fagan, Clare Fagan and Pete Gresty, together with our finance director Pearl McNamara. As a team we have over 40 years of experience in the legal profession.

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment also owns Interim Lawyers, a specialist locum service. We operate an outsourced UK based typing service as well – www.tptranscription.co.uk and are preferred suppliers to a number of institutional clients and law firms across the UK and overseas.

The Ten-Percent Group of Legal Recruitment websites gives 10% of annual profits to charity. We have carried on with this tradition since we formed the company 15 years ago. So far over £90k has been donated to charities in the UK and Africa including LawCare, Unlock and Reprieve.

We hope you have enjoyed reading our newsletter and look forward to hearing from you if we can assist further.

Warm regards

Jonathan Fagan
Director

E: jbfagan@tenpercentgroup.com
T: 0207 127 4343

Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
20-22 Wenlock Road
London
N1 7GU

Jonathan Fagan is a solicitor, qualified recruitment consultant and Managing Director of Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited. His LinkedIn profile can be viewed here – www.linkedin.com/in/jbfagan

Legal Recruitment News is produced by TP Legal Recruitment – you can view all versions of the e-newsletter at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk.

Ten Percent Group – www.tenpercentgroup.com
Interim Lawyers – www.interimlawyers.co.uk
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment – www.ten-percent.co.uk
Legal Recruitment Newsletter – www.legal-recruitment.co.uk