Legal Recruitment News – September 2011

LEGAL RECRUITMENT NEWS FOR EMPLOYERS – SEPTEMBER 2011.
Legal Job Market Report 6th September 2011
 
August has not been a good month for legal recruitment until the last week. Unsurprisingly, partners seem to have a lot more on their mind at this time of year, including holidays and cutting the grass. It did not help that the international money markets have decided to practice bouncing up and down at high speed and rioters ran around for a few days stopping our candidates from attending job interviews!

The first signs of September are that the market is yet again picking up and getting busy. Our £720 a year recruitment service is now quite busy with a number of firms signing up and posting a good number of vacancies. The crime market is about to take off yet again for the latest deadlines of November/December/whenever the LSC get round to deciding it.

We have had family law posts in across the country, crime (mainly South East but also the West Midlands), a few property posts, litigation (seems to be getting quite popular again) and some commercial activity. Locum assignments are now coming into us fast and furious – in fact I would say the market is the best it has been for about three years.

 
The CIPS Monthly Survey reports that the UK Service sector has suffered a steep slowdown of activity growth – this is blamed on a fragile economic environment undermining confidence. The Reed Employment Index shows that employer demand was maintained for August, with a 20% increase on August 2010.

 
We have certainly noticed that more solicitors are currently employed in decent, salaried posts than there were 2 years ago. Quality candidates are getting interviews fairly regularly and the market is again getting a little tighter.
 

Support staff posts continue to come in steadily. Ten-Percent has been developing a niche in legal cashiers for some time and we see plenty of vacancies coming on stream.

In August the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment £720 a Year Service had over 23 vacancies registered and 81 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates). The majority of our clients now interview and recruit directly (through our new service), so we no longer have an accurate record of interview numbers. A number of new firms and existing clients have now signed over to the new £60 a month scheme and we anticipate reaching 100 member firms before Christmas.
 
Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment. T: 0207 127 4343 or email: jbfagan@ten-percent.co.uk

Links:
Register Vacancies Online
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
£720 pa Recruitment Service

 
Candidates Registered 18th August – 6th Sept – Selection
 
060911 Commercial Property Solicitor looking around Oxfordshire and London. 15+ yrs PQE. Salary sought.
050911 Family Panel member – looking at opportunities across England and Wales. 15 years PQE. Locum or permanent.
050911 Litigation, Family, Private Client Solicitor – Middlesex and London – 2 years PQE.
050911 Real Estate Solicitor – top end training. NQ level.
050911 Duty Solicitor – Crime. London and surrounds. Salary £35-40k.
040911 Litigation Solicitor – general litigation, Cambridge and surrounds. 4 years PQE.
040911 Employment Solicitor – 5 years PQE, London and the South East. £40k.
020911 Temporary Legal Cashier – available for London and surrounds.
010911 Duty Solicitor – Crime – with Higher Rights. Central and South West London. May consider other locations.
180811 Duty Solicitor, 5 years PQE, looking in Newcastle.
040911 Employment Solicitor – locum – looking in Yorkshire.
030911 Commercial Compliance & Corporate Ethics Lawyer – in house or private practice – London.
020911 Barrister looking to move into a solicitors firm to do litigation in house. Surrey and surrounds.
010911 Solicitor – 15 years PQE +, resolution accredited in children law and financial provision, member of Family Law Panel. South West and Lake District areas.
310811 Licensed Conveyancer, 5 years experience, looking around Essex.
260811 Solicitor, 5 years PQE, family law panel member looking around Derby and Nottingham.
250811 Personal Injury FILEX (head injuries specialist) looking in Hertfordshire.
 
This is just a sample of candidates registered in the last few weeks. Member firms get full access to our candidate database by paying just £720 a year.
 
To access the 8,000+ Candidate Database, please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services 

New £720 a year Recruitment Service

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is now a service for member firms and employers. We aim to have 100 legal employers signed up to the service by Christmas 2011 and are well on the way to achieving this. Most of our clients so far are sole practitioners and firms with less than 5 partners. £720 a year covers all your locum, permanent, temporary and contract employment, legal support staff, qualified or unqualified fee earners. You get full access to our CV database and a range of job boards as part of the service. Further details by return email or on our website at www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services. To go ahead and sign up please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membershipterms. Click the button, fill out a form, and we will send you over a welcome pack including the code to instantly access our Candidate Database.

Click here to instantly register legal vacancies 

Professional Indemnity Insurance Scheme – update
As the new PII year gets closer we have now referred a considerable number of premiums through to our accountants, who are part of a network responsible for a discounted scheme on all PII renewal quotes. Unfortunately there appears to have been an overwhelming number of referrals to the insurer in question, a European operator, and as a result there has been a rather lengthy delay in them actually getting in touch with a significant number of firms we have referred through. Our apologies in advance for any inconvenience caused, particularly if no response is received before the deadline.

 
ConveyancinginAmbridge.co.uk – How to Set Up a Quick Feeder Website
One of the quickest ways to go after new business online is to set up a feeder website using actual keywords as your title. For example – solicitorsfirminreading.co.uk or lowcostconveyancingquotes.co.uk or personalinjuryinchester.co.uk.
 
Quite a few law firms are catching onto this. Google can be very lazy and instead of looking for the best quality site for a keyword will simply turn to these keyword websites and push them up the charts rapidly. What is the cheapest and quickest way of doing this? This article is from BusinessBusStop.com:
Find your domain name – use Google Analytics to find out which longer sets of keywords are popular amongst visitors to your existing website. Use other keyword tools to find popular terms (the Yahoo Advertising Keyword Tool is particularly good). You can also get paid products to do this for you.
 
Buy a .co.uk – there is little point spending money on a .com or .org unless you are looking on an international basis or for notforprofit clients.
 
1. Purchase your your domain name.
2. Set up a hosting account – make sure you have at least two SQL databases set up.
3. Configure your email account to collect all your mail in your personal email account.
4. Use Softaculous or similar tool to install WordPress onto your server space.
5. Make sure you set up WordPress in the right location.
6. Once WordPress is set up, take the following steps;
   a. General Settings – alter the address from http://yourwebsite/ to http://www.yourwebsite/
   b. Add a rewrite file to enable SEO friendly URLs.
   c. Install a range of plug ins including Google Analyticator, High Performance SEO, Contact Form
7, Google Sitemap.xml and any others required including Forum software.
8. Only start to work on pages once all of the above is complete.
9. Add a favicon.ico file.
10. Design a logo to fit the top of the page.
11. Choose a theme and install it.
12. Change permalinks – needs to be adjusted to pagename
13. Add the website to Google Webmaster
14. Verify the site for Google Analytics
15. Add the sitemap link to Google Webmaster
16. Add the website to Google Places
17. Set up High Performance SEO to ensure the correct main titles and meta tags.
18. Start designing the website with content and graphics. The site only needs five pages. About, Contact, Home, Free Advice and Services.  
 
Some of this may look a little daunting – BusinessBusStop.com can do all of this for you – domain name registration – £15, hosting – £60, website design – £175, wordpress installation and set up £150. Other ongoing services available. Visit http://www.businessbusstop.com/ for details or alternatively email enquiries@businessbusstop.com.
 
If you follow the above method, it is very likely Google will pick up and register your satellite site within 24 hours.
 
Salary Negotiations – Retaining Key Staff
 
This week we have been contacted by a long-standing candidate who gets in touch occasionally for careers advice. He has been working for the same firm for a number of years in the North West, and wanted advice on how to increase his salary during negotiations. It transpires that despite him being 6 years PQE and billing at £175k per year, salary levels have remained less than £37,000 for the last 3 years.
 
Our advice was to ask for an increase, or, failing that, to request an element of profit share in his package. We thought the best thing to do would be to ask for the same base salary and try to get 25% of everything earned over £130,000.
 
This is obviously a very good employee! How many other candidates would remain loyally with a firm who are clearly underpaying?
 
As employers, you can avoid this so easily. Firstly, make sure you review salaries every year. Do not take it for granted that an employee will stay with you. Anyone who is earning well will be looking at promotion, salary increases and career opportunities elsewhere if they think there is no chance of the first two with your firm. Try to offer incentives to employees to continue to do well. You can do this in every corner of your law firm – secretaries, paralegals, office cleaners, solicitors etc.. People work for different reasons and you need to identify these reasons in order to be able to incentivise them properly.
 
We have come across candidates who are keen to find a firm able to offer 30 days holiday a year instead of 20, and not really bothered about large salary increases. Others want more flexibility in hours. Most want more money.
 
If you cannot afford an increase, why not simply offer more flexiblity on hours or increased annual leave? Neither will cost you very much, apart from a bit more work for someone else in the firm at times, and this may make the difference between someone remaining with your firm for 20 years and someone who moves on after 2 years.
 
 
Low Cost Digital Dictation Outsourcing

 
TP Transcription (http://www.tptranscription.co.uk/) has recently announced a new online system for effective outsourcing of digital dictation. They can now offer the full supply of digital dictation machines together with the software to handle outsourcing your secretarial work effectively. Prices vary according to the size of your firm.

The system is installed onto your PCs. Your fee earners dictate into their machines, upload to the PC and press a button to transfer the work to an external server. Your remote workers (or TP Transcription Service) access the files, transcribe them and either email through the completed work or upload back to the server. Very simple and extremely cost effective.  

TP Online Transcription & Typing Service with offices in London and North Wales. We have a team of 20 UK based transcribers offering digital file and tape transcribing services worldwide. Established in 2001, the company has been handling bulk orders (including over 500 hour projects) and one-off assignments for legal and non-legal clients including a large number of UK Solicitors, B&Q, Endemol, the Office of Fair Trading, Sony, Dundee University, Cartridge World, University of Oxford, NHS Tayside, the British Medical Journal, Marie Curie and many more.

We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.

We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit http://www.tptranscription.co.uk/ call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.
 

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas:   http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews-for-lawyers-ten-percent-legal-recruitment.html
 
Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Formed in April 2000, Ten-Percent is an innovative recruitment membership service run online for law firms and employers across the UK and offshore offering free recruitment to members. Over 1,300 law firms and companies have used our services, and we have over 8,000 solicitors & legal executives registered for opportunities, as well as other fee earners and support staff. We donate 10% of our annual profits to charity. http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/
 
Please email us details of any vacancies to cv@ten-percent.co.uk or register the vacancy online on our website.
 

Legal Recruitment News for Law Firms – August 2011

Legal Recruitment Newsletter August 2011

Legal Job Market Report 3rd August 2011

 
Still blowing hot and cold, the job market in July is still showing conflicting signs. One day we get 3-4 vacancies posted for similar fields (for example last week we had four litigation posts in the South West all posted on the same day) and others we get nothing. Locum assignments have been quiet this year as well, as a number of firms simply make do without cover over the summer to save costs. To a certain extent this is assisted by better remote working solutions, which means a partner can go away for two weeks but stay in touch with the office via remote access, but there is definitely a reluctance to pay locums to cover at some firms.
 
Conveyancing still seems to be picking up in some areas – central London has attracted a number of vacancies, together with other South East locations. Corporate fields still very quiet and a number of firms seem to change their spec every few weeks, particularly in larger regional practices. Following remains a strong requirement, and we are still getting this as part of a lot of job specifications.
 

Corporate commercial posts still picking up, litigation appears to be getting stronger, but certain fields are not seeing very much movement at all. Crime and other LSC funded fields appear to be on hold whilst the latest stream of directives from the Ministry of Justice sink in and cuts start to be specific rather than generally referred to. Support staff posts continue to come in steadily. Ten-Percent has been developing a niche in legal cashiers for some time and we see plenty of vacancies coming on stream.

In July the Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment Service had over 25 vacancies registered and 58 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates). A number of new firms and existing clients have now signed over to the new £60 a month scheme and we anticipate reaching 100 member firms before Christmas.
 
Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment.

Links:
Register Vacancies Online
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
£60 a Month Recruitment Service

 
Candidates Registered 20th July – 2nd August – A Selection
 
0108111 Police Station Rep – 8 years accredited, looking in London and Croydon. 
010811 Licensed Conveyancer. 5 years PQE. Experienced team leader, most recently handling plot sales. West Kent and Central London.
280711 Office Manager, exp in defendant PI firm, high street/commercial firm and public sector. Looking in Liverpool and London. Lexcel exp.
280711 Employment & Property Solicitor, 1 year PQE, looking around London and the South East. 
280711 Paralegal with over 5 years experience in Commercial Contracts, Family, Private Client, Commercial Property and Litigation. East Midlands. 
270711 Solicitor, 3 years PQE in Property Litigation work. London.
260711 Legal Secretary, 5 years experience, based in Reading. Temporary or permanent. 
210711 Police Station Rep looking in the West Midlands. 
210711 Duty Solicitor, Salaried Partner and Higher Court Advocate looking for work in North Yorkshire and Leeds. 
200711 Employment Solicitor, 1 year PQE looking around Greater London and Home Counties. 
200711 Duty Solicitor looking to move to a medium-large firm in London or Essex. 
200711 Property Solicitor, residential and commercial, 5 years PQE. High net worth experience. London and Home Counties.
190711 Clinical Negligence Executive (with general PI), 20 years experience, looking around Essex and London.
190711 Insolvency Solicitor, 5 years PQE, looking around the Home Counties. 
190711 Residential and Commercial Conveyancing Solicitor, 2 years PQE, Middlesex and London. 
190711 Conveyancing and Litigation Solicitor, 1 year PQE. With own following. West Midlands. Salaried role sought.
190711 Duty Solicitor looking around Gloucester and Bristol.
190711 Conveyancing locum fee earner available for assignments around Oxfordshire. 
 
Statistics from the Ten-Percent Candidate Database – full access to all members for £60 a month.
 
1,421 Property Solicitors with 3 years PQE or more. 
465 Private Client Solicitors with 3 years PQE or more.

310 Commercial Litigation Solicitors within 30 miles of central London.

105 Legal Cashiers.
285+ Crime Duty Solicitors registered, 85 with Higher Rights.
519 Company Commercial Solicitors.

80 Intellectual Property Law Solicitors.

134 Solicitors describe themselves as ‘In House’.
108 Clinical Negligence Solicitors
217 Professional Locums covering a wide range of legal fields.
 
To access the Candidate Database, please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services 

New £60 Recruitment Service

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is now a service for member firms and employers only. We aim to have 100 legal employers signed up to the service by Christmas 2011 and are well on the way to achieving this. £60 a month for five years covers all your locum, permanent, temporary and contract employment, legal support staff, qualified or unqualified fee earners. You get full access to our CV database and a range of job boards as part of the service. Further details on our website at www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services. To go ahead and sign up please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membershipterms. Click the button, fill out a form, and we will send you over a welcome pack including the code to instantly access our Candidate Database.

Discounted Professional Indemnity Insurance Scheme – over £750k of premiums referred
As the new PII year gets closer we have now referred over £750k worth of premiums through to our accountants, who are part of a network responsible for 10% or 20% discount schemes on all PII renewal quotes. If you would like to receive details of this, please reply to this email with your firm name, contact name, current premium or renewal quote, and we will forward this through to our accountants who will get in touch to explain the schemes in further detail.
 
Serial Job Applicants – an avoidable menace? 
 
We recently undertook an assignment for a central London law firm handling high net worth property work. Over 120 applications were received for the post, which was a conveyancing clerk role – around 3 years experience required and salary levels c.£26-28k.  The quality of the applications was mostly good, and it took a considerable time to sift through these to shortlist 12 candidates to go forward to the firm to be considered.
 
Part of the process includes telephoning the candidates and gauging their commitment to the post and firm, which is imperative when making sure that we only put forward those certain to go ahead. All 12 candidates sounded keen, interested in the post and very suitable. We forwarded the CVs through, and got the expected feedback that the firm wanted to interview 6 of the candidates.
 
On telephoning two of the candidates, their tone completely changed when we advised them that the firm wanted to interview. Suddenly instead of commitment, interest and enthusiasm we got hesitation, uncertainty and concerns. It was immediately apparent that we had Serial Job Applicants on our hands….
 
So what is a Serial Job Applicant? They can be fairly easily spotted. 
 
1. They have been with the same firm for about 3-5 years. 
2. It is fairly clear from the CV that they have not progressed with their careers during that time. 
3. Their current firm is a happy place or at least not a bad place to be. 
4. Often have strong family commitments.
 
They usually like the idea of being in demand and want someone to care about them. Their current firm probably do not give them any encouragement or praise so instead they use job applications to get this. After all, what could be easier than sending a CV off, speaking to a recruitment consultant and finding out that they have been selected for shortlisting and then interview.
 
I reckon that most recruitment consultants can spot them within about 10 minutes of talking and instinctively know that they may turn out to be useless. On this occasion however, I completely missed them both!
 

If only all legal employers took care of their staff and were nice to them occasionally, we would not see this problem as often as we do. Sod’s Law naturally dictates that at least one of the best candidates for the job we are recruiting for will be a serial job applicant.

 

Outsourcing Secretarial Work – 10% discount on first order

 
TP Transcription is an Online Transcription & Typing Service with offices in London and North Wales with a team of 20 UK based transcribers offering digital file  and tape transcribing services worldwide. Established in 2001, the company has been handling bulk orders (including over 500 hour projects) and one-off assignments for legal and non-legal clients including a large number of solicitors firms, B&Q, Endemol, the Office of Fair Trading, Sony, Dundee University, Cartridge World, University of Oxford, NHS Tayside, the British Medical Journal, Marie Curie and many more.

We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.

It is now possible to outsource secretarial work at very low cost. We supply the software which includes an online portal. The set up cost can be less than 200 per user including hardware and with no ongoing costs (other than the actual transcription).
We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit http://www.uk-transcription.co.uk/, call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.
 

 

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas:   http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews-for-lawyers-ten-percent-legal-recruitment.html
 
Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Formed in April 2000, Ten-Percent is an innovative recruitment membership service run online for law firms and employers across the UK and offshore offering free recruitment to members. Over 1,300 law firms and companies have used our services, and we have over 8,000 solicitors & legal executives registered for opportunities, as well as other fee earners and support staff. We donate 10% of our annual profits to charity. http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/
 
Please email us details of any vacancies to cv@ten-percent.co.uk or register the vacancy online on our website.
Legal Recruitment News
For older editions of the Legal Recruitment News, and free articles on recruitment, legal careers, training, SEO & Web Marketing, please visit https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/ . You can also visit the http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/ for over 200 articles on Legal Recruitment including advice for candidates. 
 
Legal Recruitment News and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Email: cv@ten-percent.co.uk
Website: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/ : https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/
Tel: 0207 127 4343 

Candidate Legal Recruitment Newsletter July 2011

Legal Recruitment Newsletter for Candidates July 2011
 
 Important Announcement from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has recently completely changed (Monday July 11th) into a membership service. Over the 11 years we have been in the recruitment business we have constantly been asked: Why do you charge so much?” or “Why should we give you £6,000 plus VAT for just sending us a CV and arranging an interview?”

An interview only occurs once each time 20 CVs are sent out. For every 7 interviews arranged, only 1 results in a job offer. 33% of candidates reject each job offer and 5% leave within a week or fail to start. So whilst the work done in sending one CV to an employer is extremely minor, because of the way contingency fees work the client basically pays for all the work done on at least 100 other candidates and 6 other law firms.  We have worked out that each of our clients pays for work done on at least 10 other vacancies and 100 candidates.

This is the thinking behind our membership service. Instead of paying a large, one-off hit for recruiting a candidate, members recruit at no cost.
 
It is important you are aware of this change as it means the following for any candidates on our database:
 
1. Our service remains the same, except that in future any vacancies you see on our site will be from member firms.
2. None of our consultants will be receiving any commission for selling you to a law firm. We will get the same whether you find a job or not.
3. There will be a transition period whilst we move older vacancies onto the new system and remove others from firms who do not wish to sign up.
 
Point 3 is the most important for candidates. There are plenty of you out there who have applied for vacancies through us where firms have advertised without any real intention to recruit and just wasted everyone’s time. We hope that the new system will remove this, as every firm will have paid to advertise and recruit through us and by doing so we will have become the number one choice for any CVs submitted. Our clients will almost remain with us for five years, which means that we will know them well.

If you want to see further details of the service, please visit www.ten-percent.co.uk/membership-services 

Legal Job Market Report 13th July 2011 

The job market in June has shown conflicting signs. At various intervals we have picked up vacancies from good, reputable firms, looking to pay salaries and not after a following which rarely exists in the profession. At other times it has been very quiet. Conveyancing is clearly making a comeback (again) and we are starting to see a good number of posts coming through in the field, which is good news indeed. Once conveyancing work increases, so will other fields of law. There have been a number of false starts here, so we hold our breath!

Corporate commercial posts have increased, particularly at the 0-3 year PQE salary bracket, and a number of NQs from last year are starting to find employment now. Support staff posts continue to come in steadily. Ten-Percent has been developing a niche in legal cashiers for some time and we see plenty of vacancies coming on stream Crime solicitors are also starting to get enquiries and we anticipate quite a few firms looking to expand their duty solicitor numbers before the next CDS12 deadline.

In June Ten-Percent Legal had 17 vacancies registered and 73 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates).

 
Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment.

Links:
Register Vacancies Online
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

How much are Law Firms paying for Professional Indemnity Insurance?
 
We have recently emailed out a flyer to over 8,000 law firms and employers offering a solution to reduce professional indemnity insurance (PII) by either 10% if they stay with their existing provider, or 20% if they move to a new provider (please contact us if you would like details – email cv@ten-percent.co.uk). This is a scheme being operated through a new provider, one of the largest insurance companies in Europe.

Unsurprisingly a large number of firms have responded to request further details. 

 
The variation in PII premiums being charged to firms is quite amazing. We thought lawyers may be interested to know what sort of premiums get charged. Some examples:
 
A sole practitioner in the South East – £3,500
South East 3 solicitor practice – £22,000
North West 3 solicitor litigation practice – £11,000
Central London small practice – £11,000
Midlands firm with <10 solicitors – £30,000
London 5 solicitor practice – £22,000
Midlands practice – <10 solicitors – £60,000
South East practice – 10-20 solicitors – £110,000
Surrey practice – 15 solicitors – £185,000
 
Most sole practitioners not undertaking property work appear to be able to get PII for around £3,000 – £5,000.
 
Many years ago, when I was training, I recall that the profession was going through the process of opening the PII market up to private providers. The arguments being put forward included the notion that competition was healthy and good, encouraging good firms and dissuading bad ones. In recent times I hear time and again from firms that insurance premiums rocket sky high every year and it is almost impossible to change providers if a claim is made against you. It seems to be the case that PII insurance in the legal profession is reaching astronomical levels for some firms and must eat into a huge percentage of turnover each year. I have heard a horror story of a 20 solicitor practice being quoted £1.5 million to renew.

Surely there are firms out there somewhere who are doing something about this state of affairs? Have any law firms looked into purchasing their insurance together as a syndicate? To use a rather weak analogy our local community council recently got the village playing field insured for free when they discovered they could include the playing field on the village pond insurance costing £250, saving around £900 per year…. Has the profession acquiesced to insuring their practices for a high premium and simply got used to paying it? Have PII premiums in fact gone up very much since private competition was introduced 10 years ago? Medical PII used to cost around £500 per month per practitioner, in what could be seen as an extremely high risk profession. Recruitment PII costs around £600 per year for a small company not employing temps directly. Is it cheaper for solicitors to obtain PII insurance individually rather than as a firm?

We are going to look into offering access to PII as part of the new Ten-Percent Recruitment Service, recently launched (see article below). If we get anywhere, I will keep you posted. 

Outsourcing Secretarial Work – 10% discount on first order Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas:   http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews-for-lawyers-ten-percent-legal-recruitment.html
 

TP Transcription is an Online Transcription & Typing Service with offices in London and North Wales with a team of 20 UK based transcribers offering digital file  and tape transcribing services worldwide. Established in 2001, the company has been handling bulk orders (including over 500 hour projects) and one-off assignments for legal and non-legal clients including a large number of solicitors firms, B&Q, Endemol, the Office of Fair Trading, Sony, Dundee University, Cartridge World, University of Oxford, NHS Tayside, the British Medical Journal, Marie Curie and many more.

We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.

It is now possible to outsource secretarial work at very low cost. We supply the software which includes an online portal. The set up cost can be less than 200 per user including hardware and with no ongoing costs (other than the actual transcription).
We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit http://www.uk-transcription.co.uk/, call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.
 
Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/
About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Formed in April 2000, Ten-Percent is an innovative recruitment membership service run online for law firms and employers across the UK and offshore offering free recruitment to members. Over 1,300 law firms and companies have used our services, and we have over 8,000 solicitors & legal executives registered for opportunities, as well as other fee earners and support staff. We donate 10% of our annual profits to charity. http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/
 
Please email us details of any vacancies to cv@ten-percent.co.uk or register the vacancy online on our website.
Legal Recruitment News
For older editions of the Legal Recruitment News, and free articles on recruitment, legal careers, training, SEO & Web Marketing, please visit https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/ . You can also visit the http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/ for over 200 articles on Legal Recruitment including advice for candidates. 
 
Legal Recruitment News and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Email: cv@ten-percent.co.uk
Website: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/ : https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/
Tel: 0207 127 4343 
  

Legal Recruitment News for Law Firms – July 2011

Legal Recruitment Newsletter July 2011
https://legal-recruitment.co.uk
Sponsored by Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

Contents:
Legal Job Market Report 13th July 2011
Professional Indemnity Insurance – how much are law firms paying?
New £60 a month Recruitment Services launched – what’s the catch?
Salary Reviews Available Online
Outsourcing your Secretaries
Candidates registered 6th June – 13th July 2011
Apply for Ten-Percent Recruitment Membership

Legal Job Market Report 13th July 2011
The job market in June has shown conflicting signs. At various intervals we have picked up vacancies from good, reputable firms, looking to pay salaries and not after a following which rarely exists in the profession. At other times it has been very quiet. Conveyancing is clearly making a comeback (again) and we are starting to see a good number of posts coming through in the field, which is good news indeed. Once conveyancing work increases, so will other fields of law. There have been a number of false starts here, so we hold our breath!

Corporate commercial posts have increased, particularly at the 0-3 year PQE salary bracket, and a number of NQs from last year are starting to find employment now. Support staff posts continue to come in steadily. Ten-Percent has been developing a niche in legal cashiers for some time and we see plenty of vacancies coming on stream Crime solicitors are also starting to get enquiries and we anticipate quite a few firms looking to expand their duty solicitor numbers before the next CDS12 deadline.

In June Ten-Percent Legal had 17 vacancies registered and 73 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates).

Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment.

How much are Law Firms paying for Professional Indemnity Insurance?

We have recently emailed out a flyer to over 8,000 law firms and employers offering a solution to reduce professional indemnity insurance (PII) by either 10% if you stay with your existing provider, or 20% if you move to a new provider (please contact us if you would like details – email cv@ten-percent.co.uk, subject: “PII”). This is a scheme being operated through a new provider, one of the largest insurance companies in Europe.

Unsurprisingly a large number of firms have responded to request further details.

The variation in PII premiums being charged to firms is quite amazing. Some examples:

A sole practitioner in the South East – £3,500
South East 3 solicitor practice – £22,000
North West 3 solicitor litigation practice – £11,000
Central London small practice – £11,000
Midlands firm with <10 solicitors – £30,000
London 5 solicitor practice – £22,000
Midlands practice – <10 solicitors – £60,000
South East practice – 10-20 solicitors – £110,000

Most sole practitioners not undertaking property work appear to be able to get PII for around £3,000 – £5,000.

Many years ago, when I was training, I recall that the profession was going through the process of opening the PII market up to private providers. The arguments being put forward included the notion that competition was healthy and good, encouraging good firms and dissuading bad ones.
In recent times I hear time and again from firms that insurance premiums rocket sky high every year and it is almost impossible to change providers if a claim is made against you. It seems to be the case that PII insurance in the legal profession is reaching astronomical levels for some firms and must eat into a huge percentage of turnover each year. I have heard a horror story of a 20 solicitor practice being quoted £1.5 million to renew.

Surely there are firms out there somewhere who are doing something about this state of affairs? Have any law firms looked into purchasing their insurance together as a syndicate? To use a rather weak analogy our local community council recently got the village playing field insured for free when they discovered they could include the playing field on the village pond insurance costing £250, saving around £900 per year….

Has the profession acquiesced to insuring their practices for a high premium and simply got used to paying it? Have PII premiums in fact gone up very much since private competition was introduced 10 years ago? Medical PII used to cost around £500 per month per practitioner, in what could be seen as an extremely high risk profession. Recruitment PII costs around £600 per year for a small company not employing temps directly. Is it cheaper for solicitors to obtain PII insurance individually rather than as a firm?

We are going to look into offering access to PII as part of the new Ten-Percent Recruitment Service, recently launched (see article below). If we get anywhere, I will keep you posted.

New £60 Recruitment Service Launched – what’s the catch?

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has recently completely changed (Monday July 11th) into a membership service. Over the 11 years we have been in the recruitment business we have constantly been asked:

“Why do you charge so much?” or “Why should we give you £6,000 plus VAT for just sending us a CV and arranging an interview?”

An interview only occurs once each time 20 CVs are sent out. For every 7 interviews arranged, only 1 results in a job offer. 33% of candidates reject each job offer and 5% leave within a week or fail to start. So whilst the work done in sending one CV to an employer is extremely minor, because of the way contingency fees work the client basically pays for all the work done on at least 100 other candidates and 6 other law firms. We have worked out that each of our clients pays for work done on at least 10 other vacancies and 100 candidates.

This is the thinking behind our membership club. Instead of paying a large, one-off hit for recruiting a candidate, employers recruit every candidate completely free of charge. There is no cost at all. Nothing. Not a penny.

Since our launch on Monday I have already been telephoned by a firm and asked:

“What’s the catch?”

The catch is membership of Ten-Percent, costing £60 per month and fixed for five years. We will no longer do any recruitment work for non-members. The £60 per month fee will not alter during the five year period and neither will it be reduced with special offers, now or in the future.

A senior partner called to ask:

“I am a sole practitioner. Why should I pay £60 a month when I might only recruit one candidate in five years and you cannot guarantee success?”

No recruitment process can possibly guarantee to find candidates every time you recruit. However, because our service encompasses job boards, a CV database, our own website and discounted Law Society Gazette advertising if needed, we have created a full recruitment service for a fraction of the usual cost. You may only use the service once in 2011, but come back in three years to get a locum for 2 weeks, a legal secretary and another solicitor and you will again have saved a substantial amount of money.

A HR Manager called to ask:

“What do you charge for candidates on top of the membership fees and do we get exclusive access to candidates who apply for our jobs?”

We explained that there are no charges. The only cost is the membership fee.

The system works as follows:

• You register a vacancy with us.
• We send the vacancy to all relevant candidates on our database. They respond.
• We forward suitable CVs to you.
• At the same time we post your vacancy across a number of job sites and websites.
• All the applications that loosely fit the job specification are forwarded through to you.
• We handle the job vacancy enquiries, we arrange interviews and assist with negotiations and job offers.
• You can also search our Candidate Database and request specific CVs.

In essence you get Recruitment Consultancy + Job Board Services for considerably less than the cost of each service.

Don’t believe us? Contact recruitment agencies and see how much they charge. Give SimplyLawJobs or Totallylegal a ring and ask how much you would pay to access their CV database and post your vacancy. Not for £60 a month.

Another partner called us to ask:

“How much do you charge for locums?”

Nothing. Not a penny. It is included in the price. Of course you still have to pay the locum (we will negotiate the rate for you), but there is no recruitment fee charged on top of this.

Finally a South East smaller sized firm who have signed up to the service already said:

“This is an outstanding idea and very innovative. We took a candidate last year on a contingency fee from another agency and it cost us about £6,500 plus VAT. We are not even sure we will keep them on the books for very long.”

This is precisely the problem we have developed this service to avoid. If a candidate leaves, you simply recruit another one at no extra cost.

What about Ten Percent Unlimited? – This service will run in tandem with the membership service. The difference between the services is minimal apart from the contract length and the price. Ten Percent Unlimited offers 1 year contracts. For details please visit http://www.tenpercentunlimited.co.uk/ 

If you are interested, have a look at the full terms and conditions on our website. The address is www.ten-percent.co.uk/membershipterms. To go ahead simply click the button, fill out a form, and we will send you over a welcome pack including the code to instantly access our Candidate Database.

Candidates registered or updated up to 13th July

To access our Candidate Database online please contact us at cv@ten-percent.co.uk. Access to our candidate database is via our membership services, either through Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment (£60 a month for 5 years) or Ten-Percent Unlimited (12 month contracts available).

74 new candidates registered in June – all solicitors, legal executives, legal cashiers and experienced fee earners.

Outsourcing Secretarial Work – 10% discount on first order

TP Transcription is an Online Transcription & Typing Service with offices in London and North Wales with a team of 20 UK based transcribers offering digital file and tape transcribing services worldwide. Established in 2001, the company has been handling bulk orders (including over 500 hour projects) and one-off assignments for legal and non-legal clients including a large number of solicitors firms, B&Q, Endemol, the Office of Fair Trading, Sony, Dundee University, Cartridge World, University of Oxford, NHS Tayside, the British Medical Journal, Marie Curie and many more.

We provide ongoing typing contracts and also work on a one-off basis. Our transcribers are all based in the UK and we maintain a high standard of quality output. Our transcribers are experienced secretaries from the legal profesison, medicine or general business and some are educated to degree level and higher.

It is now possible to outsource secretarial work at very low cost. We supply the software which includes an online portal. The set up cost can be less than 200 per user including hardware and with no ongoing costs (other than the actual transcription).

We can transcribe from all audio & digital files, whether WAV, WMA, DSS (Olympus) or MP3 (plus a host of other formats), CD or DVD, Standard Cassettes, Mini and Micro Cassettes and Video (VHS). We have FTP facilities. For legal work we are happy to take templates to transcribe into. Our main service for law firms is our capacity to free up ‘in office’ secretaries to undertake daily tasks whilst reducing the backlog of work or any large transcription jobs. For details of the service please visit http://www.uk-transcription.co.uk/ call 01352 751945 or email pearl@uk-transcription.co.uk.

Salary Review Update
The Ten-Percent Legal Salary Survey is available online – Click the link below to view the surveys, which are broken down into geographical areas: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews-for-lawyers-ten-percent-legal-recruitment.html 

Our most recent Crime Solicitor salary list is available on our blog at http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/  

About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Formed in April 2000, Ten-Percent is an innovative recruitment membership service run online for law firms and employers across the UK and offshore offering free recruitment to members. Over 1,300 law firms and companies have used our services, and we have over 8,000 solicitors & legal executives registered for opportunities, as well as other fee earners and support staff. We donate 10% of our annual profits to charity. http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/

Please email us details of any vacancies to cv@ten-percent.co.uk or register the vacancy online on our website.

The Ten-Percent website redesign
We have just relaunched our website to make it look more up to date and user friendly. It also has all our resources accessible in one place. We have already started to see more commercial and corporate solicitors register, an area we have been traditionally less strong. High street and locum lawyers seem to have appreciated the very basic design of the original site a little more!

Legal Recruitment News
For older editions of the Legal Recruitment News, and free articles on recruitment, legal careers, training, SEO & Web Marketing, please visit https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/ You can also visit the http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com/  for over 200 articles on Legal Recruitment including advice for candidates.

Legal Recruitment News and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Email: cv@ten-percent.co.uk
Website: http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/  : https://legal-recruitment.co.uk/
Tel: 0207 127 4343

Legal Recruitment News for Law Firms

Recruitment News for Law Firms and Legal Employers, April 2011.

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Legal Careers News – April 2011

Legal Careers News for Jobseekers in Law, Lawyers and Law Students.

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