I have recently seen an advert in the Law Society Gazette for a well-known London university offering law graduates a chance to enhance their career prospects by taking one of their Masters Degrees. A question we regularly get asked by candidates is whether taking a Masters Degree will increase their chances of success in the…
Legal Job Market Report June 12th May and early June have been up and down like a yo yo, although I have been writing this since March 2008 for every newsletter we have sent out! We see pockets of very frenetic activity, followed up with a long gap without very much occurring. The main points…
I have been involved in advising US and overseas lawyers/graduates in applying for UK based roles so many times and application forms can be very difficult indeed to complete. The main thing is to make sure that you assimilate to the UK standards, with A levels rather than High School graduation certificates, degree classes instead…
The answer to this is fairly simple. Apply to commercial law firms if you are looking at training contracts with commercial law firms. Apply to the high street law firms for the same reason. If you have a 2.2 or lower, you should be aiming at high street firms. If your academics are good and…
One of the biggest mistakes candidates often make is to assume that recruitment consultants read covering emails if they are anything more than about 3 paragraphs long. As recruiters we are looking for very specific information in a covering email and have very limited time to read anything at all without heading straight for the…
Writing a Good Statement for Job Application Forms If you complete job application forms for local authorities or the judiciary, they often come with a supporting statement, statement of qualities, information to support your application, etc.. etc.. These are all the same thing, and there is a simple technique for ensuring successful completion. 1. Take…
Should I include my date of birth or marital status on a CV? This is a question that comes up time and again. Why would anyone advise to include a date of birth or marital status on a CV? Well, I always recommend considering it, and I know that careers advisers across the country will…
Legal Job Market Report 1st May 2012 April 2012 was a very strange month in recruitment. It was affected by the Easter break, but we went very quiet mid-month and then very busy towards the end of the month. The shortfall in good quality candidates still exists, but we have had a range of very…
I have to say that when I was in practise and completed the Police Station Accreditation Course I did wonder whether someone at some point would come up with the idea of charging people a fee for them to complete the Police Station Accreditation Course in full and become Police Station Accredited as part of…
We have been preparing professional CVs for lawyers since April 2000 and the process is fairly simple. Firstly we ask our clients to send us over a completed form on the internet with lots of detail in. Alternatively our clients can send over their existing CV and we will work from that. Very often clients…
How long is a piece of string? I get asked this question almost on a daily basis and hear a lot of different answers once I have given my response. CV – never longer than 2 pages? The usual or fairly common response is someone who has been told by a careers adviser when they…
Legal Job Market Report 1st March 2012 February 2012 was again a very busy month in recruitment, but again vacancies are going up and down like a yo yo. One minute we are flat out, the next very quiet. Very different to recruitment of old, where there was a constant drip of vacancies and candidates…
We are all bad at this. I have to confess to having not really trained some of my colleagues in the various packages that Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment sells. For example we offer £60 per month recruitment to law firms with less than 100 employees, but recruitment via www.jonathanfagan.co.uk for law firms with more than 100…
January 2012 was a very busy month for Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, but generally this was a strange time in recruitment. Firstly, although vacancies appear to be growing in number and even conveyancing posts have surfaced, candidates appear not to be responding in the same numbers as they were this time last year. We are getting…
This article is divided into three sections. The first is for law students, the second is for graduates and the third is for qualified lawyers, solicitors and legal staff. How do I Dramatically Improve my Legal Career Prospects? We often get asked this question and people are often expecting an easy answer. It depends on…
November was a very busy month for Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment. We had over 20 firms sign up to our £60 per month service from 1st November to December 20th and post over 50 vacancies between them. Part of this growth was fuelled by the need to recruit LSC family supervisors for the new contracts. There…
Good afternoon and welcome to the first newsletter from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment for members of our new (not so new now!) £60 legal recruitment service. It has been a very busy end to the year and we now have a large number of firms signed up to use our £60 legal recruitment service. This newsletter…
We have recently taken an order from a US client looking for a CV to use with UK law firms and to present a CV in a way the UK law firms would understand it. Ten Percent Legal Recruitment & Careers Services have been assisting US, Australian, Chinese, New Zealand lawyers for many years with…
One of our senior candidates has been in touch this morning to point out a slight issue that keeps coming up in adverts both on our site and job boards. “I have been looking at family vacancies on the web and noticed that some vacancies refer to Family Panel Members or Resolution Accredited Specialists. I…
The first thing to say about a personal profile section is that if you have nothing to say, the best personal profile section for you would be an empty one and the space used more effectively for something else. You only need a personal profile section to explain about six points. These are 1. Your…
Legal Careers Question : I have a 3rd Class Degree from the University of Ife in Nigeria. I have no legal work experience in the UK and I am not qualified. What are my prospects of finding work? Answer: I think that your chances of finding work are just above 0 %. A 3rd Class…
“Recently my firm have offered me a role as a salaried partner and informed me that I am being promoted. My salary will remain the same because they cannot afford a paying fee but I will be invited to partnership meetings and asked to assist with the management of the firm. What should I do?…
1st November 2011 October has been a very busy month in legal recruitment. Traditionally the Autumn is the busiest time of year for recruitment, tailing off as we get towards Christmas. During October the job advertisement levels in the Law Society Gazette have reflected the level of business we have been doing. Some weeks the…
Good question. This really depends on your career plans. Our advice is always to get the Legal Practice Course over and done with as quickly as possible if you can afford to. Completing the Legal Practice Course LPC part-time or by distance learning is only really relevant if you have to work whilst you are…
Every year we get asked this question by lots of different students wondering whether they should go to the College of Law or complete their LPC (Legal Practice Course) with another provider. We think that unless you have an outstanding academic background and it is looking as if you will be heading for a large…
If you are making an application for a legal job or speculatively approaching a law firm for any type of position including solicitor work or paralegal/work experience, you need to make a decision on how you send your details over. Do you need to handwrite a covering letter, send a covering email or print out…
This is a very common email and telephone call to our offices. Firstly, if you are sending emails to legal recruitment agencies asking for advice and assistance you may be surprised to find out that most of them will not respond to you. Legal recruitment agencies have much better things to do than reply to…
Q Why do you offer career coaching to lawyers and law students? Good question! Together with 3 other lawyers I set up Ten Percent Legal Recruitment back in April 2000. Within a few months we were being bombarded with CVs from law students and graduates desperate for training contracts and work experience. We obviously could…
No. We can’t help and you may be surprised to know that we will be quite annoyed if you telephone us. We have warnings all over our website detailing who we can help and how we can help and sometimes the sheer volume of students and law graduates without any work experience calling us overwhelms…
This month has been a busy one. Despite the stock markets continuing to yo-yo up and down, financial crises bounding and the continued uncertainty about change in the structure of the legal profession, firms are recruiting. One of the main areas in recent weeks has been Family Law. The Legal Services Commission have yet again…