Reading Time: 4 minutesA locum solicitor is a lawyer who works on a short term basis only – sometimes for a few hours, and other times for a few years – to cover for absent members of staff. Commonly used in local authorities, where staff always seem to require more cover than in private practice (I would imagine…
Reading Time: 2 minutesA crime solicitor used to have a little bit of credibility about him/her, but in recent times it has almost become an embarrassment to be one. Rates for the work haven’t gone up in years, and currently a crime solicitor could earn more working the night shift at Asda stacking shelves than going to a…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion: Hi there – I would be very grateful if you could please give me so advice. I feel as if my law career is going nowhere. I have nearly 3 years continuous paralegal experience which i have gained in different departments. I spent 2 and a half years with one firm and i have…
Reading Time: 2 minutesPQE stands for ‘Post-Qualified Experience’, and is usually given in years or half years for solicitors and also for legal executives as well. For example, if a solicitor was admitted to the Roll in England and Wales in September 2005, he/she would have 5 years PQE by September 2010. It usually refers to every year…
Reading Time: 2 minutesBonus schemes are either loathed or hated in equal proportion by solicitors. I recently read an article about recruitment consultant’s salaries, which was talking about the average bonus given to consultants and the way it was done. It was surprising to find that in what is considered a sales orientated environment, most consultants were getting…
Reading Time: < 1 minute“Hello, I’m an LPC graduate, can you help me find a training contract?” A telephone call we receive on a very regular basis. The very quick answer to this query is usually no, followed by a very pregnant pause. The person telephoning almost sounds surprised! I am more surprised that someone has been on our…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA sole supplier arrangement is one where a recruitment agency handles all the aspects of recruitment for a specific vacancy or length of time. Firms can benefit from being able to hand over the entire recruitment process from start to finish, with the exception of the interview itself. Where you see this term in adverts…
Reading Time: 3 minutesFor the last five years, a UK university has invited me in to talk to their LPC students about their CVs. I receive a copy of the CVs beforehand, assess them, and then base my talk upon each groups’ CVs when I go and talk. Some years I find the standard to be very mixed…
Reading Time: 3 minutesAt some stage in a solicitors career, this conundrum will almost always arise. It usually follows the stint of a locum in a firm for a longer period of a few weeks, and someone in the firm discovering that the locum is getting paid more than one of the junior partners for doing a much…
Reading Time: 2 minutesQuestion: I am thinking of going back to uni to do a GDL and work towards a career in law. The problem is I have pretty average A Level results, B,C,D and a 2:1 in business from an ex-poly. (I think I have always been capable, just not really motivated during A Levels.). I really want…
Reading Time: < 1 minute1. Whatever you do – do not get drunk. This is about the worst thing that can happen (and the best if it happens to someone else!). 2. Do not sit next to someone who you don’t like and get drunk. This can result in fights, particularly if it is your boss. 3. Avoid mistletoe…
Reading Time: 2 minutesI have conducted career coaching sessions for a number of years for law students and lawyers, and once someone come to see me to ask what they needed to wear for a legal job interview. It almost seemed like the primary reason she had travelled over 200 miles to see me, and I am not…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteOne of the reasons that law firms struggle to recruit when they are looking for solicitors of between 3 and 10 years PQE is because when solicitors spend 3 years or more in private practice, they have either: a) got set on a career path to partnership with their current firm. b) seen the light…
Reading Time: 2 minutesSurviving a recession is a little like writing a blog – you have to constantly look at your save button to ensure you dont lose any work as I have just lost this article and am now retyping it! Top tips are: 1. Make sure you are invaluable to your firm. Even if you are…
Reading Time: < 1 minute This is the best content mangement system available on the internet. WordPress can be altered and bent into so many different styles, sizes, blogs, corporate websites, individual websites, video sites, shops, forums etc.. it is unbelievable. Recommended for solicitors firms as it can make your site look that much more user friendly and you can…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis is one of the best programmes ever to be released free of charge on the web. Open Source is truly one of the craziest ideas ever to come out of the internet! Filezilla is an FTP Transfer programme to get files from your computer onto your website. This programme enables you to adjust just…
Reading Time: < 1 minute Ah, those were the days. When computers made noise, things rattled, joysticks broke when attempting to break the world record on Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, televisions were still in black and white (they were in my house anyway!). Now you can relive those moments with a ZX Spectrum Emulator. Download one of these to suit your…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis piece of software is the Windows Media Player alternative. It is very powerful and much easier to use. It is open source software and free of charge to download. We first started to use it when we discovered that Windows Media Player needed a whole range of extra downloads to make it work with…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis software is becoming much more widely used. Open Source software can be found right across the web in a whole host of guises. This website has been built using Open Source software (WordPress) and a large number of plugins and extra bits have been added, again at no cost. Open Office is a huge…
Reading Time: 2 minutesTen-Percent Legal Recruitment Consultants have been at the forefront of online legal recruitment for over 15 years. We have used a range of technologies whilst recruiting, and this has included a number of pieces of software that have stood the test of time. Whilst Adobe Acrobat Reader is a great piece of free software with…
Reading Time: < 1 minute7 Zip is the free version of Winzip. We have been using it for years and it is very powerful Open Source software, which naturally is free of charge unlike Winzip who will eventually ask you for money to continue after an initial trial period of about 30 days. 7 Zip is great – it…
Reading Time: 2 minutesMay has been a busy month. Not as busy as previous years – at the height of the recession in 2008 we had our busiest month ever with over 60 interviews, albeit with less take up than hoped for! Recruitment has started to pick up after all the interruptions of the various bank holiday periods…
Reading Time: < 1 minute Winzip.com This is a Windows compression utility that enables you to send (amongst other things) large files via email in a fraction of the time it would normally take. It works by squashing the file down, and means that files can be saved and put on a CD or memory stick to transfer to another…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis used to be fairly popular (both ways), but as more lawyers realise that life is not that rosy on the other side, we find it less common. If you are about 2 years PQE (post-qualification experience) or above, in a field of law related to in house work – employment, company commercial, conveyancing, property,…
Reading Time: 2 minutesNot so long ago, we recruited for a firm looking for a candidate to work in Bermuda. Within one week of a Law Society Gazette advertisement, we received 75 applications, all from conveyancing solicitors. Normally when advertising in the Gazette we receive 2-3 enquiries from each advertisement, so this was quite a shock! Relocating abroad…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteOverseas lawyers have over the last 4-5 years or so found it easier to source work in the UK. We do not intend to discuss the issue of work permits etc.. as there are plenty of sites with excellent advice available on them already. With the increase in bulk conveyancing, telephone advice services, local authority…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA common issue, especially for mothers (and some fathers) who have taken time off to raise a family and now want to return to work after 2,5 or 10 years. In some fields of law this is not too difficult. Firms are becoming more aware of the need to treat maternity leave with respect, as…
Reading Time: 2 minutesIs it Normal to Hate Working as a Solicitor? OK – you have spent 4 years being a solicitor, and you hate it. You dislike your clients, your boss, the money, the hours, your colleagues and life in general. What do you do? Firstly, do not worry that you are unusual. This is common, and…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA common topic with lawyers is whether they can change fields of law once qualified. Commercial Lawyers moving into the “more interesting” High Street”, and High Street lawyers looking to earn more than a Tesco shelf stacker and move into commercial law. Crime and immigration are particular fields, with a number of practitioners wanting quite…
Reading Time: 4 minutesThere are a lot of resources out there from outplacement companies, CV advisers, HR consultants and recruitment consultants who all claim to be experts on writing CVs but who advise their clients to fit their CV onto two pages. They explain that if it is on more than this, people do not read it and…