Reading Time: 3 minutesNewly Qualified Solicitors – 10 tips on recruitment It is the time of year when NQ solicitors start to wonder what they need to do to find work on qualification if they do not remain with their existing firm. Here is our brief guide – you can read the full article at https://ten-percent.co.uk/newly-qualified-solicitors/ 1. As…
Reading Time: 2 minutesSalary reviews – how not to approach them – a guide for employers/partners Here are our top tips for salary reviews and avoiding any increases in salary. 1. Repeatedly postpone or cancel the salary review for up to 6 months. Top tip. 2. During the salary review continue to work whilst occasionally glancing up and…
Reading Time: 2 minutesAdvertising – just because everyone else does. Surely they can’t all be wrong? We have spent the last year advertising on a job board specialising in the legal sector. I don’t want to name them as that is not the purpose of this article, but they are totally immersed in the legal sector if that…
Reading Time: 4 minutesNew Permanent Fee Earner Candidates 23051346 Residential Conveyancing Solicitor with 10 years PQE looking in Ipswich and surrounds for work. 25723 Sept 2016 qualified solicitor looking for a wills & probate posts in Bucks, Oxon and Bedfordshire. 25050833 Wills & Probate Solicitor available for locum and permanent work around London. 25741 Legal consultant specialising in…
Reading Time: 2 minutesThere remains a national shortage of conveyancing and commercial property lawyers at all levels. We are finding it harder than usual to recruit locums this year, although we still get CVs in to over 95% of assignments, but the permanent side is very difficult. What is interesting is the trend of firms recruiting new conveyancers…
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe UK’s most expensive Google Adwords In April 2016 Search Engine Watch, a very useful industry online magazine, undertook a study of the UK’s most expensive Google Adwords. These are the adverts at the top of the page when you search any keyword. We have been using the system for over 15 years and it…
Reading Time: 2 minutesInterview Survival Tips Top tips for surviving legal job interviews: 1. Do not exaggerate your abilities. We have recently had a conveyancing candidate claim she could run files from start to finish and work independently. The solicitors firm in question arranged a full test to check this and discovered that actually this was definitely not…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteAgency accused of inventing staff A legal recruitment agency, Dawn Ellmore Employment (never heard of them) has been caught by RollonFriday.com inventing staff – full report at http://www.rollonfriday.com/TheNews/EuropeNews/tabid/58/Id/4434/fromTab/36/currentIndex/0/Default.aspx This has attracted lots of comments from disgruntled lawyers about agencies faking their identities, making up staff and qualifications and pretending that they are much bigger than…
Reading Time: 2 minutesCV Writing – Tips for Getting Noticed Here are 10 top tips from us on how to get your CV noticed by employers: Make sure your CV is extremely detailed and contains all the work relevant to the application you are making. Information such as details of billing levels for the past 3 to 4…
Reading Time: 3 minutesNo. Mitigating circumstances do not exist. Ever. Well, hardly ever. “Mitigating circumstances” is probably one of the most irritating phrases ever to come out of university careers advice centres. What a fantastic excuse for rubbish grades. We have just had a CV in from someone using the term when they got a 2.1 from a…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteOh dear – yet again crime solicitors find themselves unable to work out what or where they will be in a years time. Hopefully some certainty will come into play sooner or later and the political see saw will balance in the middle for a while. We understand that the new rota deadline is 12th…
Reading Time: 3 minutesLondon Law firm pays NQ Solicitors £100k One of the US law firms in London has now decided to offer NQ solicitors £100k salaries, which is about £22k more than Clifford Chance NQ solicitors get, and about £75k more than most NQ solicitors get on the high street.. The RollonFriday.com website is a very good…
Reading Time: 3 minutesSmallLaw v BigLaw – the differences The US has a slightly different definition of the two types of law firm operating in each jurisdiction. In the UK we call them High Street law and Commercial law firms, although the two overlap a bit. In the USA they term the two types of firm SmallLaw and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesPractice Managers in a solicitor’s firm – who are they and how do you get a job as one? Practice Managers are usually the most senior administrative member of staff in a solicitors’ firm or company. In a lot of firms they are expected to have a considerable and varied amount of experience with tasks…
Reading Time: 3 minutesWhat do umbrella companies do and is there any point using one to do locum work? We have been working with locums in the legal profession for over 10 years now and it seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon that a very small minority of our locums and other locums we’ve come across employ…
Reading Time: 5 minutesWhat makes a good job reference? We often get job offers for our candidates which involve a clause to say that the offer is subject to satisfactory references. A few times during the last 16 years, we have experienced difficulties getting hold of a satisfactory reference but the vast majority of references are very straightforward.…
Reading Time: 2 minutesTop 5 things to take to an interview with you We hear lots of feedback as recruiters as to items that our candidates take in with them to interviews and here are the top 5 to add value to any job applications you might make. 1) Your CV. So many people turn up to interview…
Reading Time: 4 minutesThere are an abundance of different websites online to search for legal jobs. These include job boards, agency websites, posting boards and blogs. However, these are the best sites in our experience (apart from our own of course!): 1) Law Society Gazette Online This site, until very recently, was in our opinion absolutely dreadful. The…
Reading Time: 4 minutesHow to have a Successful Career as a Legal Secretary Most people do not grow up thinking, “When I start work I want to be a legal secretary”. It is more common to think, “When I grow up I want to be a lawyer”. But these days legal secretaries in some law firms actually earn…
Reading Time: 3 minutesWe sometimes get queries from trainee solicitors asking if it is possible to change law firms during a training contract, and whether they ought to do it. Our advice is always the same; jump through the burning hoop of the training contract with as minimal fuss as possible and only change law firm if your…
Reading Time: 3 minutesVery recently, a candidate got in touch about a vacancy, explaining quite apologetically that she was returning to work after a break and could she be considered for the post. As a recruiter, I have to be honest and say that whenever anybody tells me they are returning to work I almost involuntarily sigh because…
Reading Time: 3 minutesImproving chances of success when applying for a job – become a Borg Whilst working as recruitment consultants, we often get asked by candidates what they can do to improve their chances in relation to a specific job that they may be considering applying for. Very often there are a whole raft of things that…
Reading Time: 5 minutesFive common mistakes when writing a CV. Here are five very common errors that arise from CVs we receive every day of the week into Ten Percent Legal Recruitment. Some of them are glaringly obvious, others are not so straightforward. 1) Not putting any contact details on the CV This is very common and a…
Reading Time: 4 minutesTop 5 Tips for making sure you get the most out of interviews. These tips apply as much to senior members of staff and managers as they do for junior staff. They are designed so that you get the most out of the recruitment process when you apply for jobs with a law firm. 1.…
Reading Time: 5 minutesTop 5 Tips for making sure you get the most out of candidates applying for your posts. These tips apply as much to senior members of staff and managers as they do for junior staff. They are designed so that you get the most out of the recruitment process when they apply for jobs with…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteCandidates Registered in the last 7 days 02091811 Residential and Commercial Conveyancing Locum Solicitor available from the 7th September for 2 weeks and then from the 28th September onwards. 02091740 Wills and Probate Solicitor Locum available 2-3 days per week until the end of September and then full time. 01092030 Commercial and Residential Property Locum…
Reading Time: 2 minutesSalary Myths and the Legal Profession The legal profession is plagued by salary myths. How many times have high street solicitors been speaking to acquaintances and informed that as they are a solicitor they must be earning loads of money, at least 6 figures? How many law students still start their degree course thinking that…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThe June 2015 version of Legal Recruitment News is available at www.legal-recruitment.co.uk – click here to go straight to the newsletter. It includes our Legal Job Market Update and Locum Rates for June 2015. You can sign up to receive our newsletters every month or so via email as well. Simply email us at cv@ten-percent.co.uk
Reading Time: 5 minutesThinking of studying for the BPTC? (BPTC stands for Bar Professional Training Course – formerly the BVC Bar Vocational Course – also known as IWMLP – an Incredible Waste of Money for a Lot of People)? The cost in 2015 of studying this ‘course’ is £18,500 according to the University of Law (formerly the College…
Reading Time: < 1 minuteHow to be a Locum – new .pdf guide We have produced a new free 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. You can get additional information from the www.interimlawyers.co.uk FAQ section for both…