A list of the most frequently asked questions to Ten Percent Legal Recruitment from solicitors, law firms, in house legal departments, law graduates & students.
General Information
Yes we do – it tends to be locum work rather than permanent recruitment.
In recent times a lot of local authorities have decided to outsource part of the function of their HR departments to large RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) companies who operate a list of recruiters to supply staff. We suspect the HR people within the local authorities thought this may be easier for them and they would no longer have to bother phoning round agencies on a Friday afternoon. Having coached redundant executives via the Jobcentres many years ago we know that a number of HR staff from local authorities were made redundant following their decisions to outsource their own jobs!
These types of arrangements have made it harder for smaller agencies to stay profitable when undertaking local authority work, as the middle men now cream off rather a lot of the profit, and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has chosen to stay well away from these contracts for the time being. Add to this the crazy way a lot of local authorities implement IR35 (a particularly onerous piece of tax legislation applied to locum work) to every vacancy rather than checking each one and it is really an area we have stayed well away from over the years.
However local authorities do occasionally look outside these frameworks and you will see locum local authority vacancies on our sites from time to time.
Yes we do. About 70% of our work is locum, ad hoc and interim cover, with 30% being permanent recruitment for law firms and in house legal departments. If you would like to find out about our specialist locum lawyer services please visit www.interimlawyers.co.uk – there is a full FAQ section on the site as well as a free downloadable guide to being a locum solicitor. The Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment service covers both locum and permanent work for solicitors, legal executives, support staff and fee earners.
Yes we do. In our first year (2000-2001) we donated £500 to a local childrens’ hospice in Leicestershire and we haven’t looked back since. To date we have donated more than £250,000 to charity. We established a charitable trust called the Ten-Percent Foundation in 2002 and all our donations are distributed via this trust. The trust has a number of aims which include supporting small charitable causes with either a link to our local areas in the UK, the legal profession or to alleviate poverty in the third world. Full criteria for our donations can be found on the Ten Percent Foundation website. Our employees are encouraged to spend time on community related projects which in the past have included dry-stone walling on a local nature reserve. Full details of our donations can be found on our Charity page.
Yes we do. We have a specialist department for handling in house legal jobs, whether this is for general counsel, solicitors to assist counsel, specialist in house legal teams or legal department managers. We have regular dealings with in house legal departments across the UK in a wide range of companies from large multinational businesses through to small SMEs.
Our company deals with the supply of locums or contractors on an ad hoc basis via our Locum and Interim Lawyer service – www.interimlawyers.co.uk. We also handle permanent recruitment at all levels and in all industries including education, energy, construction, health, professional services and compliance.
We would love to, but they always seem to want to give lots of their money to very large recruitment agencies in order to fulfill their vacancies!
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has traditionally worked with the small-medium sized solicitors’ practices, whether on the high street or niche commercial, although we have worked with some giant multi-national law firms and in house companies over the years (see our client page for details). We have been involved with a large number of Tier 1 and 2 Legal 500 and Chambers listed practices.
We have over 12,500 solicitors and legal executives registered with us, mostly on a passive basis (ie they are not necessarily looking for a role at the present time. Most of our recruitment comes from this resource, but we do also advertise roles out on various job boards.
Legal recruitment consultants are experts at identifying, sourcing and recruiting suitable candidates for legal jobs in law firms and in house legal departments. Our company has over 50 years of combined professional experience handling permanent and locum legal recruitment roles for our clients, most of whom return to us regularly to assist with new roles and expansion. Our company goes one step further – we also assist with mergers & acquisitions of law firms, so always happy to assist with the recruitment of departments, bolt on law firms, mergers and growth through acquisition.
Recruitment consultants generally are employment agencies attempting to locate potential candidates for employers as well as work with candidates to source suitable jobs. They work by advertising for candidates to register with them and then charging employers for the introduction to the candidates. The term “recruitment agency” tends to be used for more general recruitment – eg lorry drivers or nurses – but the principle is the same. Technically we are an employment agency and not an employment business. These are terms used in UK legislation to differentiate between recruitment companies who employ candidates to do temporary work (these are called an “employment business”) and those who introduce candidates only (an “employment agency”). We fall into the latter category – our locum solicitors usually work on a self-employed or limited company basis.
We abhor discrimination of any kind – this has been a major problem over the years in the UK legal profession in certain firms (age, sex, race etc..). Things have improved in recent times and questions from firms to recruiters such as ‘is the candidate likely to want to take maternity leave in the next few years?’ are not so common these days.
We give candidates & firms honest and impartial advice wherever possible.
We have a privacy policy and do not undertake any recruitment without your consent. The company is committed to donate 10% of our net profits to charity each year and we have an environmental policy. We also believe in equal opportunities for all; regardless of disability, race, religion, colour, age or creed. Our ethical policy (amongst others) is here.
We have professional indemnity insurance, public liability insurance, employers liability insurance and cyber insurance all in place. For copies of our current certificates please get in touch.
In the legal profession, a fee earner is someone who earns/generates fees for the law firm they work for. A solicitor generates fees for a law firm by doing something on a client’s file. So meeting a client, preparing a document, writing a letter, attending court are all billable types of work and this makes a solicitor a fee earner. A secretary does not generally earn fees because they undertake administration on files under the instruction of a solicitor. This is the way that a lot of law firms and lawyers make money – billing clients for their time – usually in 6 minute increments. A receptionist is not a fee earner and neither is an office manager or marketing manager. A paralegal is a fee earner because they undertake tasks that a firm will bill a client for.
Quite often when recruiting we will advertise for a fee earner because a firm are not bothered about the qualification of a candidate and more interested in their experience. So if a role is for a conveyancing fee earner, the candidate could be a legal executive, paralegal, solicitor, licensed conveyancer or non-qualified/QBE conveyancer. NB: QBE stands for ‘qualified by experience’.
Legal jobs are usually defined as any job in a law firm, in house legal department or local authority/government setting. We help law firms and in house legal departments fill vacant legal jobs. These can include anything from a partner/solicitor through to a receptionist, legal secretary or general fee earner, although we tend to concentrate on senior solicitor roles rather than the more junior posts. Entry level jobs and trainee solicitor roles are usually not sourced via recruitment consultants.
Legal jobs cover roles for legal executives, solicitors, barristers, trainee solicitors, paralegals, legal cashiers and legal support staff, together with marketing managers or managing directors. Basically it includes any job that involves working in the legal profession.
There is very little difference between recruitment consultants and recruitment agencies, except that ‘consultants’ tend to operate in the high end market and agencies at the lower end. For example, if you ran a warehouse and wanted to recruit a logistics manager you would probably use an agency calling itself a recruitment consultancy and if you wanted to recruit a forklift truck driver you would use a recruitment agency, even though both are the same. Traditionally, recruitment consultants look to assist with white collar (office based, managerial, professional) roles and recruitment agencies tend to concentrate on blue collar (industrial, semi-skilled & technical) roles.
We describe ourselves as legal recruitment consultants because not only do we provide traditional services of contingency based recruitment, we also provide expert advice & assistance to our clients on business planning, M&A and acquisition through expansion. Recruitment agencies tend not to have this level of expertise.
We have offices in Mold, London, Derby, Brighton, Bristol, Coventry and Glasgow. Our team work on a fully remote basis, but we are always happy to travel to meet with clients where required.
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is a specialist online legal recruitment consultancy based in the UK and working with solicitors firms and in house legal departments to source legal staff. We have a database of over 12,500 solicitors and legal executives, and also assist with legal cashiers, paralegals, managers and support staff. Uniquely we donate 10% of profits to charity on an annual basis, something we have done for over 25 years.
We have been around since April 2000 and provide both permanent and locum recruitment services. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is part of the Ten Percent Group of websites and companies, which include Jonathan Fagan Business Brokers specialising in buying and selling law firms, the Interim Lawyers platform and Ten Percent Financial Recruitment. Further information about us and why we are unique can be found on our about us page.
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is a trading name of Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited, a limited company privately owned by Clare & Jonathan Fagan. Clare and Jonathan founded the business in May 2000. Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited also owns Interim Lawyers Locum Legal Recruitment and Ten Percent Financial Recruitment. The company is part of a group of websites and companies including Jonathan Fagan Business Brokers. The group website is www.tenpercentgroup.com.
Good question! Partly because there has traditionally been a nationwide shortage of a certain standard of lawyer, and secondly, because finding a new opportunity is not often simply a case of looking at online job boards. At any one time, there may be 6 or 7 vacancies for a particular area of the country, but we will know that there are a number of other law firms in that area have vacancies but not bothered continually advertising them. Firms do not always advertise new jobs; partly because they know that legal recruitment consultants can assist, and secondly because the cost of advertising is prohibitive for the return they will get. It can take 2-3 years to get a vacancy filled in some areas of the country.
Candidates
Very unlikely. UK law firms virtually always want UK law experience and will not look at lawyers from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan or Malaysia who do not already have UK experience, even though UK lawyers making the move the other way are quite often in demand in some of these countries. If you are a lawyer from another jurisdiction and do not have UK legal experience on your CV, your best bet is to contact the larger London recruitment agencies who have contracts with the City law firms for document review and higher level paralegal work.
Yes we do. We publish an updated list every month – take a look at our salary review reports here – https://ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews/
Yes, although only very occasionally and in particular circumstances. We have worked with law firms in offshore locations before such as Bermuda, the Falkland Islands and the Cayman Islands. We will not work with any law firms (particularly the Middle East) who are unwilling to provide evidence of an equal opportunity policy that is applied in practice (in the past we have been approached by firms in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to recruit white male solicitors aged 26-36 years old!). We do not tend to work in the opposite direction – UK firms tend to go for UK solicitors or lawyers from overseas with UK experience. Australian and New Zealand lawyers in particular are always very surprised to hear this.
Yes we do – it tends to be locum work rather than permanent recruitment.
In recent times a lot of local authorities have decided to outsource part of the function of their HR departments to large RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) companies who operate a list of recruiters to supply staff. We suspect the HR people within the local authorities thought this may be easier for them and they would no longer have to bother phoning round agencies on a Friday afternoon. Having coached redundant executives via the Jobcentres many years ago we know that a number of HR staff from local authorities were made redundant following their decisions to outsource their own jobs!
These types of arrangements have made it harder for smaller agencies to stay profitable when undertaking local authority work, as the middle men now cream off rather a lot of the profit, and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has chosen to stay well away from these contracts for the time being. Add to this the crazy way a lot of local authorities implement IR35 (a particularly onerous piece of tax legislation applied to locum work) to every vacancy rather than checking each one and it is really an area we have stayed well away from over the years.
However local authorities do occasionally look outside these frameworks and you will see locum local authority vacancies on our sites from time to time.
Yes we do. About 70% of our work is locum, ad hoc and interim cover, with 30% being permanent recruitment for law firms and in house legal departments. If you would like to find out about our specialist locum lawyer services please visit www.interimlawyers.co.uk – there is a full FAQ section on the site as well as a free downloadable guide to being a locum solicitor. The Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment service covers both locum and permanent work for solicitors, legal executives, support staff and fee earners.
Yes we do. We have a specialist department for handling in house legal jobs, whether this is for general counsel, solicitors to assist counsel, specialist in house legal teams or legal department managers. We have regular dealings with in house legal departments across the UK in a wide range of companies from large multinational businesses through to small SMEs.
Our company deals with the supply of locums or contractors on an ad hoc basis via our Locum and Interim Lawyer service – www.interimlawyers.co.uk. We also handle permanent recruitment at all levels and in all industries including education, energy, construction, health, professional services and compliance.
Yes – we have a vast collection of advice articles on our website for solicitors, legal executives, paralegals, law students & graduates, as well as entrants to the legal profession. visit our legal CV advice pages – https://ten-percent.co.uk/cv-advice/
One – us!
Registering with multiple agencies for permanent work can cause problems. If you are a conveyancing solicitor in Manchester, looking for positions in Manchester City Centre, there are about 50 firms you could apply to for work. If you register with 5 agencies, at least three of these may well send either your full CV, anonymous details or a briefing letter to each firm. This can cause issues. Think about registering with one agency to begin with, allow them 3 weeks to make any necessary enquiries with their clients, and then think about registering with others if unsuccessful. If you live in a remote area, such as North Devon, North Lincolnshire or the Lake District, we would recommend allowing at least 4 weeks before registering with anyone else.
No. We get on average between 5 and 15 CVs each week from students and non-qualified paralegals without 6 months experience registering for work. We cannot assist because firms do not want to pay an external source to find trainees and inexperienced staff when the market is so overloaded with potential lawyers! We can assist with careers advice or help with questions answered on our blog and by email, but if you are a law graduate you need to be out there contacting law firms, not recruitment consultants.
PQE stands for ‘Post Qualification Experience’ (or equivalent for legal executives or non-qualified staff). NQ stands for ‘Newly Qualified’ (solicitors).
NB: PQE is often indicated on job roles as a guide and it can be worth applying for roles still where PQE is indicated but does not quite fit your experience levels. However if a firm advertise for a solicitor with 20 years PQE and you have 6 months PQE, the role may not be suitable for you.
QBE stands for ‘Qualified By Experience’ – it is often used with conveyancing executives who have not gained a formal qualification but have many years experience.
In the legal profession, a fee earner is someone who earns/generates fees for the law firm they work for. A solicitor generates fees for a law firm by doing something on a client’s file. So meeting a client, preparing a document, writing a letter, attending court are all billable types of work and this makes a solicitor a fee earner. A secretary does not generally earn fees because they undertake administration on files under the instruction of a solicitor. This is the way that a lot of law firms and lawyers make money – billing clients for their time – usually in 6 minute increments. A receptionist is not a fee earner and neither is an office manager or marketing manager. A paralegal is a fee earner because they undertake tasks that a firm will bill a client for.
Quite often when recruiting we will advertise for a fee earner because a firm are not bothered about the qualification of a candidate and more interested in their experience. So if a role is for a conveyancing fee earner, the candidate could be a legal executive, paralegal, solicitor, licensed conveyancer or non-qualified/QBE conveyancer. NB: QBE stands for ‘qualified by experience’.
The police station accreditation scheme was introduced in the 1990’s in England and Wales, after solicitors were accused of sending their secretaries down to the police station to sit in interviews with murder suspects. A particularly notorious case was in Cardiff when a secretary/receptionist sent by a solicitor to observe an interview sat through questioning whilst a detective asked a suspect over 100 times whether he had committed the murder and subjected him to constant interviewing without a break.
The Law Society began to develop guidelines, and soon a recognised qualification emerged – the ‘accredited police station representative’. A police station representative attends interviews at police stations where a suspect is being spoken to by police officers under caution about a criminal offence. Its a tough job and very often involves working unsocial hours.
Pay has not increased much since we first wrote this FAQ back in 2000 and most reps earn around £22-25k per annum. Some self-employed reps earn a lot more, but the fees paid for attendance at police stations have not changed a lot in the same time frame and in fact in some cases they have actually dropped because of the implementation of fixed fees.
You do not need to be qualified to be a police station rep, but you must be with a criminal law firm with whom you can undertake the training. The cost is about £500 for the examinations, which consist of a written portfolio of cases you have experienced, written exam for some levels of candidates, and an oral exam. This is a tough test, and the rewards for passing it are that you can undertake police station work (which may or may not be considered a benefit when you are sat at a police station at 2am on a Sunday morning with a particularly unpleasant client!). It takes between 3 and 12 months to complete this qualification. If a solicitor wants to join the duty solicitor rota, he or she has to obtain this qualification at some stage in the same way as non-qualified representatives.
Every candidate registering with us will receives a personal service from our consultants. In the last 25 years over 12,500 solicitors have registered with us for vacancy updates and assistance with job seeking. We can advise on improving CVs where necessary, but we do not provide standalone legal careers advice (something we did offer until 2014).
If you register with us and you are a qualified solicitor, legal executive or experienced fee earner, we will add your details to our system and keep you updated with vacancies as they come in. We can provide targeted job application services on request and at our discretion, so if you want us to approach certain firms with an anonymous CV please give us a call or send an email to discuss.
We send out a newsletter to all our candidates on a monthly basis, and this includes careers advice and improving job applications.
We do not send out CVs to employers without your consent under any circumstances.
We cover all types of law if we get instructions from firms and in house legal departments. Our main areas where we do most business are with small-medium sized solicitors firms either on the high street, or in niche commercial practices in the City of London or regions. Although we have links and occasional dealings with larger city & corporate/commercial firms, we are not so busy in these areas.
We like to support firms that still provide legal aid work, but sadly we often find that recruitment is simply not possible because candidate expectations on salary are very different to the levels being offered by the firms. In the past we have worked a lot with crime, mental health, immigration, housing and family legal aid posts, but its very rare we get much on these fronts at present.
On the in house legal department side we have dealt with companies across the UK of all shapes and sizes and in all industries. We have worked with multi-national blue chip companies as well as SMEs looking for a very part time in house legal counsel.
We have worked with clients as diverse as offshore private practice law firms, in-house departments, charities, local authorities, licensed conveyancers and international law practices.
Main types of law covered:
Child Care, Civil Litigation, Clinical Negligence, Commercial Contracts, Commercial Litigation, Commercial Property, Company/Commercial, Compliance, Construction, Conveyancing (Residential), Corporate, Debt Recovery, Employment, Family/Matrimonial, General In House Counsel Roles, Immigration (Corporate & Personal), Insolvency, Intellectual Property, Landlord & Tenant, Law Costs Draftsmen, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pensions, Personal Injury, Planning, Plot Sales, Private Client, Probate (Contentious), Professional Negligence, Property Litigation, Public Sector, Real Estate, Shipping Law, SME Business Advice, Sports Law, Taxation, Trademarks, Trusts & Tax, Wills & Probate.
We are good at what we do; locating new opportunities for lawyers registered with us for work and filling vacancies for our clients. Ten Percent Legal Recruitment is unique; we were the first wholly online legal recruitment consultancy, established in 2000, and we concentrate specifically on solicitors and legal support staff in private practice and in-house in the UK. We adhere to ethical guidelines and keep all recruitment strictly confidential. We donate 10% of our annual profits to charity, hence our name, and this is something we have done for over 25 years. We have helped 100s of solicitors find legal jobs, both permanent and locum, and we have a database of over 12,500 solicitors registered with us. Our company has worked with over 2,500 law firms to date. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is owned & managed by a solicitor (non-practising) and our consultants are not sales people – we genuinely want to give candidates impartial advice to progress with their careers and also help our clients find the right people to fill their vacancies.
Employers
Yes we do. We publish an updated list every month – take a look at our salary review reports here – https://ten-percent.co.uk/salary-reviews/
Yes we do – it tends to be locum work rather than permanent recruitment.
In recent times a lot of local authorities have decided to outsource part of the function of their HR departments to large RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) companies who operate a list of recruiters to supply staff. We suspect the HR people within the local authorities thought this may be easier for them and they would no longer have to bother phoning round agencies on a Friday afternoon. Having coached redundant executives via the Jobcentres many years ago we know that a number of HR staff from local authorities were made redundant following their decisions to outsource their own jobs!
These types of arrangements have made it harder for smaller agencies to stay profitable when undertaking local authority work, as the middle men now cream off rather a lot of the profit, and Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has chosen to stay well away from these contracts for the time being. Add to this the crazy way a lot of local authorities implement IR35 (a particularly onerous piece of tax legislation applied to locum work) to every vacancy rather than checking each one and it is really an area we have stayed well away from over the years.
However local authorities do occasionally look outside these frameworks and you will see locum local authority vacancies on our sites from time to time.
Yes we do. About 70% of our work is locum, ad hoc and interim cover, with 30% being permanent recruitment for law firms and in house legal departments. If you would like to find out about our specialist locum lawyer services please visit www.interimlawyers.co.uk – there is a full FAQ section on the site as well as a free downloadable guide to being a locum solicitor. The Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment service covers both locum and permanent work for solicitors, legal executives, support staff and fee earners.
Yes we do. We have a specialist department for handling in house legal jobs, whether this is for general counsel, solicitors to assist counsel, specialist in house legal teams or legal department managers. We have regular dealings with in house legal departments across the UK in a wide range of companies from large multinational businesses through to small SMEs.
Our company deals with the supply of locums or contractors on an ad hoc basis via our Locum and Interim Lawyer service – www.interimlawyers.co.uk. We also handle permanent recruitment at all levels and in all industries including education, energy, construction, health, professional services and compliance.
We have over 12,500 solicitors and legal executives registered with us, mostly on a passive basis (ie they are not necessarily looking for a role at the present time. Most of our recruitment comes from this resource, but we do also advertise roles out on various job boards.
Headhunters are legal recruitment consultants who either source well-regarded solicitors via their network or simply cold call as many as possible via a LinkedIn Premium account (depending on your level of cynicism) to try to persuade them to change firms with offers of high salary or better terms. Most recruitment consultants offer a headhunting service and call it “search and selection”.
We do offer headhunting services. Our company has been around for 25 years and we have a network of connections, registered candidates, and extensive contacts in the legal profession. However we choose which clients we provide the service to and also for which roles. There is no point headhunting unless we have something to sell to candidates, so we will only agree to take an assignment if we can see the clear benefit to a potential candidate in joining your business. We charge an upfront fee in addition to our standard introduction fees for this service. If you would like to discuss using us to headhunt candidates, please contact us.
Our legal recruitment fees for permanent and locum roles are outlined here. We believe in transparency when it comes to fees and we publish ours online in full. We do not negotiate on fees and if you find agencies cheaper elsewhere we are very pleased for you!
Uniquely, solicitors’ firms and in house legal department clients are always offered 12 month instalment & rebate periods for all permanent legal recruitment undertaken through us.
Candidates (ie solicitors looking for work) do not pay any fees to us:- to charge a person to find a job is illegal in the UK.
We provide specialist legal recruitment services, usually on a contingency basis. Most of our recruitment is done from our database of candidates, carefully built up over the last 25 years. Our services include:
- Salary reviews & advice
- Legal recruitment for fee earner, legal executive, solicitor and paralegal roles
- Locum & interim assignments
- Permanent recruitment
- Contingency search & selection
- Headhunting (at our discretion)
- Law firm mergers & acquisitions
- Law firm valuations
- Exit strategy advice & assistance
- Subscription based legal recruitment
We cover all types of law if we get instructions from firms and in house legal departments. Our main areas where we do most business are with small-medium sized solicitors firms either on the high street, or in niche commercial practices in the City of London or regions. Although we have links and occasional dealings with larger city & corporate/commercial firms, we are not so busy in these areas.
We like to support firms that still provide legal aid work, but sadly we often find that recruitment is simply not possible because candidate expectations on salary are very different to the levels being offered by the firms. In the past we have worked a lot with crime, mental health, immigration, housing and family legal aid posts, but its very rare we get much on these fronts at present.
On the in house legal department side we have dealt with companies across the UK of all shapes and sizes and in all industries. We have worked with multi-national blue chip companies as well as SMEs looking for a very part time in house legal counsel.
We have worked with clients as diverse as offshore private practice law firms, in-house departments, charities, local authorities, licensed conveyancers and international law practices.
Main types of law covered:
Child Care, Civil Litigation, Clinical Negligence, Commercial Contracts, Commercial Litigation, Commercial Property, Company/Commercial, Compliance, Construction, Conveyancing (Residential), Corporate, Debt Recovery, Employment, Family/Matrimonial, General In House Counsel Roles, Immigration (Corporate & Personal), Insolvency, Intellectual Property, Landlord & Tenant, Law Costs Draftsmen, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pensions, Personal Injury, Planning, Plot Sales, Private Client, Probate (Contentious), Professional Negligence, Property Litigation, Public Sector, Real Estate, Shipping Law, SME Business Advice, Sports Law, Taxation, Trademarks, Trusts & Tax, Wills & Probate.
Careers
We are always happy to give our opinion on a legal career question you may have. We do not help with CV advice, career coaching or interview practice, although we have done all three in the past.
I have a legal career-related question for you
Great! Drop us an email to cv@ten-percent.co.uk and we will see what we can do to assist, usually by writing a blog article for our website and sending you the link. A quick note back to say thank you always warms our hearts..
Yes – we have a vast collection of advice articles on our website for solicitors, legal executives, paralegals, law students & graduates, as well as entrants to the legal profession. visit our legal CV advice pages – https://ten-percent.co.uk/cv-advice/
No. We get on average between 5 and 15 CVs each week from students and non-qualified paralegals without 6 months experience registering for work. We cannot assist because firms do not want to pay an external source to find trainees and inexperienced staff when the market is so overloaded with potential lawyers! We can assist with careers advice or help with questions answered on our blog and by email, but if you are a law graduate you need to be out there contacting law firms, not recruitment consultants.
It depends on your experience. If you have at least 6 months’ paid full time experience (can be unpaid if it is of sufficient quality in a solicitors’ firm) and be looking for permanent paralegal work rather than temporary. We do get paralegal roles registered with us by law firms and in house legal departments, but they will almost always be for permanent long term work and very rarely come with the promise of a training contract or to count as QWE (qualifying work experience).