FAQ

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.

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.

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’.

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.