Legal Cashier Jobs and Recruitment
Legal Cashiers have evolved over the years. At one point for most firms they were usually someone’s auntie who had learnt a bit of double entry book-keeping pitching up at the offices every few weeks to balance the bank account and check all receipts were to hand. As time as progressed and regulation has got tighter the Legal Cashier professional has evolved.
Although it is certainly the case that a good proportion of Legal Cashiers do not have any academic or financial qualifications, an increasing number will now be graduates or members of the Institute of Legal Finance & Management (formerly known as the Institute of Legal Cashiers and Administrators). In addition to this, a good number have MBA and MSc degrees in some type of financial management.
On a Legal Cashier CV, we would expect to see the following:
1. Evidence of all your education to date. Solicitors and lawyers generally are sticklers for looking for academic information.
2. Details of your Case Management Software experience to date. List the packages you have used.
3. A break down of the work you have done in each post you have held during your career. It is not sufficient simply to write “accounts and financial management” for each entry.
4. Specify salary levels – we know Legal Cashiers who earn £13,000 a year as well as Legal Cashiers who earn £55,000 a year.
You can search our Vacancies at any time simply by clicking the Quick Link on the left hand side. You can also send us your CV via cv@ten-percent.co.uk or register online. We can usually get any Legal Cashier an interview with a firm in at least one part of the country at any one time.
What qualifications does a legal cashier need?
If you are planning to be a legal cashier then there are lots of different options in terms of training that you can go and undertake. For example, you can join the Institute of Legal Finance & Management and obtain legal cashier qualifications through them.
However, the answer to this one is very simple – the vast majority of legal cashiers do not have a specific qualification.
You may find this strange because it is such a specialist position and comes with a considerable amount of responsibility. However, most legal cashiers are where they are because they have worked their way up within a law firm rather than start out in one specific type of post. A good number of legal cashiers are former administration assistants who possibly possess a couple of GCSEs but very little else. I can think of a large number of senior practice managers and legal account managers who have no qualifications at all apart from this, simply because they have started out from the bottom and worked their way up through the various posts such as legal cashier and senior legal cashier.
As so much work by legal cashiers is experienced-based rather than something you learn in the classroom it does not really matter what qualifications you go off and do. The vast majority of job applicants you will be up against will have no qualifications whatsoever and your qualifications will not stand you in any better stead than them. The experience they have will no doubt swing it their way rather than yours.
It is better to concentrate on getting experience than studying for qualifications if you are starting out. Experience is the key to all legal cashier jobs, although having said all of the above, in the last couple of years we have seen an increase in the number of ACCA graduates and members applying for legal cashier roles. This is however more to do with the lack of roles in accountancy than any particular need to have an accounts qualification.
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment have been legal cashier specialists for a number of years now and firms use us for our specialist knowledge of the legal jobs market.