Good morning and welcome to the December edition of Legal Recruitment News from the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group.
The market report for December is fairly short. Permanent recruitment has been very quiet indeed since the traditional half term break at the end of October. We had a spurt of family and children panel member posts coming in, probably to do with yet another Legal Services Commission deadline cropping up.
The locum market has quietened down as it always does at this time of year. Locums quite often book off November and December in their diaries as they expect to be off in any event and this can make it harder to source a lawyer even with less work around.
**Commercial Law Firms and In House:**
Quiet still – we are getting news of redundancies here and there, but a lot of the larger law firms now have contracts tied up with larger recruitment agencies and don’t tend to put a lot through the smaller companies like ourselves. Employers seem to have been holding back in recent times still and not much activity spotted at all. We have had a few commercial litigation posts in and a couple of employment locum posts but that is about it. We do find that even with in house counsel recruitment the HR departments put out requests for CVs and then decide not to proceed.
**On the High Street:**
Redundancies seem to have stopped, although we are starting to notice a new pattern emerging in business of partners dismissing permanent members of staff and reverting to locums and contractors. Recently we have had a locum assignment in from a law firm in London where we knew the departing permanent member of staff. We were told by the firm that the locum was needed to cover sick leave, whereas in fact the locum had been recruited to take over the caseload of the solicitor who had been laid off.
Conveyancing, private client and commercial property temporary and contract work has been busy up until the middle of November. Conveyancing still occurring, which is a good sign that the market has now changed and property is starting to move again.
**Company News**
Interim Lawyers, our locum service, has now opened offices in Manchester, London, Basingstoke and Gloucester. We cover the whole of the UK, offering swift and cost effective services for any law firm looking for temporary or contract law staff at all levels. We guarantee to make a locum available for every assignment posted with us (provided the assignment is reasonable – obviously we will struggle to recruit a Welsh speaking 20 year PQE solicitor to work for £5 per hour in the Outer Hebrides!).
Ten-Percent Legal’s £3,600 for 5 years Unlimited Recruitment Service is still going strong and we are (very) gradually drawing closer to our 100th member law firm. Cost savings to our 70+ firms are already estimated to be around £275,000. Over 60% of members undertake LSC funded work in some capacity and 33% have less than 2 partners. The service is restricted to firms with less than 100 staff.
In October/November 2012 we had 143 new solicitors and legal executives register with us, together with just short of 900 paralegals and non-qualified staff (in response to specific law firm member vacancies). We restrict our own legal candidate database to ensure we only register qualified or suitably experienced staff.
(http://www.interimlawyers.co.uk)
