Recruitment on the up for UK legal recruiters Ten-Percent Legal

Feb. 16, 2009 - PRLog -- Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment (http://www.ten-percent.co.uk) reports that with increasing redundancies and law firm closures across the UK, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was all doom and gloom and that very little recruitment was taking place.

Jonathan Fagan, Managing Director explains:
"This could not be further from the truth – we have had a very busy period of six weeks, which is partly why this report is about two weeks late! Legal recruitment has changed and there is no denying that, but there are certainly opportunities coming in that result in our caseload being quite busy.

We have seen a large number of vacancies posted with us during the January and early February periods. The difference is that quite a few are difficult vacancies to fill in that the firms want something that does not necessarily exist or is close to impossible to achieve. More on this in a bit. We have seen a marked change in the quality of vacancies and firms recruiting. The small to medium sized firms who have been well established for a good number of years with quality work and well paid positions are simply not recruiting at present. They are probably the ones who are hardest hit by the credit crunch as they have been paying their staff reasonable wages and offering good conditions which does not necessarily result in increased productivity. The firms that are benefiting are those who have offered low salaries and now have staff working on these with no prospects of changing position simply because there are no positions to change into that offer any more.

There has also been a marked change in the standard of firms who are recruiting and LSC funded work has come to the fore again. There has been a marked increase in the amount of interest shown in LSC funded work and in positions coming up in firms doing predominantly LSC or litigation work.

In brief, litigation and insolvency positions are up and non-contentious positions are down, if not gone for the time being.

The outlook is far from rosy but we expect all markets to pick up in the next three to four months. There are certainly signs of this as more and more jobs get posted by firms as new areas of law are explored. "

Busy Trading on the High Street

"The high street on the non-contentious side has been decimated. We have gone from 800 conveyancing vacancies down to no conveyancing vacancies. I can repeat that confidently that there are no conveyancing vacancies registered with Ten Percent Legal Recruitment or any of its websites at present. However, we did get a vacancy registered last night for a conveyancing solicitor to undertake conveyancing work and get paid 40 percent of the profits.

Wills and probate has not performed as expected. We predicted last year that wills and probate would be a boom area and most firms would expand rapidly on the wills and probate side and cut the conveyancing side. The problem has been that although firms are picking up wills and probate work, it is being done by the lawyers who were conveyancing solicitors and have moved over.

This in turn has meant that there are no jobs for wills and probate solicitors and again, although we have a few registered with us, most are not recruiting unless you have something to bring to the table (i.e. the mysterious following).

On the contentious side, there seem to be openings just about everywhere, although again, firms are still very, very reluctant to commit to anything and salaries are stunted. Firms almost put out as a matter of course that they are looking for candidates with a following even though they must know that on the whole, such candidates simply do not exist and the chance of finding one with a following in the current climate is nothing short of a miracle.

We are seeing new patterns starting to emerge and payment protection insurance misselling is going to hit our doorsteps very shortly as firms start opening departments dealing with this. Similarly everybody seems to be interested in insolvency work at present and there is certainly plenty of interest in insolvency solicitors from various sources.

Crime, mental health, family, housing, social welfare and employment from an LSC funded perspective are all very busy and firms are extremely interested in recruiting in these areas. The majority of the posts that we are picking up come in these fields.  

In summary, the high street is buoyant if you are not a conveyancer or wills and probate lawyer, but if you are one of those, then it is still pretty terrible.

Commercial Work Destroyed

Commercial law has been pretty much decimated by the recent events of the credit crunch. It almost appears that legal recruitment in the city and the larger commercial practices has disappeared as large corporations cut back on just about everything.

The redundancies that have been reported in the press are a very good example of just lazy reporting by journalists who can’t be bothered to go out and research a story as the figures put out for firms like Baker and McKenzie and Linklaters are pretty much dwarfed by the number of redundancies being made in the high street, except the number of redundancies being made in the high street cannot be put in a press release and sent to journalists simply to copy out.

We have seen vacancies dry up quite considerably on all fronts, but there are certainly still posts out there in the regions. We are currently interviewing with a large national firm on a whole host of posts, but nearly all of them are linked to litigation fields, that have some element of high street work in them, albeit from a defence side.

Not a good time to be looking for work especially if you’re a newly qualified and I am not sure that the market will pick up on the commercial side for at least another three to four months. I could be mistaken, but that is the feeling I get on this.

Other Fields still Difficult

Support work is also very difficult and the number of secretaries being  laid off is probably similar to the number of solicitors, especially when secretaries in some firms are paid almost as much as the solicitors and firms are realising that they can actually do without them when they haven’t got any work for them.  

We’ve seen a large number of secretaries who have been with firms for 20 years +, being made redundant and their salary levels are simply unsupportable in other firms, where the new firm had no loyalty to them.  

It is becoming a new world out there for everyone, and this does include support workers in the legal profession.  

Ten Percent Legal Recruitment also has divisions in architecture, financial services and tax and from these the financial services sector is very busy for independent financial advisors. If anyone is thinking of cross qualifying as a financial advisor (I did it myself some years ago), it may be a good idea to start looking into this as there is certainly a gap in the market opening up. On recent flyers out to financial advisor firms, we have had a very high take up of enquiries, although most are only interested on a self employed basis.

In summary, things are not as bad as the press make out in some aspects, but in other aspects, they are not particularly healthy and the press are correct. If you are a conveyancer who has been made redundant and want further advice, please have a look at our site - http://www.ten-percent.co.uk, the Law Care website (http://www.lawcare.org.uk) or read our recruitment blog http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com

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Legal Recruitment Consultants for international & UK Legal Jobs. Recruiting solicitors, lawyers, attorneys and fee earners for law firms across the world. Low cost fee structure and well established, with MD Jonathan Fagan recognised as a leading expert.