Law Society: Firms should pay work experience students a minimum wage
JLD chair: In some cases, candidates we heard from appear to have been taken advantage of
Law firms offering work experience should pay their students the national minimum wage, the Law Society has advised.
In a bid to improve accessibility to the profession, the society, in collaboration with its Junior Lawyers Division (JLD), has published new guidance for those offering work placements.
Providers are advised to clearly define, openly advertise, and fairly recruit work experience opportunities, while remunerating candidates to the national minimum wage or above where possible.
Unpaid work experience placements should last no longer than four weeks, while reasonable expenses incurred by a student should be covered by the firm.
The guidance comes following to a 2014 JLD survey that showed that eight out of ten students were not paid for work experience.
Some 23 per cent of those that went unpaid toiled for free for over six months. Some 3 per cent received no remuneration for more than two years.
Over one third had undertaken less than a month's work unpaid, while 30 per cent had completed between one and three months' work.
'Legal work experience has become a defining and important step towards a legal career, so competition for work experience can be intense,' said Jonathan Smithers, president of the Law Society.
'The Law Society guidance on work experience supports law firms to promote fair, equal access to the legal profession and good working practices.'
Over 70 per cent of respondents to the JLD survey anticipated that unpaid work experience would help them find a training contract but less than half of these thought the experience had enhanced their job prospects.
In the past decade, the number of law graduates has increased by 45 per cent. In 2014, over 16,000 students graduated to find only 5,000 training contracts available.
The JLD's chair, Leanne Maund, has called on work experience providers to stop exploiting students.
'While work experience is generally considered to be a good thing for aspiring trainee solicitors, sometimes the reality does not live up to expectations. In some cases, candidates we heard from appear to have been taken advantage of,' she said.
'We worked with the Law Society to produce this guidance to ensure that a line is drawn between circumstances where a prospective trainee is gaining a valuable insight into an organisation for a short period of time, and those where an individual is simply working unpaid.'