Trainee hunger games

As I stared back at the dozens of training-contract-hungry graduates, I thought to myself: "Why have I been given the not-so-cheery task of detailing the challenges of entering the profession?" The answer: because they've got to learn.

The Junior Lawyers Division (JLD) now holds a biannual conference, the 'LPC student forum: helping you to secure a training contract'. The all-day event is aimed at the division's Legal Practice Course (LPC) graduate and paralegal members, of which there are many. I, along with trainees, solicitors and graduate recruitment advisers, was asked to give advice on how best to enter the market and my talk was on the current challenges and opportunities for students entering the profession.

An onerous task at the best of times - the industry is infamously over-saturated with wannabe trainees - and so the JLD has taken a pragmatic approach to teaching debt-ridden graduates how to go about securing that most elusive of all creatures, the training contract.

The October event was over-subscribed with students haggling over CV clinics with organisers. The event's packed 'how to' programme: 'How I secured my training contract', 'How pro bono can prepare you for a career as a solicitor, 'How can you make yourself stand out to firms', is as prescriptive as law firm recruitment can surely get.

As trainees took to the stage to discuss application faux pas (no, recruiters will not excuse typos and grammatical and/or spelling errors, and yes, they can tell if a CV has been mass-produced), a few other crucial lessons came to light.

Paralegal recognition

Paralegalling has long been regarded as the invisible step - or leap of faith, depending on how you look at it - many graduates must take before embarking on their training contract. The SRA has recognised this needs to change, and will now allow paralegals who have passed the LPC to qualify without having to complete a formal training contract.

Defined as a 'period of recognised training', paralegals will have "retained the requirement for training in terms of content, breadth, level and supervision," according to the regulator. Despite this amendment, however, the industry has its own take on the prerequisite experience needed from trainees, three of whom took to the stage to discuss how they got their position.

Post-LPC, Jade Johnson, a trainee at Bevan Brittan, thought that now she was qualified, a paralegal or trainee position would fall into her lap. "I couldn't even get basic office jobs," she admitted. Desperate to get a toe hold into the profession, Johnson "shamelessly" contacted old friends from university who had found a way into the law, also as paralegals, and asked them to help her find a position.

Although she eventually secured a training contract, Johnson had to work as a paralegal for two-and-a-half years first. Pointedly, she said that picking up entry-level skills such as how to operate the telephone system actually eased her into her role as a trainee. "Paralegalling before your training contract is going to be the way forward," Johnson concluded.

The Co-operative Legal Services now requires all of its trainees to complete a minimum of six months' work as a paralegal, in a role defined as a 'caseworker'. However, it is not guaranteed that caseworkers will progress to becoming a fully fledged trainee. Emily Crick, a current trainee, advised that career progression is 'supported' and the cohorts of caseworkers are small, thus encouraging career development.

The alternative business structure (ABS) has also abandoned the traditional trainee recruitment model of hiring two years in advance. Recruitment instead meets and depends on business needs, and is either immediate or deferred for a year. This model feeds into the Co-op's mantra on management and money. "Understand how business operates and how that business makes money," was Crick's parting advice to delegates at the JLD conference.

Corporate City firms, however, continue to opt for the traditional method of recruitment, right down to taking on fresh-faced graduates. Elliott Kenton, a trainee at US firm Kirkland Ellis, suggested that vacation schemes are the ideal route aspiring City workers should take when seeking a role in a global player.

If there is one thing the profession is not short of, it is aspiring City workers. When Kenton asked how many attendees were looking for work in corporate-esque London practices, nearly half of the attendees raised their hands. Unfortunately, Kenton did not re-poll after telling the fresh-faced hopefuls horror stories from City firms regarding long working hours and stressful case work, leading to late weeknights in the office and compromised weekends, are not always fictional.

Striding in-house

A career in-house is also piquing the interests
of Gen Y. Consolidation in the market, a focus on
client and business needs, and the different skills demanded of young lawyers has resulted in a different type of solicitor and practice. Lionel
Barber, editor of the Financial Times, reports that
a staggering one in every four UK lawyers now practises in-house: "In-house lawyers are striding ahead as the biggest drivers of change in the legal industry. The requirement for corporate legal departments is to generate revenues as well as trim costs."

Mark Levine, director of in-house recruitment at BCL Legal, explained that the pyramid structure of in-house legal teams means more roles are becoming available for junior lawyers. “You’ve got one head of legal at the top, then maybe a senior lawyer and a few juniors at the bottom. I guess what might happen is number two lawyer moves on because the head isn’t moving anywhere, which means it needs filling at the bottom end.”

Concurring with Bevan Brittan’s and the Co-op’s recruitment methods, Karyn Palmer, senior counsel at Vodafone UK, advised delegates  to pursue paralegal positions at corporations, working with in-house legal counsels, before trying to obtain a training contract. Palmer advocated paralegalling as it allows graduates to differentiate themselves from fellow candidates, and said it was the ‘way in’ to securing an in-house training contract.

Nevertheless, applying to corporations for in-house roles appears to remain a covert operation. Vodafone advertises its in-house paralegal positions on a case by case basis and not as a matter of formality, as many nationwide firms do. Two positions were advertised recently and only around ten to 20 applications were received, something Palmer believes also has to do with the fact that Vodafone is on the ‘wrong’ side of Heathrow. 

But lawyers are peering in at rosier opportunities available in-house. When I asked Levine about the profession’s current recruitment habits, he responded that speculative applications from lawyers were on the rise: “You get senior lawyers who have done private practice for a number of years and have decided they want something else for their final ten years of work.” 

But what of younger practitioners? “What we have seen are lawyers at a more junior level deciding quite early on that private practice is not for them. They may have been on secondment or have heard something from friends; they want a good career, they don’t want to step off the earning potential. 

“Certainly in London you see more lawyers at associate level who would traditionally have gone on to partnership who question whether that’s actually what they want. I’ve met a few people who looked up at the people above them on the partnership track and thought ‘I don’t want to sell my soul,’” he said.

The opportunity to become an in-house practitioner is reason for young lawyers to celebrate. In-house practitioners notoriously enjoy a better work-life balance, a rewarding working environment and a less stressful and competitive career. This could be a golden age for young lawyers to work in-house, especially considering Gen Y’s fervent attitude to reasonable expectations of working hours and quality of life. 

Palmer explained Vodafone’s clean-desk policy, which aims to disengage employees from their working space at the end of the day, their offerings of laptops and mobiles, their flexi-working hours and marathon-running colleagues who are able to take time off to train. Unorthodox working hours are not revolutionary, nor are they rare, but in-house counsel appears to use them to their advantage. As Palmer said, you’re not the firm with a client on the phone demanding something’s done tomorrow.

For Levine, one element is key to the survival of traditional practices. “Firms need to look at flexibility. There’s nothing private practice can do because they can’t change the job of being in a law firm and not living the life of an in-house lawyer.”

But is it too good to be true? Palmer stressed 

that there are ‘limits’ to the flexibility on offer. “If something needs to be done, it needs to be done,” she said.

Redundant approach

Hopefully, neither my nor any of the other speakers' spiels put off aspiring lawyers from the profession. But if it did, then perhaps the law is not for them.
The biggest lesson graduates must learn is that the one-size-fits-all approach to legal education has become redundant and after the LPC, students must take control of their own learning and development.

I spoke to delegates about multi-disciplinary practices (MDPs) and ABSs. Some firms have remained wary of their entrance into the market; some have embraced them and changed their business model.

In all, the ones to have recognised the market change stand in better stead than the ones who have not, because the industry is not sympathising with any firm. It would not surprise me to see LPC graduates in the future employed in an MDP offering probate work, or in an ABS offering conveyancing.

Firms that incorporate a business strategy, whether corporate, boutique or online, are thinking ten or 20 years down the line, not five. Yes, a career in law is incredibly rewarding, but as I told tomorrow's lawyers, it will be far from easy. SJ

Hekim's Hacks

Former chair of the Junior Lawyers Division Hekim Hannan’s words of wisdom to delegates’ hankering questions 

• Get involved on Twitter.
• Listening to the Radio 4 Today programme can cultivate commercial awareness.
• Being a lawyer isn’t about retaining information, it’s about processing information.
• (On LLMs) If you go for an interview, you have to be able to say why you did that master’s degree.
• In the interview stage, don’t change your personality to be someone you think the firm wants. Be yourself or a ‘work version’ of yourself.
• (On practice) You haven’t got time to be perfect. You’ve got six to seven billable hours to do per day.

 

Hekim Hannan is a solicitor 

and costs lawyer at QM Costs 

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Laura Clenshaw is the managing editor of Solicitors Journal and editor of Young Lawyer

laura.clenshaw@solicitorsjournal.co.uk