The legal recruitment market

Aspiring lawyers are faced with a vast array of options when it comes to planning a legal career. A legal career is incredibly demanding, yet intellectually stimulating, varied, highly worthwhile, interesting and rewarding. In addition, the work of a lawyer can offer a great range of exciting opportunities; from training and practising at a leading law firm / set of chambers, to working in-house at a large multi-national company or in another jurisdiction.

This abundance of choice in the legal sector brings with it certain challenges to the unseasoned applicant, regardless of what stage you are at in the search for your first job in law. The challenges in navigating a path through this plethora of options takes some getting used to.

Ultimate Law Guide (ULG) provides a useful source of reference to assist you at every stage of your career planning, by signposting various factors that you must consider before starting out on your journey to becoming a lawyer. Our website and book, Ultimate Guide to Training Contract Success provides a comprehensive roadmap on all you need to know about forging a career in law; as it walks you through every aspect of the training contract selection process and is written from the perspective of people who have recently and successfully been through it themselves. It wasn’t so long ago that we were in your position: trying to decide which route was the best to take; worrying about exams, a legal career and our funding options. Challenging, isn’t it? There are so many options right now, so many questions you want to ask. Good. You’re on the right path.

Getting ahead of the competition

Law firms seek to recruit the very best and brightest talent available, in order to remain at the forefront of a fiercely competitive legal services market. The difficulties in securing a training contract or pupillage is common knowledge among aspiring lawyers. Many applicants find the training contract / pupillage selection process extremely challenging for the following reasons: 

• Law remains the most popular career choice for students.

According to the latest report by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), published on 19th January 2009, 82,000 applicants chose to read law, which represents a quarter of all university applications. This confirms that law is the most popular degree course to study at university. This year, just under 18,000 applicants were accepted on to law courses in universities around the country. 

• There is a huge disparity between the number of applicants searching for training contracts and the number of training contracts actually available in the legal recruitment market.

During the 2008/9 academic year, a statistical analysis of the post-graduate legal education market shows there are 6,376 students studying the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL), which is the law conversion course for non-law graduates. Whereas, on the Legal Practice Course (LPC) - the one-year vocational stage of legal training; before commencement of the training contract, there are 10,675 places on the LPC (with an extra 3,068 part-time places). The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) confirmed there were 6,303 training contracts registered from 1 August 2007 to 31 July 2008, which represents 300 more than the year before. It is clear why it is becoming increasingly difficult to gain access into the legal profession: There are simply more places open on law courses than there are training contracts available.

The challenge of securing a training contract is compounded further by LPC graduates from the previous years, who are still searching for that elusive training contract. In addition, there are student barristers who are changing direction to become solicitors, given the competition for pupillages could be considered even more intense, given there are just 550 pupillage places per year. There are also a number of legally educated professionals working in alternative careers, still harbouring ambitions to return to law and fulfil their dream of becoming a lawyer. There are also international applicants based overseas, mature students and legal executives aiming to change/further their careers by qualifying as solicitors. The legal recruitment market for pre-qualified lawyers is hugely oversubscribed; there is a huge gulf between the number of training contracts / pupilages available, and the increasing number of aspiring lawyers vying for their first jobs in law. This is reflected in the thousands of applications law firms and chambers receive for only small number of places comparatively, which is why law firms can afford to be so selective about choosing the most able candidates. 

The impact of today’s economic climate on the graduate recruitment market

According to research recently published by High Fliers, the UK’s top graduate employers have slashed their recruitment targets by 17 per cent for 2009. The hardest hit sector is in investment banking and finance, where graduate positions have been cut by a staggering 44 and 47 per cent respectively.

The cutbacks in the number of graduate jobs within the investment banking and finance sectors, has correlated with a great surge in the number of graduates turning to a career in law and applications to law schools around the country. The College of Law and BPP have both recently confirmed this trend, reporting that the number of non-law graduates applying for the GDL course has soared by 20 per cent this year.

Many of these graduates are now targeting a career in law because they view a legal career as an equally well-respected, rewarding, challenging and interesting alternative option. Some graduates also regard the law as a more secure and stable career choice compared to other sectors; this has widened the pool of applicants and competition for training contracts is set to intensify even further. This years round of training contract applications is set to be even tougher than before and aspiring lawyers will have to complete more targeted applications for possibly even fewer jobs. With the number of training contract applicants rapidly rising; students / graduates will have to work even harder to get noticed and stand out from the crowd in order to enhance their employability prospects. Whilst the challenge for most law firms is to sort out those applicants who genuinely want to come into law; or who see their decision to turn to law as a stop-gap until they can return to banking and trading in the City, once the market picks up within a few years.

There is an increasing sense of caution sweeping through the legal recruitment market; a number of city law firms have recently deferred and postponed the commencement dates of their new intake of trainee solicitors. It will be interesting to see whether law firms keep their trainee solicitor recruitment targets static, in spite of the cutbacks in the wider graduate recruitment sector because they have to anticipate what their business needs will be two years in advance. It will also be interesting to see if law firms have learned from the stop/start recruitment cycles of the last economic downturn; when they drastically reduced their trainee/newly qualified level recruitment, and then, suddenly found themselves short of junior lawyers as the economic climate improved. This resulted in the rapid escalation of salaries once the demand for good quality lawyers began to outstrip the supply of talent available.

Money matters: Legal education – huge cost, or worthwhile investment?

Aspiring lawyers face the huge obstacle of financing law school; there are a great deal of financial constraints to funding a legal career particularly for students without the financial support from their parents or sponsorship via a law firm. Many graduates have the bleak prospect of having to struggle for many years to pay off their student debts. Last year, the Higher Education Policy Institute, said that: “students face average debts of up to £37,000’’. These financial hurdles are worsened by the tough market conditions and the fact that this year, universities look likely to decide to go ahead with their plans to increase the level of tuition fees paid; this is even before considering the cost of post-graduate law school fees. The cost of law school fees vary by institution and by course: the GDL costs in the region of £7,000 and the LPC fees are approximately £11,000. For aspiring barristers the cost of the Bar Vocational Course (BVC) is between £13-14,000.

The last thing we want to do, is disillusion you, because its not all doom and gloom! But, ULG tell you how it really is, we give you the true picture - as it is so important that would-be lawyers sufficiently understand the realities of the serious times that we face in the legal market. However, we suggest that you view the cost of funding your legal career as a long-term investment because you will reap a return on this investment once you get your training contract / pupilage. On a brighter note, take it from us – it all became worthwhile once we started our training contracts and received our first monthly pay! 

The new-look LPC

A new-style LPC will be launched this September; the aim is to make the course more flexible, allowing students to study the LPC in two separate parts, which will assist those students who are self-funding the cost of the LPC and help them to move more quickly into the legal job market. The LPC has become more client focused and commercially relevant to modern legal practice; where the timing of delivery, content of the programme and duration of study will now be all the more tailored to the individual requirements of a law firm. The culture, ethos and values of the firm can now be instilled into trainees from day one of the training programme as the demand continues for trainees to hit the ground running and immediately understand how their firm operates in order to facilitate a smooth integration into legal practice. 

Salary – The war for talent

After years of a buoyant trainee solicitor recruitment market, Generation Y had a dazzling array of opportunities open to them; the war for the very best talent amongst UK law firms brought headline grabbing increases in trainee solicitor salaries and some of the largest commercial firms (particularly in the City) paying in excess of £90,000, per annum, for newly qualified solicitors. For more information on jobs and your earning potential, visit our Salary Guide.

For a long time, the upward trend in salaries showed no signs of slowing down; then the credit crunch started to bite. If the pessimism that has engulfed the legal press recently is anything to go by, opportunities for those entering the legal ­profession now look rather more limited this year - with reports suggesting that the current year is set to become one of the hardest in which to graduate. We recognise that would-be lawyers are not immune from the effects of the prevailing economic climate where conditions seem to be worsening. But ULG is here to remind aspiring lawyers that you still stand a really good chance of securing a training contract / pupilage, despite the really tough legal scene.

Law firms know that there is much more to recruiting and retaining the best talent, than being really well-paid. Law firms offer benefit packages, which includes: pension contributions, health care provisions, gym membership, a bonus and a good work/life balance is also very high on the agendas of aspiring lawyers. Good prospects of career progression within a law firm remains one of the most important factors for aspiring lawyers when selecting a law firm to train and spend their career. Then comes the partnership incentive; law firms are partnerships, which are owned and managed by the partners. Partnership is the ultimate career ambition for most solicitors in private practice and is the preserve of those who work extremely hard and generate a great deal of profit for the firm. 

Quality of work and training

The quality of work and training is commonly cited as the single most important factor an aspiring lawyer considers when deciding which law firm to train with. Like any other business, law firms seek to gain the competitive edge in making their service more distinctive than their competitors. The only source of long-term competitive advantage for law firms is their people – law firms’ most important assets. The quality of a firms training programme determines the level of excellence of their lawyers, which in turn, underpins the success and survival of a law firm. This is why law firms place tremendous value in providing comprehensive training programmes for their lawyers at every stage of the career ladder.

Law firms also aim to create a working environment that encourages and enables their people to learn and fulfil their own unique potential. The cost to a law firm in training and developing each trainee is in the region of £250,000. It is therefore vital that firms are confident that their money is being invested wisely; so that you will hit the ground running when you commence your training and the firm will see a return on their investment. Many law firms’ aim to hold on to their “investment” beyond the training contract period because they regard their trainees as the future “life-blood’’ and partners of the firm; as law firms expect candidates to show a real commitment to spending your future career at a particular firm, as opposed to any one of their competitors. It is equally important that you can justify why a firm should plough hundreds of thousands of pounds in training you above any other applicant.

Law firms demand a great deal from their employees because the role of a lawyer is exacting and challenging. It is no longer enough to know the law and have technical expertise. Great lawyers are commercially aware, business minded people who understand their clients needs and the wider business environment within which their clients and their employer operate. Good solicitors add value to their clients business by putting the client at the centre of everything that they do. Successful lawyers are great networkers and are able to build / maintain relationships with existing clients so that they become an entrusted adviser. Great lawyers are also able to cultivate and develop new business for their firm. The training and continuing professional development programmes in law firms are reflecting these requirements; for example, Simmons and Simmons recently designed a bespoke client centred MBA programme for their future trainee solicitors.

There are clearly a number of factors which influence your prospects of gaining access to the legal profession. Much of the difficulties are largely based on whether law firms decide to reduce the number of traineeships in light of the current financial storm that law firms are trying to weather. ULG is here to remind you that you stand a really good chance of securing your dream legal job despite these tough market conditions. We run workshops at law schools / universities and attend law career fairs, where we regularly speak to students throughout the country. Many students inform us that they are really worried about the state of the legal recruitment market and question whether there will be openings for them once they complete their legal studies. We strive to reassure students to remain positive about their future prospects because the legal recruitment market is clearly going to be challenging for a while, but is likely to level out by the time that you graduate and complete your legal education. It is important to remember that all you can control is your own preparation and career planning; so remember what your source of motivation is for becoming a lawyer, keep your career goal at the forefront of your mind and continue to do your very best to boost your employability prospects.