Should I accept a job or get more legal experience?

[admin]

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment is an online legal recruitment agency for lawyers. The website has a vacancy database, a candidate database, over 100 pages of detailed information on careers, CVs, interviews, and advice on how to be recruited and interviewed by a good law firm. There is also a section on the recruitment and retention of staff for legal employers. The company donates 10% of its profits every year to charity - hence its name - and over 3,800 solicitors and legal executives have registered with them since 2000.

Each week, Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment will answer one of your randomly selected career questions. To ask a question, email your question to careers@traineesolicitor.co.uk.

Here's this week's question:

"Hi,
I just finished my LPC, and despite quite a few people being against them i joined a couple of law recruitment agencies. they haven't been of any help; none have even bothered to reply......kmt. I have very little legal experience, but i do satisfy the usual minimum entry requirements that the legal profession demands.

Anyway, I've joined other agancies in the hope of finding a better job in general while looking for a TC. An agency offered me a post as an adjudicator for the financial ombudsmen services. The role involves research and communication between individuals with grievances and financial institutions. Given that i would like to work in commercial law, would it be a good idea to pursue this for the time being in order to gain some commercial experience, or should i continue to hold out for legal jobs?

Thanks in advance."

Response:

I have written copious amounts of articles and blog entries on this subject, and the harsh reality is that agencies only get paid when we find staff for law firms who are going to be of interest. An LPC graduate with no experience is no interest at all to law firms, as there are quite literally 1000's of you out there, and quite a number write in directly. As a result, most if not all legal recruitment consultants will immediately reject any LPC graduates and not bother replying. In our case (www.ten-percent.co.uk) we delete anything from an LPC graduate that is not directed at our legal work experience scheme - set up to help law graduates find work experience. If we responded to LPC graduates who ignore this and still apply, I would have to take on an extra consultant to handle the enquiries.

Anything quasi-law or law related is good for your CV, particularly if you have little experience. The danger of getting a full time permanent job in another field, is that it leaves you no time to get any work experience or law exposure under your belt, so if you do not have much, you may want to have a think about this. If you spent say 2 years working in this field, it is possible that a law firm later on would wonder why you had deviated away.

Jonathan Fagan


Jonathan Fagan LLM MREC Cert RP is the Founder and Managing Director, and is a non-practising solicitor with over 7 years experience as a legal recruitment consultant. He has personally advised and prepared CVs for many 100's of solicitors and law graduates, and has assisted lawyers throughout their careers to date.