If “careers in law” were a stock, would you invest in it? That was the question put at the end of last year to legal educators, recruiters and pundits. It is a sign of the times that none of the respondents replied with a categorical “yes”. Most hedged their bets with a hesitant: “On balance, yes, but the value of a career in law can go down as well as up.”
It is not surprising. With regular stories in the legal press about lay-offs and redundancies, even at the largest firms, no one regards a career in law — or at least a legal qualification — as a guaranteed gilt any more. As a leading London lawyer with a US firm says: “I’ve been in this game for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything that is so unpredictable.”
Meanwhile, opportunities in high-street law are likely to be reduced further by a combination of the collapse in the housing market and the draining away of publicly funded work. What has been an increasingly difficult field of law looks as if it is going to get worse.
Career planning is always an exercise in pragmatism and, despite the drawbacks and the gloss being scratched, legal careers still rate significantly by almost any evaluation. The UK economy may be about to undergo a reshaping that reduces the size of the financial sector and its associated service industries, but there will still be a substantial demand for lawyers. Central and local government will be in the privileged position of being able to recruit better candidates, and the large City law firms have indicated that they will maintain recruitment of trainees at the same level as in recent years.
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Market Watch: Trainee numbers are likely to hold up at law firms
So although there are stories of firms asking some entrants to defer for a few months before starting, there is no sign of a collapse in recruitment. Garry Pegg, of Hogan & Hartson, says: “The great benefit of trainees is that they are comparatively cheap. In fact, firm managements may actually value trainees more highly than in the past because they realise that they can get more out of them.
“Law firms can only generate revenue through people working the hours that produce the fees. So, provided they are used efficiently, trainees can be very useful.”
What is more, says Penny Cooper, author of All You Need to Know about Being a Trainee Solicitor, law firms — at least the large ones — plan for the long term. Business may be tight for the next couple of years but managing partners are already looking ahead to a return to normality — perhaps in 2011 or 2012 — and they do not want to be short of qualified staff when the upturn comes. So for students who have set their sights on the City (and have the ability to get there), the prospects may seem — despite the gloom and doom — not to have not changed much.
Except, of course, the truth is that they have changed. For a start, the recruitment market is going to be much more competitive. The number of posts on offer may hold up, but there are likely to be more people chasing them. All those bright sparks who a year or two ago were aiming for investment banks will be looking for what they perceive to be safer career destinations. Many of them are going to be heading for the law. While the law is no longer a guaranteed safe bet, it has more going for it than some of the get-rich-quick careers that are now discredited. As elsewhere in the economy, there will be a flight to quality — and the law will still be seen as a superior professional qualification.
When recruiting their next generation of trainees the law firms will not be looking just for well-qualified, well-motivated people. They will want much more. As Pegg says, they will be looking for “spark, energy, enthusiasm and personality”.
Nigel Savage, chief executive of the College of Law, says that — in contrast to the Generation Y zeitgeist — the next cohort of trainees will be expected to work harder for less. “What employers — and clients — will be looking for in their legal adviser is the man or woman of business,” Savage says. “This could be good news for the slightly older applicant who can bring both extra personal maturity and relevant industry knowledge to the job.”
Echoing this, Cooper adds that employers will be looking for people who “are good at networking and have a really commercial outlook”. It may help if they have also gained an additional qualification — such as an LLM — in a specialist area of law that is relevant to the firms to which they are applying. But these qualifications by themselves are no guarantee of success. But then, it seems, nothing is any more.
It is not surprising. With regular stories in the legal press about lay-offs and redundancies, even at the largest firms, no one regards a career in law — or at least a legal qualification — as a guaranteed gilt any more. As a leading London lawyer with a US firm says: “I’ve been in this game for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything that is so unpredictable.”
Meanwhile, opportunities in high-street law are likely to be reduced further by a combination of the collapse in the housing market and the draining away of publicly funded work. What has been an increasingly difficult field of law looks as if it is going to get worse.
Career planning is always an exercise in pragmatism and, despite the drawbacks and the gloss being scratched, legal careers still rate significantly by almost any evaluation. The UK economy may be about to undergo a reshaping that reduces the size of the financial sector and its associated service industries, but there will still be a substantial demand for lawyers. Central and local government will be in the privileged position of being able to recruit better candidates, and the large City law firms have indicated that they will maintain recruitment of trainees at the same level as in recent years.
Related Links
Market Watch: Trainee numbers are likely to hold up at law firms
So although there are stories of firms asking some entrants to defer for a few months before starting, there is no sign of a collapse in recruitment. Garry Pegg, of Hogan & Hartson, says: “The great benefit of trainees is that they are comparatively cheap. In fact, firm managements may actually value trainees more highly than in the past because they realise that they can get more out of them.
“Law firms can only generate revenue through people working the hours that produce the fees. So, provided they are used efficiently, trainees can be very useful.”
What is more, says Penny Cooper, author of All You Need to Know about Being a Trainee Solicitor, law firms — at least the large ones — plan for the long term. Business may be tight for the next couple of years but managing partners are already looking ahead to a return to normality — perhaps in 2011 or 2012 — and they do not want to be short of qualified staff when the upturn comes. So for students who have set their sights on the City (and have the ability to get there), the prospects may seem — despite the gloom and doom — not to have not changed much.
Except, of course, the truth is that they have changed. For a start, the recruitment market is going to be much more competitive. The number of posts on offer may hold up, but there are likely to be more people chasing them. All those bright sparks who a year or two ago were aiming for investment banks will be looking for what they perceive to be safer career destinations. Many of them are going to be heading for the law. While the law is no longer a guaranteed safe bet, it has more going for it than some of the get-rich-quick careers that are now discredited. As elsewhere in the economy, there will be a flight to quality — and the law will still be seen as a superior professional qualification.
When recruiting their next generation of trainees the law firms will not be looking just for well-qualified, well-motivated people. They will want much more. As Pegg says, they will be looking for “spark, energy, enthusiasm and personality”.
Nigel Savage, chief executive of the College of Law, says that — in contrast to the Generation Y zeitgeist — the next cohort of trainees will be expected to work harder for less. “What employers — and clients — will be looking for in their legal adviser is the man or woman of business,” Savage says. “This could be good news for the slightly older applicant who can bring both extra personal maturity and relevant industry knowledge to the job.”
Echoing this, Cooper adds that employers will be looking for people who “are good at networking and have a really commercial outlook”. It may help if they have also gained an additional qualification — such as an LLM — in a specialist area of law that is relevant to the firms to which they are applying. But these qualifications by themselves are no guarantee of success. But then, it seems, nothing is any more.
Edward Fennell
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