Trainee recruitment bucks trend as graduate job market contracts
Law firms have remained cautiously optimistic about job prospects for future trainee solicitors despite new research, which found that there will be significantly fewer graduate jobs this year.
According to research published by High Fliers last week the UKs top graduate employers have slashed their recruitment targets by 17 per cent for 2009. The hardest hit sector is investment banking where entry-level vacancies have been cut by a whopping 44 per cent in 2008-09. Retailing and accountancy and professional services are also suffering with vacancies dropping by 26 and 15 per cent respectively for the same period.
Victoria Wisson, graduate recruitment officer at CMS Cameron McKenna (pictured), told Lawyer2B.com that prospects look better in the legal sector thanks to its unique recruitment cycle.
We're lucky in law as we recruit two years in advance and are really stable. We won't be cutting numbers and are expecting an increase in the volume of applications as people who would have looked towards investment banking, for example, try to find alternative, challenging and academic careers, explained Wisson.
Wissons counterpart at a rival firm added: "We haven't made any final decisions about the number of graduates we're going to be taking on yet but I think we will be keeping a similar number. You need trainees to bolster the junior end of the team so it will be business as usual for us.
Meanwhile, statistics from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) show that the number of training contract places continued to increase last year. I the year 1 August 2007 to 31 July 2008 6,303 training contracts were registered. This is up from 6,012 in the previous 12 months, and 5,751 the year before that.
There is currently no data available for the number of training contract vacancies that are available this year.
Deborah Dalgleish, head of UK trainee recruitment at magic circle law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer said: "I think most firms will steer a fairly steady course through the next few years if they possibly can; no-one is particularly keen to make the mistakes of the early nineties recession when recruitment was drastically curtailed, resulting in a shortage of junior lawyers in the mid to late nineties and the resulting rapid escalation in salaries."
"In any other industry sector, you could expect a much more immediate reaction to market conditions in graduate recruitment; but we have to plan for what we think the firm will need four or five years down the line," added Dalgleish.
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Readers' comments (5)
Anonymous | 19-Jan-2009 3:00 pm
Still too early
Although law firms are saying that it's business as usual I personally think it's too early to say what impact the recession will have on trainee recruitment. It's one thing advertising for 50 training contract vacancies but another making 50 job offers - we will just have to wait till September to get a better picture of what will happen to graduate jobs in the legal sector.
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Simon Wright | 19-Jan-2009 6:46 pm
Trainee
Sadly, I have been asked to defer my training contract for next year so this article may be slightly wrong!
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Alistair Darling's Tweaser | 19-Jan-2009 6:51 pm
The Crystal Ball of Law
I am fortunate enough to have secured a training contract but I still feel the advanced recruitment system is flawed. It is nonsense to predict how much junior personnel you may need in the future at a time when your business is booming; equally it is also nonsense to cut recruitment during recession which may handicap your firm when things pick up in the future. The result is a half-way house which may give a few too many training contracts some years and not enough in others.
The application window should completely shut on January 31st, followed by vac schemes for the favourites in Easter, followed by a second set of vac schemes in July for reserve candidates, with the TC interviews in August for commencement in October. At least this way, the system would be more sensitive to economic conditions. Furthermore, graduates who miss out during their first round of applications can still secure a training contract to commence in the near future as opposed to having to work in inane paralegal roles for a few years after the LPC.
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Anonymous | 19-Jan-2009 9:51 pm
Summer Vacation Placements
I understand that the Summer Vacation Placements are a good reflection of the likely trainee recruitments in July-Sept 2009. It appears that summer placement positions have reduced substantially, so that even Oxbridge grads with high 2.1's and excellent international credentials are unable to find vacation placements.........
should foreign legal grads in Oxbridge law programs be worried ??
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Anonymous | 22-Jan-2009 9:37 pm
Calm down
To Anonymous @ 21:51 (in other words the foreign legal grad in an Oxbridge law program). The current economic climate will make it more difficult to secure a training contract, obviously. But an intelligent, well-rounded individual with a bit of spark and good grades at a decent University will always get a training contract. There's always a market for clever people who want to go ino law. It's just a question of organisation and selling yourself well at interview. Don't be put off by all the bitter whingeing and complaining by people looking for excuses.
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