• Name of firm/company: Not Specified
• Location: Cheshire, Chester, Merseyside, North Wales
• Job Vacancy: Paralegal – Matrimonial
• Job Type: Temporary – Maternity Leave
• Minimum Requirements: The ideal candidate will have a legal background, preferably having worked / studied in the area of family law
• Salary: £15,000 to £16,000 per annum
• How to Apply: Please send a copy of your CV via our Contact Us Form and we will forward to the recruitment agency
• Application Deadline: 17 February 2012 (but the sooner the better)

Details:

From the recruitment agency:

Our clients are an excellent niche private family practice in North Wales with a first class client base. They are looking for a paralegal to work with the senior partner to cover a spell of maternity leave commencing June this year until January 2013.

The ideal candidate will have a legal background, preferably having worked / studied in the area of family law. Good IT and typing skills are required and being a small team the successful applicant will have a friendly attitude and be personable.

The role will involve client contact both on the telephone, greeting and in interview situations. Good administrative skills will need to be demonstrated as well as the ability to tackle drafting statements, divorce petitions, correspondence etc. Although there will be on going training ideally the successful candidate will have some hands on experience of working in a family law environment.

The office is not town centre and is accessible only by car and not public transport, and therefore the successful applicant will need a valid drivers licence and own vehicle.

• Name of firm/company: Jirehouse Capital
• Location: London
• Job Vacancy: Training Contract
• Job Type: Permanent
• Minimum Requirements: Candidates will need to be fluent in Ukrainian and Russian and must have a UK LPC qualification
• Salary: £20,000; rising to £39,000 on qualification
• How to Apply: Please send CV and covering letter to recruitment@jirehouse.com
• Application Deadline: Not specified

Details:

We are an English legal practice regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

We provide a wide range of private international legal, tax and fiduciary services to a diverse range of individual and corporate clients. We are a boutique firm, often providing specialist tax and corporate structuring advice and services in a variety of situations.

We are seeking to expand the international coverage of our business and have an opening for a Ukrainian qualified solicitor to become dual qualified through working for us as a trainee solicitor.

The successful applicant will work primarily in our London office but will be expected to travel to the Ukraine in relation to individual projects. He or she will provide support on corporate transactions, corporate restructuring and trust establishment.

Candidates will need to be fluent in Ukrainian and Russian and must have a UK LPC qualification.

High level corporate transactional and trust experience is essential.

Significant international tax experience is also highly desirable.

Salary £20,000; rising to £39,000 on qualification.

Please send CV and covering letter to recruitment@jirehouse.com

Question (3): What are you doing to show you are ‘commercial’?

Some might tell you that commerciality or commercial awareness is something you acquire after practising or being in business for a significant period of time. Others (likely to be more uptight as human beings) will tell you that commerciality is about having a specific knowledge set – being-up-to-date with the markets, and having an almost intimate understanding of the economic variables that affect the way lawyers and business people act and work. At your stage, both these assertions are incorrect. You’re intending to be a lawyer and not an economist. As such, it’s opinions on bigger or macro issues that affect business that will impress. To form opinions, try doing the following:

• Read a broadsheet newspaper every day – cover to cover. Being commercial doesn’t just mean talking about business and/or commerce. You’ll need to show an interest in events that shape the world as well (from the latest Cabinet re-shuffle to Iranian foreign policy) so you’re not a one-dimensional dullard. By the way, the Daily Mail doesn’t count…
• Read The Lawyer, rollonfriday and Legal Week online every week – watch out for your chosen firm or preferred firms!
• Chat to friends once a month who work in other industries (that might impact on the work you could do in your firm) to understand subtle trends challenges – very impressive to raise these in interview or on a scheme!
• Read Private Eye twice a month for a more acerbic look at business and current affairs
• Read The Week if you have been out of the country for some time – a great way to catch up if you’ve missed a lot without trawling through back-copies of the newspaper.

And finally…

Excel – train yourself up to be an excel guru and volunteer your expertise when you get to your firm. Your senior colleagues won’t have a clue how to use it. Big brownie points available if you can use complex formulae.

PowerPoint – do the same – volunteer to take control of slide presentations.

Look – be as formally dressed and turned out as possible to look commercial. Don’t make any statements with clothes (short skirts, socks, ties, cufflinks etc…). Be recognized for your brain and not your look. Be ready to be taken to a meeting at a moment’s notice.

What about the Financial Times? The Financial Times (FT) has two main purposes:

a)       A useful but pretentious way to show off your financial ‘sophistication’ to others on public transport (if you complete the FT crossword in front of others, extra kudos points are available).

b)       A rather long-winded and unnecessarily turgidly-written briefing tool for those who work in business who need to find out how money moulds their landscape daily.

The FT is quite boring (it’s even pink to try to make it look a little bit more ‘interesting’). Given that you need to acquire only a macro- and not a micro-economic knowledge as a lawyer, there are only a few bits and bobs in the FT that are of any use to you as a legal practitioner (bits you can probably find in your daily broadsheet, albeit written with slightly more polemic).

You should aim to ‘read’ the FT three times per week, and whilst we recommend that you keep a copy on your desk every now and then to show willing, here is our very short, pragmatic guide to ‘skim-reading’ the FT:

1.       Read the companies and markets section – read this first (and possibly last if you are pushed for time).

2.       Read the Lex colum – It is on the back page of the main section, it’s written by the FT’s bright young things, it is read by chief executives, bankers and lawyers and it’s a great way of detecting the trading patterns of companies

And stop…

Written by our Guest Writer, Steve Weiner, author of “21st Century Solicitor: How to Make a Real Impact as a Junior Commercial Lawyer”. For more details about this book click here: 21st Century Solicitor

(Copyright – Steve Weiner 2011)

• You’re about to go into a commercial law firm for an interview for either a training contract or a vacation scheme;
• You know or you’ve been told that you will need to display a sense of ‘commerciality’ when discussing your future career with those who might be able to give you a contract or a place on the aforementioned scheme;
• You are worried – after all, what the hell is commerciality?
• You have been frantically reading the Financial Times in the hope that this might ease your nerves.
• You sweat a little at the thought of the inevitable question, ‘what do you think commerciality is?’…

First step on the ladder to commercial success: Stop worrying.

Second step on the ladder to commercial success: Stop reading the FT out of guilt/worry.

Third step on the ladder to commercial success: take some time to think about what it is you are about to do.

‘Think about what?!’, you might ask, ‘I need to get busy preparing, not thinking about preparing!’. Wrong. Sure, preparation is vital in almost every facet of professional life – and commerciality is no exception – but prepare in the wrong way or fail to prepare before commencing your preparation, and you are preparing to fail. Simple.

What should you be thinking about as a student or career changer applying for a legal job or a position in a commercial law firm to show your commerciality? You should be thinking about answer the questions:

1. Why do you want to work in business?

2. What is it exactly that commercial lawyers do that suits your interests and abilities?

3. What have you done in the past and what do you intend to do in the future that shows a real interest in business (not just law)?

Let’s answer these questions in turn:

Question (1): A career in business?

Commerciality at your level is simply about showing hunger and drive for the career you are choosing. You have chosen a career in business. Not in the media, the arts or in medicine. In business – pure and simple. You might be practicing as a solicitor, but you are helping others to do business. In fact, as a junior commercial lawyer, you commercial goals are relatively simple:

For external clients (i.e. the people that pay the fees): remove and/or provide solutions for any legal obstacles that might prevent your clients from doing business. To do this, you need to make it your business to understand their business and the environment that moulds their business. As a junior lawyer, your exposure to external clients might be limited until you’ve proven yourself internally so it is important to focus on a commercial approach when providing a service…

…for internal clients (i.e. the people you work with and need to impress every day in your firm): make it your business to understand how every piece of work you undertake and every interaction you have impacts on the bigger picture (the deal, the matter or the transaction…) to provide a service of excellence to everyone you work with.

Everything you do as a lawyer in a commercial law firm is done for business reasons. You’re not in law school any more. Telling someone about a Supreme Court case decision is interesting but irrelevant unless it has a tangible effect on the work you and your colleagues might do. Think of yourself as a car. Your engine is the law, it powers everything you do. Your steering wheel is business, it guides everything you do. Your chassis is your brand as you work, it leaves everyone with an impression of you (slick or ugly) and ensures or undermines your success. If you have a clever idea, think of the business ramifications before you open your mouth and talk about it.

Question (2): How are you suited to commercial law?

Does money (not earning but working with it) excite you? If you are not passionate about how money affects society at large, commercial law isn’t for you. Especially if you haven’t considered the sacrifices you’ll have to make for success in the profession. Commercial clients, especially large companies, expect advice whenever they want it. This means your senior colleagues will expect your help whenever they want it too. This means you probably won’t be leaving at 6pm much. You won’t be watching the One Show (maybe that’s a blessing). And the successful junior commercial lawyer shows enthusiasm for every aspect of the job, even the duff bits late at night that make you question your own metaphysical existence. Being a commercial lawyer can, if you give it your all, be a highly rewarding and intellectually satisfying job. Resent the demands placed upon you and you’ll be miserable. It’s a lifestyle choice. But it is a choice.

Part 2 of this article will be published in a few days so be sure to follow us via the links below to receive notification

Written by our Guest Writer, Steve Weiner, author of “21st Century Solicitor: How to Make a Real Impact as a Junior Commercial Lawyer”. For more details about this book click here: 21st Century Solicitor

(Copyright – Steve Weiner 2011)

Details:

October also sees the start of a new Trainee Solicitor Recruitment Cycle – a 12 month cycle that many firms work to when marketing, and recruiting for, their training contracts. This may come as a surprise to many but it is important to understand that the recruitment process for many law firms actually lasts for a full 12 months.

Here’s an example chronology for the activities of a typical law firm that regularly recruits trainee solicitors:

And then repeat for the next year’s intake.

It may be rather overwhelming to know that you need to be engaged with the recruitment process for a full 12 months – however, if you really want to work somewhere then its worth the effort and is a must if you want to be successful.

The reason why many people don’t know about this Trainee Solicitor Recruitment Cycle, or don’t want to acknowledge it, is because they have not done their research – either into the recruitment processes and requirements or into where they want to apply to. This uncertainty about which firms they want to work at or the type of law they would like to train in permeates many candidates and is one of the biggest reasons for failure in securing a training contract.

Let’s compare two students.

The first knows about the Trainee Solicitor Recruitment Cycle, accepts that it exists and has planned how to use it to their advantage.

The second candidate either doesn’t know about it or sort of knows about it but chooses to put their head in the sand. They will then try to pull a rabbit out of a hat in July when the training contract application deadlines are looming.

The issues which arise a lot more if you are the second type of candidate rather than the first type of candidate are:

If you were unsuccessful with your applications this year then you cannot afford to ignore this advice or fail to take all the opportunities that are available from the start of the Trainee Solicitor Recruitment Cycle. If you are a second year law student, a third year non-law student or otherwise in a position where you will apply for a training contract within the next 10 months or so then we would urge that you do not ignore this either.

If you go to law fairs and open days, and start researching law firms and the recruitment processes and requirements, you are far more likely to get your applications right. The good news for you is that many people will not be given this advice or will see it and ignore it. Therefore you will have a significant competitive advantage if you take this on board and apply yourself consistently throughout the full Trainee Solicitor Recruitment Cycle.

A rare and interesting position as a paralegal to assist in private/white collar crime matters at Stephensons Solicitors, a leading crime practice in the Wigan and Manchester.

Main purpose of the job:

To support and assist fee earners in carrying out duties and, where appropriate, to deal with clients and their affairs in a cost effective manner.

Main key result areas:

• Attending and advising clients where appropriate.
• Provides guidance, support and training to other staff as required.
• Assisting fee earners in the department in effective case management, including (but not exclusively) drafting pleadings, preparing instructions to counsel, arranging and attending conferences, letters of claim, statements, protocol steps, advocacy and attendance at Hearings, preparation of funding documents, requesting and returning relevant documents.
• Control and management of work in progress ensuring that it is recorded and converted into paid profit costs under supervision and direction. Effective management of own time ensuring that non chargeable and chargeable hour targets are met under supervision and guidance.
• Carrying out administrative duties as appropriate.
• Compliance with client care and complaints procedures in order to minimise the risk of negligence and comply with Law Society rules.

Person specification:

Law degree with a minimum 2:1, or relevant work experience

Driving licence

To apply please send a copy of your CV to us via our Contact Us Form by Tuesday 22nd November 2011.

For an easy guide to the law fairs happening up until the end of the year check out our Law Fairs 2011 Guide. You will find all the pertinent details you will need including venues, dates and the law firms who will be exhibiting.

Before you even get to the law fair you will benefit from carrying out some thorough preparation. Find out which firms will be there and do some research on each one that interests you beforehand.

Next, draw up a shortlist of firms you are most interested in and be sure to target those first. You do not want to be running out of time and still not have spoken to some of your preferred firms.

Getting The Most Out Of The Day

Here’s are our tips for when you get to the law fair:

• Keep an open mind - about the type of firm you might want to work for until you have met several.
• Be professional but relaxed - when you approach a firm. Don’t be too casual and don’t waste the opportunity to ask questions by asking questions which could be answered by reading their marketing literature/website.
• Introduce yourself properly – tell them your name and what stage you are at in your studies as a way of introducing yourself – also when you might be looking to do a vacation scheme and starting a training contract.
• Prepare questions – think about and plan the questions you will ask the different members of the firm and make sure they are questions you would really like to know the answers to rather than ones you think they want to hear. Ask each firm the same questions so you can compare like for like. Three to five questions should be enough but ask more if you feel a rapport with the person – however, be conscious not to hog someone’s time especially if there are other candidates hovering to speak too. Think about who to ask each question to – some will be better for trainees and others for partners.
• Be strategic – seek to glean information that will help you at the application and interview stages – for example, what are the 3 key things a firm looks for in its trainees, or which are the biggest challenges the firm is facing at the moment?
• Grill the trainees – always try to speak with the trainees as well as either a partner or recruitment manager. Trainees can tell you what its really like to work at the firm, what the training environment is like and the sort of work they do, the hours they put in and the culture of the firm, etc.
• Display your knowledge – show the firm that you know a bit about them already when you ask your questions or in general conversation. This will be noted and will impress them.
• Dress appropriately – you are not expected to dress in a suit but there is no harm dressing more smartly than you might perhaps for your day to day lectures/classes – as the cliche goes, first impressions count!
• Make notes – it is well worth making a few brief notes after you see each firm and then expand on these notes after the fair has finished but when things are still fresh in your mind. Be thinking about what you have learned that you can use in your applications and interviews when the time comes.
• Follow up – ask for a business card of the people you speak to and consider sending them an email afterwards saying thanks again for their time and you found it useful. Maybe even remind them of something you spoke about to jog their memory who you are. You never know when it might come in useful in the future for that person to remember you.

What Not To Do

Things you should not do if you do not want to make the wrong impression:

• Spend the entire time filling your bag with all the freebies and brochures – by all means take some as that’s what they are there for. Just make sure you focus on interacting with the firms’ representatives first and taking the swag second.
• Spend the entire time eating the free food and chatting with your friends.
• Always approach the firms’ representatives with a friend or friends. You want to create your own personal good impression, not appear as part of a double act.
• Go up to firms to collect their brochure and asking questions that will not impress such as”

• “When is the deadline for applications?”
• “What does the firm do?”
• “Why should I work for your firm?”
• “What is the salary for a trainee solicitor at your firm?”
• “When is the deadline for applications for vacation schemes/training contracts?

Summary

So if you want to make a good first impression and stick in the recruiters mind just aim to be confident and enthusiastic and ask some interesting questions that display you have done your homework on the firm in advance.

For details of law fairs that are taking place over the next couple of months check out our Law Fairs 2011 Guide.

Whilst we would not recommend that you go to lots of them, we would certainly recommend that you attend at least one or two carefully selected fairs.

They are a safer and less scary way of presenting yourself to a firm and for getting some invaluable information about the firm and their recruitment processes and requirements.

You can find out what firms really want from their applicants and then you will have a blueprint to work towards.

The importance of law fairs should not be underestimated. They can give you an advantage over other candidates for the following reasons:

• You will get to talk to firms in the flesh. Most firms will be represented by multiple members of staff at different levels of seniority. Thus you will have the opportunity to speak with trainees, associates, partners and recruitment personnel. You therefore have the chance to speak with either those people who have already been successful in getting the training contract you want or those people who stand in your way of getting that training contract.
• You will be able to ask them questions that can help you when you put together your applications. You can find out information that is not otherwise available about the firm and their recruitment processes which candidates who do not attend the law fairs will not have access to.
• You can get a better sense as to what the firm is like in reality. You can see the type of person who works there and discuss aspects of the firm so that you have more information on which to base your decision about which firm to apply to. This will not only mean you have a better chance of making the right career choices but it will also mean you will find it easier to convince the firms you do apply to why you are applying to them. Do not underestimate the importance of this.
• You can find out more about the size and style of the firm and the type of work they do. Also, you can find out more about the training contract and the nature of the training you would get at that firm together with the culture of that firm. You will therefore feel more knowledgable and confident when you get to application and interview stages.
• When the application and interview stages come around you will be surprised how many of the recruiters will remember a name and/or a face so its not going to harm your chances to have already put in this groundwork. Treat it as a form of networking.

Keep an eye on the blog over the next day or two for Part 2 of our blueprint to law fairs which will show you how to make the most out of law fairs.

For details of law fairs that are taking place over the next couple of months check out our Law Fairs 2011 Guide.