Exclusive: Rumours suggest that core group has struck a deal on verge of Ministry of Justice meeting

The legal aid lawyers’ strike is on the verge of crumbling as the country’s large criminal law firms are thought to be returning to work.

The development came as specialist criminal law groups were meeting Justice Secretary Michael Gove this morning in a bid to hammer out a deal that would save face for both sides.

However, Legal Cheek has learnt that criminal lawyers are convinced that the largest practices — which have clubbed together as a lobbying collective known as the “big firms group” — will start taking instructions from 6pm this evening.

It is understood from sources close to the firms that a protocol has been agreed between the BFG and the Criminal Law Solicitors Association (CLSA), which will allow the firms to take on all new instructions, barring Crown Court work.

The BFG and the CLSA are thought to have presented the protocol to Gove this morning.

The move has incensed law firms outside the BFG, as they maintain the protocol was drafted without wider consultation. Many will also view it as a stab in the back as the larger firms could ultimately gain from the Ministry of Justice’s reform plans if smaller competitors are driven to the wall.

Commented one source from outside the larger firms:

The agenda of the BFG and disunity caused by such a message is damaging to our cause and I for one am not happy to take action which will allow the BFG to strengthen their position.

Controversy swirled around the MoJ meeting even before the tea was served.

Social media fizzed with suggestions that one of the biggest of the big firms — London and Manchester-based Tuckers — had been breaking the strike. Tuckers top dog, Franklin Sinclair, roundly rejected that suggestion.

@Defencebrief totally untrue where does this rubbish come from. We've not done one own client case in Mcr,Brum,Kent +London for 22 days

— Franklin Sinclair (@FMStuckers) July 22, 2015

But he also faced criticism for being abroad at the time of the big MoJ pow-wow.

There was also confusion over the position of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA). The view yesterday was that it would take a lead role in this morning’s meeting, with the Bar Council itself — along with the Law Society — not attending.

However, the CBA leadership — which had unsuccessfully argued against barristers voting for strike action — claimed that it too had not been invited and would not attend.

Breaking: @TheCriminalBar *not* attending MoJ meeting with Gove. Claiming 'not invited' – even though they were asked to name attendee.

— Jack of Kent (@JackofKent) July 23, 2015

That left just the CLSA and the London Criminal Court Solicitors Association in the room with the BFG to face Gove. The Lord Chancellor himself would have been slightly hampered — newspapers reported this morning that Gove is hobbling around on crutches owing to a possibly fractured foot.

Previously:

Leaked memo from strikebreaker law firm says it’s too late to stop the cuts [Legal Cheek]

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A 41-year-old woman corporate immigration expert is suspended after producing a passable impersonation of an Essex lager lout

Rock ‘n’ rollers, spoilt protein-starved super models and lager louts are expected these days to trigger rucks on aeroplanes — but law firm partners …?

Sarah Buffett (pictured below) — a business immigration specialist at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, which has 15 offices across the US — was reported to have kicked up such a fuss in the first-class cabin on a recent flight to London that the pilot had to make an unscheduled landing to get shot of her.

The fiery Buffett boarded the US Airways flight in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the firm is based. Not long into the journey to Blighty, she kicked right off and the flight had to be diverted to an unscheduled stop in Philadelphia, where tutting police were waiting.

According to a report in the Philly Voice website — which quoted an official criminal complaint filed two days ago — Buffett:

Allegedly became physically aggressive and was damaging her seat …She allegedly tried to smash the aircraft window with an entertainment system remote before getting out of her seat and acting in a menacing manner in front of the cockpit door.

So far so Essex Man en route to Spain’s Costa del Booze. According to the report, beleaguered crew–– who generally reckon the first-class cabin is a bit of a doddle — could not restrain the belligerent Buffett and had to call on her fellow well-heeled passengers to assist.

They finally managed to put the 41-year-old Ivy League law school graduate into the plastic restraints airlines are forced to carry these days. But our girl was far from beaten.

The co-author of the definitive essay in the Immigration & Nationality Law Handbook — “H-1B Cap Strategies: What To Do When An H-1B is Harder to Score Than Tickets to the Super Bowl” — managed to extract herself twice.

Finally the crew and passengers subdued Buffett through a combination of plastic restraints and taping together her lower legs.

According to the reports, on the ground in Pennsylvania the lawyer told the rozzers that after take off she had washed down a sleeping table with “at least” three glasses of wine. Buffett then claimed not to remember anything after having politely declined the airline’s haute cuisine in-flight meal.

This probably isn’t the career highlight Buffett envisaged when she graduated in 1999 from Cornell law school, having two years previously done a stint at the Sorbonne in Paris.

And it did not appear to be going down that well with her firm, which is ranked in the US’s top 100. A statement sent to Legal Cheek from HQ in North Carolina was perfunctory:

Nelson Mullins is sympathetic to the inconvenience suffered by the passengers and crew of US Airways Flight 732. While we do not know all the details yet, the firm does have an expectation of personal responsibility on the part of all of our partners.

The statement continued:

Nelson Mullins has and continues to expect the highest standards of professional behavior among all its employees. Sarah Buffett has been suspended pending an investigation.

The firm would not comment on whether Buffett was heading to London Town for work or pleasure.

And Buffett’s glowing online profile was whipped off the firm’s website today. But despite having hordes of IT technicians, corporate law firms never seem to understand the concept of the Google cache. So Legal Cheek can bring you the full Buffett biog.

Read the criminal complaint in full below:

Criminal Complaint U S v Sarah E Buffett

The post Law firm partner in alleged drink-fuelled air rage ruck on London-bound flight appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Old skool City law firm fails to get a grip on this new PR thing

A generation ago, most law firm marketing techniques were no more sophisticated than the senior partner conducting a spot of schmoozing down the 19th hole.

Now press offices and business development teams have been carefully crafted, employing a phalanx of keen jargon-meisters to promote everything from partnership promotions, deal minutiae, office openings and even open-plan restructuring projects.

But some law firms have resolutely resisted the temptation to pander to the ever-growing needs of the legal profession media.

A last bastion of that stubborn stand against the tide of modernity has been the old-school-tie brigade at Slaughter and May. For years the firm refused to create a press office.

But even S&M has broken, recently appointing a “communications executive” to liaise with the media.

However, the road to PR heaven is paved with cock-ups. So it is fitting that Slaughter and May features in the launch of a new Legal Cheek occasional series — “Rubbish law firm press notices”.

The thing about PR press releases is that ideally the media will publish your message. After all, the “P” stands for “public”. That’s a fairly big clue.

However, Slaughter and May is perhaps the only law firm in the country that would fail to grasp that concept, earlier this week headlining a media missive announcing its involvement in a worthy social mobility programme as … “Confidential”.

Note to comms exec: press releases are meant to be for public consumption.

The post Rubbish press release: take a bow, Slaughter and May appeared first on Legal Cheek.

The best below-the-line thoughts from the last five days

Most liked

From ‘The GDL is for ‘spineless’ losers, says Bristol Uni law student’

The GDL students have the last laugh — do a History degree, get a first, do the GDL, get a pupillage.

Cantab law grad — July 23, 10:14am (75 likes — at time of publication)

Most disliked

From ‘Allen & Overy ups junior lawyer pay by A QUARTER to blow away rest of magic circle’

I’m not sure how commenting on an apparent market issue demonstrates individual bitterness. I simply observed that the corporate world could get equally good legal services for far less money and are funding grossly inflated salaries. By all means disagree with me, but you infer far too much if you see individual bitterness.

Anonymous — July 20, 12:50am (17 dislikes — at time of publication)

Longest

From ‘The GDL is for ‘spineless’ losers, says Bristol Uni law student’

Firstly I should say that this is not criticism of the majority. But there is a thick vein of something distasteful running through these comments and I wouldn’t be the universal pain in the arse that I am if I failed to point that out. Threatening the girl is not on… (Continue reading)

Not Amused — July 23, 1.06pm (446 words)

Editor’s choice

From ‘Gove calls make-or-break meeting in bid to resolve crime legal aid dispute’

The event WILL BE a be a craven example of window-dressing by Lord Chancellor Michael Gove, an attempt to APPEAR to be negotiating while not really giving a monkey’s about lawyer concerns. Bullshit mode here we come …

Anonymous — July 22, 5:00pm

Weirdest

From ‘Fried Mars bars — Scottish judges and lawyers love ‘em …’

It’s true though — if you know what you’re doing you ask for a Snickers.

Ex-Scot — July 24, 11:25am

Previously

Comments of the week [Legal Cheek]

The post Comments of the week appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Curse of the Law Society governing body strikes again as disciplinary tribunal gives the bullet to council member

A member of the solicitors’ profession governing body has been struck off for fiddling funds.

In the latest embarrassment for the Law Society — which represents the nearly 160,000 solicitors in England and Wales — the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal gave Richard Barnett the bullet.

Barnett, the former senior partner at Southport high street practice Barnetts, had been the society’s council member for Merseyside and District since 2005.

He was found to have breached conflict of interest rules as well as having misused cash from a litigation funder.

According to a report in the Law Gazette, after a three-week hearing, the tribunal found Barnett had “spent litigation funding from the now-collapsed Axiom Legal Financing Fund on the running of the firm”.

The finding is the just the latest in a string of hiccups Chancery Lane has had with its elected council members.

Some 20 years ago, a then-City law firm partner, John Young, was forced to decline the Law Society’s presidency after he admitted to a series of minor groping episodes, including those involving women fellow council members.

Five years later, Chancery Lane found itself in the media glare when the lawyer set to be its first woman and ethnic minority president successfully sued the organisation for race and sex discrimination.

The Law Society eventually successfully appealed that ruling involving Kamlesh Bahl, but doing so kept the saga in the legal and mainstream press for at least another four years.

A bizarre twist on that story involved former Law Society President Robert Sayer. The Crown Prosecution Service charged the conveyancing solicitor with allegedly creating a false identity — that of a country vicar — and forging a passport in a convoluted bid to discredit his archenemy Bahl. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the case on medical grounds.

More recently, the Law Society’s 2013-14 president, Nicholas Fluck, was slapped with a no confidence motion at a special general meeting called by criminal law solicitors. They angrily maintained there was a Chancery Lane policy of appeasement of the Ministry of Justice over the government’s legal aid reforms.

And only a few weeks ago, last year’s council president, Andrew Caplen, had to bat away suggestions that his strong Christian beliefs had prevented him from backing a high-profile Law Society campaign to support Gay Pride events.

Back to Richard Barnett — the Law Gazette reported that the full tribunal judgment would be published later in the summer and that the ruling might be subject to appeal.

However, it appears that any appeal will not save Barnett his council seat. A society spokesman intoned:

We will be running a by-election for a council seat in Merseyside and District.

Local solicitors will undoubtedly be on tenterhooks.

The post Solicitor leader struck off for fiddling funds appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Incendiary remarks could divide profession as barristers head to picket lines today in support of solicitors’ battle against MoJ rate cuts

Criminal law legal aid lawyers are paying the price for a golden period of fat cat fees, a leading silk said today as barristers go on strike to battle government-imposed rate cuts.

Francis Fitzgibbon QC (pictured below) — who a week ago was elected as vice-chairman of the Criminal Bar Association — told a recently launched legal affairs blog that “during the golden years of legal aid there was masses of work”.

At that time, said the 29-year-call silk from London’s Doughty Street Chambers, the criminal bar was “in some cases … probably excessively well paid”.

Speaking to the blog LegalHackette, Fitzgibbon said:

Some people thought it was going to go on for ever. But I’m sorry, things don’t go on for ever.

His controversial comments fell against the backdrop of intense media coverage this morning of the biggest legal profession strike in living memory. Barristers were set to down wigs today in support of solicitors’ firms that face a second round of 8.75% cuts to fees imposed by the Ministry of Justice.

Coinciding with the strike was the launch of a new Twitter hashtag and blog that aimed to boost public support for the lawyers and awareness of the value of criminal legal aid to ordinary people.

Created by four lawyers — non-practising solicitor Melanie Horrocks, Toni McCarthy, a partner Hull-based Barker & Co, former criminal barrister Steph Varle, and freelance solicitor Michaela Mallin — the hashtags #legalaidhero and #notafatcat were today flagging up a series of stories designed to win the heats and minds of middle England.

Check out the #savelegalaid campaign. Also using #legalaidhero and #notafatcat hashtags. pic.twitter.com/VHfIUkrY6n

— Steph Varle (@stephvarle) July 27, 2015

Despite the publicity, debate still rumbled over whether the legal profession would remain united against Justice Secretary Michael Gove.

Last Friday, at a meeting with the MoJ, the group that represents the largest crime law solicitors’ firms told Gove that they would go back to work in the magistrates’ courts after three weeks of turning down all instructions but police station interviews.

And the CBA is scheduled to meet this evening to see if that new “protocol” launched by the big law firms will alter its view of whether barristers should be on the picket lines.

There are also suggestions that several law firms have followed the example of the one major Manchester practice that publicly broke the strike.

The new CBA vice-chairman acknowledged to LegalHackette that regardless of the outcome of this current action, the structure of criminal defence work would change.

I should imagine there will be a degree of fusion of barristers and solicitors,” Fitzgibbon told the blog. “Whether that will just be at the training stage or throughout is hard to tell. For the public interest, the key thing is to have specialist and properly motivated litigators and specialist and properly motivated advocates.

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The latest social media craze is all about law and films

Using the hashtag #LawyerSchmovies, lawyers, students and movie-buffs have spent the last 48 hours sharing their legally-adapted film titles

To the uninitiated, a “Schmovie” is a humorously adapted film name, deriving from the US board-game Schmovie — the premise of which is to make up amusing film titles.

And, as with most aspects of life, it’s even more fun when you incorporate the law. Legal Cheek has picked out its top 13 #LawyerSchmovies for your consideration.

1. Mrs (Reasonable) Doubtfire

2. Jurassicisprudence Park

3. Semi-Pro (bono)

4. Big Wig Trouble in Little China

5. Inglourious Basterds Barristers

6. Kill Bill(able hours)

7. You’ve Got Mail Bail

8. Who Framed Defamed Roger Rabbit?

9. Lawrence Warrants of Arabia

10. Paranormal Paralegal Activity

11. Despicable Me Plea

12. I Know What You Did Last Summer (But Don’t Say That On The Stand)

13. Dude, Where’s My Car Clerk?

Think you can do better? Stick your law movie title in comments section below.

The post #LawyerSchmovies: 13 top movie titles improved by references to the law appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Erratic retention performance continues amid concerns swirling around firm’s profits and financial health

Trowers & Hamlins has failed to steady the ship, as its fluctuating retention rate will continue into this autumn.

The firm — which has offices across the UK and Middle East — revealed yesterday that just five of seven September-qualifiers will remain.

Trowers — which offers around 20 training contracts annually — will no doubt be disappointed with yesterday’s announcement, having posted an encouraging spring figure of 82%.

Two of the newly-qualified (NQ) lawyers will be based at the firm’s London headquarters, while its Manchester and Exeter outposts will receive a new associate each.

The remaining NQ will be based at Trowers’ Dubai office, which has been open since the early 1990s.

The London NQs will start on a salary of £58,000, while their regional counterparts will be on a more modest package of £37,000.

In recent years Trowers’ retention rate has fluctuated dramatically between 60% and 100%, and even hitting a low as 28% in 2012.

But it isn’t just NQ retention rates occupying the senior management’s collective mind. Last week, The Lawyer newspaper reported (registration required) that international profits at the firm — which has had a big presence in the Persian Gulf region for years — had took a 96% tumble last year.

Yesterday’s announcement came on the back of another disappointing autumn retention rate for City firm Nabarro. Last week the firm revealed that three lawyers had opted to leave the firm post-qualification, equating to a retention figure of just 77%.

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What appears to be court stenographer’s note appears online after Mr Justice Peter Smith stands up for airline passengers everywhere

A document appearing to be the full transcript of a judge’s bench badgering of British Airways over his lost luggage has emerged.

Fleet Street last week cast the Chancery Court’s Mr Justice Peter Smith — whom The Times newspaper described as “one of the legal profession’s more colourful figures” — as the common air travellers hero after he castigated lawyers for the “world’s favourite airline”.

But the bench-slapping had nothing to do with their submissions in the £3 billion lawsuit Smith was hearing — a spat in which BA was accused of colluding to fix air cargo charges. Instead it related to an entirely unrelated incident which had seen Smith’s luggage go missing on a BA flight during a recent trip to Italy.

Legal Cheek cannot verify the authenticity of the document that is doing the rounds of legal London. However, it appears to be a comprehensive transcript of the court stenographer’s note.

Emerald Supplies Ltd v British Airways

Taking the brunt of Smith’s ire was Jon Turner, a silk of nine years’ standing from Monkton Chambers in Gray’s Inn. As BA’s lead counsel on the day, Turner came in for repeated questioning regarding the loss of Smith’s luggage during his recent trip Florence.

At one stage the judge threatened to haul BA’s pugnacious Irish chief executive, Willie Walsh, before the court to answer some pretty searching questions on the missing luggage front. Sadly that didn’t happen, as it would have been one hell of a bout.

Now, Smith is no stranger to courtroom antics. The judge once famously inserted his own coded message into a judgment he handed down on a copyright case concerning best-selling thriller novel “The Da Vince Code”.

In the most recent case, according to the transcript, Smith repeatedly cross-examined BA’s lawyers about the lost luggage, while, in turn, they desperately tried to bring the proceedings back to the matter of the trial.

In the end, frustrated lawyers, who included the airline’s law firm, Slaughter and May (whose partners presumably know a thing or two about international holiday travel), applied for Smith to recuse himself. The grounds were clear: anyone so arsed off with one of the litigants — no matter how legitimately in a customer service context — would not be able to hear case impartially.

Smith adamantly disagreed, but he stood down nonetheless. He didn’t go quietly, telling the court:

I do not believe for one minute that the reasonably minded observer … would think that merely because I have raised issues over the non-delivery of my luggage of itself should lead to the possibility of bias. I believe a reasonably minded observer would see a judge with a problem trying to resolve that issue and finding the parting question being obstructive and unwilling to address the issue and find a solution. A simple dispute as to the luggage cannot possible be grounds for recusal. However, BA and its solicitors have simply escalated the problem almost immediately.

Nonetheless, Smith saw the writing on the wall in terms of public perception:

I however cannot allow my presence in the case and its difficulties to distract the parties from this case. And therefore, regretfully, I feel that I have no choice, whatever my feelings about it, but to recuse myself from the case …

BA’s legal team will be relieved. The rest of us will still shed a tiny tear as the case of Emerald Supplies Ltd v British Airways is destined to be a damn sight less entertaining than it was a week ago.

Read the judgment in full below:

Emerald Supplies Ltd v British Airways

The post Full transcript of judge’s luggage rant at British Airways lawyers emerges appeared first on Legal Cheek.

In the wake of major London salary boosts, CMS returns to pre-crash level by cautiously increasing junior lawyer remuneration

London-based global franchise law firm CMS Cameron McKenna today announced that newly qualified (NQ) lawyers will receive a 5% boost to pay packets — taking fresh-faced solicitors to the level of dosh their predecessors received pre-global financial crisis.

Trainees also received a dollop of extra cash in today’s round of CMS management munificence.

The firm, which offers around 80 training contracts annually — will boost associate pay to £66,000. Trainees will also receive a welcome cash injection with first-year salaries rising from £38,000 to £40,000 and second-year trainee pay going from £43,000 to £45,000. Back in 2008 CMS was paying its new associates — yep, you guessed it — £66,000.

The 18-office outfit — which falls under the larger European CMS umbrella — will leapfrog some major City players in the NQ pay stakes, including Ashurst and the London office of US franchise rivals Baker & McKenzie.

And the increase to trainee pay will also put the firm in good company, with Washington DC-based Atkin Gump and New Yorkers Cleary Gottlieb.

But today’s development will not worry CMS’s magic circle counterparts. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer — home to the worst paid NQs of the City elite — still offers their junior solicitors £67,500, a full £1,500 more than new legal talent at CMS.

Another magic circle player, Allen & Overy, earlier this month chucked a whopping extra £12,000 at its recently qualified lawyers, taking salaries to £78,500, enough to make some of the US firms in the City look over their shoulders.

The post CMS finally brings newly-qualified lawyer pay back to 2008 levels with £3k rise appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Law firm pressure forces junior lawyers group to drop application deadline guidance

Law firms have the green light to recruit trainees more or less whenever they fancy after amendments to a long-standing code of practice were released today.

Fears mounted that the move could launch a free-for-all that will see top firms racing to bag the best performing students at ever-earlier stages in their education.

Those concerns were exacerbated by the decision of the profession’s regulator last May to remove its imprimatur from the voluntary code.

The reformed version of the code — which is being promoted by the Law Society’s Junior Lawyers Division — advises “employers can set their training contract application deadline at a point of their choosing”.

The code goes on to say that firms should not set deadlines before the start of students’ second year of undergraduate study.

However, the revision is a move away from the historic position under which firms and others in the trainee solicitor market were asked not to set deadlines before 31 July of students’ penultimate year of undergraduate study.

Other reforms to the code include a move to allow employers to make training contract offers at any point during a student’s penultimate year, or later.

Under the previous code, it was suggested that offers should not be made before 1 September in the student’s final year of undergraduate study.

Under the revised guidance, students may accept offers at any point after they are made, but they:

will not be obliged to accept (nor should they be put under pressure to accept) before a deadline of 15 September in their final year (or four weeks after an offer has been made, whichever is later).

According to a JLD statement, the code has been updated “to reflect modern practices” — in other words, a recognition that the employment market was increasingly ignoring the previous version.

The code was launched as a recommended standard of good practice for employers, students, higher education careers advisers and faculty staff.

But its relevance was dealt a blow when the Solicitors Regulation Authority backed out this spring. While the code has always been voluntary, regulator support gave it added muscle.

Launching the revised version of the code, JLD chairman, Max Harris, acknowledged it was:

likely that we will see some changes to the application deadlines at law firms. Indeed, we have already seen a few firms break away from the 31 July application deadline.

Harris — an associate in the IT and commercial department at the London office of global law firm Baker & McKenzie — continued:

It is important that this code works in practice, and setting an artificial deadline of 31 July did not necessarily achieve the ideal student protections. By 31 July many vacation schemes and training contract interviews will have been completed, and therefore firms may be stuck in a bizarre situation where they have to keep their applications open until 31 July even though by that point they have already made their training contract allocations.

Harris added:

If that was the case, students who apply to those firms on 31 July may be applying for a position that has already been allocated — or offered — to someone else, which would be a waste of that applicant’s time.

Harris rejected fears that the lack of SRA backing will render the code useless.

I am confident a significant amount of law firms will abide by the new code,” he told Legal Cheek. “One concern from the previous code was that firms who abided by the code were sometimes put in a disadvantaged position compared to those who didn’t abide by the code. Some firms were making offers earlier than 1 September, and by 1 September, firms who were abiding by the code found that some of their applicants had accepted training contracts elsewhere. This code seeks to avoid that situation, and also offer more transparency to students.

The post Revised trainee solicitor hiring code is here; market braces for chaos appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Boffins invoke artificial intelligence to determine which are the best litigator horses to back

Clients take notice — if you want the best chance of finishing first in a court battle don’t brief the flash litigation hot-shots at magic or silver circle players, or even at any law firm in the UK top 100.

No, if you want the litigation practice with the best record last year of High Court wins, get on a train to Cambridge and make for the head office of regional firm Hewitsons.

You would then tell the partners to instruct either Michael Fordham or Phillippa Kaufman, the two silks that have the best “win rates” in the High Court.

This shocking development — which will clearly shake up the highest reaches of the legal profession — was revealed yesterday courtesy of a new band of US researchers that invokes state-of-the-art technology to name the best performing lawyers.

Boffins at Miami-based data analytics company Premonition claim to use artificial intelligence techniques to assess which litigators have the best win rates.

And in England the researchers reckon that regional corporate-commercial firm Hewitsons, with an 88% High Court success rate in 2014, is the best horse to back.

The firm — which also has offices in Milton Keynes and Northampton — has just merged at the beginning of this month with City of London-based Moorhead James to create a £16 million turnover practice.

Likewise, Fordham and Kaufman will be sending bouquets by the lorry-load to Miami. The former is a public law specialist at Blackstone Chambers, who took silk in 2006. While the latter is also an administrative and public law guru; based at Matrix Chambers, Kaufman took silk four years ago.

To support their claim, the researchers have produced an 80-page report that is almost totally impenetrable. Nonetheless, the gist of the Premonition analysis is its claim that the best performing lawyers are not always recognised.

The study — which was three years in the making — claims there is “no correlation whatsoever between popularity or re-hiring and win rates”.

According to the researchers:

Law firms’ selection of barristers is negatively correlated with their win rates. A barrister with twice the performance of a peer is 37.9% less likely to be hired.

We think that means that even if a barrister bags a lot of court victories, that success does not necessarily translate to repeat instructions. Although, frankly, it could almost mean anything.

The Floridians — which employed artificial intelligence to review more than 11,600 UK cases between 2012 and 2014 — said their aim is:

To increase transparency so that lawyers are hired based on their success — rather than league tables created without any foundation. By allowing companies to study trends, win rates and to potentially see which lawyers succeed with particular judges … evidence-based decision-making will be possible for the first time.

Read the report in full below:

UK High Courts 2014 -S-2

The post Two silks and a regional law firm have best High Court ‘win rates’, says survey appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Thinking of burning the midnight oil to make a bid for City glory? Don’t, advise top law firm specialists

Students aiming to bid for highly prized City law firm training contracts who have not applied before tomorrow’s deadline might as well go down the pub instead of firing off last-minute applications.

That is the unofficial message from several senior graduate recruitment executives at leading Square Mile practices.

The harsh verdict came a day after a voluntary code of practice for the recruitment process dropped the 31 July training contract application deadline. In future law firms are advised to set whatever closing date they see fit.

However, Legal Cheek has spoken to a clutch of top law firm recruitment bosses, and the consensus view is that an 11th-hour rush to apply is a waste of time for students.

While City law firms are reluctant to acknowledge that view openly, it is widely accepted that by tomorrow most — if not all — training places starting in 2017 will have already been allocated.

Indeed, senior recruitment executives have laid out for Legal Cheek a process that is far longer, detailed and almost of Big Brother proportions than most law students will be aware.

Firms start clocking individual students as earlier as recruitment fairs, where notes are taken on those attending a stand and showing intelligent interest. The next step is law firm open days, where again recruitment teams will log those attending and make notes next to their names.

By the time applications for vac scheme places roll around, the firms have a good idea of those students that are keen on the practice. They award points to those that rocked up to the firm’s recruitment fair stand and then turned up at an open day.

Students that manage to clamber over the vac scheme hurdle are then much better placed in the race for a training contract offer.

Ultimately, the message is this: if the first time a law firm hears from a student is at five minutes to midnight on 31 July, the recruitment exec’s finger is almost certainly headed towards the delete button.

The number of training contracts up for grabs in the City and across the rest of England and Wales for the 2014-15 round is still unknown. Last year, the Law Society reported that 5,001 contracts were registered.

That figure was more than 1,000 down on the pre-global financial crisis high in 2007-08, and 6% down on the previous 12 months. The vast majority of places — more than 93% — were registered with private practice law firms.

The post Last-minute training contract applications are a waste of time appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Application process kicks off next week for positions across the UK

Competition for seven social welfare law training contracts kicks off next week in arguably one of the best chances wannabe public law solicitors have to bag sponsorship.

The Legal Education Foundation — the charity that sprang from the first sale of the University of Law three years ago — yesterday announced that applications will open on 3 August for the training contracts.

It is the second year of the UK-wide programme, with positions available at a host organisations in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The scheme is aimed at graduates who have passed the Legal Practice Course, or the Irish and Scottish equivalents.

Grants to host organisations average £75,000 to cover the two-year costs of salary, supervision and training courses.

Registered host organisations include the Avon & Bristol Law Centre, north-east England law firm Ben Hoare Bell, the Child Poverty Action Group, south-east London charity Greenwich Housing Rights, Northern Ireland not-for-profit agency Law Centre, Glasgow law centre and charity Legal Services Agency, and London-based homeless charity Shelter.

Amber Rowsell has been training at another host organsation, the Coram Children’s Legal Centre in Colchester, Essex. She commented on the programme:

The fellowship has enabled me to dedicate my time to gain practical experience of social welfare law at this early stage in my career. The support I receive from my supervisors is focused and descriptive, which enhances my skills on a daily basis, allowing me to advise vulnerable clients to the highest standard.

And foundation chief executive Matthew Smerdon commented:

With steep cuts to legal aid and many other areas of public spending, the need for social welfare lawyers has never been greater.

Applications will be accepted online via the foundation’s website from 3 August until midnight on 15 September 2015. The training contracts start in January 2016.

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More money would help rectify work-life unbalance … along with fewer irritating clients

More alarm bells have been sounded warning that junior lawyers are either contemplating topping themselves, or telling the senior partner to get stuffed before storming from the office and heading for a beachcombing life in remote South America.

The latest doomongering came yesterday from Manchester and London virtual law firm Gunnercooke, which claimed that nearly three-quarters of “legal professionals” think they might suffer from “chronic occupational stress, depression and anxiety”.

The firm gathers those conditions into the technical collective term of “burnout”, maintaining that long hours and irritating clients were driving especially young lawyers to distraction.

Other factors forcing lawyers to contemplate mixing a booze and sleeping pills cocktail were such crushing factors as “high levels of interruptions each day”, low pay, deadline pressure, a lack of autonomy, and a lack of authority.

Lawyers also moaned to the researchers that “strained working relationships with bosses, partners and other colleagues” were getting them down.

The survey — of a total of 1,000 solicitors of varying levels of seniority — found that junior lawyers (defined as those younger than 30) were particularly gloomy and “most worried about burnout”. However, once they hit young middle age, the outlook brightened.

“Those in the 30 to 40 age bracket were happiest and least concerned about burnout,” said the research team.

That team drilled down extensively into lawyer attitudes to work to find that their favourite time to be in the office was between eight and 10 o’clock in of a Friday morning. The least favourite time was after 5pm on Tuesdays.

Most respondents cited that old chestnut phrase of “work-life balance” as the factor that would most improve their existences, although there was no definition of the term.

That was followed by a keenness to do less administrative work, and then a desire for higher pay, a need to receive more recognition from colleagues.

Other factors lawyers cited as being part of an ideal world were having more interesting work and higher calibre clients (having to put up with intellectually inferior clients must be a real drag), a smaller workload, and greater autonomy.

Sarah Goulbourne, the commercial law specialist co-founder of Gunnercooke, said the research findings highlighted:

that fear of burnout is now rife within the legal profession, and the causes identified with unhappiness in today’s working environment are numerous.

The firm also wheeled out an academic to bolster the research’s scientific credibility.

Dr Sandi Mann, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Central Lancashire, commented:

High stress levels amongst employees should be a big concern for businesses as it could cause backlash — if employees aren’t healthy, the business won’t be either and so it is in an employer’s best interests to ensure and improve the psychological wellbeing of their staff.

Legal profession stress experts agreed that burnout is a big issue. “I am not surprised by these findings,” Elizabeth Rimmer, the chief executive of charity LawCare told Legal Cheek, continuing:

We know how real these issues are within the legal community from the calls to our helpline; 75% of our callers report stress as the reason for their call, with workload being the most common cause of this. The culture and practice of law makes it difficult to talk about stress and burnout openly. We need a culture shift in the legal profession to recognise and value wellbeing.

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Now you have to be a qualified lawyer to get a non-qualified job

The City of London office of Baker & McKenzie has illustrated just how much recruitment bargaining power top law firms have by demanding that paralegal applicants must be two-year qualified solicitors.

In an extraordinary advert spotted today by one of our law student spies, the global firm — which is currently the world’s largest by revenue — seeks a solicitor with a minimum of “two years [sic] post qualification experience or equivalent” to fill a four-month fixed term paralegal contract in its London litigation department.

The advert can be viewed below:

The move follows research released at the end of last year showing increasing numbers of law graduates working as paralegals before doing training contracts.

Indeed, the survey from the Junior Lawyers Division of the Law Society found that 60% of wannabe lawyers went through paralegal purgatory. But the idea of solicitors being effectively relegated to non-qualified roles AFTER QUALIFICATION is a new and worrying development.

Still, with training contract numbers falling to 5,097 last year while the amount of students graduating from the Legal Practice Course rose to 6,171, it’s evident that the rookie lawyer market is saturated. Under such conditions, why not, as an employer, try to bring in the best-qualified paralegals in town?

Last year, Baker & McKenzie announced record global revenues of nearly £1.63 billion. The firm has not yet responded to Legal Cheek‘s request for comment.

UPDATE 14:45 — A spokesperson for Baker & McKenzie told Legal Cheek:

Like all large City law firms, we use paralegals for particular project work based on client and business needs. It has been commonplace for many years for qualified lawyers, particularly internationally qualified lawyers in London, to take on short-term paralegal work such as this.

Hat tip to @JackofKent.

The post Baker & McKenzie insists paralegal applicants must be two-year qualified solicitors appeared first on Legal Cheek.

With the courts closed and the legal profession in holiday mode, what better opportunity to do lots of pointless presentations?

You’ve done the presentation, you’ve had the feedback — but what does it really mean?

Please find your handy Wigapedia Presentation Feedback Translator to assist in understanding those Delphic comments… (with a hat tip to @BagotBriefs)

Wigapedia (aka Colm Nugent) is a barrister at Hardwicke in Lincoln’s Inn in London.

Follow @Wigapedia

The post Your Presentation Feedback Translator appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Head of London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association also has a pop at legal education establishment

Crime law solicitors’ firms have been forced into a “McJustice approach” of providing a fast-food-like service on the cheap, one of the leaders of current legal aid strike said in a frank interview published earlier this week.

Barrister-turned-solicitor-advocate Jon Black also lambasted what he described as profit-motivated law schools for creating a flood of students, who are bound to be disappointed by the current state of the employment market.

Black — the president of London Criminal Court’s Solicitor Association — told legal affairs blog LegalHackette’s Brief yesterday that too many criminal legal aid firms cut corners by “piling clients high and selling them cheap”.

But ultimately, according to Black, the market will regulate the system without the need for the government’s proposed dual-contracting system. That regime would force a reduction in the number of legal aid-authorised providers by about two-thirds.

Black explained:

There are firms that have gone on for years about the market being too big. There were people in them who trained us how to bill so we could recruit more lawyers, who are now saying there is an over-supply.

The founding partner of King’s Cross firm BSB Solicitors also fired a broadside at the legal education establishment for money-grubbing.

A former Leeds Grammar School boy, who studied English and history at Newcastle Poly before completing the bar course at the Inns of Court School of Law, Black blames deregulation of the universities in the 1990s and the post-graduate legal education system for creating a perfect storm. He told the website:

Law faculties popped up everywhere and the profit-driven provision of education meant over-recruitment at universities. That has been coupled with irresponsible recruitment to the Bar Professional Training Course and Legal Practice Course without warning students that there is no guarantee they will be the next Michael Mansfield or Helena Kennedy.

The post Crime legal aid firms are forced to offer cheap ‘McJustice’ to clients, says strike leader appeared first on Legal Cheek.

Inspired by global social media sensation “Humans of New York”, two English law students have set up a legal profession version

Aside from advertising the glamour of corporate firms, many universities often fail to teach students the basics of a legal career. What types of lawyers are there? Is it just commercial solicitors and barristers? What other options exist? What do lawyers actually do on a day-to-day basis?

We — Hannah Levy, a law student from Leeds University, and Sophie Mowll, a law student from Bristol University — have created ‘Humans of Law’ to answer these questions for law students around the country, and members of the general public.

The aim is to increase the transparency of the profession and challenge its elitism stereotype. Law students are always told that to thrive in the current commercial legal market, they must be more than just lawyers — they must also be business advisors. Can they also show a human side?

Armed with a trusty yellow notepad and a camera, we took to the streets of London to find out. Our first stop was Lincoln’s Inn, followed by Middle Temple — where the barristers were rather shy about being photographed.

Then, via Chancery Lane, we headed to the law firms around Moorgate and Liverpool Street in the City. We can officially announce that the stereotype that Londoners don’t like being spoken to when out and about is — not true! (well, sometimes). Everyone we spoke to was engaging and friendly, even those in a rush.

Finally, we went to Dalston in east London and met some high street lawyers.

Our first trip taught us several things about the legal profession. First, so many more people than solicitors and barristers are involved. We met volunteers at the Witness Protection Service and law firm PR staff with a real passion for their work and interesting stories to tell.

Secondly, we learnt that no one has the same route into law and there are many reasons for pursuing it. From accidentally wandering into the profession to getting bored of selling bottle tops, we heard a full range of stories and anecdotes of how legal professionals ended up where they are.

Law is a serious business, and lawyers need to be capable and professional. However, as we found out, they can still be human.

Follow Humans of Law on Facebook

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Diversity recruitment agency announcement suggests Olswang has got into the good wood game

There are varying approaches to achieving the goal of broadening the pool from which the legal profession is drawn — and Legal Cheek has been tipped to an absolute cracker.

Diversity specialist recruitment agency Aspiring Solicitors recently trumpeted that it had cut a deal with fashionable London media law firm Olswang. Indeed, the recruiters were not shy in their online announcement, boasting: “Olswang commits to increase diversity in the legal profession.”

How does the firm that also has pride of place in the “partner zone” of the UK’s bastion of right-on-ness, The Guardian newspaper, intend to make good on that commitment? Clearly by raising the profile of a hitherto unsung minority: chaps with todger troubles.

According to Aspiring Sols, Olswang is committed to increasing “access, opportunity and erectile dysfunction assistance to aspiring solicitors from underrepresented groups”.

Not only that, the firm’s diversity inclusion specialist has beefed up her title to include a reference to “hard on oral jelly” just to illustrate how damned committed Olswang is to this project.

Aspiring Solicitors’ announcement went on to describe Olswang as a “leader in technology, media, telecommunications and real estate” — all rather subtle coded language around Soho way for being a dab hand at getting things up that other law firms can’t.

Alternatively, Legal Cheek’s tech advisers have suggested Aspiring could have fallen victims to a cock up (the jokes just keep rolling in) on the “active advertising” front.

Those systems automatically create links between specific words and advertiser sites. Or the site could have been hacked.

Sadly, for some reason the Aspiring Solicitors promotion of Olswang’s commitment to maintaining good wood for Britain has been pulled from its site. Fortunately, Legal Cheek tipster — Richard Brent, editor of Briefing Magazine — immortalised the copy reproduced above.

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