Property specialist law firm Nabrarro revealed this week that BPP Law School will be the official legal education provider for its trainees. It is understood that the switch has already taken place, with the firm’s wannabe lawyers moving to BPP at the beginning of this month.
The deal involving the London Wall-based practice follows last month’s announcement that Kaplan Law School was to close its doors from the end of next year.
The provider — which was founded in 2007 in a deal where it offered Nottingham Law School courses in London — cited the changing face of legal education as part of its decision not to invest in traditional routes to legal qualification.
The demise of Kaplan — which ditched its Bar Professional Training Course back in September last year — has left the University of Law (ULaw) and BPP rubbing their hands in delight.
Last month, elite New York-based firm Shearman & Sterling — which had been with Kaplan — struck a deal with ULaw to provide the Legal Practice Course for its London trainees. In retrospect, the move has triggered speculation that Shearman was aware all was not well at Kaplan, and therefore opted to send its 17 trainees to Europe’s largest law school.
However, according to a report in Bebo-style law firm partners message board Roll on Friday, Nabarro — which offers around 25 training contracts annually — is the first firm to show its hand since the closure of Kaplan’s law courses was confirmed (the institution will continue offering courses in other disciplines).
The campaign, which was launched by 11KBW silk Sean Jones QC on Thursday evening last week, has — at the time of publication of this article — raised £120,492.10.
Not bad for a humble JustGiving page whose initial target was £7,500.
On Saturday evening Jones took to Twitter to share a thank you video — featuring his barristers’ wig — with his followers.
The almost 1,000 people who have made donations include overseas lawyers, as the appeal has gone global, and a handful of wannabe lawyers — the youngest of whom is just 10.
Jones’ brilliant idea has spawned a host of similar fundraising pages for other professions, such as accountants. But so far the lawyers are streets ahead in terms of money raised.
Global law firm Pinsent Masons leads a group of 15 City law firms in a list of the 100 best businesses in the UK for students to have a work placement.
The firm — which has 20 worldwide offices outside its London headquarters — came top of a league table compiled by website RateMyPlacement. Pinsent was pipped to the top of the whole pile by global banking giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
According to the site, the rankings were “based upon thousands of insightful student-written reviews”.
Pinsent Masons was listed as offering 100 vac scheme placements in its London and Middle East offices, which offer up to £300 per week to the students on tea-making and photocopying jankers.
The next highest law firm on the list was Nabarro, which came 14th overall, one place above German cheap-as-chips supermarket Lidl.
Nabarro did not provide details of its vac scheme numbers, but following it was Taylor Wessing (17th place on the overall list), which offers 80 placements in London and the Netherlands and pays around £275 a month.
Creeping into the bottom slot of the top-20 overall was the first magic circle firm to make the list — Linklaters, which also declined to provide vac scheme details.
Immediately behind was the London office of Baker & McKenzie with its 40 vac scheme places, which come with weekly wedge of about £320.
It stands to reason that law firms have done reasonably well in the league table. Only about six weeks ago, Legal Cheek highlighted how many firms seem to treat vac schemes as though they were some form of holiday camp.
For example, vac schemers at magic circle giant Clifford Chance enjoyed a day clambering to the top of London’s Millennium Dome, those at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer engaged in a spot of leisurely community centre gardening, while the lucky blighters at Anglo-US firm DLA Piper played ice hockey.
Commenting on his firm’s high ranking, Pinsent Masons managing partner, John Cleland, told Legal Cheek:
We are extremely proud to have been rated as one of the leading UK employers by undergraduates who have come and worked on placement for us. We expend a lot of energy and effort on our placement schemes because we want to give undergrads great work experience, something of real value to their CV and, of course, we want them to be interested in working for us when they graduate.
The London office of international law firm Mayer Brown has increased the intake of students doing its new earn-while-you-learn law degree and period of recognised training.
The firm unveiled the scheme — dubbed an “articled apprenticeship” — earlier this summer in a tie up with the University of Law (ULaw). It effectively allows aspiring lawyers to circumvent the training contract process and qualify as solicitors while minimising debt.
Initially Mayer Brown planned to take on just one student through the programme and not look to recruit again until summer 2016. But the firm — which has experienced disappointing retention rates recently — says that it was inundated with applications from high quality candidates. As result it has decided to take on two earn-while-you-learn starters this month and then look to bring in another next year, with the recruitment process opening in January.
The six-year programme — which has a minimum A-level entry requirement of AAB — is run in association with the University of Law (ULaw), combining a part-time undergraduate law degree followed by the Legal Practice Course (LPC) with paid paralegal-level work. Scheme participants spend the final two years as part of the firm’s trainee group.
The successful candidates are Rosie Ahmadi, who is already at the firm in a business services apprenticeship capacity, and David Elikwu. They will be employees of Mayer Brown for the duration six-year scheme, which begins today.
Ahmadi, 20, left Southgate Secondary School in Hertfordshire in 2013 with an AAB at A-level in economics, chemistry and maths. She opted not to go to university and instead successfully applied for a business services apprenticeship at Mayer Brown later that year. Having caught the law bug she successfully obtained a Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (CILEx) Level 3 certificate in law and practice and decided to apply for the firm’s articled apprenticeship scheme.
Elikwu, 21, did the international baccalaureate at St Mary Magdalene Academy in London, scoring 37 points. He then began an LLB at City University in 2012, but left to intern at Google as part of its Top Black Talent programme before gaining more work experience at a firm in Shanghai.
The programme begins with the pair completing an initial nine-month rotation in Mayer Brown’s Business and Information Centre departments, before making the move into one of its legal practice areas.
Alongside this, they will have to complete their legal studies part-time. Ahmadi and Elikwu — who began the LLB at ULaw’s Bloomsbury branch last week — will then progress onto the LPC before going on to the Professional Skills Course (PSC) in their final year.
The apprentices will start on a salary of £18,000, rising over the six years to the same as second year trainees at the firm, a figure that currently stands at £45,000. Mayer Brown also revealed that it will cover the costs of the apprentice’s LPC fees, in the same way it does for trainees on the traditional qualification route.
Commenting on the appointments, Annette Sheridan, global chief HR officer at Mayer Brown, said:
The calibre of applicants who put themselves forward for this apprenticeship was extremely high, therefore we decided to offer a legal apprenticeship to two people. I am delighted to welcome our inaugural apprentices — Rosie and David — to the firm and I look forward to watching their progress as they develop their future careers.
The London office of Chicago headquartered global mega firm Sidley Austin has increased its newly qualified (NQ) pay by a whopping 20%.
The huge hike from £75,000 to £90,000 comes as a host of mid-tier English City firms announced rather less generous salary rises. Osborne Clarke has edged up its NQ pay from £60,000 to £62,500, while Stephenson Harwood has gone from £60,000 to £62,000 and Watson Farley & Williams from £62,000 to £65,000.
Sidley Austin — which is famous for being the firm where President Obama met his wife while she supervised him during a vac scheme — only takes on ten trainees a year in London. But its NQ pay rise is significant because it is part of a wider movement among US firms in the UK to boost pay at a far greater rate than their English rivals.
Indeed, when announcing the news, the chair of the Sidley’s grandly-titled “associate compensation committee”, David Howe, emphasised that the rise is “set against the backdrop of increases in the market generally”.
Other American firms to have upped London NQ pay recently include Shearman & Sterling (where NQ pay now stands at £88,000), White & Case (NQ salary: £90,000) and Sullivan & Cromwell (leading the market with £101,500 for NQs).
These rises have left even the top English firms in the shade, with the £70,000 offered by Slaughter and May and Clifford Chance to NQs looking, by comparison, less than magical.
Sidley Austin has also boosted its trainee pay rates. First years go from £41,000 to £44,000, while second years rise from £43,000 to £48,000.
It all kicked off on Friday when Garsden, who is also senior partner at Quality Solicitors-branded law firm Abney Garsden in Cheshire, fired of a broadside at former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor.
The 68-year-old ex-member for Basildon in Essex recently called a high-profile press conference to protest his innocence in relation to allegations that he was at the heart of an establishment-organised paedophile ring.
Proctor lambasted the police and a website called Exaro for running what he described as an unfounded smear campaign against him.
Garsden, writing for the online public law site The Justice Gap, took Proctor to task, not least for having invoked the term “witch hunt” to describe the tactics of plod and some keyboard warriors.
The solicitor’s rationale suggested that invoking the analogy was misplaced, and that unless bona fide witches were involved in this debate, the term should be binned.
It was entirely legitimate for the former MP to defend himself in the media, argued the lawyer, who is also known as BarristerBlogger, not least as a lead police investigator had apparently prejudiced the case by describing allegations against Proctor as “credible and true”.
But Scott reserved his most acerbic comments for Garsden’s witch hunt volley. Wrote the barrister:
It may be that he [Garsden] is uncomfortable with the analogy because, as he explains on his firm’s website, he himself actually believes in the widespread existence of witches who sacrifice children. If you believe in the existence of evil witches a witch hunt is not necessarily a bad thing.
Scott then quoted from Garsden’s own Abuse Law blog, where the solicitor does indeed suggest that witches could be among us today.
My own belief is that there are several hidden societies in England and Wales which practise ritualistic abuse to the present day, which includes the sacrifice of children described graphically in Dennis Wheatley novels.
Wheatley was a best-selling writer of occult novels and thrillers during the first half of the last century. Garsden continued on his blog:
The Wicker Man film is obviously fictional, but not far away from the truth, I believe. A similar attitude would have been adopted to child abuse 70 years ago, I would imagine. Although witchcraft was commonplace in this country in medieval times, there are many who alleged they have been a victim of it today. The point is that not enough people are brave enough to believe that it is true.
Clearly, Garsden is brave enough to call a witch a witch when he sees one. In the meantime, Harvey Proctor adamantly maintains his innocence.
A senior partner at the London office of Brown Rudnick has been shamed on Twitter after sending a private LinkedIn message to a barrister praising her “stunning” profile photo.
Rather than respond with, as perhaps was hoped, a coquettish smiley face to Alexander Carter-Silk’s note, Charlotte Proudman — who describes herself as a “fearless feminist” in her Twitter bio — took a screenshot of the correspondence and yesterday evening posted it on Twitter for all the world to see.
The five-year call family law specialist at the Chambers of Michael Mansfield QC also included her non-plussed response in which she brands Carter-Silk’s message “offensive”, “sexist” and “misogynistic”.
Proudman has received messages of support on Twitter for her actions exposing what some have dubbed “disgusting” behaviour. Meanwhile, Carter-Silk, who leads his firm’s European intellectual property division, has issued this statement via City law messageboard RollOnFriday:
Most people post pretty unprofessional pictures on Linked in, my comment was aimed at the professional quality of the presentation on linked in which was unfortunately misinterpreted. Ms Proudman is clearly highly respected and I was pleased to receive her request to linkup and very happy to instruct her on matters which [are] relevant to her expertise that remains the position.
The London office of Norton Rose Fulbright has announced today an autumn retention rate of 77%, keeping 24 of its 31 newly qualifying (NQ) lawyers.
The firm, which offers 50 training contracts annually, made 26 offers with all but two accepting. The retention figure is a slight drop on the international giant’s spring performance when it kept 21 of its 26 young lawyers, resulting in 79% retention
Those staying at the firm will benefit from a recently improved NQ pay package of £70,000, up from £65,000. The transatlantic player also chucked extra cash at its junior talent this summer, with first year trainees taking home £41,000 up from £39,500.
Meanwhile, City outfit Bird & Bird has revealed that 15 of its 18 trainees due to qualify this September will remain at the firm, resulting in an autumn retention figure of 83%.
The firm, which offers around 18 training contracts annually and is best known for its IT specialism, confirmed that 16 newly qualifying lawyers were made offers, with only one turning it down. That individual, a free spirit named Sophie, is opting instead to work with lions in an animal sanctuary in South Africa, Bird & Bird confirmed to Legal Cheek.
The news marks a slight drop in the retention standings for the telecommunications, media and technology focused-firm. Last autumn, Bird & Bird kept 14 out of 15 of its NQ cohort, equating to a retention figure of 93%.
Finally, corporate firm Eversheds has posted an autumn retention figure of 82%.
The sprawling global behemoth — which has 55 offices in 28 different countries — has retained 37 out of 45 of its qualifying NQ talent.
Eversheds revealed that 15 new associates will be based at its London HQ near St Paul’s, while the remaining 22 young lawyers will be spread across the firm’s regional offices in locations including Birmingham, Leeds, Cardiff, Cambridge, Nottingham and Manchester.
Those opting to remain at Eversheds will take advantage of a recent pay boost. NQs in London will now take home £62,000, a rise of 5%. Meanwhile, their regional counterparts have had pay upped by 8% to £40,000.
The mismatch between student perceptions of being a lawyer and the sometimes tough reality has been highlighted in a survey that shows members of the legal profession heading for the exit door in rising numbers.
According to analysis of job searches by 1,486 lawyer applicants on job sites Reed and Total Jobs, 32% of lawyers who earn over £50,000 are applying for non-legal roles that would see them leave the profession. The sample was restricted to lawyers in the newly qualified to 10 years post-qualification bracket.
A similar survey conducted jointly in 2007 by YouGov and The Lawyer found that 24% of lawyers would like a change of career.
The new study, conducted by career change consultants Life Productions, found that the disillusioned lawyers were applying in greatest numbers to other City roles in banking, insurance and finance (13%), followed by IT and internet business roles (7%) and jobs in the construction industry (6%).
Life Productions‘ founder, Martin Underwood — a former junior criminal barrister who now advises unhappy corporate law associates how to escape their jobs — billed the results as emblematic of a “talent retention crisis for Big Law [that] is getting even worse as the industry deals with millennials, a generation of professionals who demand work-life balance and a job that is aligned to their values.”
Underwood, who used to practise from London set 9 Bedford Row, went on:
Working conditions for lawyers at larger firms haven’t changed significantly in eight years. A large proportion of well-paid associates and senior associates continue to resent the lifestyle they are expected to adopt. For them, the high salary is simply not enough to justify the grinding hours, the stress and the lack of control over the volume and nature of work.
The study comes as a host of City law firms move to increase junior solicitor pay and implement flexible working initiatives — developments which suggest the recovering economy is boosting associates’ employment options and bargaining power.
Wunderkind Jozef Erece has become one of the world’s youngest solicitors aged just 18.
The child prodigy was last week admitted to Queensland’s roll of legal practitioners after racing through a law degree and the Australian equivalent of the Legal Practice Course (LPC) before his 19th birthday next month.
Aussie law graduates are awarded the title of “solicitor” upon completion of law school, rather than at the end of their training contract-style on-the-job phase of training.
No stranger to the spotlight, Erece made headlines earlier this year when in June he became the University of South Queensland’s youngest ever law graduate. He passed his university entrance exam in his 11th school year and became a law undergrad in 2012 aged just 15.
Following graduation, Erece enrolled onto Queensland University of Technology’s Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (GDLP) — the Aussie LPC equivalent. Quite unlike the situation here in the UK, under Queensland Law Society regulations prospective solicitors can apply for admission to the roll without having undergone a two-year traineeship. GDLP graduates can apply for a restricted practising certificate, which affords them practising rights, albeit in limited form.
As you might expect of anyone deserving of “world’s youngest solicitor” status, Erece has previous in high-achievement. By the age of three the child prodigy was reading, and, according to newspaper reports, he had his first book published at eight. When he was just 13, he followed up his reported literary success by becoming New Zealand’s youngest Tai Kwondo instructor. Described as an all-rounder by his amazed former teachers, he also apparently excelled in sport and music during his school career.
Still, his ascendency to lawyer status at such an early stage has tested even this superhuman — with Erece acknowledging to the Brisbane Courier Mail that his latest achievement required some graft. He explained:
I’ve had to study for several hours a day. I do acknowledge I’ve got strengths in academia.
Not yet satisfied with his lot, Erece is planning on becoming a barrister — in Australia students must first qualify as solicitors in order to be eligible for the bar — and also expects to supplement his burgeoning academic CV with a postgraduate degree.
Erece’s success recalls that of 2013 headline-maker Gabrielle Turnquest, who at 18 — a couple of months Erece’s junior, no less — became the youngest person to qualify as a barrister in England & Wales in 600 years. She completed her Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) aged just 17 and was called to the bar after she successfully completing the BPTC at the University of Law.
The University of Law (ULaw) is to extend its reach beyond England & Wales in the latest chapter of an eventful summer for legal education, which is still reverberating from Kaplan Law School’s shock announcement that it is to close.
ULaw’s move into a new market comes in the form of a tie-up with international law behemoth CMS Cameron McKenna to create a bespoke version of the Scottish Legal Practice Course (LPC) equivalent — the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice (DPLP) — for the firm’s trainees-to-be.
But for now ULaw won’t be adding to its branches in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Chester, Guildford, Manchester and Leeds, with the new jointly curated course set be hosted by an existing Scottish university — the identity of which is still to be confirmed. ULaw told Legal Cheek this afternoon that it has “no plans at present to open a branch in Scotland”.
In that sense, the arrangement could prove similar to the recent deal struck by ULaw and the University of Exeter, which are partnering from September to offer the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and, from next year, the LPC.
This has been one of the bright spots in a tough year for ULaw, which entered into new ownership in June having lost a number of exclusive firm GDL and LPC deals to bitter rival BPP. CMS — which has offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen thanks to its 2014 merger with Dundas & Wilson — has also been on the receiving end of some negative publicity recently, having slashed its trainee recruitment target from 76 last year to 50 in this recruitment round.
The real story here, though, is whether the franchised legal education model could colonise Scotland as it has England. Even without a physical presence north of the border, ULaw’s move into the Scottish vocational training market is likely to shake things up in the Land of the Brave, where the DPLP is delivered mainly by single-centre universities without any specific affiliation to law firms.
Ominously for those traditional establishments, the current legal education scene in Scotland looks a lot like England before ULaw and BPP began signing up firms to exclusive training deals for their future lawyers in the mid-noughties.
Plenty of details still need to be ironed out before CMS’s first cohort of future lawyers begin their ULaw DPLP’s in September next year, but the key point emphasised by both the firm and the law school is that the course will be more business-focused than existing syllabuses and streamline better with the English LPC.
In a statement issued by the firm, CMS senior partner Penelope Warne spoke of her enthusiasm for the bringing of “more consistency to legal training and education for CMS trainees”. ULaw’s provost and chief academic officer Professor Andrea Nollent had a similar message, commenting:
We have enjoyed a successful working relationship with CMS for many years and are excited to be working with them on this innovative development of their training. This is a market leading proposition which will equip the firm’s trainees with the edge they need to succeed in a highly competitive and rapidly evolving market.
The “sexist” LinkedIn message row just got real as the head of one of the UK’s biggest legal aid firms vowed to send “no more briefs” to Charlotte Proudman.
For those returning from desert islands, Proudman is the young legal aid barrister who on Monday tweeted a screenshot of a private LinkedIn message from senior solicitor Alexander Carter-Silk which described her profile photo as “stunning”.
This move by the 27 year-old — who practices family law from Mansfield Chambers — has split the profession, as evidenced by the 160 plus comments posted on Legal Cheek‘s report of the news. Some admire her chutzpah, while others have questioned her judgement.
But until late yesterday afternoon no one from the law firms who instruct legal aid barristers had come out publicly to express a view on the matter. That changed at half past five when Franklin Sinclair, the outspoken boss of Tuckers, blasted off this tweet in which he pledged “Nomorebriefs4u”:
@CRProudman what an awful thing to do, what kind of world do we live in when a man can't give a lady a compliment.getalife. Nomorebriefs4u
Sinclair responded by bringing Proudman’s head of chambers, Michael Mansfield, into it, before arguing that Carter-Silk’s message wasn’t sexist and wondering out loud how someone who has published private correspondence can be trusted.
@CRProudman I should think you've blacklisted yourself from more than just sexist ones! Anyway send my regards to Michael Mansfield
Sinclair is a controversial figure, whose utterances — often made through his Twitter account — regularly wind up his fellow lawyers. Previous classics include it’s “not my job 2 care about justice”. But his point about publishing private correspondence may strike a chord with many instructing solicitors.
In statements given to the national media after the story of her tweet went viral, Proudman has argued that her decision to make public the message was justified because of the wider problem of sexual harassment in the legal profession.
Meanwhile, Carter-Silk, 57, is laying low, with no word from him or his law firm, Brown Rudnick, since it issued a short statement yesterday admitting that it had “apologised for the offence caused”.
One of the most high profile judges in the Court of Appeal has slammed the unfair selection processes used by the legal profession to recruit students.
Speaking last night at a fundraising reception for Big Voice London — one of the capital’s leading legal youth engagement organisations — Lord Justice Vos rounded on firms and chambers bosses who are biased towards “privileged” people who remind them of themselves. Addressing a group of lawyers, students and journalists at the Lincoln’s Inn event, he thundered:
My view has always been that the barriers to entry to the legal profession are far too high for those from less privileged backgrounds who have no family background in the law or in other professions. The main barriers are financial ones, lack of proper advice and guidance in schools about how to get into the law, lack of available work experience or internships for the less privileged, so that their aspirations can be kindled and their drive harnessed, and the discriminatory selection procedures that still exist for some training contracts, pupillages and tenancies.
Frustratingly, Vos declined to name names. But a perusal of the Legal Cheek Most Lists and accompanying firm profiles — for top firms and leading chambers — should give readers a sense of which outfits are the most geared to hiring traditional types at the exclusion of almost everybody else.
Although Vos didn’t go into it, the situation is particularly bad among commercial sets at the bar, many of which are entirely dominated by Oxbridge graduates thanks to lazy, under-funded recruitment processes that are allowed to continue despite members hauling in record revenues.
To their credit, many City law firms are putting increasing resources into recruiting more widely, be it through building ties with non-Russell Group universities, launching contextual recruitment initiatives or developing career paths for non-graduates. But a widespread reluctance to disclose socio-economic diversity data means progress at a large number of outfits is slow.
Vos went on to despair at the group-think that prevails in law, where similar wealthy middle class types tend to join each other in coming to the same old boring conclusions. He reckons this is dangerous because it makes the legal profession one-dimensional and predictable. Vos explained:
Privileged people from good, but often very similar, social classes and educational institutions can certainly perform well in the law and in other professions. But they tend to see and solve problems in homogeneous ways. There are many different ways to solve problems — which is what lawyers do. If the UK legal profession is to be world beating — as it has been up to now — it needs to offer the problem solving abilities of people who see the world from all angles. That means recruiting people from all backgrounds across the spectrum.
One solution to getting a wider spread of society into the legal profession, argued Vos, was to get people thinking about the law at a much earlier stage via initiatives like Big Voice — whose headline projects include a Model Law Commission and a mooting competition with a final in the Supreme Court. Other impressive youth engagement schemes include the Citizenship Foundation’s excellent annual Bar National Mock Trial competition.
Only that way, reckoned the top judge, would ordinary people without loads of family friends who are lawyers be able to have a fair crack at negotiating selection procedures that “demand a high level of insight into the profession you are trying to join”.
In some quarters the LinkedIn message lawyer row has been spun as an optimistic tale of a tech-savvy young feminist outwitting a sexist dinosaur in the progressive arena of social media.
Proudman’s brilliant use of her computer’s screenshot function, followed by her rapid dissemination of the image on Twitter, is the sort of bold move that is contributing to making old prejudices extinct, we have been told.
But strip away the ideological distractions, and you are left with the real story: a young, inexperienced barrister — let’s remember for a moment that the Mansfield Chambers family law junior is just 27 — took the decision to make public a piece of ill-judged private correspondence from a senior member of her extremely hierarchical profession. And the consequences have been explosive.
This was a terrible move for a lawyer to make. What members of the legal profession sell — particularly the self-employed hot shot barrister ones — is their knowledge of the rules and associated ability to push them to their limits, without breaking them. In breaching the convention of respect for private communications — which is a particularly big deal for the law with its love of all that “without prejudice” jargon — Proudman came across as unreliable and reckless. Worse, she exposed herself as someone who doesn’t really understand the game she is playing.
Tuckers boss Franklin Sinclair’s was a bit mean in publicly vowing to never instruct Proudman again, but anyone with moderate experience of the legal world could have predicted important solicitors would react like this.
Judging by her comments in the media over the last couple of days, Proudman is a long way from accepting the reality of her situation. So far, she is still arguing that the problem of sexism in law is so great that it trumps the importance of professionalism — and ultimately justified her taking a noble stand at great personal cost. Her supporters agree and have branded her a hero.
But at no point has anyone in the Proudman camp troubled to ask themselves if the barrister could have exposed Alexander Carter-Silk without endangering herself. In case you’d forgotten, Carter-Silk is the senior lawyer who sent the offending LinkedIn message — and has since been reduced to an almost bit part in the story as Proudman has assumed centre stage.
The answer is obviously that she could have kept her name out of this. If Proudman had been more media savvy she would have taken the screenshot and then sent it anonymously with her name and photo redacted — and Carter-Silk’s in full view — to the press.
Certainly Legal Cheek — and no doubt our competitors — would have been delighted to publish it. That’s the way the making public of private correspondence works: it’s possible, but to protect yourself you have to do it via a third party and not from your own Twitter account. At which point, Carter-Silk would have been in an impossible position. Because for him to have responded and revealed Proudman’s identity he would have had to have assumed the role of the active party, and been the bad guy who not only sent an inappropriate message but needlessly ruined the career of a poor junior barrister.
Having said all of that, we shouldn’t be too hard on Proudman. She’s not long out of university let alone bar school and she clearly has guts. Her career will recover from this, and perhaps even benefit, if — and it’s a big if given her reaction so far — she can be honest enough with herself to ignore all the armchair Twitter supporters egging her on and admit that she got this one wrong. After all, she’s now the best known junior barrister in the country.
Previously:
Boss of top legal aid firm vows to never instruct LinkedIn message barrister Charlotte Proudman again [Legal Cheek]
Feminist barrister tweets screenshot of senior male solicitor’s ‘sexist’ LinkedIn message [Legal Cheek]
Lawyers at elite City firm Linklaters have teamed up with a leading legal education charity to provide free housing advice, as one of the country’s busiest courts dealing with this issue and other social welfare claims prepares for closure.
Linklaters’ solicitors will work alongside training specialists at Pro Bono Community (PBC) to give gratis legal assistance on housing matters to low-income and vulnerable Londoners.
The City lawyers, who individually volunteered to be a part of PBC’s programme, completed the first of three training programmes earlier this summer.
The training — which covered how to handle matters including possessions, evictions, homelessness and landlord disrepair disputes — is part of a wider pro bono initiative that also involves fellow magic circle outfits Clifford Chance and Freshfields. But Links are taking the lead on social housing advice.
Details of how the pro bono scheme will be delivered have not yet been confirmed, but those facing eviction and homelessness will no doubt sleep a little easier knowing some of the finest legal minds in the country could end up dealing with their cases free of charge.
Owen Clay, Linklaters global pro bono partner, told Legal Cheek:
Access to justice is at the very heart of our pro bono practice. This collaboration is all about encouraging and equipping more of our lawyers to volunteer in housing law — an area outside their day-to-day expertise. The need for advice from those on low-incomes on important issues such as disrepair is very high. I’m pleased to report that we have been able scale up the programme through this partnership.
In his first address to the legal profession earlier this summer, Justice Secretary Michael Gove told wealthy City lawyers that they need to “look into their consciences” and provide more free work in a justice system they have “done very well” in. Let’s just hope Links’ lawyers — who take home £68,500 at newly qualified level in return for a professional life that sees them work often very long hours — have time to represent their pro bono clients.
With City firms doing their bit to promote access to justice, Gove seems focused on doing just the opposite. It appears that Lambeth County Court is one of ten in the City earmarked for the chop despite the legal profession voicing its concerns over the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) planned court closures.
The court — which is one of the country’s busiest when it comes to housing possession claims and evictions — will be shut as part of the MoJ’s ‘Estate Reform Programme,’ which proposes the closure of more than 90 courts across England and Wales.
The court’s workload is set to be moved to Wandsworth County Court in south west London, leaving those who would attend proceedings at Lambeth facing longer journey times, and putting a greater strain on resources at already busy Wandsworth.
Despite government suggestions that court users will only be marginally effected, those in South London may face travel times in excess three hours, if commuting by bus.
So the sad irony — which will already be apparent to many in the legal profession — is that as Gove urges City lawyers to do more to promote access to justice, any upsides to schemes such as Linklaters’ PBC tie-up will probably be hampered by the MoJ’s court closure plan.
Officials at the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) have apologised to Alan Blacker — who shot to fame when a Crown Court judge berated him for festooning his gown with Harry Potter-style medals — after the solicitor-advocate complained over the handling of investigations into his practice.
Legal Cheek understands that Blacker — also known as Lord Harley of Counsel — officially complained to the Independent Complaint Resolution Service (ICRS) earlier this year over several issues, including alleged discrimination. The ICRS — a specialist provider of complaint and dispute resolution services — independently oversees complaints regarding the SRA.
Blacker, who is based in Heywood, Lancashire, alluded to the ICRS findings on his extensive LinkedIn page last week, posting a message claiming that the SRA had been “ordered to apologise for not handling complaints of racism and general misconduct properly”.
However, Legal Cheek can reveal that the apology was in relation to a miscommunication regarding a lost file concerning Blacker. The SRA had incorrectly informed the lawyer that a file containing his details had gone missing.
According to the SRA, none of Blacker’s grievances were upheld by the independent complaints body, but the final report did recommend — and not “ordered” as Harley suggests — an apology.
As a result, the SRA wrote to Blacker two months ago apologising for the misunderstanding and any distress caused.
An SRA spokesman told Legal Cheek:
The Independent Complaints Resolution Service has oversight of the way we handle complaints about our service and provides a final independent response to complainants. The ICRS did not uphold Dr Blacker’s complaints. However, it did make a recommendation that we apologise to Dr Blacker for any distress caused when we mistakenly advised we had lost files when we had not. We wrote to Dr Blacker in June to apologise.
The spokesman then addressed issues of alleged discrimination:
We also reminded staff to consider inviting further information from complainants to help us better understand concerns of discrimination that are raised with us, although as we said, Dr Blacker’s concern in this respect was not upheld by the ICRS.
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that the Law Society — which has technical oversight of the otherwise independent SRA — has been told to ask the regulator to release some correspondence between it and Blacker’s charity, the Rochdale-based Joint Armed Forces Legal Advocacy Service (JAFLAS).
A ruling from the society’s freedom of information code adjudicator was handed down at the end of last month, suggesting that the SRA release a series of correspondence and reports regarding the charity. The Law Society does not fall within the scope of freedom of information legislation, but it has adopted its own code of practice, which covers the SRA.
However, the SRA is not obliged to comply with adjudications and it is understood officials are considering the ruling. No detail is known of the substance of that correspondence and reports.
Legal Cheek contacted the charity’s office late on Friday for comment. An unidentified voice simply responded by saying:
So far an incredible 1,403 donations have been made — with a host of big shots handing out £1,000 lump sums. But as another QC, Simon Myerson, pointed out, that still leaves plenty of lawyers left to help nudge the figure over the £200k mark.
OK, so #billable hour is now at £176k, which is amazing. But 'only' 1380 lawyers have given. That means lots haven't. http://t.co/gfatXLGuXd
UPDATE: 5:11pm — Hardwicke barristers Gordon Exall and PJ Kirby QC are hosting How to get sued: Make a loss and be miserable on Tuesday 22 September, with all proceeds going to the billable hour for refugees campaign.
Held at Hardwicke Building in Lincoln’s Inn from 5:30pm-7pm, topics to be covered include
• How to fall foul of limitation periods time after time.
• How to root out and get caught by those limitation periods that are less than three years.
• An easy guide to fouling up service of the claim form.
• The wrong way to agree extensions of time.
• Why court orders and rules are not important and can happily be ignored.
• How to make sure your witnesses fail in their evidence every time.
• How to lose at trial without really trying.
• How to panic and run away when things go wrong.
Registration and welcome drinks are from 5:30pm, the talk starts at 6pm and there are nibbles and wine from 7pm. Tickets cost £100 for lawyers and £25 for students and pupils. All proceeds go to the billable hour for refugees campaign.
To book, please contact billable hour charity event manager Sheraine Rowe at sheraine.rowe@hardwicke.co.uk, who will confirm your place and advise you on how to make payment.
Norton Rose Fulbright newly qualified solicitor Tom Capel — who’ll be speaking at Commercial Awareness Question Time this Thursday — on how the hard-to-define concept beloved of law firms manifests itself in real life
When I was applying for training contracts during my second year of a law degree at the University of Southampton, I thought I wanted to become an IP lawyer. My dissertation was about copyright infringement, and I chose to study IP and IT law.
I developed my commercial awareness through reading about important IP cases in the news at the time, such as the Newzbin file-sharing case. It was an area that I was genuinely interested in, so following stories like these wasn’t a chore. I think that enthusiasm probably came through in my interview, and my understanding of how businesses could be affected by external pressures such as IP laws helped me to answer the commercially-based interview questions.
I knew much less about some other commercial topics. You don’t have to sell yourself as being an expert in every industry, but you do need to be able to think about how certain events or circumstances might affect your client or, in the context of training contract applications, the practice overall. Over the course of my training contract I have developed a much broader knowledge of how law and business interact. Despite my interest in IP law at university, the seat I most enjoyed — above even the technology work I did while with the corporate team — was in an asset finance team, into which I’ll shortly be qualifying.
It’s not hard to enjoy the work because at the end of the day, you’ve helped finance a tremendous piece of equipment, be it a plane or an oil rig. The aviation and offshore industries are so dynamic and interesting that being able to work in and understand those industries is a really rewarding and enjoyable aspect of the job.
For example, a big issue affecting the financing of offshore oil projects is the oil price, which has plummeted over the last year. This happened after I concluded my asset finance seat. As the industry had become a genuine interest, I closely followed the commercial implications of the oil price collapse. I saw how it really shook up the industry, creating challenges but also creating opportunities for some. Our clients rightly expect us to be up to speed with these issues so we can provide commercially sensible legal advice.
One of the great experiences as a trainee which helps your commercial understanding grow is that the legal sector attracts people with interesting backgrounds. For example, I share an office with someone who is a master mariner and worked on oil tankers before he became a lawyer. There are also former naval officers and engineers, amongst other professions, in the office, who are experts in their field. Listening to them on the phone discuss commercial issues with clients is an experience in itself and one of the real perks of working at Norton Rose Fulbright.
The partners you are working with tend to be so immersed in their respective industries that they are aware of developments before they hit the mainstream press. As a trainee you are steadily building up a base of knowledge that will hopefully one day put you in the position of those partners. The industry knowledge you can develop in the legal profession is quite amazing. Plus, knowing about the wider context of the documents you are working on helps inform your drafting so that the documents work in the commercial context in which they are being used. So, continuing to develop commercial awareness as a trainee is a very important process.
In contrast, as a student you are jumping in at the deep end, going from being someone who knows very little about law and business to attending assessment centres and being asked big picture strategic questions, such as “Where would you open another office?” and “Who do you see as our competition?”. Unsurprisingly, these types of questions don’t tend to crop up in conversations with partners during your training contract.
In that sense there is a disconnect between what commercial awareness means as a student and as a trainee. However, in both instances you are being tested on your understanding of how wider commercial issues, the law and the legal sector interact. One of the most important things to remember is to demonstrate that you understand that clients don’t operate in a world of neat law student-style problem questions.
Tom Capel is a newly qualified solicitor in Norton Rose Fulrbight’s London office. He will be one of the panellists at Legal Cheek’s inaugural Commercial Awareness Question Time this Thursday evening. You can apply for one of the final batch of places available from today here.
Single-office City outfit Macfarlanes has announced today an autumn retention rate of 74%, keeping 14 of its 19 newly qualifying (NQ) lawyers.
The firm, which trains around 30 new lawyers each year, revealed it made 18 offers — which 14 NQs have accepted “so far”. Seán Lavin, head of graduate recruitment, reflected plaintively:
Macfarlanes recruits its trainee solicitors for the long term and it is always our ambition to retain 100% of trainees on qualifying. However, it is not always possible to match up the individual expectations of every trainee with the opportunities we have at the firm on qualifying, and so that ambition is not always fulfilled.
Today’s news marks a drop of 10 percentage points on the firm’s autumn figure last year, when it posted 84%. That mid-80s level is the sort of figure that silver circle firms tend to view as respectable.
Indeed, it is just in excess of this proportion of trainees that competitor firm Ashurst has kept on, with 86% of its autumn 2015 qualifying cohort remaining at the firm. The global outfit announced that 18 of its 21 September London qualifiers had accepted full-time associate positions.
Ashurst — which has 28 offices worldwide — confirmed 20 NQ lawyers had put themselves forward for consideration, while one opted out of the process.
Four new associates will head to Ashurst’s corporate transactions department, while corporate projects and banking will receive three NQs each. Real estate will also receive three NQs, and dispute resolution gains two. The firm’s employment, regulatory and securities/derivatives departments bag one new lawyer each.
The news marks a slight decline on the firm’s spring result, when it posted a 91% figure, keeping 21 of 23 NQs.
But forget about the silver circle — if you want retention bliss, look no further than insurance specialist DAC Beachcroft. The national player has posted one of the best autumn retention results yet, with 100% of new qualifiers sticking around.
The firm, which offers around ten training contracts annually, revealed that all 11 autumn NQs would be remaining. Six of its trainee cohort will be based in DAC’s City headquarters, three will heading to Bristol, while the firm’s Manchester and Leeds offices will be gaining a new associate each.
DAC’s perfect retention rate places it as the odd one out among an elite group of top-paying US firms which are currently dominating the City’s autumn retention table. White & Case, Shearman & Sterling, Sullivan & Cromwell and Weil Gotshal & Manges have all revealed 100% figures this autumn. Although like DAC, US firms traditionally have a much smaller trainee intake — meaning that it can be easier to shine in the topsy turvy world of NQ preservation.
Research conducted by Oxford University academics has revealed that solicitors, barristers and judges have only a 3.5% chance of being replaced by robots — making the high end branch of the legal profession one of the groups most protected from the rise of the machines.
However, paralegals — who were dubbed “legal associate professionals” by the study — face a whopping 66% chance of mechanical replacement 20 years from now.
The data, which was compiled by Oxford Uni researchers’ Michael Osborne and Carl Frey, examined how susceptible to automation 366 different jobs were. It has since been turned into an online tool by the BBC website, which allows users to find out how at risk they are of being rendered obsolete.
Examining nine different key skill areas — including social perceptiveness, negotiation, persuasion, assisting and caring for others, originality, fine arts, finger dexterity, manual dexterity and the need to work in a cramped work space — the researchers were able to calculate how likely it is that a robot will replace you.
In what is no doubt bad news for cost-cutting Tory Lord Chancellors, solicitors, barristers and judges — who all received the same ranking — were determined to be the 320th least likely professionals (out of a list of over 350 jobs) to be replaced by metal and wires.
These odds compared highly favourably with the 66% chance of cyborg takeover which the researchers assigned to “legal associate professionals”. These paralegal-style support staff are apparently the 137th most likely to be replaced out of the 366 positions examined.
And there was even worse news for legal secretaries, whose probability of automation was calculated at 98%. This placed the role as the third most likely to be dominated by machines in the future.
Away from law, tele-sales roles topped the researchers’ list with a 99% chance of being replaced by robots; meanwhile publicans and managers of licensed premises were the least likely with only a 0.4% risk.
The research comes as the “northshoring” trend — which many see as a prelude to automation — sweeps the British legal profession. It sees City firms ship undesirable and less complex work to locations outside London in a way that is making the country resemble a Hunger Games-style dystopia, where paralegal factories up north serve the prosperous capital.
Earlier this year — in a cost-cutting move — magic circle player Freshfields relocated its “repetitive legal work” from its flash Fleet Street headquarters in central London to a slightly less glamorous office situated inside a Manchester shopping centre. Meanwhile, back in 2011 fellow elite firm Allen & Overy opened a “Legal Service Centre” in Belfast.
These moves could just be the beginning. In January Liverpool University’s computer science department took the commoditisation of legal services a step further by teaming up with low-cost law firm Riverview in a bid to ascertain whether artificial intelligence could be applied to legal tasks. The joint venture reinforces the possibility that one day basic legal work will indeed be carried out by robots.
