Profession’s growth 'defies gravity’, SRA figures show
The number of practising solicitors in England and Wales has risen sharply to more than 120,000, with their ranks growing at an accelerated rate despite the economic pressures faced by the profession, the latest figures have shown.
One leading industry commentator claimed that the rise ‘defies gravity’.
Figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed that there were 120,847 solicitors with practising certificates on 31 December, up 7% on the end of 2009. This represents a faster rate of expansion than in previous years, with the profession having grown by only 2% in 2009 and 2008, and 3% in 2007.
An SRA spokesman described last year’s 7% rise as ‘surprising’. The regulator does not collate the information required to enable the figures to be broken down into practice areas or type of firm.
Legal services expert professor Stephen Mayson, who has argued that non-reserved activities will increasingly be performed by non-qualified individuals to reduce the cost of providing legal services, described the growth as ‘counter-intuitive’. He said: ‘The number of solicitors keeps going up and up, and defies gravity. There are already too many qualified solicitors in the market, and the more that come in, the more competitive this market is going to get [driving down salaries].
‘Somewhere along the line something has to give, and that either means qualified solicitors leaving the market and doing something else, or being swallowed up by new competitors in consolidation, [with] lower earnings.
‘It does not mean solicitors will have to exit the market, but there will be consequences somewhere.’
Mayson added that it was difficult to see ‘where the expanding numbers are coming from’.
He said: ‘Residential conveyancing, personal injury, high street and legal aid are not areas that are associated with growth in this cycle of the economy. The bigger commercial firms are not hiring in the way that they used to.
‘The [numbers] are at odds with everything that we know is going on in the market.’
Comments
More solicitors
I would suggest this simply reflects the growing number of women solicitors many of whom will choose to work part-time-same number of jobs though
It probably reflects the
It probably reflects the growing number of solicitors who wear glasses and have ginger hair while women should obviously cook, clean and talk about fluffy kittens and flower arranging.
Welcome to the twentieth century. (the twenty-first might be too much for you).
Ooh touchy-I think you will
Ooh touchy-I think you will find its a statistical fact-my own wife does
what will they all do?
Don't worry; I'm sure that they will all find lucrative jobs in banking, commodities, derivatives and other parasitical sectors of the economy. Or ambulance chasing to make everyone's life a misery.
How is he being sexist? One
How is he being sexist?
One job doesn't equal one person. You can have a job share etc.
Anyway how did she know I
Anyway how did she know I have ginger hair and glasses?
Note that I did not say "he
Note that I did not say "he is being sexist". Sexism is however being inferred by his post linking the statistical fact of more women in the profession and clearly inferring as a result fewer jobs "for the rest of us" (men). Jobs can be shared (although I`ve never encountered that arangement after 17 years in the law personally).
Lighten up.all I meant was
Lighten up.all I meant was that the legl sector itself was not expanding
Student preconceptions
More and more people want to be solicitors because they see it as a "safe" job, a solid profession.
Get a law degree and you are pretty much certain of landing a good job, right? That was my attitude at 17, luckily I have met my own expectations so far but there are many that haven't done as well as they'd hoped.
Says it all that you think I
Says it all that you think I am a "she" (I`m having the op next year though!)
Maybe it's an error
Just a thought, I wonder if the new firm based regulation forms have anything to do with this and whether there is perhaps some duplication?
My firm is in a group structure and many of our directors are directors of more than one entity.
With all the news of firms going pop, redundancies, graduates not being able to find training contracts etc. a 7% rise seems astonishing.
404 Error Report
SRA really has to consider this is a statistical error. I know how easy it is to do - I make enough of them in my work. 7% rise in students in the law perhaps, 7% rise in unemployed lawyers perhaps, but 7% with a practising certificate - i.e. in work, in an office....seems very odd.
As other posters have said could this be because of a new way of counting the data?
This needs to be sorted out, otherwise legal researchers the world over will be quoting this number as Gospel and it will mess up academic papers for years to come. People will have to write academic papers saying: Data proves recession helps support lawyers - therefore we need more economic crashes to support the legal sector. Hmmm....
Why the sudden surge in numbers?
It is also worth noting that according to the Law Society itself: 'Since 1979, the total number of solicitors holding practising certificates has grown by 222.8% at an average annual rate of 4.0%.'
To go from an average rate of 4% tof growth to a rate of 7% may seem small, but it is in fact a huge jump in growth rates, effectively a 75% increase in the speed at which the profession is growing. As prof Mayson says, since 2008 and 2009 and 2010 all saw lay offs of solics, training contracts cut down and law firmss going bust, how can there be this growth. After all, this is NOT the number of students who now have law degrees - this is practising. Just doesn't seem right.
More I look at this more we need to have the figures explained.
see:
http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/secure/file/183555/e:/teamsite-deployed/documents/templatedata/Publications/Research%20Publications/Documents/asr2009report.pdf
Bar Students
Part of the 7% may well be students who completed the bar, cannot get a pupillage, and are cross-qualifying before the loophole closes.
I know several people who have not succeeded in getting a pupillage and have cross qualified as solicitors in the past couple years. The absence of a training contract in these circumstances made it a very appealing option once their ambitions of becoming a barrister were given a harsh reality check.
Bar Students
Part of the 7% may well be students who completed the bar, cannot get a pupillage, and are cross-qualifying before the loophole closes.
I know several people who have not succeeded in getting a pupillage and have cross qualified as solicitors in the past couple years. The absence of a training contract in these circumstances made it a very appealing option once their ambitions of becoming a barrister were given a harsh reality check.
The STATS are a fudge. The
The STATS are a fudge.
The SRA has kept redundant solicitors on the role until 5th Jan 2011.
I have NOT renewed my PC but I was on the role until 5th Jan 2011.
Why has no one spotted this!!!!
The reason you were made
The reason you were made redundant is not far fetched. You dont seems to understand a fundamental aspect of your profession. You can still be on the roll notwithstanding the fact that you do not have a PC. Do you mean 'roll' or role...? Again remember that some solicitors who work in the public sector are not obliged to take out a PC (exemption).
To make it clear. I had a PC
To make it clear.
I had a PC until 5th Jan 2011 despite the fact that I did not renew my PC in November 2010.
Is that clear?
It's a nice trick by the SRA. Makes people think things are better than they are.
Good publicity for the profession.
But so many firms are dumbing down and not recruiting solicitors
So we are own worst enemies when our quality suffers.
man up with the right staff, and you'll then be - rearrange the words:
ashes phoneix improves economy out the of when a like
Bar Students
Part of the 7% may well be students who completed the bar, cannot get a pupillage, and are cross-qualifying before the loophole closes.
I know several people who have not succeeded in getting a pupillage and have cross qualified as solicitors in the past couple years. The absence of a training contract in these circumstances made it a very appealing option once their ambitions of becoming a barrister were given a harsh reality check.
Are solicitors intelligent?
The reason I ask is it seems to me that legal profession has been outwitted and outplayed by the reformers very easily. I have not observed a single smart move by a lawyer to defend the profession. Are we all stupid?
As regards female solicitors impact on the profession it would be very difficult to be certain as to how women differ from men. Historical, however, women have tended to be used as cheap labor in many industries and I would imagine that supermarket law will result in legal services almost completely run by women at all levels but it will not be female solicitors that will be used as cheap labor.
Is Prof. Magasnon serious if he said it was difficult to see where the expanding numbers were coming from. Try the massive increase in universities setting up law courses since 1990 and the College of Law no longer being the only college to provide the LPC.
To answer your question
To answer your question directly solicitors are not intelligent people.
Intelligent people don't enter saturated markets.
Intelligent people don't spend tens of thousands of pounds to earn low wages.
Intelligent people don't sell themselves cheap.
Intelligent people protect their positions and maintain their positions.
Intelligent people don't enter markets that are being outsourced and commoditised.
Intelligent people tend to understand the fundamentals of supply and demand, a concept lost on solicitors.
That leaves stupid solicitors to fill the roles.
Even when tuition fees hit £9,000 per annum solicitors will still flock like lemmings. That's how stupid they are.
The only way to stop this madness is to raise the cost of the LPC to £50,000 so law graduates are forced to assess the risk properly (i.e. based on economics not emotion)
^^Agree with this to an extent
Unfortunately those students who try and enter the market don't have the initiative to take a look at that market and see that no matter what they do they will be in for a trememdous shock. I count myself among that number.
It doesn't help that none of the legal education bodies seem too concerned about the end result of solicitor-overpopulation (or even the outrageously competitive ordeal of getting a training contract) and are more concerned with opening more centres and taking another £10 - 15k off them, regardless of where they go afterwards.
Perhaps a condition for entry to the LPC should be that they already have a training contract. Perhaps there should be some kind of responsibility taken at university with educating students fully about the state of the market.
Perhaps the SRA should engage in this too, as it could be seen as regulating the profession at an early stage.
From my point of view, however, a lot more effort is focused on lining their pockets than controlling an increasingly out-of-control profession.
Recession?
Perhaps the recession is taking effect.
When the recession hit the number of training contracts reduced until a year or 18 months later when firms had had time to regroup and possibly refocus their business on insolvency type business and swap remortgage for repossession.
There could also be an anomaly where partners who may have retired are holding on as consultants for an extra year or two whilst the firm arranges finance to pay out their profit share. This would skew the figures as the same number of solicitors would enter the profession (+the usual annual increase) but fewer solicitors would be leaving.
The STATS are
The STATS are misleading.
Redundant solicitors that did not renew their PC's were shown as practising on 31st December 2010.
Their PC's were officially withdrawn on 5th Jan 2011.
If you counted the number of PC holders as at 6th Jan 2011 it would be much lower.
Are these numbers right?
This size jump is very odd and if you look at the data historically, unparalleled (see the graphs here: http://lawyerwatch.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/does-the-professions-growth-defy-gravity/). That said, as reported, that data is for practising certificates, which suggests that the largest jump in the last 20+ years was less than 6%. Given the contraction in training contracts this does suggest transfers in (from the Bar and abroad) would be part of the explanation. Changes in patterns of retirement and part-time working might also be possibilities. The timing of this change does seem very strange.
See the above post about
See the above post about misleading STATS.
I did not renew my PC yet as at 31st December 2010 I was a practising solicitor.
Clearly I was not.
an over subscribed profession
I recall a conversation with a young Asian man and his business man father about the prospects in the legal profession - they were certain that qualifying in any legal area would bring respectability, money and plenty of work. I explained that this was not the case, many high street solicitors earned a little more than the average wage for long hours, having made a substantial investment in time and effort to qualify; it was not a gold mine. They clearly did not believe me or the solicitor friend I had with me. This was over ten years ago. I hope the young man decided to be a pharmacist, dentist, accountant - had to be a better idea!
Let's hope so for his
Let's hope so for his sake.
In india (and most asian countries) the legal profession is still well respected and solicitor do earn good money.
So may be this influenced his view about the prospects in the UK?
High street law is a dead business model and ABS will finish it off.
The larger firms will be around for a while but in time most of their work will be done in China or India.
Partners will inevitably go for the cheapest labour and if that is in China or India then so be it.
ABS will separate the wheat clients from the chaff
Good luck getting quality legals at a supermarket or using an outfit that has some sort of suggestion they are good in the title of their brand, we know that neither produce good work, and ABS brings more of these into the market pushing legals back to solicitors.
You'll see.
Wishful thinking. The point
Wishful thinking.
The point being that law firms will go bust before the work can be pushed back
Annonymous 15.02
And again, in English please.
Is this sudden rise a one-off
Is this sudden rise a one-off caused by the SRA announcing they were closing the ever so easy QLTT route to entry and replacing it with a test which is rigorous and expensive?
The over supply of solicitors ought to lead to lower fees as well as lower salaries. Let's see what happens. It will almost certainly lead to more discrimination against certain sectors of the profession.
Oversupply Outcomes Are Uneven
Sue Nelson's point above is very interesting: oversupply = lower salaries. However, although this is the commonsense approach, it doesn't always follow.
For example, at top commercial firms salaries have continued to rise and so have bonuses. Equally, there are more students seeking to become barristers than ever before, but again, the top sets are paying more to pupils than ever before.
This is because when it comes to 'the best' lawyers/candidates, the demand side of the equation (i.e. the large large firms) is still stronger than the supply. Even if there were many more lawyers than there are today, the top firms still just want the top 10% of the class. That top 10% is large, but not so large as to greatly impact the demand of the large commercial firms - which - let's accept it, employ a sizeable part of this country's legal professionals.
At the other end, yes, there will be over-supply. For the medicore, life as a lawyer will get tougher (although one could say is that not the profession's fault for allowing so many duff/process level lawyers into the system).
We also should not assume that ABS firms will Hoover up all the 'low-grade' lawyers we have created. They'll be looking for good people too - they have no intention of getting sued by clients for shoddy work. 'Tesco law' may be a large business but they are not stupid. They may actually add a little to the demand side - or at least absorb good people who have seen High Street firms collapse.
The people that will be hurt the most will be the lawyers who are still hoping to re-create the period from the 1980s to mid-2000s when being a High Street lawyer was a not a bad way to live. When legal aid money rose year on year, when middle-income clients had no choice and had to go to the local firm because they didn't know there was an alternative - and perhaps back then there wasn't one they were aware of, (often to receive bad service, long turnaround times, and be treated like the firm was doing you a favour). That avenue is dying off rapidly.
The truth is that by, let's say 2020, there will primarily be two kinds of law firm in the UK, large commercial firms, and large consumer-end/legal aid side firms (whether ABS or still 100% lawyer-owned.) Both sectors will take the pick of the annual crop of young lawyers - a few will struggle on in small High Street firms, some will escape inhouse, the rest will have to find something else to do.
OK, sorry for the epic email - but it just seems like the profession, and hence the Law Society, SRA, law schools etc are all walking, ...no, sleep walking, into the future. If you have students, friends or family who are seeking to become a lawyer you have a duty to tell them the facts. Either law students need to get ready for a much more service-focussed ABS style world, or aim very high indeed to get into a City firm/good inhouse role. The middle way is going to be obliterated....and yet, by 2020 there will still probably be more law students than now.
Oversupply Outcomes Are Uneven
Sue Nelson's point above is very interesting: oversupply = lower salaries. However, although this is the commonsense approach, it doesn't always follow.
For example, at top commercial firms salaries have continued to rise and so have bonuses. Equally, there are more students seeking to become barristers than ever before, but again, the top sets are paying more to pupils than ever before.
This is because when it comes to 'the best' lawyers/candidates, the demand side of the equation (i.e. the large large firms) is still stronger than the supply. Even if there were many more lawyers than there are today, the top firms still just want the top 10% of the class. That top 10% is large, but not so large as to greatly impact the demand of the large commercial firms - which - let's accept it, employ a sizeable part of this country's legal professionals.
At the other end, yes, there will be over-supply. For the medicore, life as a lawyer will get tougher (although one could say is that not the profession's fault for allowing so many duff/process level lawyers into the system).
We also should not assume that ABS firms will Hoover up all the 'low-grade' lawyers we have created. They'll be looking for good people too - they have no intention of getting sued by clients for shoddy work. 'Tesco law' may be a large business but they are not stupid. They may actually add a little to the demand side - or at least absorb good people who have seen High Street firms collapse.
The people that will be hurt the most will be the lawyers who are still hoping to re-create the period from the 1980s to mid-2000s when being a High Street lawyer was a not a bad way to live. When legal aid money rose year on year, when middle-income clients had no choice and had to go to the local firm because they didn't know there was an alternative - and perhaps back then there wasn't one they were aware of, (often to receive bad service, long turnaround times, and be treated like the firm was doing you a favour). That avenue is dying off rapidly.
The truth is that by, let's say 2020, there will primarily be two kinds of law firm in the UK, large commercial firms, and large consumer-end/legal aid side firms (whether ABS or still 100% lawyer-owned.) Both sectors will take the pick of the annual crop of young lawyers - a few will struggle on in small High Street firms, some will escape inhouse, the rest will have to find something else to do.
OK, sorry for the epic email - but it just seems like the profession, and hence the Law Society, SRA, law schools etc are all walking, ...no, sleep walking, into the future. If you have students, friends or family who are seeking to become a lawyer you have a duty to tell them the facts. Either law students need to get ready for a much more service-focussed ABS style world, or aim very high indeed to get into a City firm/good inhouse role. The middle way is going to be obliterated....and yet, by 2020 there will still probably be more law students than now.
Even now I don't know how the
Even now I don't know how the economy can justify the number of high street firms that exist.
What are all these high street firms doing?
Conveyancing has dried up so what work are they doing?
Is family and probate really keeping them all busy?
I gather accountants will soon be able to deal with probate then surely it will be game over.