Unemployment rate among solicitors climbs by 400%

My experience suggests that the figures are indeed understated as I was made redundant at the end of 2008 and have been signing on but not claiming benefits since. I am a property lawyer and the figures for that specialisation must be dramatic.

I agree, think the figures will be much higher, you have to wait until your redundancy and savings runs out before you can claim benefits so there will be loads in that category. Nor does it reflect those Solicitors who are in work but doing other jobs to make ends meat, all those years of training being wasted. There will no doubt be hundreds if not thousands of solicitors who have reskilled into another job or underselling themselves to take any job they can get to make ends meat or the NQs who are being offered paralegal jobs.

Ignoramus! In a recession there are "too many" of every vocation.

This is truly the tip of the iceberg as when MDP's arrive in 15 months and the Profession comes under the "stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap" regime then unemployment levels will soar.

Law School Graduate over-supply is plainly a problem but this will rapidly change as unemployment levels rise.

Te country will always require knowledgeable Lawyers, but those involved in "Production Line Law" such as PI and Conveyancing need to re-train or will inevitably disappear.

Nil satis nisi optimum

yes too many lawyers

we need a massive cull

I'll happily start clubbing them

The argument of restricting the number of LPC students is often raised in relation to the number of LPC graduates versus number of available training contracts. There are a vast amount of LPC students who have completed the course and will probably never qualify due to being unable to find a firm to train them.

It therefore seems to me that there is already a restriction on the number of people entering the legal profession. Having forked out for and completed the LPC with nothing left to show but a certificate in legal practice and a huge amount of debt.

I do not think raising the LPC fees is going make much difference

Johnny, (I'm anon 12.22). Which area of law did you qualify in?

The biggest thing you can do to
remain employed or self-employed
is to be the best at finding, getting,
keeping and growing business.

If you can develop yourself
to be the best in your firm
or can find your own clients
then you don't have to worry.

Yes it does take effort.

And you have to invest some time.

But if you take control of your
own future it can have a huge impact.

And you don't have to wait until you are
unemployed or threatened with it.

You just need the right mindset, guidance
and goals.

Yes, Anonymous 19.48 has it absolutely right.

The pass was sold when the Law Society failed to stand up and differentiate between a profession and business, and point out that a profession had standards not applicable to straightforward "business". Those standards entail higher overheads - something never emphasised. Professionalism requires judgment- not "tick box" application of rules.

As Regulation has now been outsourced to tick box bureaucrats, what precisely is the point of the Law Society and the expense it costs? Certainly the representation it is supposed to provide is utterly useless against the Lenders and any businees or governmant body.

You Become What You Think.

And you are clearly thinking of defeat.

For those who think of winning I'll stick to
what I know is right.

That there is room in the market for
a well marketed law firm with
systems that ensure high profits.

And that can be any firm that
takes marketing as the
serious business it is and applies it
will win out.

And it is not about huge budgets.

It is more important to be resourceful
than to have resources.

Very happy to disagree with you.

I have a positive attitude about the future
and I know many others do too.

And on the eve of 2010
I look forward to sharing with like-minded
people next year.

Happy New Year.

You missed out the most important function...marketing.

Reading the above comments shows how obviously deluded solicitors/law students are.

You can have the most able and astute lawyers running a practice but at the end of the day no business can change the deterioriating market for legal services.

High street butchers were excellent at their jobs but the bottom line is that the products and services they offered became commodotised.

In the future there will be a need for legal services but the commodotisation will mean that it will just be a low paid job. (No one pays a premium or even a decent wage for a commodotised service)

The point that lawyers are not willing to accept is that in the future it will simply not be worth the cost of training.

This is not prediction it is reality.

Dear Paul on Son

Of course you don't see my point because you don't understand the economics of the legal profession.

The smartest accept that the demand for solicitors is unlikely to return to previous levels for many reasons.

Of course the economy will recover but that does not mean a recovery will translate into more jobs for solicitors. You are not moving with the times. The job of a solicitor is being commodotised/outsourced. In addition there are now much cheaper options for firms rather than employing solicitors. Paralegals can do just as good a job for a lot less money. Due to the silly supply side of the equation, paralegals are now highly educated and as such I not see the need for firms to rush to appoint solicitors. The cost of the PC makes it very attractive for firms to employ paralegals as opposed to solicitors. This does of course depend on what sector you are in. What I am saying is more true of property.

What sustained an unusual level of solicitors was the recent economic boom based on irresponsible bank lending. That will not return.

To be frank there is no need to train any solicitors for the next couple of years.

I agree that we as a profession are being commoditised. Working in property I can see an easy route towards standardised documentation with higher end legal advise being required on more complex transactions. If we work towards this as a profession then I agree that the need for qualified staff will diminish. That isn't really the point that you ellaborated on in your earlier post.

I do not however agree that this shift is going to happen as fast as you might think.

ps - not understanding the economics of the legal profession? I assure you that I do. You have not been in discussion long enough with me to make such sweeping statements. Though your post does indicate a sweeping nature. Please elaborate more if you are going to post on this site.

I am a 25 year old who graduated from the college of law in 2009- legal practice certificate proudly tucked under my arm along with my 2:1 Law degree and a Masters in Management from a top ten UK University. Unfortunately all I have managed to find is grungy temp work (unrelated to my chosen career path) and evening work in the pub to supplement my income. This was not the dream I was sold at University. I love the law and want nothing more to obtain a training contract and get my career underway. However, whilst I am certainly not giving up, success seems to be more and more unlikely. Those who have had training contracts deferred are prime candidates in those law firms for paralegal work-making paralegal work even harder to come by- thus also making gaining experience even more of a problem. Even working for free has become highly competitive, which to me seems completely insane as we all have to live somehow and with levels of debt and rent to pay I can’t afford to work for free. I realise now that I am also not getting any relevant legal experience to boost my chances of employment-but how can I? There is so little around and anything that becomes available is given to those with more experience-gained from the better times or to those with deferred training contracts.
Of course I can try and do something else but I am always met with suspicion-why if I wanted to go into the Law am I applying for this job now-obviously there will be other candidates that have geared themselves toward that specific market place and are therefore likely to be more successful. I can only keep trying but have to admit that I may have to consider re-applying when times are better. However, from the previous posts I gather that old timers don’t see a return to prosperity? Any advice?

Who knows, you may get very lucky.

I qualified 7 years ago and I am currently employed. However even when I was doing the LPC it seemed fairly obvious that it was a high risk. If I had to pay for it myself, I wouldn't not have paid for it.

7 years later I would think that it is painfully obvious that self funding the LPC is a significant risk.

If I am honest, I get tired of LPC students complianing about not getting anywhere. At the end of the day if one takes a risk then one should not complain if that risk is realised.

I'm a 4 year PQE solicitor in a high street firm. I'll be stunned if we're still here in ten years time, we'll probably be gone in 5.

As a profession, we are finished. We have allowed ourselves to be marginalised out of our bread and butter work.

Conveyancing has gone - we lose money on virtually every conveyancing transaction we do, because we have qualified solicitors doing work which is done in those 'nasty factories' at less cost and with automated systems - we are "allowed" to deal with all the "difficult" stuff they don't want to touch.

The CPR has totally overhauled court work - a lot more people will now have a go at a small claim themselves. How many times have we heard of people accepting a paultry sum from an insurance company because the claimant wants the money NOW, when we know that if they had had representation that we could have got them a lot more. The sharks came and took our business there, and ruined our reputation, as the public will not differentiate between us and the 'nasty claims companies'. The work is now done by paralegals, and the costs have been capped.

Wills are now offered by companies with no accountability, no PI insurance, outrageous storage costs and no guarantee of not dissappearing into the ether. Their costs are frighteningly low, and we cannot compete. Why would a client pay triple what the 'nasty will writer' charges when they get a home visit and a Will in plain English for their 25 quid? We have been costed out of the market by our refusal to change and our refusal to use language the clients can easily understand.

Probate will go the same way - research shows a massive drop in solicitor applications - people are sorting things out themselves or just not bothering to get a grant - out of either naiviety or fraud. When the probate version of the CPR comes in, or the nil rate band threshold leaps up, and more estates become excepted, or if we continue to stubbornly refuse to quote a fixed fee, our work is going to disappear, to the Co-op, or M&S, or any other big corporate that isn't afraid to mine it's client database and sell, sell, sell. Accountants and Licensed Conveyancers can already do this work. In the case of accountants, this means that every small business owner in the country will look more and more to their accountant for legal advice. The accountants may employ one or two 'lawyers', but they will do so on the understanding that the SRA does not regulate, and PC fees are not paid to the Law Society. Accountants are still strong enough to stand up for themselves.

I am sick and tired of being told that we will survive and that I am being negative. We won't and I'm not. We have been sold down the river by the people who were supposed to stand up for us. The government hates us and for most firms Legal Aid is no longer a sustainable proposition. The public hates us and assumes that we will always rip them off. There are too many students and not enough jobs - this will lead to a further reduction in salaries and more work being done by even lower paid "paralegals", whose professional body does at least have a spine and a willingness to fight for it's members 'rights'. All the marketing in the world will not save our jobs - the customer will choose on the basis of price and convenience - and TESCO is open 24 hours a day!

As an employed solicitor, the stress placed upon me by my employer is excessive in relation to the frankly pitiful salary I am paid. I have not had a pay rise for 2 and a half years. Frankly, if I had my time again, I would never have put myself through the pain, stress and financial heartache of qualifying.
I could have been an accountant, or a teacher, or something in the civil service. I'd earn more. I'd have a chance of not being in debt up to my eyeballs. I'd be able to sleep at night, not being kept awake by fear of losing my job, my house and my reputation because of something someone else at my firm might or might not have done (the SRA doesn't care about the staff when it intervenes). I'd be able to take holidays without the dread of what would awake me on my return. I'd get training without having to pay for it myself or risk the wrath of partners who resent the costs of the same.
And I wouldn't be sat in front of my PC at 1 o'clock in the morning, 6 hours before I have to be out of bed to go to work, unable to sleep with the stress and worry of what will be on the doormat at the office tomorrow morning after a whole 3 working days away from my desk!

To any law students out there reading this - DON'T DO IT. DO SOMETHING YOU WILL ENJOY WITH YOUR LIVES. THERE IS NO POT OF GOLD AT THE END OF THE LPC. THERE ARE NO JOBS. THERE IS NO RESPECT. Have better lives.

Easy solution: only allow students to start the LPC once they have a training contract. The LPC is useless otherwise anyway.

Supply and demand sorted.

It is a ludicrous thought that the LPC should increase its fees in order to meet the low demand in solicitors. This would not result in anything fair. This would result in the more affluent becoming solicitors, and those who couldn't affor it wouldn't be able to practise in the legal profession. Therefore this would have the consequent of law graduates become the chosen solicitors on merrit, but because of their background, and especially within the legal profession, it has been long overdue that there is a break in the bridge of social difference and wealth within those newly graduated students.

Yes, there may be too many lawyers about, but at the end of the day isn't that what a market is all about, competitiveness. It is the same in any profession.

I say that more support should be given to prospective law students instead of the lingering debates about whether one should opt for a Law degree. It will always be sought after as will a lawyer, so it is wrong to stop employment within the law profession.

Please try to understand the basic fact that lawyers and solicitors, in particular, have all been losing relative economic power and also politcal power over the last 30 years. Pleased also try and understand that our basic work is to be given to other people.

Yes, it is a wonderful thing for underpivileged people to become solicitors but not if there are no jobs for them and they are left with a huge debt. Not, if when they do find a job they are earning less than half what a GP earns for high pressure work and cannot leave that work because of the debt and not if they finally become partners, or set up on their own and then get bankrupted, because of an intervention by the SRA, which is not their fault ( and I can assure you it happens). Most of all not if they have to get deeper into debt to retrain because large commercal outfits have been handed all our work.

Wealthy Mummy or Daddy can get you out of any of these things (in the case of an intervention probably Extremely Wealthy Mummy or Daddy,as they typically lead to debts of over £500,000.00) but underprivileged man will probably end up as a broken hearted shelf stacker at Tesco.

The following points try and explain what has happpened. If all of this is too boring for you read "The Rainmaker" by John Grisham. It shows what happens when a country (or US State in this case) becomes over-lawyered. Just understand several things when reading that book. Our position is a thousand times worse, than the Memphis lawyers, because their work had not been handed whoelsale to non-lawyers, as is to happen here in 2011. The university in the book actually tries to find work for its students, rather than just cynically grabbing their money and none of you will be able to set up your own firm just after qualification (thank heavens). The experience for the hero of the book is still enough to destroy legal ambitions.

So why has our position declined (and apologies for repeating a post on another topic but it applies to this one as well).

We live in an infantilised society where things giving pleasure are rewarded and things giving pain are rejected. Lawyers deal with pain but it is not the type of pain that medics deal which you feel going away. It is pain in the wallet for stressful things.

The press and media hate solicitors for two reasons. The first is that when most national editors were at uni or school the swots became solicitors and became rich, whilst they slogged away in the provinces. They have never forgiven solicitors for this and do not realise that times have changed (they still have huge expenses and self regulation). The second is that it is good business to bash those associated with pain.

The politicians these days follow the press and media and so solicitors are bashed remorselessly by politicians. Add the present government's complete naievety about any commercial transactions at all, which follows from Mrs Thatcher's similar stance and you have a recipe for disaster. Not content with the claims farmers fiasco, we now have the looming ABS (law firms owned by non- lawyers) disaster which will take years to unravel . Most of us won't be around when that collapses because most of us will have gone out of business by then.

However, we have been our own worst enemy. Even before we handed over our elected delegates law making powers to an oligarchy, which will now be dominated by non-solicitors, we were absolutely useless at putting our case forward.

The Law Society couldn't be a union because that would be proletarian and so it preferred to lobby rather than strike.

Soon governments realised that this was a paper tiger organisation ripe for manipulation and once the most manipulative government in history came on the scene it was always going to be curtains in one way or another.

The Legal Services Act 2007 was the result and that will be our doom but long before that our schools and colleges of law were stuffed with people doing dumbed down law exams. Peoole whose parents remembered when solcitors were wealthy, like IFAs and GPs are now and who didn't realise that their sons and daughters had no hope of achieveing such wealth. European law meant that thousands of foreign trained lawyers were transferring to our jurisdiction. Supply greatly exceeded demand.

At the same time the law became more and more complex as the government came to believe that everything could be solved by legislation, yet another astoundingly naieve view. At the same time those trainess who didn't get in to good metropolitan firms faced an awful training period where they were to become fee earners, as soon as possible, on trainee rates. This was a direct result of the swingeing cuts in fees imposed by the market and the collapse of Legal Aid as a proftable concern. Persons qualifying into such firms faced rock bottom wages and nightmare responsibilities. One of them has posted elsewhere on this blog.

Our own little oligarchy, who now make our rules, saw no need to change things. We would still offer a full indemnity for negilgence. We would still financially destroy any solicitor even suspected of dishonesty using the ridiculously expensive route of intervention of his or her firm (where there is no receivership to recover assets, just destruction). We would go on as always. Most of all, we would only act in the public interest because to act in any way in our own interests would be a disaster. It would smack of being a union and we couldn't have that. It would be "common" and mean we were no longer a profession.

I think it is too late but the Law Society is now showing signs of acting like a union. It is to be hoped the new leadership of the SRA will understand what is happening and start changing the rules to allow us to compete in future.

However, I fear it will all be too late to save us.

It is such a shame that many of the people who saw all this coming as early as the mid 1980s did nothing to involve themselves with the politics of the profession. It is so sad that they and their successors will suffer because of this failure to do this. We are too individulistic and the adversarial system sets us against each other.

The government knew our weakness alright. The inducement for the City of London to agree the Legal Services Bill was external funding, which would make current City of London partners rich.

Meanwhile GPs had got the best contract ever out of the same government propelling their wages into the stratosphere. IFAs and other financial services were similarly rewarded with juicy commissions and the bankers were saved outright when things went wrong.

The belief that decline is the natural way of things for solicitors is partly borne of the dramatic decline in our fortunes since 1970 but it has greatly hastened that decline because it has meant that individual solicitors have felt that there is some of sort of historical inevitability to it.That feeling has been a self-fufilling prophecy.

DO NOT CONSIDER BECOMING A SOLICITOR

THERE MAY BE NO SOLICITORS IN TEN YEARS TIME BUT YOUR DEBT WILL STILL BE AROUND THEN