RECRUITMENT: SOME FACTSThe Law Society's annual statistical report 1998, 'Trends in the Solicitors' Profession' found:-- the number of assistant solicitor s in private practice firms increased from 25,314 to 26,602 between 1997 and 1998-- on 31 July 1998 there were 41,596 men and 19,222 women in private practice-- on 31 July 1998 the majority of partners was in the 40 to 49 years age bracketSTEPHEN WARD CHARTS THE RISE AND RISE OF THE PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT LAWYER IN THE SCRAMBLE TO KEEP FEE EARNERS UP TO SPEEDA decade ago, professional support or 'know how' solicitors' jobs often came about almost by chance, as Juliet Humphries, an associate at City firm Linklaters and Alliance explains.

'Historically, most went into the job for family reasons, and the jobs often came about because firms didn't want to lose the solicitors they had trained.

This was a way of retaining them in a different position,' she says.The potential professional support lawyer will be a specialist in a particular practice group or department, such as European Union competition, corporate communication, finance or pensions.

There will be one -- or sometimes more -- support lawyers working in each area.

They are considered to be part of the department and work closely with the fee earners.As an indication of how important support lawyers have become, one firm which has been a pioneer and enthusiastic exponent of professional support, Freshfields, now has a ratio of about one support lawyer to every 20 fee earners.

Herbert Smith has a total of 20 support lawyers, and Linklaters and Alliance has 19 in the London office alone.Hugh Crisp, the partner at Freshfields in charge of professional support, says even some smaller firms now employ a handful of these 'know how' lawyers.Professional support lawyers -- an essentially '90s phenomenon -- follow logically from two trends as firms have grown in size and scope in recent years.

Solicitors frequently have no time to keep up with the latest developments in their field -- they are too busy with day-to-day client work.Equally, many would like to devote more time to their families, or pursue outside interests -- such as writing books -- but their job demands that the working day frequently overlaps into evenings and weekends.Adrian Fox, a director of QD Legal Recruitment, says the precise nature of the support lawyer's job will vary from firm to firm, but includes 'making sure all the fee earners see everything scoured from the law journals and the newspapers, and making sure everybody in the practice area gets the latest statutes and case laws relevant to them'.

He adds: 'They will get involved in writing brochures and so on to send to clients'.Another key part of the support lawyer's task is researching and supplying precedents, and they are often involved in induction and training.

But he adds: 'The job can really be flexible.

It is often what the person makes of it to a large extent, especially where it is a green field post [one which no-one has held before]'.Clare Wilson, of City firm Herbert Smith explains how she came to move from being a fee earner in corporate finance after returning to London from a spell in one of the firm's overseas offices.She discussed her next move with the firm.

'I was looking for something different,' she says.

They asked her to set up a structure of professional support lawyers in the firm.

She is now a partner.According to Ms Humphries at Linklaters, the trend is now sufficiently developed for the need to be recognised first in firms, the post identified, then the appropriate lawyer found from inside or outside the firm.

The benefits to the firm are obvious.

Mr Crisp says most client lawyers are not the most effi cient people at finding information, and 'support lawyers have grown in numbers because they take the legwork away from partners', and 'free up client lawyers by saving hours of their time'.Professional support suits a particular kind of lawyer, as Mr Crisp explains.

'It is interesting and stimulating work.' It suits lawyers who feel client work takes them away from pure law.

Although, as Ms Humphries points out, a support lawyer still needs good communication skills, and to be a good all rounder.

'It is just that they use those skills with their colleagues rather than with clients,' she says.For the support solicitor, an advantage is that the work is less demanding time wise, making it attractive to those with other commitments.

'They still work hard, but without the same intensity where a sudden telephone call can take away your weekend,' Mr Crisp says.

It is often possible for support lawyers to work part-time, and sometimes from home.

Ms Humphries agrees that flexibility is usually one of the attractions.

'I became a professional support lawyer in 1990 when I had a family.

I had been in corporate finance,' she says.Salaries reflect the importance of the job, but also the slightly reduced stress levels and the flexible work patterns.

According to Ms Humphries, there will be a discount generally but 'a market is developing in terms of price'.Mr Fox says the salary for a support lawyer reaches a plateau of £75,000 to £80,000 at the top, but earlier on in a career, it is comparable to within 5% to 10% of the salary for a fee earner.

This would be reduced pro rata for part-time posts.Ms Wilson was made a partner after moving to professional support, so in her case at least, the move has not held her back.

A second professional support solicitor from corporate finance at Herbert Smith, Carol Shutkever, has also been made partner.

But so far at least, in most firms, such progress is not expected.

Ms Humphries says when she is recruiting professional support lawyers she makes it clear that the present structure makes it unlikely they will go on to make partner.Mr Fox's colleague at QD, Deborah Blake, detects a parallel but so far slower trend, also aimed at making fee earners spend as much time as possible earning fees -- the increasingly sophisticated use of paralegals for research, using the Internet and setting up databases.

'Paralegals are good for the morale of younger lawyers, because they let them do more lawyering,' she says.

There is still a distinction in status in law firms between the qualified lawyer and the rest, but she says she recently placed a graduate who had completed a legal practice course but not a training contract, in a job earning more than £30,000 a year.

Can professional support lawyers go back to fee earning? According to Ms Humphries, it is too new a trend for such a development to have been tested.

Mr Fox agrees, but says: 'If an experienced lawyer came to us and said they wanted to go back into fee earning, we would be able to place them.' And as Clare Wilson says: 'Most find it too interesting a job to want to change'.SHORT-TERM CONTRACT WORK SUITS SOME SOLICITORS DOWN TO THE GROUND BUT THERE ARE RISKS, AS ALISON CLARKE DISCOVERSNatalia Siabkin says that she 'fell into becoming a freelance solicitor' in 1995 after ten years as an in-house lawyer.

'I had become disillusioned with the law and left my last job with the aim of taking time out, but when I needed some money I contacted an agency and started doing casual work.'Richard McIlwraith, on the other hand, found himself 'chucked on t he job market with little notice' six years ago, after partners in the firm where he was an assistant solicitor fell out with each other.Qualified since 1981, he decided to find temporary work -- because there were so few permanent jobs available -- and found that he liked it.

Natalia Siabkin and Richard McIlwraith are now the chair and vice-chair respectively of the Freelance Solicitors Group, a loose network of lawyers across England and Wales -- although concentrated mainly in London and the south east -- who exchange information and share experiences with one another.

The group also offers advice to solicitors thinking about going freelance, because according to Mr McIlwraith, 'it is not for everyone'.Lawyers working on short-term contracts have to be flexible, adaptable and enterprising.

They also have to be able to get on with other people and to get on top of things quickly.

Firms expect freelances to be able to hit the ground running, irrespective of the state of the files they are asked to take over.

That means they need a certain level of experience, usually in a defined specialist area.David Woolfson of the recruitment agency Chambers and Partners recommends post-qualification experience of at least two to three years, although that can vary with the demands of the job.

Carmel Murphy, head of ZMB contracts division, agrees: 'Both from a confidence point of view and competence, lawyers on short-term contracts who are assuming files or processing transactions need three to four years experience behind them.

For obvious reasons, clients do not have the time to invest in training them'.So what is in it for someone with that level of experience? Apart from a more flexible lifestyle, Natalia Siabkin says it is the feeling of control over her working time.

'I like to work intensively for six months and then take time out.

Being a lawyer is extremely responsible .

.

.

you need time away to concentrate on yourself.' Keri Freeman of the QD recruitment agency agrees that many freelances 'have no urge to become a partner.

They like being lawyers, but they do not want the pressure of working long hours'.The downside is that lawyers brought in to cover for an absent colleague or to carry out a special project, may find themselves doing low-grade jobs.

However, according to Natalia Siabkin, established freelances can more or less dictate to prospective employers what they are prepared to do.

'Although I have to fit into the firm and find out their requirements, I always find out first why they need someone, what level of support staff is available and the list of cases they want me to take on.'Established freelances can benefit from other advantages, for example, they can dictate rates of pay they are prepared to accept.

Likewise, so can candidates with expertise in banking, corporate finance and general commercial work, where there are shortages.

However, those with less experience may find they are worse off than their counterparts in permanent roles.

For instance William Beale, the chief executive of London law firm Barnett Alexander Chart, admitted that a freelance might be paid less than his or her permanent equivalent, at least to start with.But irrespective of experience, there is no guarantee of work for freelances who may have to eke out a salary during lean periods.

In addition, there are enormous regional variations in the availability of work.

Noel Murray of Chambers and Partners says that 'although there is demand in the regions for freelances, the problem is that people have to be prepared to travel'.

And that travel can be over distances as great as those from Leeds to Birmingham.

The recruitment agency, Reynell, confirmed the restricted nature of the freelance markets in Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester compared to London and the south east, although they pointed out that all are expanding.Life as a freelance can, therefore, be precarious.

Not forgetting that every solicitor on a short-term contract has to organise his or her own indemnity cover, keep up with professional development -- although the Freelance Solicitors Group is trying to break into the provision of continuing professional development courses -- and pay for a practising certificate.

None of which comes cheap.But for some solicitors, short-term working is the only answer.

For instance, women returners who need a flexible approach to work; overseas solicitors who do not want permanent work; lawyers who have been made redundant; or solicitors who have left one job and want a breather before diving back into the permanent market.Although contracts can last from one day to two years, the usual period is four to six months, possibly to cover maternity leave or some other period of extended absence.

They also arise because of intermittent build up of work in a firm, to cover someone's notice period, or to take on a special project.Surprisingly, the biggest firms are not necessarily the biggest hirers in the market.

The personnel departments at Dibb Lupton Alsop, Denton Hall and Stephenson Harwood explained that although they all hired paralegals on short-term contracts, they did not take on qualified solicitors because work arising out of staff absences could usually be absorbed by other staff in the same department.Whatever the reason for being on a short-term contract, there are clearly advantages to working as a freelance, the biggest being the degree of flexibility that can be exercised over work.

But a word of caution.

It is flexibility at a price -- the price being the uncertainty of work in the future.-- The Freelance Solicitors Group can be contacted via Natalia Siabkin; telephone: 0181 992 3885MATT BARNARD LOOKS AT IN-HOUSE RECRUITMENT, WHERE THE FOCUS IS SHOWING A STRONG EUROPEAN ANGLESix months ago, when the Asian financial crisis hit, there were fears of a global meltdown.

At the same time, the UK's strong pound and high interest rates were hitting exporters and slowing the domestic economy, and manufacturers across the country were starting to warn of a full scale recession.

Yet at the time, the salary surveys by in-house recruiters showed that lawyers in industry had never had it so good.

This worried some even more.

Was it the boom before the bust?Six months on, interest rates have come down, the pound has devalued and the Asian crisis has not sparked a world-wide recession, primarily because the US economy, remarkably, has remained buoyant yet with low inflationary pressures.

Europe too, after a period of slowed growth, has begun to strengthen.

Many companies remain cautious about the global outlook and mindful of the fact that the UK is still heading for some sort of recession or slowdown.

However, they nevertheless recognise that they need not totally shut off their expansion plans.For the in-house recruitment market, this has meant that while there has been some slowdown in the overall activity of the market, more significantly, the type of recruitment has altered.

Sally Horrox, who heads up ZMB's in-house recruitment section, says of the types of job available : 'The market is still quite buoyant, but it has diversified.

As the market has slowed, so legal departments have started to come to us more often saying that it could be a permanent job, but equally it could be a contract job'.Ms Horrox has also noticed a greater European focus where previously recruitment had been primarily UK-based.

She continues: 'We've had a lot of business in the last six months from people asking for civil code-trained lawyers -- people with French or German skills as well as English'.There are still large variations in the market.

Many banks, which were hit particularly badly by the Asian turmoil, have implemented a full recruitment freeze, although as a whole, the financial services sector -- including companies such as pension funds and insurers -- is still relatively buoyant.

Shell UK, which has one of the largest in-house teams in the country, says that the recession has had no impact on its in-house recruitment.

On the other hand, recruiters report that they have recently had little business with pharmaceutical, property and construction companies.One sector undoubtedly experiencing vibrant growth is IT and new media.

With both Yahoo! and Intel reporting profits well above analysts' forecasts this month, the demand for in-housers is still strong.

It is a trend that Kate Sutcliffe, a member of the in-house recruitment team at QD Legal Recruitment, confirms: 'IT and multimedia sectors are not suffering at all from any supposed recession, and I can't see that they are going to.

Yahoo! is five years old but is growing tremendously, launching on different stock exchanges and coming over to Europe for the first time from the US, so they now need European legal advisers'.However, whether the relatively rosy picture will continue as the UK economy continues to slow is not clear.

On the one hand, companies reduce their recruitment when times get tough and a significant number of businesses will go out of business.

On the other hand, using in-house lawyers can be a cost-saving exercise if it cuts down on the need for expensive outside counsel.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that in some sectors there is more need for lawyers during a downturn.Paul Gilbert is head of legal services at the building society Cheltenham & Gloucester.

He comments: 'For us, debt recovery is an important part of what we are doing, so ironically we would need more legal staff in a recession than we would in a prosperous period, and I suspect a lot of companies are a little like that'.What is clear is that over the long term the recruitment of in-house lawyers is on a strong upward path.

In the US, companies do not just bring in lawyers to check transactions at the end of the process, lawyers and a knowledge of law is used at the start of projects to help frame strategy.

This is where the real advantage of the in-house lawyer comes into play, industry- and business-specific knowledge, and the UK is following the US's lead.Mr Gilbert is also chairman of the Law Society's commerce and industry group, and sees the evolution of in-house departments following three stages.

He says: 'Most companies in the initial stages of developing an in-house legal function are interested in saving costs.

Then what happens -- if the in-house lawyer is any good -- is that they will start to add value in other ways, so the business starts to grow and the in-house department can take maximum advantage of that.

However, you are then into problems of managing peaks and troughs of work, and that's where you move into the phase of concentrating on core business activities and also becoming an expert purchaser of le gal services.

This tends to mean that the legal department plateaus, or even reduces'.The UK and Europe are a long way behind the US's mature market with many companies just beginning the process of recruiting in-house lawyers, and recession can often act as a catalyst in this process.

This means, as QD's Kate Sutcliffe says, there is still massive potential in the UK.

The commerce and industry group has increased by 76% in the last ten years, and is set to rise even further.

And as the role and perception of in-house lawyers change, so has the composition of the group.

Mr Gilbert comments: 'I think in essence industry is generally recruiting younger lawyers than it used to.

Ten years ago, most in-house lawyers would be grey-haired types.

What I'm finding is I need young lawyers with an ability to adapt to a business environment which traditionally private practice hasn't trained its lawyers to deliver'.Another key difference between working in-house and private practice is the number of moves the lawyer may experience.

'Private practice is two or three firms or bust really,' says Mr Sutcliffe.

'But it is regarded as completely different in-house, far more like the rest of the business world.

Business recognises that a lawyer might only spend two or three years at an organisation, build up a skill set and get to a stage where they want to move on.

A good in-house lawyer might have a good six or seven moves and as long as they are all logical that's not a bad thing at all, and in fact it is probably a good thing.' The speed of change for in-house lawyers in the last ten years has been fast.

It is likely to get even faster in the new millennium.