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Patrick Stevens - all of your comments ring true for a conventional interview scenario. However I suspect you have not encountered the complicated JAC selection process which is designed entirely around what is convenient for a ‘male pale and stale’ barrister with no regard as to how employed solicitors or those with childcare commitments can commit. It is seriously the most farcical process for a solicitor and one which only few solicitors can navigate. To even get in the room to encounter the problems you describe is an achievement in itself.

Even if you get through the process then you can only discuss flexible working after you have started the job, meaning that a solicitor has to quit their job, abandon childcare commitments in the hope that someone in JAC will give them a workable timetable, rather than ferry them off hundreds of miles from home for long hours.

If JAC were to listen instead of talk and drag their recruitment processes into the modern age then they could address the problem. However it is better for them to spend £150k telling us all there is no problem and keeping the status quo.