Skip to main content

Is Loyalty a Commendable Trait for a Locum Solicitor?

If you locum through Interim Lawyers and Ten Percent Legal Recruitment, we value your commitment to us immensely. If you take on an assignment and see it through, and consistently do this, then inevitably you will get continued attention from us and be offered repeat assignments.

If you decide half-way through an assignment or during an ongoing assignment that you plan to go elsewhere because the money is higher, or the conditions are better, then chances are we will bear this in mind for future assignments and be very wary about putting you forward in advance of other locums with whom we enjoy a more trusting relationship.

This may sound somewhat controversial and over simplifies what tends to be a very complicated situation. 

For example, the firm you are with may have been extremely vague as to the length of the assignment and you may have been offered a 3 to 4 month assignment elsewhere with specified dates. Similarly, the firm you were with may be utterly dreadful and you really do not wish to carry on working with them, but having read the above are probably fairly nervous as to future locum work coming your way!

We entirely appreciate that there are genuine reasons for leaving a locum assignment half way through, or finishing one early and the above examples are just a couple of reasons why an assignment can end early or you make the decision to jump ship.

However, in the vast majority of situations it is usually fairly clear to us as to why someone is leaving and if there are good reasons we do not hold it against them. However if we suspect they have simply done it because someone has dangled a carrot in front of them for another assignment that sounds better than ours then we do usually hold it against them. 

In order to put locums forward for roles, particularly with our most reliable and longstanding clients, we have to have trust in the locum and their ability to see the assignment through. Some of our regular locums have been known to turn down very lengthy assignments to fulfill their commitments to existing firms, whether through ourselves or otherwise.

Our relationship with one of our biggest and best clients was somewhat dented earlier this year when a locum went for a face to face interview, accepted a string of assignments for the whole year of weeks at a time and then shortly before the first assignment was due - in peak season - decided to go elsewhere for a longer term contract.

Needless to say this locum has not and will not work through us again!

We appreciate entirely as stated above that this candidate had very good reason for turning down the locum assignments in view of the lucrative work elsewhere, but the consequences of that for us as a business are too much to be able to give her any locum work again in future.

Bear this advice in mind because it not only applies to Ten Percent and Interim Lawyers, but also to other agencies as well. It is important to demonstrate loyalty and commitment to locum assignments as this will impact on your future opportunities.


Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment and a non-practising Solicitor. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment provides online Legal Recruitment for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Fee Earners, Support Staff, Managers and Paralegals. Visit our Website to search our Vacancy Database. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Overpaid Charity CEOs - top 40 of high paid employees - updated 2022

In 2014, we wrote an article about high pay in the charity sector after the Charity Commission started to require all charities to disclose pay of senior executives earning more than £60,000.    We have updated the list for 2022, with a comparison chart so you can see the difference between 2014 and 2022. We have included the source of the most recent salary levels and the year refers to the accounts year we extracted the salary information from.   2022 Top 40 Chart of High Paying Charities Charity Highest salary Year Consumers’ Association £390k-£400k 2020 MSI Reproductive Choices £240k-£250k 2020 Save the Children International £285k-£300k 2020 Cancer Research UK £240k-£250k 2020 The British Red Cross Society £170k-£180k 2020 Age UK £180k-£190k 2020

Is it possible to work as a Paralegal when you are a Qualified Solicitor

  This question comes up all the time and is quite a common query that we imagine the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) are getting better at answering due to the sheer number of people asking the question. Many years ago the advice seemed a bit varied at times, but we have recently had a candidate who wanted to work in a locum role in the short term and waiting to go back on the Roll and get a practising certificate after some time spent outside the profession. She has been given fairly concise advice on whether she could work as a paralegal whilst waiting to be readmitted which we are repeating here. This article is written as a discussion point and is not intended to be advice in any shape or form. For full advice on your particular set of circumstances please speak to the SRA (or whoever else you like, but please do not depend on the information in this article!). The SRA have a simple online test to determine if you need a practising certificate and this i

What questions are asked in an Investors in People Assessment?

Recently Ten Percent Legal Recruitment was assessed for the investor in people accreditation. We worked very hard on this and spent some time as a company ensuring that all our procedures and policies were in place and that our staff were aware of the various requirements of the Investor in People process. We wondered how the assessment would go and also what the questions were likely to be during the interviews. The assessor was very friendly and explained from the outset what she was wanting to do and we were already aware that we would have thirty minute interviews with the directors and managers and twenty minute interviews with the staff. We also had the Investors in People programme so we were able to look and see what the actual questions would be based on, but there was nowhere to indicate what questions would be asked in the investor in people assessments. So if this helps anyone else, here are the questions we were asked in our investors in people accreditation: The assessor