More Competition for Training Contract Vacancies

The job market for training contract vacancies has been affected by the recession and become very tough.  This has meant that many good students have struggled to secure a job.

This is down to two main things.  Firstly, many law firms have reduced the numbers of trainee solicitor vacancies.  Secondly, the numbers of students studying law has been increasing.

The consequence of this has been lots more people searching for trainee solicitor jobs than there are jobs being offered.  A consequence of this has been even more people competing for training contract vacancies and inevitably more people being unsuccessful and having to look at alternative careers or get interim legal jobs instead.

Sadly, these circumstances are due to get worse before getting any better because in each additional year there are more people graduating from the LPC than there are trainee solicitor vacancies being offered.  As a consequence, this year will see not only this year’s LPC students making applications for training contracts but also any of last year’s LPC students who were unsuccessful with their applications last year.

To make matters worse, there will also be additional LPC graduates applying for training contract vacancies who graduated even further back than last year.

Despite the bleak outlook for law students right now, this situation will not last forever and things are bound to improve.  One thing is certain though and that is there will always be a need for trainee solicitors in law firms and therefore job vacancies will increase at some time.  The off law firm has already started to raise its number of vacancies, in fact.

Balancing the numbers of trainee solicitors that are taken on each year with the amount of qualified lawyers a firm might need in the future is also a difficult process to manage.  As a result some of the bigger firms have been known to offer some of those whom are due to fill their training contract vacancies in the next year or two the opportunity to defer their training contracts for a year.

This way the firm can save itself the economic burden of a trainee solicitor’s salary for a year.  A secondary benefit is being then able to manage the number of qualifying solicitors coming through its ranks until the economic outlook has improved and demand for legal work has increased.