Create a Candidate Profile Activate a Hirer Account
NQ Solicitors logo

NQSolicitors.com Legal Blogs

James Pritchard

by

Looking for promotion to the role of Senior Associate? Here’s what you need to think about.

If you’re a mid-level Associate who’s looking to secure a promotion to Senior Associate, you’ll need to demonstrate excellent legal skills, a strong work ethic, leadership qualities, and a strategic approach to career development. Here are some other tips to help you achieve your goal:

1. Exemplary Legal Skills:

Continuously hone your legal skills and knowledge within your practice area. Demonstrate expertise in handling complex legal matters, drafting documents, providing strategic advice to clients, and achieving successful outcomes for cases or transactions.

2. Consistent Performance:

Continuously hone your legal skills and knowledge within your practice area. Demonstrate expertise in handling complex legal matters, drafting documents, providing strategic advice to clients, and achieving successful outcomes for cases or transactions.

3. Take on Responsibility:

Volunteer for challenging assignments, take ownership of projects, and demonstrate your ability to handle increased responsibility. Show initiative by seeking out opportunities to lead teams, mentor junior colleagues, or manage client relationships.

4. Business Development:

Develop and nurture relationships with clients, referral sources, and industry contacts. Actively participate in networking events, industry conferences, and client meetings to expand your professional network and contribute to the firm’s business development efforts.

5. Leadership and Teamwork:

Exhibit leadership qualities by collaborating effectively with colleagues, contributing positively to team dynamics, and fostering a supportive work environment. Lead by example and inspire others through your professionalism, integrity, and commitment to excellence.

6. Seek Feedback and Mentorship:

Solicit feedback from supervisors, peers, and clients to identify areas for improvement and development. Proactively seek mentorship from senior colleagues or Partners who can provide guidance, advice, and support as you progress in your career.

7. Continuing Education and Training: 

Stay updated on legal developments, industry trends, and best practices within your practice area through ongoing professional development opportunities, such as seminars and workshops.

8. Demonstrate Firm Commitment:

Show your commitment to the firm’s values, culture, and long-term goals. Actively participate in firm initiatives, committees, and pro bono activities to demonstrate your dedication to the firm’s success and contribution to its broader community.

9. Prepare for the Promotion Process: 

Understand your firm’s promotion criteria and timeline for advancement to the role of Senior Associate. Document your achievements, contributions, and professional growth to support your case for promotion during performance evaluations or promotion reviews.

10. Communicate Your Interest:

This sounds so basic, but don’t forget to actually express your interest in promotion to your supervisors or Partners. Be prepared to openly discuss your career goals, development objectives, and aspirations for leadership within the firm.

By demonstrating your value to the firm through your skills, performance, and leadership potential, you will substantially increase your chances of securing a promotion.

Create a Candidate Profile Activate a Hirer Account

by

How to answer the most important question asked at every job interview

The purpose of most interviews is to establish two things. First, whether you have the skills, knowledge and experience for the role. Second, to find out if you are the right fit.  What the interviewer is trying to establish is whether your values, outlook and ambitions match those of the firm and the people who work there. The question asked to determine this is usually along the lines of “What attracts you to this role?” or “Why do you want to work here?”

Candidates often don’t give this question due care and attention. It’s often asked at the start of the interview, and they give a somewhat perfunctory answer. Candidates wrongly treat this question as little more than a warm-up ahead of what they consider to be the meat of the interview, namely questions about their skills and experience. This is a big mistake.

Candidates need to think more deeply about why firms ask this sort of question. What interviewers are trying to ascertain is whether you are likely to be at the firm for the long haul. In some ways, you could say that they want to find out if the candidate’s ‘story’ (i.e. their values, future career and where they see themselves in the years ahead) aligns with the firm’s values and where it is headed. In other words, interviewers want to have a thorough understanding of what matters to the candidate, where they’ve been, and whether this role will get them to where they want to be?

The candidate’s ‘story’

The three main topics to discuss when answering this question are broadly:

  • The services the firm offers and why this interests you.
  • The firm’s culture, mission and philosophy and what appeals to you about them.
  • The training and development they provide and why that is important to you.

Regurgitating what you have read or heard about the firm during your research is not enough. It’s how you relate what you have found out specifically to you, your interests and ambitions that matters.

You should be pleased to be able to answer this question early on as it will set the tone for the rest of the interview. Bear in mind that from the interviewer’s point of view, all the skills and experience in the world won’t make up for the fact that the candidate and firm are not on the same page. Firms recognise that skills can be learned and experience acquired, but fit either exists or it doesn’t.

It should go without saying (though I’ll mention it anyway) that giving the salary or benefits as an answer is an absolute no-no.

Relocation

How you answer the “why us” question is even more important if you would need to relocate to take the job. It may not be that important if you are moving to London from the regions – London has a huge ‘pull’ factor, salaries are high, and almost everybody knows somebody in the capital – but it’s vital if you’re moving from London to the regions or if the move involves a relocation overseas.

In these circumstances, the interviewer is trying to decide whether you are likely to reverse your move due to a failure to settle. Typical follow-up questions you can expect are whether you are originally from the area or went to university there and whether you have local friends, family or any other ties. You need to overcome any doubts in the interviewer’s mind that you intend staying for the long term and that they won’t be recruiting for the same role in a few months or a year or two down the line.

The firm’s ‘story’

Thinking about this question in terms of your ‘story’ can help you focus not just on whether you are right for the job, but also whether the job is right for you. It’s easy to forget that an interview is a two-way street. Candidates can become so desperate to get an offer that they fall into the trap of convincing themselves that the firm is a fit for them. They need to take a step back and use their questions to the interviewer to work out if they want to work there after all.

Create a Candidate Profile Activate a Hirer Account

by

10 tips for answering competency-based questions during interviews

Competency-based questions are commonly used in interviews to assess a candidate’s specific skills, behaviours, and experiences relevant to the job. These questions often begin with phrases such as “Give an example of a time when…” or “Tell me about a situation where you…”

Here’s a guide on how to answer competency-based questions effectively:

1. Understand the Competencies:

Review the job description and identify the key competencies the interviewers are looking for. Common competencies include, teamwork, problem-solving, time management, communication and adaptability.

2. Do your Preparation:

When candidates ask me what they can do to prepare for an interview I advise them that the most important thing they can do is revise their own work history.

Once you’ve identified the core competencies that you maybe questioned on, you should go through your CV and identify the pieces of worker projects that highlight each competency.

3. Take Notes in with you

Lest you forget which piece of work to mention when answering competency-based questions, write the examples down and take the notes in with you. This is an interview, not an exam, and it’s not cheating to take notes in with you. You just look like you’ve done your prep!

You don’t want to walk out of the interview thinking, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t mention that piece of work!’

4. Use the STAR Method:

Structure your responses using the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result.

  • Situation: Provide context for the situation or problem.
  • Task: Describe your role and responsibilities in that situation.
  • Action: Explain the specific actions you took to address the situation.
  • Result: Conclude with the positive outcome of your actions and what you learned

5. Be Specific:

If there’s one piece of advice I always give to candidates attending interviews, it’s this… GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES.

Your job during the interview process is to get the interviewers to picture you doing the job, and you do this by giving specific examples which include details about the context, people involved, and the challenges you faced.

If you can get the interviewers to picture you doing the job, you’re halfway there!

6. Highlight your Contribution:

We don’t want you to appear arrogant, but you musn’t be a shrinking violet either, so don’t be afraid to emphasize your individual contribution to the team or task.

7. Practice:

Rehearse your responses to common competency-based questions before the interview. You could also ask a friend or mentor to conduct a mock interview and provide feedback.

8. Be Honest:

Be truthful about your experiences. Interviewers can often tell when candidates are exaggerating or providing generic answers. If you’ve faced a really challenging situation, discuss what you learned from it and how the experience helped you grow as a professional.

9. Stay Concise:

While we want you to give good specific examples, we also want you to keep your responses focused and concise, so try your best to maintain a balance between providing enough information and not rambling.

10. Show Continuous Improvement:

If the situation allows, discuss how you have applied lessons from past experiences to improve your skills or approach in subsequent situations.

By following these tips and practicing your responses, you’ll be better prepared to articulate your skills and experiences in a way that resonates with the competencies sought by the hirer.

Create a Candidate Profile Activate a Hirer Account

by

The Battle for Talent Wages On: A Brief History of Skyrocketing Salaries

As the largest law firms vie for the new wave of junior solicitors, the battle for talent is becoming more intense than ever before, but what is the trajectory for this ever-escalating bidding war? Where did it begin, and what does it mean for the best of the newly qualified talent now?

After experiencing a difficult period of economic uncertainty that encompassed the Brexit vote and the first 12 months of Covid, the legal sector has bounced back spectacularly, and the market for junior lawyers is currently white hot. If you didn’t see it on the BBC website last week, you may be interested in this article which explores the battle for talent and touches on the plight of NQs earning £150,000 per annum.

Anybody who has spent time with a large international law firm will know that while they invest heavily in the recruitment and retention of talent through non-salary elements—generous benefits packages, L&D opportunities, onsite doctors and dentists—the easiest way to attract the ‘brightest and best’ is to simply whack another £10k on their salaries. After all, nothing talks louder than cash!

But what drives this need to increase salaries by such margins? While we’re no experts when it comes to economics, we’re aware of the basic concept of supply and demand—and there’s certainly no shortage of supply when it comes to junior lawyers.

Looking Back: A Story of Salaries

To understand where we are now we need to look at what’s gone before, so let’s turn our minds back to 1987 and the merger of Coward Chance and Clifford Turner to form—you’ve guessed it—Clifford Chance.

This was a merger that sent shockwaves through the legal world, and many would argue that it fired the starting pistol in the race for global domination—in respect of the provision of legal services anyway.

Fast forward a decade to 1997, and NQs within the magic circle were pocketing an average of £30,000 per annum (which equates to c. £58,000 today). The highest NQ salary in London (£45,000) was being paid by one of New York’s finest, White and Case.

In 2010, Boston headquartered and financial restructuring heavyweight, Bingham McCutchen, became the first firm to break through the £100k barrier, but they were far from the only firm to play along. 2010 was an exceptional year for salary growth, with magic circle qualifiers getting a c. 20% rise.

Bingham didn’t stop there either; they doubled their NQ salary in just four years, and four years later the firm tore itself apart and 300 partners disappeared to Morgan Lewis.

The current flare up in the battle for talent started just prior to the pandemic, when several leading firms announced double digit increases in their NQ salaries, only to perform an about-turn shortly after we were all sent home. However, once everybody realised that work could continue and 2020 was firmly in the rear-view mirror, it was open season again.

Several of the UK’s largest law firms(not just the magic circle) are now paying their NQs in excess of £100k, while the salaries on offer at numerous US law firms (including Kirkland & Ellis, Skadden and Latham & Watkins) are an eye-watering £150k+.

We think that Vinson & Elkins currently tops the list at £153,300 per annum, but somebody’s probably gone one step further during the 48 hours it’s taken us to publish this blog!

So, if there’s no shortage in the supply of junior lawyers, why is the battle for talent currently so intense?

Pent-up Demand

While there’s no shortage in the supply of junior lawyers, there’s certainly been a significant increase in the demand for their services.

Whatever your views on the current government, it’s hard to argue against the fact that the 80-seat majority won by Boris Johnson in 2019 released a pressure valve which had suffocated the economy and the legal market since the referendum of June2016. However, almost as soon as the valve was released, we were hit with the pandemic, and the legal sector returned to a state of cryostasis once again.

Within a year of the first lockdown, businesses had learned to adapt and—frustrated by four or more lost years—boy are they ready to do some deals!

Replacing Mid to Senior Level Associates

As the BBC article references, recent reports have indicated an increase in the number of experienced practitioners quitting the legal sector.

Whether this is because the pandemic has caused experienced lawyers to simply take stock, or surging demand creating a heightened level of pressure for mid to senior level associates, one thing is for sure: finding like-for-like replacements in the current climate is extremely tough.

This is forcing law firms to replace experienced associates with more junior lawyers to plug the gaps.

Chasing the ‘Brightest and Best’

While we’re currently experiencing exceptionally high levels of wage growth, the battle for talent will always endure because of the way that the sector identifies ‘talent’.

It matters not how academically strong the median law student is, or how well the legal education system prepares graduates for a career in law; top tier law firms will always do what they can to attract the ‘brightest and best’.

As you can see from the historical bigger picture of legal pay, the wheels never stop. Salary increases are inevitable. It doesn’t matter how many first-class trainees qualify each year, there’ll always be a top 2-3% that elite firms will skim off the top.

It appears that the battle for talent has no end, and as salaries continue to climb, we might remember Bingham McCutchen for their pioneering spirit. For the giants that stand on their shoulders offering more than ever, it seems that they are too big to fail.

One thing is for certain, in this waging dogfight to recruit the best of the legal sector, the real victors are the newly qualified solicitors pocketing the payslip.

Create a Candidate Profile Activate a Hirer Account

by

It’s difficult to achieve social mobility if you don’t have… mobility.

The Social Mobility Foundation has recently published its Employer Index Report for 2020, which ranks UK employers on the actions they are taking to access and progress talent from all backgrounds.

Now in its fourth year, the Index is seen as the leading authority on employer best practice within the field of social mobility, and the Foundation commends the 75 organisations that secured places on the Index for ‘showing what’s possible with regard to increasing social mobility’.

Encouragingly, law firms accounted for more than one third of the organisations on the Index, with Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (4th overall) securing the highest rank within the sector.

Other law firms placed in the top 10 overall include Browne Jacobson (5th), Herbert Smith Freehills (7th) and Baker McKenzie (10th).

Naturally, our eyes were drawn to the ‘Recruitment and Selection’ pages of the report, which assessed an organisation’s performance within two main categories:

  • removing barriers that prevent individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds progressing to selection, and
  • rewarding current ability and future potential over past academic performance.

In other words, the Index recognises organisations that are moving away from recruitment practices that reward ‘polish over potential’.

‘Blind’ recruitment practices can certainly help in this regard and, as the report makes clear, those employers who provided data to the Foundation have made huge strides over the past few years. For example:

  • 46% of employers do not request the names of applicants, which is up from 18% in 2017.
  • 37% do not ask for grades, up from 13% in 2017.
  • 46% do not ask for the name of the university an applicant attended, up from 18% in 2017.

These figures suggest that a significant shift in recruitment practices is taking place nationwide, and at NQS we know that we can play an important part in this process too.

While we can be proud that the legal sector dominates the Index, we can’t help but think that more could be done with regard to geographical bias within recruitment practices.

What do we mean by ‘geographical bias’? Essentially, it’s the snobbery that exists regarding experience gained in London as opposed to, basically, anywhere else.

Although we don’t have any hard data to prove that this geographical bias affects social mobility, it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to see a link. After all, it’s difficult to achieve social mobility if you don’t have… mobility.

While it would be wrong not to recognise the differences in the work undertaken by ‘Regional’ as opposed to ‘City’ firms – where the transactions and disputes advised upon are often of higher value and complexity – all too often we see applications from candidates with huge amounts of potential being dismissed out of hand simply because of their ‘Regional’ experience.

Having worked in legal recruitment for nearly 17 years, I realised long ago that most lawyers haven’t got a clue about how their colleagues within different departments go about their work. If they don’t know what the lawyer down the corridor does on a day-to-day basis, why do they make so many assumptions about the workload of a lawyer based 200+ miles away?

If we are to continue to move away from recruitment practices that reward ‘polish over potential’, isn’t it time that we investigate a junior candidate’s experience a little deeper before excluding them from the process?

Create a Candidate Profile Activate a Hirer Account

by

4 reasons why solicitors hate speaking to recruitment agents

If you ask the general public which professions they dislike the most, lawyers would come pretty high on the list. This isn’t new. Shakespeare was in on the act more than 400 years ago. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” says Dick the Butcher in Henry VI, part 2. That’s a bit harsh in my view. Surely that punishment should be reserved for bankers and estate agents?

Ask the same questions to a bunch of lawyers and their response is likely to be unanimous: recruitment agents. It seems there is a special place in the dark heart of most lawyers reserved for people who in theory should be helping them with their careers.

Why is that? Here are four reasons why newly qualified solicitors don’t like recruitment agents:

1. They waste your time by advertising non-existent jobs

This is an age-old tactic. Advertise a juicy sounding vacancy in order to build a database of candidates that they might be able to place at some future date. You spend ages honing your CV and gearing up for an initial interview with the agent, only to discover that the ‘job’ has already been filled. Don’t worry, you are told, even better opportunities will be along shortly. And now they have your CV on file, you’ll be ahead of the game.

2. They don’t keep you informed

Not all jobs are fictional. Sometimes the agent manages to secure an interview for you with a firm you would like to join. You think the interview went well and are already picturing yourself progressing well at your new home. You are excited, and anxiously waiting for ‘the call’. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting… You calls are met by voicemail, your messages unanswered. When you finally get through, you are told that unfortunately the job went to someone else. No explanation, no feedback.

3. They’re indiscreet

Worse than not getting a call at all is being called on your work number. You mumble into the handset trying to disguise who you are talking to, hoping that the partner you’re sharing an office with doesn’t cotton on.

Or, the agent touts your CV to all and sundry without your consent. They’ll even send it to firms that aren’t recruiting, in the vague hope that their scattergun approach will find a target. Any target. No thought is given to the incestuous nature of the legal world. Your boss’s best friend is Head of Department at that firm. How could they do that?!

4. They put you forward for a position that is totally unsuitable

This usually goes something like this. “I know this isn’t exactly what you are looking for but this firm is really going places and you are a great fit for them.” In other words, ignore the fact that you want to join a magic circle firm to do high value M&A work, why not attend an interview with a West End firm looking for a corporate/commercial lawyer?

Some agents are more subtle. They will tell you that the job is precisely what you are looking for. This is the type of work you want to do, it’s a great salary and there are real partnership prospects. These are lies. Of course, you only find this out as you sit across the desk from the interviewer and listen to them outline a different role entirely, at a lower salary.

You then have to fend off persistent calls from the agent trying to convince you that it would be a big mistake not to take this job. Sometimes it’s even tempting to accept it for no other reason than to stop the agent calling you!

Create a Candidate Profile Activate a Hirer Account