I have just been reading in this month’s Law Society Gazette that the College of Law claims that they will soon be more training contract vacancies than legal practice course graduates to fill them.
Are the College of Law completely out of touch with reality?
I am in charge of training recruitment here at Farleys and receive dozen of applications every week. I regularly interview and talk to trainees and the message still remains that the number of applicants massively exceeds the number of trainee vacancies available.
There has been a significant excess of graduates over the past few years which means that a large proportion of the applications we receive are not from people on the LPC but are from people who have completed the LPC and are now having to make do in other jobs whilst still desperately seeking a training contract.
A large proportion of the applications we receive are from “paralegals’ – people who have completed the LPC but only managed to secure work in a Solicitor’s firm as a paralegal with no guarantee of a training contract.
I remain saddened by the number of good quality applicants whose CVs pass across my desk who do not even make it to the interview stage because there is such enormous competition still for training contracts. So much so that I would certainly think twice at the present time about advising my children to follow me into the profession.
The College of Law can rest assured that for the next few years competition for training contracts will remain as fierce.