Receiving rejection letters, emails and phone calls can be a tough part of the job-hunting process. Worse still are those days of hearing nothing at all, even when you’ve slogged over countless application forms. But try your best to fight despondency. Now is the time for inner strength and renewed energy. To keep on track until your ideal NQ solicitor, paralegal or legal secretary job is in the bag, it’s vital to stay focused and positive.
Legal jobs take multiple forms, but the skills needed to excel are the same for any position in law.
Whether you are an aspiring or qualified Lawyer, Paralegal, Secretary, Conveyancer or any other role in the profession, Anna Pitts of the Graduate Recruitment Bureau brings you the 10 essential traits you need for a career in law. For anyone looking to begin their career in law, especially if you are about to graduate, this is essential reading!
1. Organisation
Legal professionals can’t afford to be unorganised. You’ll be running on a tight schedule, and clients will be counting on you to be prompt and reliable. If running like clockwork isn’t your strong point, use a diary, daily planner and even Post-its if you need to, to get organised.
2. Teamwork
Does it come as a surprise to you that legal apprenticeships exist? There are a good number of ways in which you could complete a legal apprenticeship, and for many people this may be preferable to following a LLB law degree route.
Legal apprenticeships allow you to study to become a fully qualified Legal Executive at the same time as working and earning in a legal firm. The pay can be low whilst you study to become qualified – often only at the national minimum wage – but when you take into consideration the fact that you are being paid to gain a valuable qualification and experience, this does appear to be an excellent path to take.
If you can minimise nervousness in the run-up to your interview, you’ll be in a good position to perform well on the day. It’s worth remembering, though, that a few nerves and being under a little stress can be good for you, according to the latest medical research. Being under slight stress is likely to fire you up, make you more alert, able to tune out distractions and think creatively – all great aids to an impressive job interview! Interviewers expect you to be a little nervous too, and will take that into account.
In review, 2013 proved a mixed year for UK law jobs. Against a backdrop of the planned changes to Legal Aid provision and personal injury law and regular news of law firms falling into administration – particularly at the mid-tier level – there was generally felt to be more optimism about law job prospects and salaries than has been felt in the previous three or four years.
At Simply Law Jobs, we can confirm an upward trend in law job postings, which is extremely encouraging for our registered jobseekers. Our figures show that during 2013 the number of law vacancies posted rose by 16% compared to the previous year – up from 117,258 in 2012 to a massive 136,362 in 2013.
If you are preparing for a legal secretary job interview, make sure you don’t stumble on a question that many people simply forget to plan for, and live to regret. “Tell us what you can bring to this role?” is an incredibly obvious question, and you’re guaranteed to hear it at just about any job interview.
Yet somehow many of us struggle to have a knockout answer lined up, and therefore risk not sounding committed to the job in question and failing to sell ourselves effectively.
When you finish ILSPA’s Legal Secretaries Diploma and head out to find work, you will be joined by hundreds of others in just the same position you are in. It is important to be prepared for your job search and to be confident of the value you can bring to an organisation.
Before you apply
Applying for a job requires careful planning, and those who are well prepared will secure employment. A good way of going about your job search is to imagine you are employed in the business of finding yourself a job. You need to research and plan each step of the way to secure the right position.
The world of law changes on a regular basis, so Douglas Scott Legal Recruitment has kicked off its annual Big Data Survey and is inviting legal employees all over the UK to take part.
The salary and benefits benchmarker was launched last year and immediately acknowledged within the legal industry for shining a spotlight on all the issues facing legal recruitment, as well as for spotting trends within the ever-changing legal landscape.
Last year's survey pinpointed a massive discrepancy between legal staff and their employers with regard to bonuses, which helped a number of companies target candidates more strategically. By highlighting the needs of potential recruits as well as future trends in the industry, we hope to again provide valuable insights that will make the recruitment process more effective for all concerned.
“Would you say you’re a good communicator?” is a classic interview question, but the follow-up, “Explain why”, can really scupper interviewees, who might find themselves mumbling and scrabbling for examples and looking like anything but a good communicator!
Going into an interview for a Legal Secretary or PA job feeling fully prepared and confident about relevant skills will help you greatly on the day. But regardless of how much research you’ve done about the job, the firm, and its management style and global strategy, you could still be caught out by those pesky, quirky, unexpected ‘curve ball’ questions interviewers sometimes like to throw in.
It’s official – employers have zero patience when it comes to CV grammar and spelling. When asked, ‘What is the biggest turn-off for you to see on a candidate’s CV?’ the top answer employers gave was poor grammar and spelling mistakes, according to a recent survey. Recruitment consultancy Nicoll Curtin asked 550 companies, and a massive 65 percent pointed to CV errors as their ultimate bugbear.
Shoddy spellchecking and proofreading aren’t exactly a ringing endorsement of your knowledge of basic office technology or attention to detail, are they? For enthusiastic, well-trained legal secretaries and PAs, it’s vitally important to demonstrate these basic skills.