Legal Sector workers union- will you join up?

available to anyone working in the legal sector from cleaners, to drivers, to paralegals and solicitors. This should fix fee earners gripes right ?

Agree with dux

Also solicitors think they are above unionisation. They aren't workers they're Professionals!

I think today's young partners will really struggle to keep firms running if they don't wise up, tho.

Yes, damn the comfy chairs, the good, free coffee, the client dinners in excellent restaurants, the interesting, enormously well paid work, the free comprehensive health scheme, the flexible working hours and the tickets to the rugby.

Damn them all in this accursed gulag.

Hey, don't mind that some autistic sociopaths are making millions from screwing you over, imposing unrealistic billing targets, ruining your weekends and holidays, offering limited promotion prospects, and demanding you complete the most eye-wateringly dull tasks.

You've got comfy chairs!!

And yet the gulags are still massively oversubscribed.

Especially when all other jobs have no deadlines, pressure or degree of repetition involved with them at all.

Most curious.

(Not the chap having a heart attack, nor all the others who have had nervous breakdowns - I know of a couple personally - but rather Strutter's lame apologies for the conduct of law firms)

every year more people apply to the LPC (or whatever it's now called) than there are training contracts.

the demand for the gulag is off the chart!!

On the other hand, if I were the union rep, things could improve. We could have an industry code with a prohibition on whining by anyone under 5 pqe

 

I didn’t say they all stayed, in what job is that true?

But the ‘gulag’ conditions strangely don’t mean there is a shortage of senior staff (unlike many other professions).  In fact rather the opposite is the case I would suggest.

The good wife confused me so much. There was one entire series that consisted of the two rival firms (in various formations of who was on one side or the other) chasing various contacts to sew ups their enormous annual legal spend. I don't think they actually recorded a single billable hour before the client jumped then jumped again.  

 

She had great clothes tho 

And in what way are my ‘apologies’ lame?

I am merely pointing out that people vote with their feet and the profession is oversubscribed at all levels. Hardly likely if it were the ‘gulag’ you described.

Facts, dear boy, facts.

This idea of it being hugely "oversubscribed" at entry level is propaganda. I posted the stats on here a coupe of years ago. LPC passes v training contracts available. Virtually the same, or at least a ration of about 95%, and going back for a decade or so. If I cba, I'll dig them out and re-post.

I can't find the latest figures, but in 2008/09 there were 5,824 LPC passes and 5,809 training contracts. So, while I feel sorry for the 15 bods who missed out, I don't think a 99.7% success rate really indicates enormous over-subscription.  

Hey, don't mind that some autistic sociopaths are making millions from screwing you over, imposing unrealistic billing targets, ruining your weekends and holidays, offering limited promotion prospects, and demanding you complete the most eye-wateringly dull tasks.

Dux I can safely say that the only one of these things that happens where I work is unrealistic billing targets but nothing happens if you miss them so it's irrelevant.  Some of us also like days of dull tasks where we don't have to think and worry we've ballsed up something complex.

Clergs nobody here bats an eyelid if you leave early as long as there are no clients shouting stuff hasn't been done and that's the same in most places I've worked.

I have no intention of funding some tede in pursuing their political career whilst paying lip service to apparently trying to improve my working life.

Dux you seem to be ignoring the poor no hopers who are lured into doing the LPC at great expense only to fail and find they've wasted a year and a small fortune.

We're also talking about the supply of those able to fill them. What %age of LPC grads are so utterly useless as to be viewed as a complete liability to even the dodgiest of NW1 postcode located firms about fried chicken shops?

Nope Dux just have a good sense having worked in numerous firms of what a firm is going to be like based on the people I meet before I start working there.  There are plenty of decent firms to work for if you're not worried about the fact that people outside the profession haven't heard the name.

You can't talk about demand for jobs if you ignore people who fail the LPC.  They will have applied for training contracts and want jobs but don't get them or may get them after retakes.

But back on topic I can think of a few mediocre solicitors who'd love to lead a union and then segue into politics and earn far more than they'd have earned doing law.

"I thought we had a union in the form of Law Society."

After the financial crash the Gazette wrote an article telling partners how to lay associates off.  I wrote to them saying the Gazette (and Law Society) was for all solicitors, not just partners, and those being laid off would find it odd that their bosses were getting advice to do it from their own trade union.  They edited my letter so it didn't make sense when published and told me "The Law Society wouldn't like to be referred to as a trade union".

My m7 dave sat 6 exams on the LPC and managed to fail 7 of them.  The bonus fail was the professional ethics questions that were weaved in to the other papers.

TBF he did see more gusset that year than a smear test dr

Yup tried doing all that cutting edge stuff and using my brain and didn't like it.  It's bad enough just trying to understand the stamp duty regime these days.