Recruitment code changes: part two - what do they mean in practice?

The Voluntary Code of Practice for the Recruitment of Trainee Solicitors has recently been amended (those amends summarised here), but is it seriously different? In truth, it is neither a radical move towards a recruitment wild west, nor is it a reining in of those employers that are unwilling or unable to follow the 'gentleman's agreement' that has governed the conventions of when and how trainee solicitors are recruited. More likely, it is another incremental step towards the less stratified recruitment environment that has been developing for over a decade.

Let's have a look at what has changed. It hinges on when firms can offer their latest cohorts of candidates training contracts. The old code stated that firms should not offer candidates studying undergraduate law a training contract before the 1 September that falls between their penultimate and final year at university. Once an offer was made, a firm was allowed to require a response within four weeks, after which it was at liberty to withdraw the offer. Candidates were also not supposed to hold more than two offers simultaneously (although in practical terms this was difficult to enforce). Furthermore, signatories to the code were asked not to set their final deadline for applications any earlier than 31 July. So in theory, firms had at least one month to process applications and make offers, and candidates had a month to juggle offers and make a decision within roughly a month of receiving an offer.

The new regime allows the offer to be made far earlier. Firms can swoop at any time from the commencement of the penultimate year of a law degree. The restriction on the final deadline for applications has also been relaxed - it just needs to be after the commencement of the penultimate year of study (exactly when that is remains moot as some universities start earlier than others, although we don't expect dates to be pushed that far back). Crucially though, the deadline for responses is set at 15 September, which is two weeks earlier than the date at which those offered jobs on 1 September, under the old agreement, needed to make their minds up. It also seems to be the case that candidates can now hold more than two offers.

So how big is the change? Before we address this we should look at what the voluntary code did, could and should do for both firms and candidates. Candidates aspiring to a legal career already need to focus on launching their career earlier than most. The top firms were already recruiting people FOUR years before they qualified as lawyers and two before they even started at the firm.  The original agreement was supposed to allow candidates the time and space to properly research their options and not let the job hunt impinge too badly on their academic study. For firms, the idea was to instil some sort of level playing field that would allow them to plan and manage the way they resourced their recruiting in a highly competitive market. This is all very nice and communal in theory; however, in a cut-throat business sector, the first response to a rule is to bypass it, if not in the letter, certainly in spirit. These people are lawyers for goodness sake!

What really happened was that firms found new ways of making the first pass at each new cohort of talent as early as possible. The way the game was played was distorted by how much resource some players put in, which in turn forced others to do the same! The main 'weapon' was the summer vacation scheme. Vacation schemes were originally supposed to be a chance for candidates to have a look at different firms to get a hands-on idea of what the various options looked and felt like before making a final decision. However, with firms investing significant resources in running high-quality schemes, it became clear that those schemes would be dedicated to taking an in-depth look at genuine prospects, not curious maybes. In turn this meant that the vacation scheme selection process became, in some cases, more rigorous and important than the training contract selection process. For those who did well, a formal offer was not really needed - a nod and a wink would do it, with the fat envelope on 1 September simply a formality.

All of a sudden the 'real' deadline for many firms became somewhere around 31 January when the vacation scheme applications had to be submitted. In reality it was even earlier, with many recruiters offering positions to those that were good enough as soon as their application was processed.

So, back to the original question; are the new rules really a change? I'd say not really. If the main battle is being fought at vac scheme level and with many/most big firm training contracts already effectively allocated to vac schemers long before the deadline, then some rules on specific dates make little difference. Already some firms (eg, Nabarro and Mishcon de Reya) have stopped publishing a summer deadline of any sort and confirmed all recruitment will be via their summer scheme. One would expect others to follow suit and revert to one deadline per year instead of two.

Other firms who do not recruit exclusively through a scheme may maintain two deadlines, though with June more prevalent than July for the latter one. There is a sound argument for this - the earlier a deadline, the more likely it is that good people will miss it and there are rich pickings to be had later. Maybe others, particularly those who are struggling to or unable to keep up with the inflationary character of schemes, will try to recruit in the spring and get offers out before heads have been turned. Do candidates perform so well on a vac scheme if they already have an offer on the table?

The good news is that candidates lucky enough to have options (ie, multiple offers or the possibility thereof) still have until mid-September to decide where to train. This, I would say, is the most precious element of the scheme. Attempts to pressure individuals to make decisions before they know all their options should be resisted. Candidates have no real choice but to engage with the recruitment process ridiculously early and possibly detrimentally to their academic health; but probably the ability to do so demonstrates just the sort of skills the recruiters seek!

It seems certain that firms will attempt to steal a march on one another and those most generously resourced will probably succeed to some extent. Candidates with prior knowledge of how the game is played (ie, those already privileged to be on the inside track) will also do disproportionately better as they parade themselves at the optimal moment. A triumph for diversity this is not! The bottom line is that considered, rational decision-making will notionally be best for all, but the competitive nature of the system will make the outcomes somewhat less successful. It is up to all parties, recruiters, careers advisers and websites like ours to impress on potential lawyers that they must do their research properly, understand their real options and be single-minded in pursuing their own best interests. Knowledge is power!