DLA Piper and LG are the latest firms rumoured to be thoroughly doing over their trainees on qualification.
Last week RollOnFriday reported that Freshfields was dumping 30% of its September qualifiers. However, this now doesn't look so bad compared with news emerging from other firms. Insiders say that DLA Piper will be keeping on just 14 of its 34 London trainees, four out of 12 in Birmingham and only two out of 11 in Scotland. That means DLA Piper trainees have, at best, just a 40% chance of keeping their jobs.
Meanwhile, LG is keeping on just nine of its 21 qualifiers. A spokesman for the firm was keen to point that one of the qualifying trainees didn't want to stay at the firm, so the offer rate was actually 45%. Which is hardly something to be proud of - and still a shocking overall retention rate.
Ditching large numbers of trainees on qualification couldn't be a surer sign of a firm's doubts about its own prospects. And apart from damaging the firm's remaining business by undermining the leverage that firms rely on to generate profit, it can have a major impact on a firm's reputation and its ability to recruit junior lawyers in the future.
And as for how this sort of news is received internally... well as one DLA Piper trainee put it,
"Every time Sir Nigel posts one of his blog pieces about how DLA Piper is 'best placed to weather the downturn', one cannot help but be reminded of the rotten propaganda that drooled out of the festering corpse of Soviet Russia during the dying days of communism.... I wish I had known just what a shoddy outfit this firm is before I accepted my training contract."
Ouch. Blimey.
Tip Off ROF
Last week RollOnFriday reported that Freshfields was dumping 30% of its September qualifiers. However, this now doesn't look so bad compared with news emerging from other firms. Insiders say that DLA Piper will be keeping on just 14 of its 34 London trainees, four out of 12 in Birmingham and only two out of 11 in Scotland. That means DLA Piper trainees have, at best, just a 40% chance of keeping their jobs.
Meanwhile, LG is keeping on just nine of its 21 qualifiers. A spokesman for the firm was keen to point that one of the qualifying trainees didn't want to stay at the firm, so the offer rate was actually 45%. Which is hardly something to be proud of - and still a shocking overall retention rate.
 |
A qualification bonus from DLA Piper |
Ditching large numbers of trainees on qualification couldn't be a surer sign of a firm's doubts about its own prospects. And apart from damaging the firm's remaining business by undermining the leverage that firms rely on to generate profit, it can have a major impact on a firm's reputation and its ability to recruit junior lawyers in the future.
And as for how this sort of news is received internally... well as one DLA Piper trainee put it,
"Every time Sir Nigel posts one of his blog pieces about how DLA Piper is 'best placed to weather the downturn', one cannot help but be reminded of the rotten propaganda that drooled out of the festering corpse of Soviet Russia during the dying days of communism.... I wish I had known just what a shoddy outfit this firm is before I accepted my training contract."
Ouch. Blimey.