Articles From the Team

LPC Graduates

Today I received a CV application from a London based LPC graduate applying for an Insurance Fraud Paralegal opportunity in Liverpool with no practical legal experience. I replied with a polite email explaining that we cannot help and our clients require more experience. The applicant replied with the following:

Thanks for your email.

I would appreciate it, if you could please, assist me with this major confusion. How can one obtain the much needed experience that is often, too often required by recruiters; when ALL they do is dismiss potentially valuable contributors based on what they deem as lack of experience. How then can new entrants gain the experience in the first place?

A lot of these legal roles, I believe, require COMMON SENSE with a little on the job training and everything else you acquire as time passes by. I apologise for taking your time but I have been writing on this topic for quite sometime now. I have started a massive wave of responses on social networks like Facebook, twitter and the rest. I believe employers should begin to make a better use of the three months probation period during which time the so called experienced and less experienced ones will prove their worth to the organisation after which an employer can decide on whether to retain an employee or not Thanks for reading this. I anticipate your reply in due course. Now though some of you may think this is an unwarranted rant, however it is a misconstrued misconception by many law graduates and LPC graduates, that recruitment agencies do not wish to help them get their foot on the legal ladder.

The fact is that our clients generally, the law firms which you wish to work at, who do not accept CVs from agencies of applicants without relevant legal experience, as they already have a pool of CVs from LPC students and LPC graduates that they can dip in to at any one time if they have a junior/trainee job.

As for using the 3 months probation period as a trial period for LPC graduates to see how they get on, some of the larger firms already do this, via Paralegal Academies etc to which you have to apply directly to. Many however, in order to remain efficient, cannot afford the time and expense of training up a large amount of graduates with any initial legal experience, when they have increasingly demanding client expectations and targets to meet.

On a positive note, there are a couple of firms that we work with in the Merseyside area who do instruct us to recruit bright LPC graduates in their Personal Injury teams. The successful applicants tend to be local to the area, have gained a 2:1 at degree plus good academics at school and be enthusiastic team players. In return, these firms train you up from scratch, developing you into a fee earners and paralegals. One law firm in particular, also offers training contracts to those paralegals who prove themselves and exceed expectations.

So if you are an LPC graduate or LPC/LLB student who will be graduating this year and you are looking to gain legal experience and you can comfortably work in/commute to Merseyside from where you live, then please visit our website BCL Legal or BCL Graduates.

We look forward to hearing from you.