Apprentice to legal executive to solicitor

Last week I interviewed
a group of aspiring apprentices. They were all between 16 and 19, wanted a career in law and were anxious to avoid the mountain of debt that goes hand in hand with the cost of a degree.

I took on an apprentice last year. She was bright, with top-drawer academics, and did
a great job all year. I kept her on
as an apprentice at the end of her year and she has now morphed into a trainee legal executive. These are just titles, but when you are 18, titles matter quite a lot.

During that first year she helped the reception staff, constructed a new archiving system, learned how to clerk
at court and did any manner
of other clerical tasks around
the office. She was an extremely popular member of the team.

I have to admit there was a degree of culture shock, in that this was not a trainee or an intern we were dealing with. This was somebody straight out of school who knew very little about the basics of a solicitor’s office and frankly was not used to working nine to five.

There were many advantages, however. First, you get to
mould somebody without preconceived ideas into the person you want them to be. Second, there is the enthusiasm of youth. Even trainees have had a bit of their initial excitement knocked out of them by the time they start a training contract. Third, while we pay more than the national minimum wage, an apprentice is still a lot cheaper than a trainee and the government pays a grant towards the placement.

I am now paying for her legal executive examinations and hope that once qualified she may even think about conversion to a solicitor – a long haul, I know, but not impossible.

When interviewing the six wannabe apprentices last week, I included last year’s apprentice on the panel.

We scored set questions, gave them a computer exercise of fiendish complexity to complete and then involved them all in a group activity, constructing a platform out of sheets of paper and seeing how many Mars Bars could balance on it. Ridiculous you say, but it certainly did separate the sheep from the goats. Leadership, imagination and teamwork were all in evidence.

My guess is that the route into a career in law is likely to change radically over the next few years.

Is university necessary? Do we still have to have this cruel and unusual farrago of potential trainees begging for a training contract?

Perhaps an increasing number of lawyers will flow forth from the apprenticeship route. Will that be such a bad thing? Could it perhaps lead
to greater equality, diversity
and variety in an otherwise relatively stale profession?

The only negative about apprenticeships is trying to find them.

I went via a recruitment agency, but the government could do a lot more to give
out information about how to recruit. At the moment, it takes a great deal of research to find out how to go about it – it’s all
a bit opaque and not very easy
to access.

Oh yes, and at the interview we had to clear whether anyone was allergic to dogs! Cosmo would not appreciate a non-doggy apprentice
around the office. SJ

Russell Conway is senior partner at Oliver Fisher Solicitors

@Russboy11