Perhaps the incompetent are those who are already qualified and were overhired during the pandemic period should be eliminated – not the up and coming people who are paying the price and deserve a chance as much as anyone else

Agree, think the pay war hasn’t helped. In increasing those salaries for NQ’s, they have to leverage salaries for those lawyers higher up the PQE chain. Some firms definition of “increase” isn’t even a proper increase tbqhwy.

That probably gives those disgruntled at 2-7PQE and/or those who have their firms taking a sizeable pound of flesh wanting to lateral as they see the roles that offer them the chance to get more G@!n$ elsewhere.

Hopefully the market will open up soon and some new roles come in soon, mayhaps firms will realise they let too much talent go and then vacancies will open up. A bit idealistic but radical optimism is needed during these times – fingers crossed for us all, godspeed

It is insightful to know there is a trend among city firms in hiring.

I heard from a friend that the thing happened at DLA Piper. Apparently a few teams didn’t post any NQ roles.

To name a few: Responsible Business (Pro Bono), Real Estate, Intellectual Property, Technology & Sourcing etc.

Which 4 teams posted jobs? Which 6 teams didn’t post jobs?

A job is not guaranteed in a capitalist society… There are prob plenty NQ jobs around, but London City Law firm Trainees feel they deserve a high salary for what (at their stage) is essentially admin work.

Wake me up when it ends

There’s quite a lot of demand in employment lately, especially with the new changes coming under Labour

Knock on impact of the relentless NQ salary increases, or more importantly, salary bunching above that. For example, for one of the commercial teams at RPC, beyond retaining your own trainees (or at least the best ones), why externally hire an NQ on a £90k salary when you could get a 3PQE for perhaps £10k more?

“only 8 applied for associate positions”… why do you think that is?

“unfair to blame RS for not retaining three other people who didn’t even want/bother to apply for associate positions”… why do you think the other 3 didn’t apply?

Use your brain. Clearly there were teams that didn’t have the budget to post an NQ role in a department they wanted to qualify into which is why they didn’t apply.

It is not a case of trainees not being bothered to apply – there simply were not enough roles going in the teams trainees were looking to qualify into.

Nobody is blaming Reed Smith.

Literally, no one.

Read the room (and the comments)… everyone is saying the NQ market is dead. The market is to blame

Why did they not want to accept an NQ role at the firm, though?

It’s less bad than it looks.

Of the 11 trainees, only 8 applied for associate positions – it’s a bit unfair to blame RS for not retaining three other people who didn’t even want/bother to apply for associate positions.

Of the remaining 8 trainees who applied for associate positions, six were given offers – again, it’s a bit unfair to blame RS for the people within those six who were given an offer and turned it down – from the perspective of a potential trainee, RS offered 6/8 people who applied associate positions.

Ultimately 8 people applied for associate positions at RS. RS made offers to 6 of those 8 (I.e. 75% of applicants received offers – a much healthier figure). Factoring in people made an offer who rejected it completely distorts the numbers particularly from the perspective of a potential trainee (the bulk of the LC readership).

Bearing in mind that many of those with offers are qualifying into teams that were not their first choice but for the sake of having a job, the figures are distorted.

The % of retained trainees qualifying into their preferred team is probably around 15% (not just at the firms listed in the article but at all firms across the city).

My initial assumption is that retention is poor across all firms this year because there isn’t as much demand in the specialist areas i.e Employment, Pensions, Privacy, Intellectual Property etc

This may be linked to M&A activity being down and corporate being dead.

Anyone else without an offer noticing that there are hardly any roles externally solely aimed at NQs?

I keep being told that the roles are going to those with the most experience.

I would love to reply, but been so busy buying my holiday home on the Côte d’Azur.

I think you mean Mo Money No NQs hahaha