Road less travelled

Hard-pressed support staff working in City law firms often say their most challenging internal clients are not uppity partners, as might be expected, but their wet-behind-the-ears assistants. Heavily in demand themselves, these ambitious young lawyers sometimes place the most demands on others.

That is not surprising given the hurdles that would-be lawyers have always had to overcome to even get a foot in the door of a leading firm, let alone qualify into it. A trainee at a top-ten City firm has probably beaten off competition from some 30 other applicants just to be able to train there. Those that make the grade can perhaps be forgiven for thinking highly of themselves.

But if previous generations of lawyers have been proud of their attainments, none is likely to have as much to crow about as those who make it into the best firms over the next few years. Thanks to the downturn, they are faced with a doubly tough challenge. Not only are trainee intake numbers and retention rates coming down across the City, anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of applications to law firms will soar, as candidates who might once have gone into even more battle-scarred industries, such as banking, reconsider their options.

In particular, some firms are gearing up to try to recruit the alpha-male types who, they believe, would once have scorned a career in law as too pedestrian, but who are now starting to recognise that it may offer relatively more stability than other City career paths.

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