From August 2014 the trainee solicitor minimum salary of £16,650 per (£18,590 for central London jobs) will be scrapped, following a decision this week by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), which is the independent regulatory body of the Law Society of England and Wales. Law firms must instead pay at least the National Minimum Wage, currently set at £6.8 per hour, bringing the law profession in line with the wider job market.

Industry commentators have said this will amount to a pay cut of £7,000 per year for trainees – a potential 60% drop in earnings, and could mean people from less well-off backgrounds will not be able to pursue a career in the legal profession. In its own summary of feedback, the SRA recognised fears that removing the minimum salary would have a disproportionate effect on women and black and minority ethnic groups.

The board papers admitted there was a risk that employers would decide to cut salary levels as a result of deregulation. However another view is that more firms will be able to employ trainees as the wage costs will be considerably lower.

The SRA voted on May 16 to partially deregulate the trainee solicitor minimum wage which has been in place for three decades. The minimum salary was introduced in 1982 by the Law Society to protect trainees from exploitation and to encourage high quality graduates into the profession. After a consultation which began in January, the SRA board agreed that setting a minimum salary level for trainees above the National Minimum Wage was not in the public interest. In order to minimise the impact, the change will be deferred for two years’ time.

Samantha Barrass, SRA’s executive director, gave a statement thanking everyone who responded to the consultation, “and those who took part in the stakeholder meetings, focus groups, and the online survey for their views and information that were taken into account in reaching this decision”.

She said: “This decision was based on an objective consideration of very full and detailed evidence gathered through a variety of sources.”

In total there were 130 responses to the consultation, around 60 individuals in total attended nine focus group sessions across four cities, and over 1,300 individuals responded to the SRA’s online survey.

Browse our law jobs today.

Here’s a selection of legal jobs currently live on our site. We hope you’re inspired to apply, or click here to find many more jobs.

Clinical Negligence Solicitor – City of London

Is your legal track record good enough for this permanent role with a private practice in London? A Clinical Negligence Solicitor with up to 3 years PQE is required who will be able to manage a caseload of legal actions. Cases include inappropriate medical treatment, late diagnoses, fatal accidents and cosmetic surgery, dental, and optical treatment claims.

The Top 50 law firm is looking for someone who can multitask, work in a team, and thrive in a fast-paced environment. The salary is described as ‘excellent’ and there are future career development opportunities.

IT Lawyer – Burges Salmon

This vacancy requires an experienced lawyer to act for providers and users of technology products. Leading law firm Burges Salmon has built a strong reputation in IT, utilising extensive industry knowledge of technical and business issues. The aim is to add value to corporates, financial institutions, governmental bodies, developers and vendors, both in the UK and internationally.

The role requires someone who is at least 7 years PQE, and in the job the successful candidate will be advising clients on all aspects of technology, media and telecommunications. Experience of IT sourcing, outsourcing, the impact of joint ventures and collaborations, and re-engineering would be very useful in the role.

So Burges Salmon is looking for excellent academic qualifications, as well as evidence of good quality training, and IT experience, ideally gained from a top firm. Adaptability and enthusiasm are critical.
» Read more: Latest opportunities in law

There is no easy route to becoming a lawyer, but the path to entering the legal profession can be made less cluttered by understanding some of the terms used by educators and recruiters. Translating legal jargon can be a necessity on occasion.

Qualifications
Solicitors use numerous terms on a daily basis to explain various activities. Lecturers and professors also use terms that may seem alien to the layperson, while barristers and judges might as well be speaking a different language at times.

The important point to note here is that most legal terms are learned either in university or on the job – it is not necessary to know what is meant by equitable estoppel, indenture or subrogation, for example, before studying law at undergraduate level. Likewise, most graduates will not need to be familiar with Latin phrases such as 'certum est quod certum reddi potest' (treating something as certain if it is capable of being made certain) or French terms such as 'cestui que trust' (a beneficiary under a trust) unless absolutely necessary.

An exercise in legal jargon-busting should always start with the qualifications needed to become a lawyer. The following terms are among the most important.

Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC): the vocational stage of training for barristers.

Bar Standards Board (BSB): the professional body that regulates barristers called to the Bar in England and Wales.

Call to the Bar: a formal ceremony in which the title of barrister is officially conferred on those who have completed the academic and vocational stages of training.

Common Professional Examination (CPE): a conversion course for non-law graduates that usually lasts one year and teaches core legal modules such as Obligations, Tort and Equity.

Inns of Court: four approved Bar societies.
» Read more: Understanding legal jargon

The latest research from legal recruitment website Simply Law Jobs shows that the legal job market is thriving both in terms of paid salaries and legal job vacancies.

Despite a bleak UK employment market, the research shows the average legal salary in February 2012 reached £54,515 pa. This represents a 5.9% annual rise in salary, comfortably outperforming the current 3.6% rate of inflation.

Furthermore, there were over 6,000 vacancies posted on Simply Law Jobs during February 2012. This number of vacancies is the highest number posted on the legal recruitment website since March 2011 - great news for job seekers and recruiters in the legal profession alike.

The Simply Law Jobs study also highlighted some great news for those entering the legal profession as newly qualified. The average annual salary of newly qualifieds in the legal profession has been continually increasing since November 2011 and reached £45,161 pa in February 2012, equating to a 5.9% annual increase.
» Read more: Legal vacancies on the rise and salaries climb in 2012

Irwin Mitchell, Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Lawrence Graham (LG) have all announced promotions.

Irwin Mitchell has announced that four lawyers are to be promoted to the partnership from 1 May 2012. Two Partners, including a non-lawyer will be promoted to membership status also.

Group Chief Executive John Pickering said the appointments reflected the top quality offering provided to personal, business and institutional clients.

The appointments will take the number of partners at Irwin Mitchell to 174.

Operations Director Gary Jackson will be added to the non-lawyer contingent of Members. Personal Injury Partner, Jonathan Betts (pictured), who heads up the spinal injury team in Manchester, has also been promoted to Member.

Joining Irwin Mitchell’s growing list of partners in its Business Legal Services division are Sheffield-based property lawyer Tom Hall and banking and finance litigation specialist Tom Seabrook, based in Manchester.

In the Personal Legal Services division, Adam Draper steps up from associate to partner in the specialist Contentious Probate team, while Phil Tomkinson is promoted to partner in the firm’s Motor team. Both are based in Sheffield.

Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) is to appoint 11 new partners - the firm's City arm will gaining nine new partners and Singapore and Abu Dhabi will add one new partner each from 1 May 2012.

In London one non fee-earner, the firm's head of risk Nicole Bigby is to be appointed partner. The remaining City promotions will be made up of Michael Weir in corporate, Daisy Reeves in finance, Catherine Gelder, Amir Ghaffari and Neil Owen in dispute resolution and Celia Berg, Deepa Deb and Nick Skea-Strachan in real estate.

Marius Toime has been added to the partnership in the firm's risk practice in Singapore and Charles Lilley has been made up in the litigation group in Abu Dhabi.

Lawrence Graham (LG) has also promoted four lawyers to its partnership, Rose Chamberlayne will be added to the partnership in the private capital practice, Jon Lent in finance and Carole Peet and Caroline Walker made up in the real estate group.

Chamberlayne previously worked at Simmons & Simmons before joining the firm in 2006, while Peet was previously a partner at Eversheds and legacy Denton Wilde Sapte, before joining LG as a consultant. Both Walker and Lent trained at LG.

Why don't law firms communicate better with clients? Why do advisers persist in business practices that encourage inefficiency? Why are law firm charge-out rates so high? Why can't we all buy the world a Coke and live in perfect harmony?

It's funny that when comments are made about the legal industry there is often a strange, persistent notion that if only clients and advisers could get together, have a good chat and show a bit of consideration, then everything that ails the profession would be OK.

Well, to find out more about the client and firm relationship head to legalweek.com and read the full story.

Social Media and its ramifications are rarely out of the news. Last year, headline-grabbing dismissal of employees due to use of social media affected companies as diverse as Microsoft and Wetherspoons. But the ‘danger’ of social media misuse isn’t confined to the employee. For many businesses, corporate social media discrimination is becoming an increasingly tricky issue to deal with and often, the necessary defences have not been put in place.

Corporate social media discrimination refers to situations where employers use social networking sites such as Facebook to undertake research about a candidate’s background either prior to or during the interview process. The aim is to understand more about each applicant before taking a decision to hire them or not.

But the challenges involved in not overstepping the mark in this regard are only set to mount as social media usage continues to grow. Ten years ago, the channel was merely a pipe dream, with one or two very basic sites such as Six Degrees and Friendster acting as the vanguard. Today, nearly everyone you meet has a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account, with some people even having their own blog, Flickr and YouTube accounts as well.

Social Media usage continues to grow and grow:

• Users spend more than 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook • Twitter gets more than 300,000 new subscribers every day • A new member joins LinkedIn every second, the organisation’s press office claims.

Looking at such numbers, it becomes clear just how important social media has become in today’s society. And the same is just as true in the world of work as workers progressively realise how important it is to be connected to others and how useful being online can be for networking purposes.
» Read more: Social media and the workplace – legal implications in 2012

Last year, when the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, called for the use of s159 of the Equality Act 2010 to increase diversity in the judiciary, he highlighted the relative lack of representation of some groups in senior legal positions – and, indeed, in the legal sector per se.

We asked Steve McNally of Equality Law to analyse the issue: When two candidates for a legal position are of equal merit, should this form of positive action be used - and what effect could we realistically expect?

“Women and Ethnic Minorities are not progressing - or are simply under-represented.

“Whether the ‘tie-break’ provision should be used in legal – and especially judicial – appointments is an increasingly important item on the agenda and it refuses to go away.” says McNally.

“A recent study by the Bar Council was really quite sobering. It showed that the proportion of women barristers was rising very slowly indeed: in 2006, they formed 33.4% of the profession but by 2010 it had risen to 34.8%.

“For those from ethnic minorities, the rise in numbers is also slow. In 2006, 76.2% of barristers were white, 9.6% from black or minority ethnic backgrounds and there was no data on the remaining 14.2%. By 2010, the figures were: white 77.2%, minority backgrounds 10.2% and no data on 12.6%.

“Beyond that, progress in appointing women and members of ethnic minorities as judges has been far too slow and the adoption of a ‘tie-break’ procedure favouring such candidates is, in my view, almost inevitable. Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, effectively said just that to the House of Lords when he appeared before the constitution committee inquiry into the judicial appointments process at the beginning of the year.

“Mr Clarke was acknowledging what many people in the legal sector believe: greater diversity is needed, although appointments must also still be based on merit, of course.”

“The Legal Profession must appoint on merit – but also reflect what’s going on in the wider world.

“Section 159 of the Equality Act 2010 allows employers to choose someone from an under-represented group when faced with two candidates of equal merit – and this year may well see the adoption of s159 in the selection of judges. This is often known as the tie-break principle, and for the legal sector as a whole it may well prove to be the tipping point for greater diversity – not just amongst judges, but across the whole profession.”

“Certainly, the legal profession needs to understand that it doesn’t work in a vacuum. It’s a professional service in a world where the UK government is committed to 25% female representation on the boards of FTSE 100 companies, where glass ceilings are being smashed in many different industries – and, in that sense alone, representation of women simply doesn’t look healthy enough.

“There are barriers – but 2012 will see the beginning of real change.”

Are there any reasons why the Law profession lags behind others? McNally believes that the issue is structural rather than just attitudinal. “The problems are not just at the appointments process. It's a problem of the career structure. Fifty per cent of those entering the legal profession are women – that’s a healthy intake. But the evidence suggests that women progress more slowly in the profession, reach fewer senior positions – and watch their prospects for advancement simply peter out.

"I'm even more concerned about the slow progress for people from ethnic minorities” says McNally. “Quotas and targets don’t add very much to the argument as the one immovable thing is that the Legal profession must appoint on merit. So the introduction of the Tie-Break has to be seen as a positive – and I fully expect its adoption to begin in 2012.”

On the 8th March 2012, The Law Society will be carrying out the International Women in Law Summit 2012 at their headquarters in London.

Over the past three decades much work has been done from both organisational and national perspectives to identify and address the barriers to women's career progression.

The aim of this summit is:

• to identify and address the barriers to women's career progression through the exchange of successful strategies for change; and • as a legacy - to create a manifesto which will drive a more proactive agenda at both national and international levels.

The event promises to be energetic, inspiring and topical with a summit programme that focuses on moving past awareness raising to the delivery of a bolder, more proactive agenda - one which aims to articulate the change required and how to achieve this change.

For more information go to lawsociety.org.uk.

From the 20th - 21st March 2012, The Law Society will be holding a forum at 113 Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1PL.

The forum explores the future of online legal services in the age of recession, deregulation and globalization. It looks at the technologies and business models that will give competitive edge to the solicitor of tomorrow and asks whether online law can lead to a renaissance of the High Street.

But it also looks at the dark side: what does the future hold in terms of online legal services for the disadvantaged, the disabled and the digitally excluded? What is the place of traditional professional ethics and face to face service in an age of robotic data processing and commoditised, digital law products? Can a profession trained in industrial age law respond to the challenges of information age law?

For more information head over to lawsociety.org.uk.