Things are not looking good.

According to The Lawyer, there have been 2,866 redundancies in the UK legal sector in 2008-09. With the dust just settling on the sizeable slicing of legal jobs at Allen & Overy, and national firms such as Halliwells entering into the fourth round of redundancy consultations, lawyers at every level are spending more and more of their time worrying about their futures in a profession that traditionally has been a safe bet.

But things are not as bad as they seem. There is a silver lining to all this doom and gloom — particularly for junior lawyers.

At first glance career prospects may not seem too rosy with agencies revealing that recruitment at the junior end of the market has all but come to a halt. However, staff who qualified two years ago are still getting calls from headhunters looking to recruit a safe pair of hands desperately needed by firms that have scaled down their teams but are still hungry for experienced (and cheap) juniors.

Look at the Junior Lawyers Division section of the Law Society website and you’ll see that only 7 per cent of junior lawyers can see themselves as a partner within ten years.

However, if you qualified last year and have kept (or found) a newly qualified position this year, the world is your oyster. Fast forward ten years from now and there simply will not be enough solicitors in the market qualified at this level.

Statistics from the Law Society show that a significant number of partners who qualified during the peak of the recession in the Nineties have reaped the benefits of being one of the few specialists in their field — often because there are not that many lawyers around at their level, especially in practice areas worst hit by the recession such as real estate and corporate.

Now firms such as Linklaters want to hive down practice teams and have its partners develop a more hands-on approach in advising and nurturing the more junior members.

If this plan works — part of its new world strategy — it could be the most effective way of training junior lawyers, giving them first-hand knowledge and all the other benefits of working closely with an experienced, and for some, eminent partner.

Marketing needs to be thought about, too. If ever there was a time to crank up the levels of business development, it is now.

The temptation in the present climate is to keep an eye on chargeable hours and billings, but this is the year to strengthen relationships with existing clients — and perhaps garner a few new ones, particularly those who are shopping around for cheaper rates.

Junior lawyers in mid to small-sized firms are in a prime position to charm the monied socks off clients who simply can no longer afford City rates.

"Magic circle" and City firms are notorious for limiting client contact with junior lawyers, but when the number of staff between a junior and a partner has decreased, what better time to take up the opportunity to become a client’s first point of contact?

Nabbing that big client or, better still, a small client that you stick with through the bad times, could lead to some serious return on your investment. The opportunity to be the face of your firm at an early stage of your career could open up the future.

The author is a solicitor at Wedlake Bell

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