Lifelines for Halliwells trainees

Trainees who had not yet started at the firm’s Liverpool and Sheffield offices will still start their training contracts with Hill Dickinson which has taken over those offices but it is understood 51 remain without a job.

Bristol firm Burges Salmon is urging every UK law firm to sign up to a project that will try to match the trainees with firms in the region in which they are able to work.  A portal has been launched on its website through which Halliwells trainees can submit their CVs and offer letters which will be forwarded to participating firms.  More than 50 firms have already been contacted by senior partner Stephen McNulty who said the scheme would be “a litmus test for the decency of the profession”.  He told Lawyer2B: “Halliwells won’t have offered contracts to people they didn’t think were good enough. It’s a question of matching them to the right firm.”

And Manchester Metropolitan University Law School is offering a new funding scheme under which unemployed law graduates will be offered £1,000 out of a £300,000 cash pot if they can secure a four-week placement at a UK law firm.  No existing links with the college are necessary to qualify.