Lawyer oversupply: 16% drop in UK training contracts

The Law Society in the UK has reported a 16 per cent drop in the number of available training contracts last year, confirming the impresseion that there is an oversupply of lawyers for the job market. This drop meant that there were just 4874 registered training contracts offered in the 12-month period ending 31 July compared to the previous year's figure of 5,809. The annual number of training contracts has now fallen 23 per cent from a 2007-08 peak of 6,303. Meanwhile, the number of places in Legal Practice Courses has increased 5 per cent in the same period. Peter Crisp, dean and chief executive of BPP Law School, argued that the statistics come amid a pick-up in law firm recruitment, saying: "The market dictates the number of training contracts available and the number of students is a reflection of that. The students are intelligent enough to realise that finding a training contract is difficult at present, with the last two years having been particularly challenging. What we do see is that law firms are starting to recruit again."

Lawyer oversupply: 16% drop in UK training contracts legalweek.com Wed, Apr 6, 2011