Food For Thought: The Hell of Unpaid Work Placements

“From January 2015 all applicants to the New York Bar will be required to carry out 50 hours of legal pro bono work. Should this requirement be introduced for trainee lawyers in England and Wales in order for them to qualify?”

The above is this year’s topic for the fourth Annual Access to Justice Competition.

Let me give you a sample of my view on the issue above in the hope that you will, too, form you own opinion on the matter.

To begin with, I should like to point out that I will not talk about any trainee- solicitorship as I am still in the process of obtaining one and, as such, have no experience with the joys and woes of a trainee’s life.

Once more, I shall express my view through an example because it is a lot easier and mainly because I feel incredibly lazy and unimaginative today (// insert sarcasm //).

Imagine you are a student who has, stupidly so, decided to do an LLB degree at an English or Welsh institution.

Also, imagine that you come from a middle- class (a somewhat chimerical concept these days) family.

Since the fees have trebled (cheers Clegg, you legend), you take out a £ 27,000 loan to cover your tuition fees and a further £ 12, 000 maintenance loan to cover your living expenses so that you don’t have to work as much (you WILL still have to work, mind you) and have the time to find, wait for it,

AN UNPAID WORK PLACEMENT.

Outstanding. So, you do your studies and work part time (because the maintenance grant is not enough to support you and your parents carry the whole weight) and apply for all those vacation schemes.

You would be pleasantly surprised to know that most of them are unpaid (long live capitalism).

Those which are paid involve a telephone interview, an assessment centre, a two- part HR/ partner interview, a case study and a lot of fake smiles, white teeth and tailored suits.

So you somehow manage to get on one of the unpaid ones (as you simply lack the experience, skills or connections to get on the other ones) and you work for the firm for two weeks. For free. Which is great.

Then you go back to university and decide to do yet another work placement with your local law clinic and/ or a county/ magistrates/ crown court for another month or two.

And, because you are such a nice person, you do those for free. Which is also great.

You then somehow manage to graduate from university only to find out that, in order to become a ‘lawyer’, you would need to:

a) Do the LPC, which would cost you between £ 7,000 and £ 14, 000; or

b) Do the BVC (or whatever it’s called these days), which would also cost you that much.

Which is also great.

So let us say that you are incredibly lucky (because of, say, a four- leaf clover you once stepped on…) and find a training contract/ pupillage.

The sad reality is that most trainees or pupils have to extra work outside their working hours for which they are rarely paid any overtime.

Ergo, they work for free. Which is also great.

And, then, they would have to do ANOTHER fifty hours of unpaid, pro- bono work.

Let us now do a rough calculation, shall we?

By the time you become a trainee/ solicitor, you will have spent between £ 46,000 and £ 53, 000 and a further, say, £ 12,000 which you have earned through your part- time job as  a bartender/ waiter/ kebab- man, etc.

This equals to a grand total of some £ 58, 000- £ 65, 000.

Which is great.

So, let me be crystal clear in saying  that NOTHING that I have talked about so far is great; I was just being massively sarcastic.

To me, that abovementioned equals extortion, exploitation and, yes, I will say it, slave labour.

The current rate of youth unemployment in the UK is some 20%. And you want graduates to work for free even more than they do now?

As for the proposal itself.... Well...

To Hell With It!