FAQ

The same query applies to high street lawyers who occasionally get this rate confused as well.

Locum Hourly Rates are not Client Billing Rates

Your locum hourly rate is not your client billing rate. We sometimes get locums registering with us who indicate their hourly rate as being £300 per hour, when similar locums and consultants are charging £55 per hour..

Sometimes we are immediately able to clarify figures with locums, but at other times the lawyers stick to the rates. We never find work at these sorts of levels, but we always respect an individual locum’s requirements!

Calculation of Hourly Rates

If you are working on a £300 an hour basis, you would get £2,100 per day (assuming a seven hour day), £10,500 per week (assuming a five day week and 35 hours in total) and £546,000 per year on a full-time annual basis.

This of course would be fantastic and I can imagine a lot of lawyers would love to be earning that sort of money doing consultancy and locum work!

Unfortunately, this is nowhere near the sort of hourly rates you can expect if you’re working for private practice or in-house.

In House and Corporate Commercial Private Practice Locum Rates

In-house rates tend to be lower traditionally because they are more used to paying a salary equivalent for any locuming work being undertaken. So for most corporate and commercial roles working in-house you’re probably looking at a maximum of about £70 per hour. So a typical day rate for a very senior competent experienced corporate commercial solicitor with a history of completed assignments and good quality references is probably around the £450 to £500 mark per day. This is very much top end and we do have a number of consultants who work with us from time to time who will attract these types of fees and slightly higher.

Competition

However, these consultants will be prepared to drop their rates in order to get certain types of work coming through the door. So even when the headline figure may well be £500 a day, they will probably accept £350 per day if they can see an advantage in taking a role.

For example, there may be a company with an ongoing assignment for three hours a day or one day per week. in this situation the consultant may well charge out at their highest level and aim for a day rate at £500.

However, if another company had an ongoing locum assignment covering maternity for nine months and working full time (or at least as many hours as the consultant could manage to fit round other commitments), then the consultant is likely to drop to around £350 per day simply because it’s ongoing paid work and they’re not going to have to scrape around for other consultancy work during that time.

Gig Economy

This makes a lot of sense because one of the difficulties with doing locum work is that you never know where your next gig is going to come from – welcome to the gig economy! Sometimes corporate and commercial locum lawyers will go for three, four or even five months without any work at certain times of the year or at certain times in economic cycle. So it is important to make hay whilst you can and not continually turn down assignments in order to hold out for higher levels that may never arise.

Our Experience

Our experience from 20 plus years of dealing with locum work is that locum lawyers who have a very stubborn streak when it comes to hourly rates, and who stick rigidly to one specific level will often find that at certain times of the year or certain times in the economic cycle their work completely dries up and they don’t get any. They then spend hours phoning around agencies, including us, chasing us up to find if there’s any work or to try and push for us to do more to find them work, which of course is something we’re very reluctant to do if we know no one is going to pay their sorts of rates unless they’re desperate.

Our Advice

So our advice in relation to hourly rates is not to have any one particular rate and stick to it. Never wait to speak to a recruitment consultant first before setting a rate because in the meantime three other locums may well have come to the same role and you will have missed out, but have a think about what the assignment is and then set your rate accordingly.

If you are going for an ad hoc role for one day a week for six hours a day, then you can afford to go high, simply because if you don’t get the work it doesn’t matter particularly. However, if you are going for a maternity cover that’s going to last six months and you don’t want to miss out, then you need to take a pragmatic approach to your rates right at the start to perhaps think that if your normal hourly rate that you have in mind is £70 an hour, you might need to pitch at £55 an hour in order to get the work.

It’s always a question of supply and demand and at certain times in the economic cycle there is lots of availability and interest from locums for specific jobs and at other times there are no locums looking, which then means of course there is plenty of opportunity to hike your rates.

Supply and Demand

An example of this was in 2022 when property law firms were struggling to find anybody at all to do any locum work because there was such a shortage of cover. As a result locums started to set their own rates and we were seeing unqualified residential conveyancing locums going for £45 an hour when normally these same conveyancers would be pitching around the £30 to £32 per hour. In 2023, and a very different economy, there are now lots of locum still trying to get work at £40 to £45 an hour and failing because the market has completely changed and the current rate is somewhere around the £30 to £35 per hour.

Lawyers Hourly Rates Guide

For details of our experiences of hourly rates and our hourly rate guide please visit our website for the Interim Lawyers monthly updates. We have a full guide that we publish every month outlining our experiences in the previous month of hourly rates and also what we are hearing out in the market. We don’t necessarily just go on the rates that we see ourselves but also on the rates that we hear about from partners of law firms we are involved with buying & selling (we also have a business brokerage department) and also our conversations with locums and solicitors.

Summary

Keep an open mind. This is a very competitive market at the best of times, so it is important if you are going to start working on a long-term basis as a locum you keep an open mind as to what hourly rate you are prepared to work for.

Finally, if you are just starting out as a locum it is really important to put the hourly rate second and think about getting the work first. Any locum or consultancy work on a CV makes a complete difference to your chances of success going forwards because potential firms looking to use your services can see that you have had experience of the type of role before. Any questions? Please feel free to contact us as we are always happy to assist if we can.

The same query applies to high street lawyers who occasionally get this rate confused as well.

Locum Hourly Rates are not Client Billing Rates

Your locum hourly rate is not your client billing rate. We sometimes get locums registering with us who indicate their hourly rate as being £300 per hour, when similar locums and consultants are charging £55 per hour..

Sometimes we are immediately able to clarify figures with locums, but at other times the lawyers stick to the rates. We never find work at these sorts of levels, but we always respect an individual locum’s requirements!

Calculation of Hourly Rates

If you are working on a £300 an hour basis, you would get £2,100 per day (assuming a seven hour day), £10,500 per week (assuming a five day week and 35 hours in total) and £546,000 per year on a full-time annual basis.

This of course would be fantastic and I can imagine a lot of lawyers would love to be earning that sort of money doing consultancy and locum work!

Unfortunately, this is nowhere near the sort of hourly rates you can expect if you’re working for private practice or in-house.

In House and Corporate Commercial Private Practice Locum Rates

In-house rates tend to be lower traditionally because they are more used to paying a salary equivalent for any locuming work being undertaken. So for most corporate and commercial roles working in-house you’re probably looking at a maximum of about £70 per hour. So a typical day rate for a very senior competent experienced corporate commercial solicitor with a history of completed assignments and good quality references is probably around the £450 to £500 mark per day. This is very much top end and we do have a number of consultants who work with us from time to time who will attract these types of fees and slightly higher.

Competition

However, these consultants will be prepared to drop their rates in order to get certain types of work coming through the door. So even when the headline figure may well be £500 a day, they will probably accept £350 per day if they can see an advantage in taking a role.

For example, there may be a company with an ongoing assignment for three hours a day or one day per week. in this situation the consultant may well charge out at their highest level and aim for a day rate at £500.

However, if another company had an ongoing locum assignment covering maternity for nine months and working full time (or at least as many hours as the consultant could manage to fit round other commitments), then the consultant is likely to drop to around £350 per day simply because it’s ongoing paid work and they’re not going to have to scrape around for other consultancy work during that time.

Gig Economy

This makes a lot of sense because one of the difficulties with doing locum work is that you never know where your next gig is going to come from – welcome to the gig economy! Sometimes corporate and commercial locum lawyers will go for three, four or even five months without any work at certain times of the year or at certain times in economic cycle. So it is important to make hay whilst you can and not continually turn down assignments in order to hold out for higher levels that may never arise.

Our Experience

Our experience from 20 plus years of dealing with locum work is that locum lawyers who have a very stubborn streak when it comes to hourly rates, and who stick rigidly to one specific level will often find that at certain times of the year or certain times in the economic cycle their work completely dries up and they don’t get any. They then spend hours phoning around agencies, including us, chasing us up to find if there’s any work or to try and push for us to do more to find them work, which of course is something we’re very reluctant to do if we know no one is going to pay their sorts of rates unless they’re desperate.

Our Advice

So our advice in relation to hourly rates is not to have any one particular rate and stick to it. Never wait to speak to a recruitment consultant first before setting a rate because in the meantime three other locums may well have come to the same role and you will have missed out, but have a think about what the assignment is and then set your rate accordingly.

If you are going for an ad hoc role for one day a week for six hours a day, then you can afford to go high, simply because if you don’t get the work it doesn’t matter particularly. However, if you are going for a maternity cover that’s going to last six months and you don’t want to miss out, then you need to take a pragmatic approach to your rates right at the start to perhaps think that if your normal hourly rate that you have in mind is £70 an hour, you might need to pitch at £55 an hour in order to get the work.

It’s always a question of supply and demand and at certain times in the economic cycle there is lots of availability and interest from locums for specific jobs and at other times there are no locums looking, which then means of course there is plenty of opportunity to hike your rates.

Supply and Demand

An example of this was in 2022 when property law firms were struggling to find anybody at all to do any locum work because there was such a shortage of cover. As a result locums started to set their own rates and we were seeing unqualified residential conveyancing locums going for £45 an hour when normally these same conveyancers would be pitching around the £30 to £32 per hour. In 2023, and a very different economy, there are now lots of locum still trying to get work at £40 to £45 an hour and failing because the market has completely changed and the current rate is somewhere around the £30 to £35 per hour.

Lawyers Hourly Rates Guide

For details of our experiences of hourly rates and our hourly rate guide please visit our website for the Interim Lawyers monthly updates. We have a full guide that we publish every month outlining our experiences in the previous month of hourly rates and also what we are hearing out in the market. We don’t necessarily just go on the rates that we see ourselves but also on the rates that we hear about from partners of law firms we are involved with buying & selling (we also have a business brokerage department) and also our conversations with locums and solicitors.

Summary

Keep an open mind. This is a very competitive market at the best of times, so it is important if you are going to start working on a long-term basis as a locum you keep an open mind as to what hourly rate you are prepared to work for.

Finally, if you are just starting out as a locum it is really important to put the hourly rate second and think about getting the work first. Any locum or consultancy work on a CV makes a complete difference to your chances of success going forwards because potential firms looking to use your services can see that you have had experience of the type of role before. Any questions? Please feel free to contact us as we are always happy to assist if we can.

We often hear an assumption that if you have covered a field of law at some point in your career
you can then at a later stage go back to it as a locum to cover. So, for example, in the past week, we had an application from a commercial litigation solicitor looking at a commercial property locum role and wanting to apply for it. We indicated to them that this would not be possible, as the firm was specifically looking for a commercial property specialist. The solicitor got back to say that they had commercial property experience, albeit from some years ago, and could they be put forward ?

The simple answer is that if you do not have recent experience which is evident on your CV, there is little point applying for a role. A law firm is not going to be interested. However if you are looking to get into other areas of law then you may want to look down the route of local authority locum work. We have seen this time and again over the years with solicitors looking to change fields of law and using local authorities as a stepping stone to enable them to do this.

Local government roles tend to be much more flexible in terms of who they are prepared to recruit to cover for them, partly because they seem to be more desperate than private practice, not as selective and a bit more flexible in terms of when your experience was or how little you have. So for example if you have a piece of experience dating back 10 years in commercial property, and you are a commercial litigator wanting to switch to commercial property, then finding the agencies who undertake local authority locum work are probably your best port of call.

Once you have the work on your CV, then you can start to make the transition across to becoming a specialist in that particular area of law in private practice.

As a final note, it is possible to switch from one area to another if you have related experience. So in the case of the commercial litigator above – if they have property litigation experience – a firm may well be interested in them for commercial property work if there is a reasonable element of litigation work that could potentially be completed as well.

Am I considered as self-employed or as an employee?

About 95% of locums working through Interim Lawyers are self-employed. Working on a self-employed basis gives both the locum and the law firm or in house legal department so much more flexibility and is better from a tax perspective.

However the question as to whether the assignment is classed as self-employed or employed also depends on the Inland Revenue (HMRC). For example, if you worked for one firm for 3 years on a regular monthly salary payment equivalent, HMRC may well determine that your arrangement is one of an employee/employer and you would be treated as such from a tax perspective. It is quite clear however that locums engaged for short periods of time who regularly work for a wide range of law firms or in house legal departments are self-employed for the purposes of tax and national insurance.

Longer-term or regular locum employment for specific fixed hours each week may be regarded by the Inland Revenue and contributions agency as salaried employment and therefore liable to PAYE and employer’s NIC. We have never come across an arrangement that has fallen prey to this, but you do need to be aware of the tax implications of just working for one firm for a lengthy period of time.

Q: Am I covered by professional indemnity insurance if I work as a locum or do I need to take out a policy?

A: Unlike doctors and other professions, solicitors’ firm Professional Indemnity Insurance usually covers locum solicitors working on behalf of the law firm. In 99.5% of cases, locum and temporary members of staff are covered by our clients’ professional indemnity insurance policy. If you are unsure at any time before an assignment begins please contact us and we will gladly check for you. Whilst you are on-site with a client you can ask the firm’s practice manager or one of the partners and ask for confirmation.

Most law firms would be surprised to be asked about PII because it is taken for granted that locums are covered, but with all the changes in the market and different rules applying to so many areas of a law firm practice, it can be worth checking.

Some locum solicitors do take out their own policies just to be on the safe side, and the cheapest way of doing this is to use a price comparison site.

To give you an idea of the cost, we have professional indemnity insurance ourselves, although our terms exclude liability, and the cost is minimal – less than £30 per month. We would expect a similar rate for a locum solicitor because we understand that liability for any errors will rest with the client in most circumstances rather than the locum.

For a further article with advice on professional indemnity insurance, please visit: https://interimlawyers.co.uk/locums-and-professional-indemnity-insurance-2/

What are the locum rates of pay for a solicitor or lawyer?

This is a difficult question to answer but we a produce a monthly guide which you can access by clicking here.

The hourly or daily rate is usually a matter of negotiation between the parties although we very often specify an hourly rate based on discussions with our client before an introduction is made.

A lot of locums have an hourly rate they use to start negotiations and this tends to vary according to the length of an assignment. Longer assignments can sometimes attract lower hourly rates but not always.

Rates of pay can depend on the time of year, level of demand, availability of locums and the location of the assignment.

What are the terms and conditions of employment for a locum?

This will depend upon whether you are self-employed or an employee of the law firm or in house legal department who have signed you.

If you are engaged on a long term locum assignment and have been advised by an accountant that you are likely to be regarded as an employee, you should be offered a contract of employment specifying details such as salary, entitlement to annual leave, sick leave etc. within eight weeks of beginning your employment.

For locums who are self-employed, the terms of the contract will be those agreed with the law firm or in house legal department. The usual range of employment rights protecting salaried employees will not apply.

As a locum on a self-employed basis, you need to be aware that it is highly likely at some stage in your locum career a firm will dispense of your services at extremely short notice – this can be as short as a few hours. This is after all the main purpose of employers using locums and temporary staff – flexibility.

You will need to negotiate your terms with the employer. We have a template that our signed up locums can use to agree to terms if required, although it very often is just a case of agreeing hours, confirming the hourly rate already arranged and establishing exactly what work is going to be dealt with.

Q: How, when and what will I be paid for my locum services?

A: Locums are paid directly by the hiring law firm or in house legal department. Interim Lawyers do not employ locums directly.

This is why the majority of the locums working through Interim Lawyers are self-employed. Self-employment is very easy to set up. It involves a telephone call to the HMRC to notify them of your intention. After this, you simply have to issue an invoice for the work you have completed.

Payment is on a weekly basis unless agreed otherwise. You issue an invoice to the law firm or in house legal department who ought to pay you within 2-3 working days.

Most firms pay by cheque or via BACS (Bank Automated Clearing System) directly to your bank or building society account. It is important to use the services of a suitably experienced accountant when becoming self-employed. You need to be aware of the expenses that can be put against your income in order to reduce your tax liability etc…

The payment levels depend very much on the assignment and are almost always agreed upon before we pass you through to speak directly to our clients. See our hourly rates article for details of typical amounts paid.

Q: Will I get any travelling allowance?  

A: We do not pay our locums anything and this includes expenses. It is quite rare to find law firms and in house legal departments prepared to pay expenses or a contribution towards them. Usually, the hourly rate agreed is considered to be the overall amount payable.

However, there is no harm in asking before you start an assignment. If you want to include mileage or other expenses in your rate we can negotiate this with the employer before you start. It is rare for this to happen and may also affect your potential chances of securing a booking.

For most assignments in popular areas, eg London, we have a good number of locums available for the majority of the year to choose from. For these posts, we do not recommend requesting mileage or other expenses. However, there are some assignments where you are more likely to get a favourable response.

Some employers may actually provide overnight accommodation as part of the package. Some sole practitioners will offer you the use of their house whilst they go on holiday or know a friendly bed and breakfast owner who will do a good rate.

Q: Will working as a locum affect my chance of permanent employment in future?

A: Yes.

Quite simply, when the good times were booming, and law firms were recruiting permanent staff on high salaries and reasonable work conditions, the vast majority would not touch locum solicitors with a barge pole. We should know. Between 2004 and 2008 we dealt with a grand total of about 3 locum assignments and just short of 1,000 permanent vacancies.

None of the registered locums on our books were even interviewed for the permanent vacancies, even when there was very little response from our registered permanent candidates.

The usual reason for this is that employers believe locums to be damaged goods – after all, if you have worked as a locum you have experienced the following:

1. Freedom
2. Flexibility
3. Being your own boss
4. Being paid a higher hourly rate than the employees at a particular firm

Once you have done this, it is hard to go back to being an employee, or so the theory goes.

It is of course perfectly possible to go back and work as a permanent member of staff, and people do on a regular basis, but do not be surprised if employers hold your locum status against you in future years.

If you are locuming out of necessity, this is of course different. Locuming out of necessity is usually done whilst waiting for permanent work to crop up. Firms will still look on suspiciously, but a few weeks is better than nothing after all.

Q: Can my locum contract be checked?

A: Lawyers uncertain about the terms on which they are being engaged as a locum, for example, whether or not they are self-employed or an employee, can send a copy to us for checking. We are very happy to give any contract the once over, but you must be aware that we do not hold ourselves out as able to offer specific employment law advice. You must also ensure that this is done well before accepting the terms of the contract offered.

It is important to have some sort of agreement set up, even if it is just an email confirming the assignment in writing.

Q: What do I do if I have had change in circumstances (i.e. a change of contact details)?

A: It is important that you keep your locum records with us up-to-date, so that you can benefit firstly from finding out about new assignments and opportunities, and also so that we have the right contact information and experience to pass onto potential employers. You can amend your details by emailing jobs@interimlawyers.co.uk or calling 0207 127 4343.

Please note that if you do locum assignments elsewhere and don’t tell us, you are quite often taking yourself out of the running for any new work coming in. After all, we are unlikely to put someone forward who hasn’t worked for a few years, when we may have someone on our books who has worked through us for the past 6 months constantly (and we are aware of this).

Q: How do I register to work as a locum for Interim Lawyers?

A: Click here to register as a locum. Once we have your registration we will log you onto our database and keep you posted with anything suitable arising.

Please note that when registering we need to know the following:

1. Your specialist areas of law. So many CVs for locums fail to say exactly what it is you are able to do. If you can handle a caseload of either Conveyancing, Commercial Property or Wills & Probate, please tell us. Failing to do so will simply mean you miss out on opportunities in these areas.

2. Your general availability. It is no use registering for locum work with us if you can only work weekends!

3. Your standard hourly rate. If you don’t know this, have a look at our hourly rate page for an idea.

Once you have registered, your details will be logged onto our locum database for the fields of law you have expressed an interest in.

When you get to the end of an assignment you can drop us an email and let us know you are available again. We always keep locums updated in any event with all assignments coming through to us, whether you are currently in one or not.

Q: How do you communicate with your locums?

A: We know that keeping our locums up to date with our business is important. That is why we produce our regular newsletter for candidates, both locum and permanent, which appears monthly (give or take a few!).  It keeps you updated, both with vacancies coming in generally, advice on marketing your services, professional developments, and the latest information from around the business that affects you. We deal directly with locums via email and text message regarding any new assignments coming in, but similarly are quite happy to talk to you on the phone where necessary.

Q: Why should I want to work as a locum?

A: Working as a locum solicitor can offer flexibility, variety and a change of scenery on a regular basis. Whilst our order books in recent years have not exactly been bulging, a good number of locums have found regular ongoing work.

Locums are in great demand at certain times of the year in law firms and in house legal departments. There are several reasons for this. Law firms have discovered that employing locums on a short term contract is a cheaper option than taking on permanent members of staff. Firms are also opening for increasingly longer hours, and this means having extra solicitors to cover the working week.  As the legal job marketplace gets more flexible, law firms find themselves with staff who want to work part-time or job share, requiring more staff and subsequently more cover for those staff when they are off work. Some areas of the UK face recruitment problems, although these are rare in the current climate.

Finally, an increasing number of solicitors are getting involved in providing additional services or non-legal services (eg, HR management, ski instructor, nursing home owner etc..) as well as training & lecturing, providing continuing professional development (CPD), all of which may take them away from the office and result in the need for locums.

Q: How much do I as a locum have to pay the agency?

A: You pay nothing to us (in fact it is illegal for a recruitment agency to charge a candidate); we charge our Clients (law firms, in house legal departments and employers) a fixed rate.

Q: Who pays my Tax and N.I Insurance?

A:  Depends on whether you are self-employed (issuing an invoice at the end of each week) or whether you are on the temporary payroll. It is very important that you don’t spend all the money you earn. Being self-employed you will be accountable for your tax returns. We strongly advise you to get advice from an accountant and have your tax returns completed by them. We can recommend a low-cost accountant (our own accountant in fact) and you simply need to email us at jobs@interimlawyers.co.uk and ask for his details.

Q: What do I do if I can’t fulfil an assignment?

A: There will be occasional times as a locum solicitor when you will not be able to fulfil an assignment for one reason or another. It is absolutely vital that you contact us by phone, text and/or email as soon as possible so that we can find a replacement. We can be contacted Monday – Sunday between the hours of 08.00 – 17.00hrs on 0207 127 4343.

The best way of contacting us to notify outside these hours is by email. We regularly pick up messages.

We would naturally appreciate you keeping all cancellations to a minimum wherever possible. We penalise any locums who pull out on us without a very good reason and will certainly avoid using them again in future.

Q: What is the cost of having a locum?

A: Locum costs depend on a wide range of factors, but usually the rule of thumb is that the longer the assignment the lower the rates.

Location plays an important part in determining hourly rates. For example, if you work in Kings Lynn there are very few locums who live within say 75 miles of your offices. This means that a locum will have to stop overnight. Accommodation costs in Kings Lynn are usually reasonable so the hourly rate will not be that affected. However – if you are based in Newquay in Cornwall there are again very few locums residing close by but the accommodation costs at certain times of the year are exceptionally high so hourly rates will be considerably higher.

Length is the other major issue, although a good number of locums have become fairly immune to promises of length assignments that are offered simply to try and haggle the hourly rate down! It is fairly easy to spot firms who are trying it on and recruit a locum for 2 weeks cover at a low rate by indicating a likely duration of 6 months. The rates will probably be lower for longer-term assignments, but this can only be a very small reduction in a lot of cases.

Costs can be broken down into the following:

1. Hourly rate paid directly to the locum lawyer. This is usually termed as the “locum hourly rate” in our correspondence with you.
2. Our fee – this is paid separately and is based on 18% of monies paid to the locum.

There are no other costs. The locum will issue an invoice to you on a weekly basis, payable within 3 working days by BACS. We issue an invoice for our fee on a monthly basis, based on the amounts the locum invoices you for during the month.

As a general guide, the overwhelming majority of our locums work on a rate of £25-35 per hour (this has increased in recent times and varies year on year) – see our hourly rate guide for details.

Our fee of 18% is non-negotiable – we charge the same rate on every assignment – click here for our locum fee page. However, if a locum takes a permanent role with you we have different arrangements. Please contact us for details.

Q: How many locum legal recruitment agencies should I register my CV with?

A: As many as you like, but we recommend giving one agency priority over others. This will be the agency you have your primary relationship with and you can become a ‘trusted’ locum. We tend to know before sending out an assignment which of our locums is likely to respond, how long it will take them to respond, and also which one we are likely to go with once they have responded.

We also know that there will be certain locums who will only respond to us if they have already checked with their primary agency to make sure they do not have the same vacancy on their books as well.

This is good practice because your relationship with the locum recruitment consultant is extremely important for ensuring you get continued assignments flowing your way.

Obviously, for assignments in far-flung places where there are fewer locums, you will get more offerings if you are flexible on travel and this will open doors for you, but for assignments in central London for example we get a very healthy response usually for every assignment coming our way.

Q: I am a solicitor working for a law firm and looking to take on contracts elsewhere – is this possible?

A: Yes. We have a number of solicitors registered with us as locums and contractors who work for one firm full time or just about full time, yet work for one or more other firms at various times as a contractor or locum. There is no reason why you can’t do this, provided you tell your main employer about the others. I believe it is called ‘moonlighting’ if you don’t have permission, and this is usually covered by your contract of employment!

A typical example is a family solicitor with children panel membership who works in a solicitors firm undertaking privately funded work and not LSC funded family law work. The solicitor has SQM Supervisor status but is not using it with his/her existing firm. Provided your current firm is happy with you working elsewhere, the family solicitor can assign their supervisor status to another practice and work for both law firms. Very common, particularly when LSC rates are so abysmal for legal aid work.

Areas of law in demand are fairly straightforward. It is almost always the case that solicitors firms recruit Conveyancers to cover for annual leave, sick leave and maternity leave.

Litigators can be covered for, or so the argument goes. After all, if you get in a mess with a litigation file it is easy just to palm it off onto Counsel and let them deal with it.

Residential Conveyancing requires careful management. Anything less than this can result in professional negligence claims. As a result, it has always been the case, and probably always will be, that residential conveyancing locums are the most in-demand.

If you wanted to become a professional locum and work 9 months in every 12, residential conveyancing with the ability to do some light commercial conveyancing would be the place to be.

Areas to avoid, which tend to go up and down like a yo-yo, are litigation and corporate commercial. Family law has been a graveyard for some years since the demise of legal aid and a load of redundant family solicitors. Crime has never really existed as a solid area for locums and litigation tends to be too sporadic.

At Interim Lawyers, we are always delighted to hear from residential and commercial conveyancing locums looking for additional work or even just starting out as locum lawyers.

Email us your CV to jobs@interimlawyers.co.uk

The use of the term ‘contractor’ tends to describe a situation where a lawyer or solicitor is working on an ongoing basis, usually to deal with excess capacity or a busy period.

The use of the word ‘locum’ tends to be used when referring to a lawyer or solicitor covering for sick leave, maternity cover, replacement cover (during notice periods) or any short term cover.

In the IT industry, quite a few skilled employees are used on a contractor basis to deal with specific projects. This does not tend to happen with the legal profession – projects per se do not tend to crop up. It is usually cover for specific incidents or periods of time that is more relevant.

Locums work on a self-employed basis. In other industries, contractors work on an employed basis via the employment agency that introduced them. In law firms, contractors work on a self-employed basis as well, not usually via agencies unless dealing with a large multinational.

We don’t think so. In fact, we would be glad to publish any reasoning from any umbrella company as to why a locum would want to use an umbrella company to get paid.

Look at the facts. Assuming you do 20 weeks in a year at a rate of £1,000 a week, your annual income is going to be £20,000.

Your tax on this as a self-employed person is going to be negligible. The first £10k’ish is tax-free, and the remainder is done at 20%. Your national insurance contributions will be minimal and you can knock off plenty of expenses before getting taxed – speak to an accountant about the expenses to be deducted – low-cost accountancy at www.businessbusstop.com if you are looking for one!

An umbrella company sets you up as a limited company and handles all your administration.

Gee whizz! What administration? Issuing weekly invoices, submitting an annual self-assessment to HMRC and paying your national insurance and income tax? It is hardly very taxing.

The umbrella company takes a fee from your hard-earned locum monies for work you could quite comfortably do yourself.

We have only come across one locum using an umbrella company for a very long time in recruitment. In that instance, I don’t think the locum got any benefit at all. Completely pointless.

If anyone knows of a reason to justify the use of one of these companies apart from laziness, please let us know and we’ll publish it on our site.

Be prepared to be very, very flexible.

For example, if we email you on a Friday afternoon and ask you if you were free to go to Scarborough on the Monday morning, say yes.

If we ask you to cover a 3-month assignment starting in three weeks time working 3 day weeks for 6 weeks in Portsmouth, say yes.

If we then get a lucrative booking on a full-time basis for 6 months covering maternity and need a locum, it is likely we are going to put you forward for it.

If you do not want to do locum work please do the following:

1. Take a locum booking and then decide you don’t want it 12 hours before it is due to start and after we have done reference checks as well as the employer.

2. Um and ah about an assignment 6 miles from your home address before deciding it is too much hassle and besides you have got to pick the kids up from school at 3pm.

3. Pitch at a completely unrealistic hourly rate, even though you are on benefits and in dire straits.

All of these things have happened in the last 12 months. We favour locums who favour us. If I send out a vacancy and need 5 days cover urgently in some far-flung part of the UK, I will try and make sure I favour the person who covered it for me when we get something in closer to home.

Locums who cannot be flexible and have very specific requirements are extremely unlikely to get much work through us.

The quick answer to this question is yes, you can. We have had a couple of assignments covered by locums in the past who have conditions on their practising certificate, but this is very rare and opportunities, where solicitors firms would be prepared to take you, are few and far between.

One of the main issues is trust. Locums are often placed fairly blindly into law firms and the firm is completely dependent on our judgment when sending across a CV.

Every locum on our books is checked out before we send over a CV and we are usually able to determine whether there have been any incidents in your past. We always disclose conditions or previous appearances before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal or any involvement with the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

We appreciate that quite often conditions relate to minor breaches of the Solicitors Rules in respect of accounting procedures and this is why on a couple of occasions we have been able to assist locums with conditions.

If you have conditions on your certificate that relate to issues of alleged dishonesty, serious misconduct or conduct falling below the level required of a solicitor, you are unlikely to get locum work through us. Naturally, we are happy to discuss any conditions with you prior to registration. Please be aware that thanks to a number of websites publishing all former decisions by the SRA (even when they themselves remove them after a certain time) we can usually work out if there have been appearances before the SDT etc…

This is not always the case though and if we do miss someone we do not accept liability if a law firm takes a locum through us and subsequently find that the locum had conditions at some point or appeared before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

The same applies to Legal Executives. Although very few appear to ever get hauled before the ILEX disciplinary tribunal we still want to know about it if you have been before the tribunal and also do background checks.

We normally advise you not to attend. Over the years we have been dealing with locum assignments we find that the vast majority of interviews like this are a complete waste of time, both for the client (the law firm) and the locum. Firstly the locum has to take time off work, which is a headache for most if they have to give up valuable hours to do this. Secondly, there is not really any reason for interviewing – the beauty of using locums is that the locum can be asked to leave at any time – you are self-employed – so if there is something wrong with your work the firm can get rid of you at any point. Thirdly we have had some really, really bad experiences of the following occurring:

1. The firm tries to get the locum to agree to a discount on their hourly rate and spend the interview time haggling.
2. The firm tries to get the locum to agree to a salary rather than an hourly rate in order to save money.
3. The firm cancels the interview at very short notice after the locum has driven 100 miles to their offices – after all – it is only a locum role and nothing important (this was the reason given by the law firm in question).

Naturally, we are happy to arrange interviews if locums want to attend them, but we really think they are unnecessary and time-consuming… Zoom, Team or telephone interviews can deal much more efficiently with any queries that need to be discussed and save everyone time and effort.

Think carefully before agreeing to travel for interview.

There are certain areas of the UK where locums are in great demand and other areas where there appears to be a lot of them.

Firstly, it is important to point out that certain types of locum are more in demand than others. For example, it is quite rare to get a request for a criminal solicitor locum anywhere in the UK.  Whilst it does happen, and we have had solicitor locum requests in as diverse of places as Mold and the Falkland Islands, they are few and far between and the vast majority of locum assignments coming through Interim Lawyers and Ten Percent Legal Recruitment are for conveyancers, wills and probate solicitors, commercial property lawyers, family solicitors and company commercial solicitors. Civil litigation and commercial litigation solicitors are asked for from time to time, but it seems that most firms are okay to do without cover in the summer for litigation work and in the longer term they tend to cover the work internally.

Conveyancing locum work is cyclical. In the summer there is a lot of conveyancing work available for locums and in fact, in the month of August this year, we had a number of locum assignments where we had nobody available to cover. This is rare indeed and Interim Lawyers usually has a success rate of about 98% in securing a locum CV for a particular assignment.

Wills and Probate, again, tends to be concentrated around the summer months, but we do find quite a few longer-term roles available simply because there is such a shortage of wills & probate solicitors and fee earners across the UK.

There are certain hotspots for locum work that are worth knowing about if you are thinking of entering into the world of locum assignments.

Firstly, we get a lot of requests for locums from solicitors firms based in Hampshire and Surrey. These are particularly around Portsmouth and Southampton, and moving up the coast towards Brighton and into West Sussex. Not only do we get quite a few requests for locums in places as diverse as Emsworth, Chichester and Bognor Regis, but we also find it harder to source locums for places like Basingstoke, Portsmouth and the outer reaches of Southampton including Eastleigh. If you are available to cover these areas for residential conveyancing, commercial property and/or wills and probate, then chances are you will pick up quite a bit of work.

The other major hotspot is around Wiltshire, North Somerset and Dorset. We do not seem to get many requests for places in Devon and Cornwall and I suspect there are a good number of retired solicitors based in these areas providing seasonal locum services to local solicitors firms at a reasonable cost, hence the lack of any requirement for the use of a locum agency like Interim Lawyers. However, places around Shaftesbury, Salisbury, Bath, Swindon and Dorchester, seem to have a shortage and solicitors’ firms will quite often try to secure the services of a locum in these areas at quite short notice throughout the year.

Surprisingly, Bristol again is an area where we have traditionally found it harder to source locums because also quite traditionally Bristol solicitors’ firms do not seem to have kept up the salary levels needed to secure accommodation in the Bristol area of reasonable quality. Whilst house prices and the cost of living have increased dramatically, the salary levels for most Bristol firms have stayed pretty static or dropped which has meant a shortage of qualified staff in the area and has hence led to a lack of locums because firms are reluctant to pay locum rates. The same applies in Gloucester and Cheltenham where similar demand tends to be regular.

Our main area of business for locum assignments is around London. It is fair to say that a good percentage of the locum assignments on a weekly basis occur within 20 miles of central London but here again there are areas that can be a bit like a desert when it comes to sourcing locums. Whilst central London solicitors’ firms have no problem at all sourcing locums through us and we are very often oversubscribed with locums applying for any assignments that crop up in WC1, EC1 and W1, as soon as we move out of the centre of London and into the suburbs it is much, much harder to source locums.

Particular hotspots include East London (for example Stratford, Walthamstow and Ilford), South East London (e.g. Lewisham, Bromley and Dartford), and South West London (including Kingston, Sutton and New Malden).

This is mainly due to transport issues because it is considerably easier for most locums to travel into the centre of London to cover assignments than it is to get to the suburbs, especially if the locum is commuting in from outside London, which most are.

One major area that can be classed as possible as the work hotspot in the UK is East Anglia and Ipswich & Norwich in particular.  Due to the fairly remote location of these two cities, it can be hard to find locums prepared to travel out and stay locally at a reasonable rate that law firms can afford.

The same applies to pretty much the whole of Kent once you are outside the M25. Surprisingly places like Canterbury, Folkestone and Margate can be notoriously hard to find anyone prepared to work in them. This does not necessarily make it a hotspot, but more to do with the level of wages being paid in what is a pretty high cost of living areas.

One final hotspot is Cumbria, where firms actually do pay good locum rates to secure staff to cover assignments, but it is quite rare to find a locum willing to travel up there. Firstly this is to do with temporary accommodation costs and secondly because there are very few locums who live in the area as it would be difficult to make a living out of the Cumbrian law firms.

The North West for us has traditionally been a problematic area for locums and we have found some solicitors’ firms in the area are quite demanding in their requirements from a locum and expecting too much from the service potentially being supplied. It is quite rare in other areas of the country but fairly prevalent around Manchester and we have had a number of experiences with solicitors firms which have made us quite wary about introducing locums in the area or even taking the time to source candidates. Solicitors’ firms expect very low rates and we have had locums placed in firms where the firm has expected them to undertake business development work for them and generate clients which of course is not something locums are usually there to do.

The best way to use hotspots for locum work is to research the cost of accommodation in the area (AirBnB is getting particularly good at providing cheap accommodation of a reasonable standard) and when you receive an update from Interim Lawyers Legal Recruitment to go for the areas indicated above. Chances are you will be the only applicant.  If you know the cost of accommodation in advance you can factor this into your hourly rate and if a firm is keen enough to get a locum in then they are usually keen enough to pay the premium for someone who needs to stop locally.

The key to getting consistent locum work is to be as flexible as possible, although we do appreciate that circumstances for a lot of people preclude a lot of flexibility. However, regardless of whether it is fair or not, or easy for a particular locum in particular circumstances, flexibility remains the key to getting regular locum assignments.

Interesting you should ask! We have an article on the site setting out exactly what needs to be in the CV or you can download a CV writing pack from our sister site – www.legalcareercoaching.co.uk

The article can be found here: https://interimlawyers.co.uk/how-to-write-a-cv-for-locum-work/

We run your assignment past our locums to see who is available and interested. Responses are usually received within about 40-60 minutes and we forward across our preferred locums for you to consider. At the same time, we will send over a copy of our terms and conditions for your attention. Nothing too onerous in these – our locums work on a self-employed basis and invoice you weekly. We invoice you monthly with our fee being based on the hours worked.

Once you have decided on your preferred locum we arrange for you to speak to them directly or book them in to cover your assignment. On request we send you one or two references, proof of ID, proof of residence and a copy of the locum’s practising certificate if relevant.

The process can be undertaken extremely quickly. Our record is an assignment registration at 4.50pm on a Thursday, with a locum starting at 9am on the Friday.

Q: Can NQ Solicitors work as Locums?

A: No, not really.

In most areas of law, solicitors firms are looking for experienced lawyers to cover annual leave, sick leave, long term absence, change of personnel, increase in workload, etc.. etc… The locum is expected to go into a department, pick up a caseload and start working on it without anyone else needing to tell him or her what needs doing.

Unfortunately for most NQ solicitors, you need fairly close supervision and it is rare to get a newly qualified solicitor who is able to work on their own initiative throughout the day without someone else assisting you.

However – sometimes we do get requests for an NQ (newly qualified) Solicitor to join a solicitors firm as a locum as they have a large case that they need help with for example, or alternatively another NQ Solicitor is off work ill. In these circumstances, it is possible that an NQ Solicitor can pick up locum work, but these types of roles are few and far between. We are not even sure we would recommend to an NQ that it is a good idea to work as a locum as it can affect your career prospects and future opportunities – some firms seem to hold it against you if you have a locum assignment on your CV.

We have a full article on this including our guide to getting paid and a template for a 7 day letter before action.

There are a number of professional locum solicitors in the UK who solely specialise in producing short-term cover to firms on an annual basis, and very often get a range of repeat bookings. There are also a number of semi-retired solicitors who undertake ad-hoc assignments as and when they come up, simply to a) keep their hand in and b) give them something to do and c) earn a bit of money.

As far as we know there are no locums in the UK who have guaranteed sources of work throughout the year. There are plenty who seem to go from one assignment to the next and have bookings constantly for certain times of the year, but none of it is ever guaranteed and they are often in need of work here and there, and hence are registered with the various locum agencies including ourselves.

So the answer to the question is no there is no guarantee of locum work for any field of law.

What we can say however is that there are certain areas of law where locums traditionally have been in more demand than others, providing you are able to travel to cover assignments. The main two of these are Conveyancing and Wills & Probate.

If you are a solicitor or legal executive who has about 3 to 5 years of residential conveyancing experience or wills and probate experience, then chances are you will pick up locum work across the UK on a regular basis, and, if you are any good, you will attract repeat bookings.

However, if you are a commercial litigation lawyer, it is very likely that you will be doing ad-hoc locum work as and when it comes up.

The only time that locum work as a career move is a good idea is if you are not in need of a regular income to pay the mortgage and want to work on an ad hoc basis. This applies to all areas of law, whether this is conveyancing or family because no locum work is ever guaranteed and any assignments can be cancelled without any notice at all.

Do not listen to anyone who claims that they earn hundreds of thousands of pounds from doing locum work and pick up constant bookings. We certainly have not met any locums who do this, and we know of over 700 in the UK. We do get phone calls fairly regularly from solicitors who say “I’ve heard from Lance the Locum that you can earn £150k a year doing locum work in solicitors’ firms. How do I get a piece of the action?”

There are over a thousand regular locum solicitors and legal executives working in the UK. Some of these hold down a number of different roles, whether legal or non-legal and undertake locum work either as a sideline or as a main source of income. However, certain areas of law attract more interest than others.

Why is this?

The main answer is that any employer will try to get away without having to arrange short-term cover for any lawyer who goes on annual leave, maternity leave, sick leave or simply has a large increase in their caseload.

And why not. The main aim of working in a law firm is to generate money and to make a profit so that the business sustains itself and supports the people within it. It is not ever a profitable decision to take on a locum if the firm can survive without one. The difficulty a lot of firms have is recognising when a firm can survive without a locum.

One thing is clear – most UK law firms will try to arrange cover for their property lawyers, regardless of how short the cover needs to be. This is because property files are pretty much hands-on the entire time, and if a fee earner goes away and leaves a file running, the firm could almost guarantee that the other sides on the transaction will immediately want to exchange contracts or have queries that need urgently dealing with. If a fee earner is away for 2 weeks it slows the entire transaction down and runs the risk of negligence claims.

The same applies to family law. Very often in family law, there are issues that need to be dealt with swiftly, and if the fee earner is away on annual leave this cannot happen.

These two areas are the two most in-demand short-term cover requests we receive for locums. Most other locum requests are either long term or in relation to specific requirements, such as a departing fee earner or an increased workload.

Wills and probate is a good example. For wills and probate, most assignments are a minimum of 3 months, quite often considerably longer than this. This is because there is a national shortage of wills and probate solicitors after a large number jettisoned by law firms in the 1990s as markets were opened up and firms thought they could see the writing on the wall for the demise of wills and probate. However, with the recent hugely profitable Power of Attorney trade, there has been a large increase in the amount of work coming into private client departments of law firms, and for this reason, wills and probate lawyers are very often in demand. However, the work very rarely needs to be covered in the short term, and we often get requests for wills and probate lawyers to cover until a firm has recruited permanently. They have often not quite paid their wills and probate staff enough to retain them and they have moved on to pastures new, and the whole merry go round starts again of finding a new member of staff, trying to avoid paying them too much but needing to employ a locum in the interim, racking up huge costs and not investing sufficiently in the future of their wills and probate department, to avoid the same thing happening again a few years down the line.

The only other area of fairly constant demand for short and long term is local authority locums, across a whole wide range of areas, but this is a completely different topic!

We often see local authorities looking for staff and read about placements from our locums’ CVs showing hourly rates at levels rarely seen outside large London commercial practices.

So for example we quite often notice that childcare lawyers coming from a local authority background expect considerably more than childcare lawyers who have worked in private practice. The difference can be quite dramatic – in private practice, it is rare to see an hourly rate above £35 an hour for family solicitors of any length of experience or complexity of work to be covered. However, for local authority locum lawyers, it is very rare to see anyone earning less than £35 an hour, you’re more likely to see somebody working at £45 to £50 an hour for what is fairly similar work, but just from the other side.

Why is this?

Many years ago back in the good old days of local authorities trying to get out of doing any work, the HR departments signed up various councils to RPO’s, Recruitment Process Outsourcers. Some examples of names in this field included Commensura and Matrix, one of whom was partly funded by James Caan. These RPO’s basically took over the whole recruitment process from the council HR department of sourcing temporary staff. So if a local authority needed a locum property lawyer, they would log on to the system, add the vacancy and the RPO would send it out to all the agencies on their list, collate CV’s onto the system and basically deal with the whole recruitment process, including payment.

You may ask why would the HR department outsource their job to someone else? Good question! I attended a meeting with one of our local councils back in 2007 when the HR director was explaining the new system and how good it would be for everyone concerned. At the time the Department for Work and Pensions was running an executive coaching scheme for anyone who was recently made redundant, and I am aware that the HR person who spoke to us that day was in that coaching scheme within 12 months of giving that talk. I hope he got a good payout, but this is a classic example of the bizarre and wonderful world of local authorities. Why anyone would outsource their own job, knowing that they were likely to get made redundant is just beyond me. However, what has happened over time is that the RPO’s have operated an effectively ‘closed shop’ of recruitment agencies as only certain recruitment agencies are signed up with them to introduce staff. This is because you have to comply with a whole range of requirements including high levels of insurance, and also all locums have to be employed by the agency and through the RPO’s system. A lot of smaller agencies like ourselves are simply shut out.

As a result of this, there has been a national shortage in some areas of locums, and as a result of the national shortage of locums, their hourly rates have shot up, creating an artificial market. I’m not sure this will continue forever as new innovations like this tend to be cyclical, but as it stands this is partly why local authority rates are so high.

The other reason they are so high is because of IR35 legislation that has started to be applied by local authorities to all locum assignments. The new IR35 legislation basically says that if you are within the legislation you must pay the same tax as somebody who was in an employed position, even if you are working as a locum. Rather than the contractor or locum being responsible for determining whether they fall within the legislation, the onus is now on the local authority to make the decision. Furthermore, the local authority and/or any recruiters involved in the process have to agree to be liable for any unpaid tax that the contractor does not pay themselves. As a result, this has made the whole locum industry considerably more expensive for local authorities. Why? Because suddenly assignments that may have been covered at £35 an hour on a self-employed basis are now being covered at £50 an hour on an employed equivalent basis. The locum is suddenly needing to pay national insurance and PAYE on their earnings, and there are no ways around this. Virtually the only way to get paid for any roles that fall within the IR35 specifications is to use an umbrella company that employs the locum and pay PAYE & National Insurance. Some agencies also do the same job, although Interim Lawyers and TP Legal Recruitment do not. There seem to be no easy ways around this, and it is for this reason as well as the whole local authority limitation with RPO’s, that has led to an artificial market in the local authority sector, which simply does not exist in the private practice.

There is no difference between a locum lawyer and an interim lawyer. It is just a question of language. We set up Interim Lawyers many years ago simply because all other domain names of a similar nature have been taken! Interim lawyers are exactly the same as locum lawyers; they work on an interim or temporary basis.

In-house interim lawyers work in the same way. There has been some confusion at times because of the way local authorities use the word locum when looking for staff, and in the past, there has been a distinction between lawyers working on a fixed-term basis to cover say annual leave for two weeks, and lawyers working on an ongoing basis covering specific cases or caseloads as and when required.

Some recruitment agencies have referred to lawyers working on an ad-hoc basis but ongoing as “interim lawyers”, and lawyers working on a fixed-term basis covering annual leave or similar as “locum lawyers”.

In reality, there is no difference between the two, but the differentiation has been made because of the way some locum solicitors are paid for their work.

Some recruitment agencies have a commission deal with umbrella companies (not to be confused with a dodgy backhander of course), whereby if a locum signs with a specific umbrella company, the locum agency gets paid a fee. Locums sign up to umbrella companies to get paid for work on a fixed-term basis and the umbrella company pays them as an employee of their own limited company. We have been offered £200.00 per introduction by umbrella companies, so we can only presume that there is some considerable profit to be made in their use. Umbrella companies however are really only relevant to locums who are working on a fixed-term basis, rather than ad-hoc as and when required. Our company does not recommend using them – they are, for most people, an unwanted administrative expense. We think this is why the terms have differed with some agencies – umbrella companies are not really relevant for ad hoc interim solicitor roles and more suited to a fixed term.

Yes!

Locum solicitors can be notoriously bad at keeping a record of their previous locum work history. This can be a complete nightmare for the recruitment agencies involved because it can leave them with no idea what the locum has been doing for the last few years. This can be the difference between getting an assignment or not, particularly if the hourly rate is disproportionately high compared with the expectations of the law firm requiring a locum.

We have a locum on the books who is one of our regulars but has not updated his CV for about 4 years. During that time he has probably undertaken between 50 to 60 locum assignments, but we don’t know actually what those are because he has never given them to us. Instead, we are dependent on writing a short note to say that he locums extensively across a wide area and that we have always had very positive feedback on his work. On a number of occasions this had led to someone else getting the locum assignment, and whilst this may not particularly bother the locum in question, who picks up plenty of work generally, it seems a shame that just for the small task of keeping a record of dates and forwarding it across to us, he is missing out on assignments.

So how should you keep a record and what should the record be of? Firstly, keep a note of the dates. You don’t necessarily have to know that between the 12th and 16th of August you spent a week at Smith’s Solicitors in Barnstaple, but to have a note that in August 2017 you were with Smith’s Solicitors in Barnstaple for 1 week is very helpful. You also need the name of the firm, the location, ideally an email address for someone at the practice, a short note as to the type of work you were doing, and the identity of the person you were covering for. By this, I mean the level within the practice, so if you are covering for a partner or head of the department, anyone reading your CV can immediately see that you have provided cover at a senior level.

The easiest way of maintaining a diary is to keep an excel spreadsheet with a column for each of the fields mentioned. Every time you do a locum assignment simply add the new firm and information in. Excel spreadsheets can be copied into emails; the data can be manipulated or pasted.

Keeping a sheet of paper with handwritten notes on simply doesn’t work because then if anybody needs to see it they have to either copy it into a record themselves or you have to photocopy it and send it across. Neither is particularly professional in the modern digital age and it can make the locum look very old fashioned indeed if we have to send over a scrappy piece of paper that has been photocopied numerous times.

We cannot emphasise how important it is to keep a record of all your assignments as it makes such a difference to your future prospects of work. You cannot expect locum agencies to add this information for you, although if there are any out there doing this, please tell me so we can have a look and see how they are putting the information together. If you are up against another six locums for the same assignment and five of them are maintaining a regular diary of their locum work, then you can virtually guarantee which locums will be going forward for a particular role and which one is going to miss out. The diary becomes particularly important if you are a professional locum charging a fairly high hourly rate for your work. This will make a considerable difference to your chances of success, and for some of the locums registered with us, it is the one thing they could do to increase their prospects of good quality work.

For locum solicitors in the UK, the busy period every year starts in May and runs through to September. This is the timeframe when annual leave cover is booked and firms often need extra help dealing with increased caseloads during the conveyancing busy season. People tend to buy and sell houses when the weather is warm, and start looking after Easter.

There is a statistic somewhere that shows the housing market increases by over 50% during the summer months compared with winter, and unfortunately, this tends to coincide with most solicitors’ annual leave! As a result, this is a busy time of year for all concerned, and residential conveyancing locums are particularly in demand. As conveyancing is the busiest area for locum work, it follows that when the property market is busy and when most conveyancers are on annual leave, there is going to be most work available for conveyancing locums.

We have found that firms tend to fall into two categories – those who have regular locums they know will come in to provide cover on an annual basis and have been doing so for years, and those who leave it to the last minute hoping they can struggle through and then discovering that actually if they even think about it, they could end up in hot water with the SRA. There are also the unfortunates who find that their regular locum suddenly discovers they cannot cover the annual leave and leave the firm scrabbling around for a conveyancing locum at the last minute.

Other busy periods bizarrely are around January time when staff have an annoying habit of handing in their notice to start a new job in April, requiring medium to long term cover until the firm can recruit. There is also the baby boom effect that always seems to kick in around January, and we have found over the years that maternity cover requests increase.

Areas of law other than conveyancing tend to be much more ad hoc as firms don’t tend to need annual leave cover to such a degree, although family law is pretty similar to conveyancing. It is still the same though that May to September is the busier period for all areas of law as well as conveyancing, and there is usually very little work from about December through to February unless it falls into the category of staff leaving or maternity cover.

Traditionally it used to be said by locums that they could pick up 8 out of every 12 months in locum work for property and private client, or for other areas of law of less intensity, 6 months out of every 12. So what is the current rule of thumb for locum work?

Hard to say, but this is our guide to the rule of thumb for conveyancing, wills and probate, family, in-house commercial and litigation.

For conveyancing, we think the rule of thumb at the moment is 8 months out of every 12 if you are able and willing to travel. If you are not able or willing to travel we think the rule of thumb changes to about 5 months in 12 in London and the South East, and 4 months in 12 in the North and Midlands. If you are an established locum you can probably add an extra month to this on average every year.

For wills and probate locum work we think the current rule of thumb is 9 months in 12 for any locum with more than 3 years PQE. I don’t think this changes for established locums as it’s not common to see repeat booking for wills and probate work, and assignments tend to be longer term. If you are not able to travel, the rule of thumb will drop to about 6 months in 12 at the most.

For family locum solicitors the rule of thumb is probably at about 7 months in 12, a dramatic improvement on family locum work from a few years ago. There is currently a shortage of family locum solicitors across the UK, and we don’t anticipate this changing for some time. If you are unable to travel, however, we think the figure will drop to about 4 months in 12 as assignments seem to be fairly well spread out.

For in-house commercial work, the rule of thumb is probably 5 months in every 12 months working for most locums. Although assignments tend to be well paid and seem fairly plentiful, it is fairly common for them to be cancelled at short notice, or a recruitment exercise to be undertaken that never actually follows up. Quite a lot of time can be spent chasing shadows when looking for in-house commercial work, and for this reason, we think the rule of thumb for the amount of work every year is probably quite low. If you are unable to travel this will drop right down to about 2 months in every 12, if that.

For litigation, the figures are probably fairly similar to in-house commercial unless you have established clients, but most litigators don’t tend to do holiday cover – it tends to be longer term or maternity leave cover. So you are probably looking at 4 months in every 12 if you are able to travel, and 2 months in every 12 if you are needing to look for something local to your home address.

These are very arbitrary figures and change regularly, but they reflect a locum market generally that has not really changed in many years, whether in good times or bad. Firms will try to muddle through if the market is not particularly strong, but booking locums was the first area to pick up for recruitment after the last recession.

The most in-demand in-house roles are generalist positions with companies looking for a jack of all trades rather than a specialist from one particular sector. If you are able to do both corporate and commercial in equal measure you will be in demand. Those who have just covered one area will be less so.

The most popular locums are those who have got general commercial and corporate experience in both private practice and in-house roles. The reason for this is because in-house counsel tends to cover a very wide range of work across the board, but in a specific role are likely to just do certain tasks. However, there are a large number of corporate/commercial lawyers out there who have had very specific experience in one sector during their career, and quite possibly have no experience at all in another sector. In-house legal departments tend to want someone who can pick up a file and run with it, and not someone who may be in the legal 500 for their experience in aviation finance that wouldn’t have a clue dealing with an employment file.

Yes they do.

All locum solicitors work on the basis that they are self-employed, and as a result maintain their own practising certificates and their own CPD hours. You cannot expect a law firm or in house department, you are contracting with to pay for this on your behalf as you are self-employed.

If a law firm pays for this on your behalf then in most circumstances you are probably no longer self-employed but classed as employed, because the law firm has paid for some of your professional costs. Self-employed people pay their own professional costs and it is important you ensure this is the case. The cost is usually quite minimal unless you have done lots of work in the previous 12 months, and the best place to look is the SRA website. It is usually a very painless job to get hold of your practising certificate, and you can expect to receive it within a fairly short amount of time, but it is important to remember that this is your responsibility and you should not be doing locum work without a practising certificate in most circumstances.

We are aware of a number of locum solicitors who work as non-practising solicitors in law firms essentially on a paralegal basis. These solicitors have received advice from the SRA and/or Law Society, that their work is perfectly valid and they are able to do this without any issues, but we remain very unsure about this advice as in most cases some elements of the work will involve some sort of advice to a client at some point, and with this, in mind, it does lead to all sorts of issues developing that are probably fairly avoidable if you get a practising certificate.

It’s not exactly as if the practising certificate is going to cost you a huge amount of money, so our normal advice is to get one and make sure it is in place before you commence any locum work.

In fact, don’t even bother applying for locum work until you have the practising certificate in place for that particular practice year, as most firms will simply decline to offer you the locum work because it’s not there and already in place.

The definition of a conveyancing locum is a lawyer who provides temporary or short term cover in a solicitors firm or licensed conveyancing practice when a fee earner (a fee earner is anyone who generates fees in a law firm), goes on annual leave, is taken ill or leaves the firm without them recruiting a new member of staff.

So a locum will be used to come in and provide a service as a contractor.

Invariably the conveyancing locum will be working as a business themselves, providing their expertise as a professional advisor to the law firm. They are usually covered by the professional indemnity insurance arrangements of the hiring business and will provide the cover during hours agreed.

The work will involve handling the caseload of the conveyancer who is absent, which will include dealing with queries on files, progressing matters to exchange or completion, handling new queries, opening new files, closing old files, dealing with completion, dealing with matters post-completion, completing SDLT forms, processing information returned by clients and solicitors or lawyers acting for the other side selling or buying the properties, and all matters involved in working in residential conveyancing.

The key point for using the services of a conveyancing locum is that they will not generate new work, they will not undertake marketing, they will not deal usually with complaints against the firm and they will not generally get involved in any internal management of the business other than to keep everything going on a day to day basis. They are there basically to ensure that cases are continued to be progressed and do not stop in the absence of a fee earner dealing with them. This is very important to bear in mind if you are a partner of a law firm and looking for locum assistance. Locums are good at what they do, but you must understand the limitations.

To become a conveyancing locum you simply need to have extensive experience in residential conveyancing and be prepared to work in different locations, sometimes at short notice. To find out all about becoming an interim lawyer or locum solicitor please visit www.interimlawyers.co.uk and read our detailed guide.

Yes you can, is the quick answer, but the slightly longer answer is that it can be considerably harder than if you were qualified or have maintained your qualification.

By way of example, we have a number of conveyancing executives with over 20 years experience who are not qualified. They may have partly done the legal executive qualification some years ago but never finished it. There can be a whole host of reasons for this but there are a significant number of non-qualified conveyancers out there who are highly experienced and quite capable of managing large conveyancing caseloads by themselves.

Unfortunately there are a good number of law firms and in-house legal departments that will not look at non-qualified fee earners for locum work, mainly because of the problems of verifying their identity, not having any way of knowing who they are taking on and generally being concerned about the risk involved.

A qualified fee earner undertaking locum work has always got evidence of their past history in the sense that they will be registered somewhere with a regulator, whether that is the Council of Licensed Conveyancers, the Charted Institute of Legal Executives or the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

In our experience, the number of complaints we get about locums, albeit extremely small, is fairly equal between non-qualified and qualified staff. It is perfectly possible to hold yourself out as a conveyancing locum solicitor and have never actually done that much conveyancing. For example, I am a solicitor, qualified in 2000 and have never done conveyancing, but technically I could claim I was a conveyancing solicitor and attempt to go into a practice as a locum on that basis. Similarly, I could be a non-qualified conveyancing executive with 20 years experience and be fully capable of running a caseload.

In some senses qualifications in terms of locum work are pointless and not particularly relevant because they don’t reflect the actual experience that a fee earner has, but that is not the point of this advice article, which is to cover the point that if you are not qualified it is harder to get locum work because there are companies out there who will not consider you.

What can I do to improve my chances of finding locum work if I am non-qualified or do not hold an up to date practising certificate?

Firstly make sure you have a recent proof of ID and proof of address that is easily sendable via email. Secondly, ensure that your CV fully covers all dates from the time you left school right up to the present day. Try to include all locum assignments for the past 3 years. If you have done longer-term locum assignments then try to include all locum assignments, but if a good chunk of your assignments have been short term, then possibly just the last 2 years will suffice. It is important to ensure that you give a full accurate CV to any locum agencies working for you because this is one of the things that a slightly hesitant client is going to look at and think about before they consider taking you on.

Also make sure that your CV covers all types of work that you’re able to deal with, and in some detail. It is not unusual to see a CV of between three and six pages for a non-qualified lawyer detailing all their previous experience and exactly what they are able to do.

Also do not forget to include your IT experience and confirmation as to whether you require secretarial assistance or whether you are comfortable working by yourself with a reasonable typing speed. If you do not know your typing speed then take an online typing test and see what that is. Include it in the CV.

Finally, get references – these are the key to getting locum work with a lot of firms – they want the reassurance that you have been a success working on previous assignments. At least two or three references from recent assignments is the best option. The reference should state who you are, what you did, how long you were there for and any positive comments the reference has about you. Each time you finish a locum assignment try to ask for a reference in writing from someone you have worked with or for, and ask them to address it “To Whom It May Concern”; pointing out that if they do this you will never need to bother them again.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 Locums are the two different levels of registration available to solicitors and legal executives who want to register with us.

Tier 1 Locums will have:

1. A full CV on our system, detailing all work to date.
2. Proof of ID in the form of a copy of their passport or driving licence.
3. Proof of residence – usually a bank statement or utility bill.
4. At least one reference from employed work or locum work in the past 5 years.
5. Undergone a background check by one of our consultants.
6. Agreed to work to the Interim Lawyers standard locum conditions.
7. Have a fixed hourly rate for work.
8. Signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement with us.

Tier 2 Locums will have:

1. Registered with InterimLawyers.co.uk to receive locum assignment updates.
2. A CV on our system, but not necessarily up to date.
3. Undergone a background check by one of our consultants.

Tier 1 Locums are those we work with regularly and Tier 2 Locums can either be new registrations or locums who simply want to be informed of assignments as they crop up. We do not arrange assignments for Tier 2 Locums until they have provided the documents requested, although in emergencies we may notify our clients that we have someone at Tier 2 level available.

Same question also applies to professional indemnity insurance renewal forms. Not easy to answer this question as yes we do in some circumstances, but no in other situations.

We do get locums willing to be named as cover for the purposes of PII renewals and lender panels, but it tends to be where they have a relationship with firms already, and the name to lender panels is part of the arrangement. In other words, if a locum is providing ongoing annual leave cover, knows the practice and the lawyers in question, and is aware that there will be work arising from the arrangement on an ongoing basis, they are usually relaxed about their name being used.

Other than this, locums tend to want a monthly retainer in order to be the named cover, which can be expensive just for what is a box-ticking exercise. At the time of writing we would imagine £200 a month may attract some interest.

In the past some SRA regulated firms have got round this simply by asking a specialist locum solicitor recruitment agency like ourselves to confirm that we could provide cover with at least 24 hours notice should there be an emergency, but we have not been asked to do this for some time and it may be firms are now being asked for specific names of lawyers.

Navigating IR35 can be a significant challenge for employers in the UK, particularly after the reforms introduced in April 2021, which shifted the responsibility for determining IR35 status from the contractor to the client in the private sector. Employers now bear the liability for determining whether their contract workers fall inside or outside IR35. As such, it’s crucial that employers understand how to structure their relationships with contractors to ensure compliance while mitigating the risk of falling inside IR35.

Understanding IR35

First, it is important to understand what IR35 is. IR35, also known as the off-payroll working rules, is designed to combat tax avoidance by workers supplying their services to clients via an intermediary, such as a limited company, but who would be an employee if the intermediary was not used. If a contract is caught by IR35, it means that the contractor should be treated as an employee for tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs).

Smaller Sized Businesses Exempt

End-clients will be considered by HMRC to be a ‘small business’ – and therefore exempt from the IR35 legislation – if they meet at least two of the following criteria for two consecutive financial years:

• Turnover of no more than £10.2 million
• A balance sheet total (assets) of no more than £5.1 million
• An average of no more than 50 employees

Key Factors to Consider

To ensure that a contractor is operating outside of IR35, employers need to consider several key factors that HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) looks at:

1. Control: Employers should avoid exerting excessive control over how contractors complete their work. Contractors should have the freedom to decide how to carry out their tasks, without needing to adhere to strict company schedules or processes.
2. Substitution: The right of substitution is a strong indicator of self-employment. Contractors should be allowed, contractually and in practice, to send a substitute in their place should they be unable to complete the work themselves.
3. Mutuality of Obligation (MOO): This should be clearly absent in the contractual relationship. MOO exists when the employer is obliged to offer work and the worker is obliged to accept it. Contracts should be project-based, with a start and an end, and without the expectation of ongoing work.

Practical Steps to Avoid Being Inside IR35

1. Clear Contracts: Draft clear, concise contracts that reflect the true nature of the relationship between the parties. These contracts should include clauses that demonstrate a lack of control, the right of substitution without unreasonable restrictions, and the absence of mutuality of obligation.
2. Conduct Regular Reviews: The working practices should match what is stipulated in the contract. Regular reviews of contract terms and working practices should be conducted to ensure compliance.
3. Use a Confirmation of Arrangements (CoA): Employers should have a CoA document signed by both parties at the start of each contract. This document should confirm the actual working practices and that they reflect the terms agreed upon.
4. Provide Training and Support to Staff: Ensure that those responsible for hiring and managing contractors within your organisation understand IR35 and its implications. They should be able to identify potential risks and know how to structure relationships appropriately. Try to get away from the situation where your HR department just says ‘IR35’ to every contractor they come across.
5. Engage with Specialist Advisors: Given the complexities of IR35 legislation, consulting with legal and tax professionals who specialise in employment status can provide valuable guidance and help mitigate risks.
6. Implement a Robust Determination Process: Develop and implement a rigorous process for determining the IR35 status of every contract, using the Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool provided by HMRC, supplemented with professional advice as needed.
7. Consider Outsourcing: If managing IR35 compliance becomes too cumbersome, consider outsourcing certain roles or using umbrella companies for contracting needs. This transfers the IR35 compliance obligations away from your company. Umbrella companies can be a nightmare to deal with so be careful..
8. Maintain Transparency with Contractors: Clearly communicate how IR35 determinations are made and provide contractors with the reasons for their status determination. This transparency can help manage expectations and reduce disputes.

You can run a test on the HMRC website to see whether or not your arrangement is caught by the rules.

Conclusion

Contractors hate IR35 and will try to avoid roles that fall within its remit. If at all possible try to keep consultant roles outside the provisions. Life is a lot easier and you will get a lot more interest for your role. For all private practice and in house locum legal recruitment please visit www.interimlawyers.co.uk.

No, you don’t. Professional indemnity insurance is specialist insurance to cover you in cases where your company has provided negligent advice or services to a customer, and the customer seeks redress for your failings.

Solicitors who work out of a solicitors firm have to hold high levels of professional indemnity insurance, which usually costs many thousands of pounds, but this is because they are providing advice to members of the public and individual clients, and regulators have determined that clients need lots of protection in case of incompetence on the part of their professional advisers.

If you have your own in-house legal adviser working directly for you on a part-time, ad-hoc or fulltime basis, then they are providing you specifically with legal advice for you to act upon if you wish. If you decide to act upon it and the advice as negligent, then that is your own issue and nobody else’s.

If someone else acts upon the advice of your in-house lawyer, i.e., a third party, then this is where the insurance kicks in. However, because you are using an in-house lawyer who is specifically providing you with advice, and not third parties, you do not need professional indemnity insurance.

In fact, most in-house lawyers across the country who work for firms big and small, do not usually have their own professional indemnity insurance, simply because they do not need it. Quite a few will not have a practising certificate, because again they don’t actually need to practise and provide advice to individuals if they’re working on an in-house basis providing advice specifically to their employer or contractor (i.e. if they are a sub-contractor).

It seems to be a bit of a red herring for quite a few companies who seem to think they need professional indemnity insurance to take on an in-house lawyer. Funnily enough, they don’t think the same when taking on an accountant or some other professional working in the business, but only solicitors. I think part of the problem with this is that there is so much information online about professional indemnity insurance for solicitors that there is a considerable amount of confusion as to exactly what is needed and why.

The easiest way to sum it up is to say that professional indemnity insurance is in place in solicitors firms, and solicitors charge an hourly rate based on the fact that if they get the advice wrong to you and you act upon it, and suffer finance loss, you have a claim against them for negligence. If an in-house lawyer provides you with duff advice and you act upon it, then chances are you will not be able to get any compensation for it, because you were the person who recruited the in-house lawyer in the first place. This is why there is such a substantial difference in the hourly rates of solicitors firms compared with hourly rates of individual solicitors working for you as a contractor or part-time employee on an in-house basis.

So, essentially your decision on whether to take on an in-house lawyer or use an external firm of solicitors should not be based on whether or not one has professional indemnity insurance and one does not, but more on the relative skill levels you are going to get from each of the two options, and whether or not you want recompense if things go wrong.

If you would like to discuss using an in-house lawyer on an ad-hoc basis, please get in touch with www.interimlawyers.co.uk, specialists for in-house and private practice solicitors for over 20 years.

Sometimes, and it is a fairly rare occurrence, we get a law firm who go through the whole process of finding, interviewing and accepting a locum to work for them, usually fairly long term, and everything looks good. The locum goes through the whole process of booking themselves out for a period of time, providing all their documentation, dealing with all the various queries and issues and starting work.

On the first day of work the firm welcome the locum with open arms, but after an hour or so inform them that there’s been a change of plan and rather than them working 9:30am to 5:30pm they will instead be working 10:00am until 4:00pm. This is usually because someone in the management team has worked out that if they cut one or two hours a day they will save the firm money each week.

This sounds great for the firm and you would imagine that the locum would be delighted as well because they will be working less hours and have more time to spend on other things. Nothing could usually be further from the truth. Very often the locum will be quite annoyed, whether or not the changed hours suit them. You can almost guarantee that within a matter of weeks the locum will be thinking about assignments to move on to. All because someone in the management team has decided they can save themselves a bit of money simply by cutting the hours of the locum without telling them first.

So is it a good idea to unilaterally cut locum hours?

No, absolutely not. Any firm who do this almost immediately label themselves as a problem to the locum and damage their relationship.

Locum = B2B Relationship

Unilaterally changing hours of locums is an extremely bad idea and never goes well. Locums see it as arrogance on the part of the firm, that they think they can treat them like this but not taking into account that a locum is self-employed and in control of their own circumstances (one of the many reasons lawyers turn to locuming). If locums don’t like a firm or the assignment they will simply leave and find another one.

If you consult with the locum, advise them after a short or medium period of time that circumstances have changed and you don’t actually need a locum for a full day but instead just need them for a bit of a day and ask them for their thoughts on it, this may all have a different response.

You may find that the locum is quite pleased and says, “No problem at all, I’ll source work for the other time when I’m not needed at your practice,” or is pleased that they can avoid the rush hour at the start and finish of the day, or simply that they would rather just work less hours if at all possible. It just has to be done very carefully and with an eye on the needs of the locum as well as on your firm.

Do not expect a locum to be happy about a reduction in hours if you notify them of it on their first or second day. Just think about the time you have spent recruiting a locum and how long it is going to take you to find another one when your current locum is so annoyed with you that they simply leave and find another assignment. It is really important to look after your relationship with a locum because you just never know how long you’re going to need them for, or how hard it is going to be to find someone else to replace them.

So if you have a locum working with you and you are thinking about reducing the hours, please speak to the locum and tell them your thoughts and ask for their opinion on it. You may be pleasantly surprised and find that the locum is quite happy with you changing the hours; similarly the locum might have another suggestion for you which works just as well for your practice and avoids any awkwardness.

Q: How far ahead can I plan my Locum cover for holidays or pre-arranged annual leave?

A: As far ahead as you wish.  It is a good idea to always plan ahead wherever possible as locum cover can be difficult to arrange at short notice in the busy periods of the year like the summer or around Christmas. However, the vast majority of locum contracts are arranged with as little as 24 hours notice (sometimes a lot less) and we try to assist.

If you know about annual leave coming up in say 3 months time, it is definitely worth speaking to us now rather than waiting. Just drop us an email over to jobs@interimlawyers.co.uk and tell us the following information:

• Name of the law firm or in house legal department
• Email address and telephone number
• Type of law
• Budget (optional)
• Level of experience needed and whether you will recruit a solicitor or a solicitor/legal executive/experienced fee earner
• Start date and end date

Q: How can I be sure you will send a fully qualified Locum Solicitor?

A: We use a thorough registration process for all our locum staff. During this, we request proof of ID, proof of residence, a copy of their practising certificate, confirmation that they have no conditions on their practising certificate and at least two references from recent employers or from recent assignments.

At the end of each assignment we request full feedback from our clients on the performance of the locum, including issues such as:

• Punctuality
• Appearance (we don’t want locums working for us who turn up in shellsuits!)
• Ability
• Client interaction
• Staff interaction
• Management Skills
• Time Management
• Efficiency
• Overall impression

Any locum who receives a low score in this process will not get future work from Interim Lawyers. We are aware that sometimes the requirements of employers for a locum are a little excessive and we do bear this in mind when evaluating our returns. An example of this would be a low score for punctuality where the locum has turned up 30 minutes late on one occasion due to a signalling failure on the train line.

For non-qualified staff we are more dependent on references to demonstrate ability.

From time to time we supply new legal locums to clients for very short notice assignments, and we are not always able to get references immediately. However, from the moment we know a locum is going to work on an assignment we endeavour to obtain these and forward them through asap.

Q: The locum I had at my law firm was not as good as expected, what can I do?

A: It is always disappointing when a locum does not live up to expectations and we as an agency would like to know if this is the case. Sometimes if we feel that our clients have received poor service from a locum we offer a discount on future assignments (this is not a contractual obligation). We can very often supply an alternative locum solicitor or fee earner at short notice.

After all, the beauty of using a locum solicitor is that you can quickly terminate any arrangement and hire another one without too many issues arising.

We do ask for feedback after each assignment and do not offer poorly performing locums future assignments.

Locums are assessed on:

• Punctuality
• Appearance
• Ability
• Client interaction
• Staff interaction
• Management Skills
• Time Management
• Efficiency
• Overall impression

What are the locum rates of pay for a solicitor or lawyer?

This is a difficult question to answer but we a produce a monthly guide which you can access by clicking here.

The hourly or daily rate is usually a matter of negotiation between the parties although we very often specify an hourly rate based on discussions with our client before an introduction is made.

A lot of locums have an hourly rate they use to start negotiations and this tends to vary according to the length of an assignment. Longer assignments can sometimes attract lower hourly rates but not always.

Rates of pay can depend on the time of year, level of demand, availability of locums and the location of the assignment.

What are the terms and conditions of employment for a locum?

This will depend upon whether you are self-employed or an employee of the law firm or in house legal department who have signed you.

If you are engaged on a long term locum assignment and have been advised by an accountant that you are likely to be regarded as an employee, you should be offered a contract of employment specifying details such as salary, entitlement to annual leave, sick leave etc. within eight weeks of beginning your employment.

For locums who are self-employed, the terms of the contract will be those agreed with the law firm or in house legal department. The usual range of employment rights protecting salaried employees will not apply.

As a locum on a self-employed basis, you need to be aware that it is highly likely at some stage in your locum career a firm will dispense of your services at extremely short notice – this can be as short as a few hours. This is after all the main purpose of employers using locums and temporary staff – flexibility.

You will need to negotiate your terms with the employer. We have a template that our signed up locums can use to agree to terms if required, although it very often is just a case of agreeing hours, confirming the hourly rate already arranged and establishing exactly what work is going to be dealt with.

Q: How do you communicate with your locums?

A: We know that keeping our locums up to date with our business is important. That is why we produce our regular newsletter for candidates, both locum and permanent, which appears monthly (give or take a few!).  It keeps you updated, both with vacancies coming in generally, advice on marketing your services, professional developments, and the latest information from around the business that affects you. We deal directly with locums via email and text message regarding any new assignments coming in, but similarly are quite happy to talk to you on the phone where necessary.

Q: What is the cost of having a locum?

A: Locum costs depend on a wide range of factors, but usually the rule of thumb is that the longer the assignment the lower the rates.

Location plays an important part in determining hourly rates. For example, if you work in Kings Lynn there are very few locums who live within say 75 miles of your offices. This means that a locum will have to stop overnight. Accommodation costs in Kings Lynn are usually reasonable so the hourly rate will not be that affected. However – if you are based in Newquay in Cornwall there are again very few locums residing close by but the accommodation costs at certain times of the year are exceptionally high so hourly rates will be considerably higher.

Length is the other major issue, although a good number of locums have become fairly immune to promises of length assignments that are offered simply to try and haggle the hourly rate down! It is fairly easy to spot firms who are trying it on and recruit a locum for 2 weeks cover at a low rate by indicating a likely duration of 6 months. The rates will probably be lower for longer-term assignments, but this can only be a very small reduction in a lot of cases.

Costs can be broken down into the following:

1. Hourly rate paid directly to the locum lawyer. This is usually termed as the “locum hourly rate” in our correspondence with you.
2. Our fee – this is paid separately and is based on 18% of monies paid to the locum.

There are no other costs. The locum will issue an invoice to you on a weekly basis, payable within 3 working days by BACS. We issue an invoice for our fee on a monthly basis, based on the amounts the locum invoices you for during the month.

As a general guide, the overwhelming majority of our locums work on a rate of £25-35 per hour (this has increased in recent times and varies year on year) – see our hourly rate guide for details.

Our fee of 18% is non-negotiable – we charge the same rate on every assignment – click here for our locum fee page. However, if a locum takes a permanent role with you we have different arrangements. Please contact us for details.

Q: How are locums screened – what qualifications do they have?

A: Our recruitment process involves all locums being thoroughly screened before being registered. We always obtain two professional references and get proof of ID/residence plus a copy of a practising certificate before arranging an assignment for a locum. Sometimes we do introduce locums who are available at short notice and then try and get the above documents over as quickly as possible. The skills sets of our locums vary so please let us know if you require any specific qualifications or accreditations and we’ll make sure that we find a locum who matches your requirements.

Q: How quickly can you respond to emergency requests?

A: We open the Interim Lawyers office at 08.30 hrs every weekday and we are able to respond very rapidly to requests for emergency cover for locum solicitors and lawyers. We can dispatch solicitors and lawyers within minutes of a call being made, although naturally, every call depends on the current availability and status of our locum teams.

Our out of hours service is operated by email. We regularly check for emergency cover requests throughout the evening as well as early morning, so if you need someone at short notice please email us at jobs@interimlawyers.co.uk if you get in touch after 5pm or before 8.30am.

Q: We are a Limited Company looking to use a Solicitor. Is having a locum or interim lawyer handling a case a cheaper option than using a law firm?

A: Yes, in a nutshell, but using a locum solicitor is a slightly different experience to engaging a solicitors firm to do the work for you.

Firstly, you will need to be aware that if your contracted solicitor makes a mistake, you will not have any recompense against the solicitor individually if they are acting as your company representative.

Secondly, you will be restricted to the knowledge an individual solicitor is able to provide rather than a law firm.

Thirdly, the solicitor will need to be contracted to you and will not be an independent lawyer per se.

Fourthly, you will need to check that an in house contracted lawyer can do the same things a solicitors firm can when dealing with your matter.

Whilst it is correct that the hourly rate is going to be dramatically different – budget for about £30-40 per hour for a locum or interim lawyer compared with £175-225 per hour for a solicitors firm, there are reasons for this – the main one being that if a mistake is made, you will have recompense against a law firm – they have professional indemnity insurance.

You cannot employ your own solicitor on a private basis for most types of work, but a limited company can indeed save substantial amounts by using an interim lawyer or locum solicitor. It really depends on the work you want them to do as to how they can assist.

Please note that we do not supply locums to defend winding up actions against your company or similar litigation. It is unlikely also that a locum would be prepared to handle professional negligence claims on your behalf. We credit check every limited company before accepting an assignment.

Get in touch with us to discuss your assignment, and we can advise as to whether using an interim lawyer will be the best course of action or cost-effective.

jobs@interimlawyers.co.uk

Q: How many locum agencies should I register our firm’s assignment with?

A: We rarely get asked this question, but we know that quite a few practice managers or junior partners at medium-sized law firms will get asked to secure the services of a locum or provisionally find out what is available out there in case of need. The practice manager will call around 6 or 7 agencies and ask for a locum.

We know that the practice manager has called round 6-7 recruitment agencies to ask for a locum because our locums email us and let us know!

Professional locums tend to register with a good number of agencies to make sure they have been considered for every locum assignment available on the market. The problem with blanket calling a load of agencies is that firstly you will be inundated with phone calls from very excited agents all thinking they have the assignment wrapped up and pushing you for a response, and secondly you will be wasting your time on the whole because a good number of employment agencies have very similar locum lists.

It is certainly true that we all have certain locums we use regularly, and that these locums will favour one particular agency over another, but it still means you will have caused each locum to get 6-7 different telephone calls from agencies, which can be very annoying for the locums concerned!

Our advice is to call one agency, give them a deadline of when you expect to see CVs, and if none are forthcoming or not suitable, move onto the next legal recruitment agency.

Q: I am provisionally seeking locum cover for my firm, what do I need to do?

A: Drop us an email over with your requirements but make sure you tell us it is very provisional. It is always helpful to know exactly how likely the assignment is to go ahead.

We have two law firms on our books who are marked with a big black cross. Our locums will not give consent to a CV being released to them and we rarely bother very much when we get their assignments emailed over.

The reason for this is because the practice managers at these solicitors’ firms will spend a lot of time giving us their assignments, specify dates, hourly rates, types of work etc.. and tell us that the vacancies are urgent. We contact our locum solicitors, agree on hourly rates, provisionally book them in, send a CV over….. and hear absolutely nothing back despite calling and emailing.

Whilst we expect this from time to time and appreciate the pressure law firms and their staff are under, there are a few firms out there who have earned their black cross from doing this more than three times in a row.

If you tell us the post is provisional we can let our locums know as well. This stops them provisionally booking the assignment into their diaries and then bombarding us with calls when another assignment comes in elsewhere that they are unable to accept in the meantime.

Please bear this in mind when looking on a provisional basis. We are very happy to help and can often provide details of locums definitely available at a particular point in time, but if you don’t tell us how possible an assignment is to actually happen it causes us and our locums real problems.

Q: I am a sole practitioner and need ongoing cover for annual leave or emergencies – can you help?

A: Yes, absolutely. Usually, we get calls from sole practitioners asking us to provide details of a locum who can assist on an ongoing basis with any requirements for annual leave, increased workload, emergency illness cover and urgent staff cover.

We can always assist with these, but it is difficult to give a definite locum availability unless the assignment is longer than 4 weeks or we are able to indicate at least 2-4 blocks of booking rather than just one. The reason for this is because most locums will not commit to a week in a year when something much more lucrative could come up that they then have to turn down because they have already booked themselves in for your annual leave cover etc..

If you have a 2-week summer break to cover, simply drop us an email whenever you can to jobs@interimlawyers.co.uk and we will confirm the dates. About 6 weeks before you go we will supply you with availability for our locums so that you can agree to cover with us and an individual locum. It is often best to get the person in for a day before you go so that you both know what needs covering and what can be left for your return. Please note that you will have to pay for the locum on this day unless the solicitor in question lives just around the corner and is feeling particularly generous with their time!

Providing ongoing cover is always possible and you simply need to get in touch when you need assistance. Emergencies are similarly covered. Provided you are looking to pay a reasonable hourly rate (we can advise on this for solicitors and legal support staff) we will be able to arrange cover for you.

The use of the term ‘contractor’ tends to describe a situation where a lawyer or solicitor is working on an ongoing basis, usually to deal with excess capacity or a busy period.

The use of the word ‘locum’ tends to be used when referring to a lawyer or solicitor covering for sick leave, maternity cover, replacement cover (during notice periods) or any short term cover.

In the IT industry, quite a few skilled employees are used on a contractor basis to deal with specific projects. This does not tend to happen with the legal profession – projects per se do not tend to crop up. It is usually cover for specific incidents or periods of time that is more relevant.

Locums work on a self-employed basis. In other industries, contractors work on an employed basis via the employment agency that introduced them. In law firms, contractors work on a self-employed basis as well, not usually via agencies unless dealing with a large multinational.

Q: Can NQ Solicitors work as Locums?

A: No, not really.

In most areas of law, solicitors firms are looking for experienced lawyers to cover annual leave, sick leave, long term absence, change of personnel, increase in workload, etc.. etc… The locum is expected to go into a department, pick up a caseload and start working on it without anyone else needing to tell him or her what needs doing.

Unfortunately for most NQ solicitors, you need fairly close supervision and it is rare to get a newly qualified solicitor who is able to work on their own initiative throughout the day without someone else assisting you.

However – sometimes we do get requests for an NQ (newly qualified) Solicitor to join a solicitors firm as a locum as they have a large case that they need help with for example, or alternatively another NQ Solicitor is off work ill. In these circumstances, it is possible that an NQ Solicitor can pick up locum work, but these types of roles are few and far between. We are not even sure we would recommend to an NQ that it is a good idea to work as a locum as it can affect your career prospects and future opportunities – some firms seem to hold it against you if you have a locum assignment on your CV.

Very easily! Simply click this link, download the form, fill it out and email or post it to us. We welcome all feedback on locum assignments, whether positive or negative.

There is no difference between a locum lawyer and an interim lawyer. It is just a question of language. We set up Interim Lawyers many years ago simply because all other domain names of a similar nature have been taken! Interim lawyers are exactly the same as locum lawyers; they work on an interim or temporary basis.

In-house interim lawyers work in the same way. There has been some confusion at times because of the way local authorities use the word locum when looking for staff, and in the past, there has been a distinction between lawyers working on a fixed-term basis to cover say annual leave for two weeks, and lawyers working on an ongoing basis covering specific cases or caseloads as and when required.

Some recruitment agencies have referred to lawyers working on an ad-hoc basis but ongoing as “interim lawyers”, and lawyers working on a fixed-term basis covering annual leave or similar as “locum lawyers”.

In reality, there is no difference between the two, but the differentiation has been made because of the way some locum solicitors are paid for their work.

Some recruitment agencies have a commission deal with umbrella companies (not to be confused with a dodgy backhander of course), whereby if a locum signs with a specific umbrella company, the locum agency gets paid a fee. Locums sign up to umbrella companies to get paid for work on a fixed-term basis and the umbrella company pays them as an employee of their own limited company. We have been offered £200.00 per introduction by umbrella companies, so we can only presume that there is some considerable profit to be made in their use. Umbrella companies however are really only relevant to locums who are working on a fixed-term basis, rather than ad-hoc as and when required. Our company does not recommend using them – they are, for most people, an unwanted administrative expense. We think this is why the terms have differed with some agencies – umbrella companies are not really relevant for ad hoc interim solicitor roles and more suited to a fixed term.

For locum solicitors in the UK, the busy period every year starts in May and runs through to September. This is the timeframe when annual leave cover is booked and firms often need extra help dealing with increased caseloads during the conveyancing busy season. People tend to buy and sell houses when the weather is warm, and start looking after Easter.

There is a statistic somewhere that shows the housing market increases by over 50% during the summer months compared with winter, and unfortunately, this tends to coincide with most solicitors’ annual leave! As a result, this is a busy time of year for all concerned, and residential conveyancing locums are particularly in demand. As conveyancing is the busiest area for locum work, it follows that when the property market is busy and when most conveyancers are on annual leave, there is going to be most work available for conveyancing locums.

We have found that firms tend to fall into two categories – those who have regular locums they know will come in to provide cover on an annual basis and have been doing so for years, and those who leave it to the last minute hoping they can struggle through and then discovering that actually if they even think about it, they could end up in hot water with the SRA. There are also the unfortunates who find that their regular locum suddenly discovers they cannot cover the annual leave and leave the firm scrabbling around for a conveyancing locum at the last minute.

Other busy periods bizarrely are around January time when staff have an annoying habit of handing in their notice to start a new job in April, requiring medium to long term cover until the firm can recruit. There is also the baby boom effect that always seems to kick in around January, and we have found over the years that maternity cover requests increase.

Areas of law other than conveyancing tend to be much more ad hoc as firms don’t tend to need annual leave cover to such a degree, although family law is pretty similar to conveyancing. It is still the same though that May to September is the busier period for all areas of law as well as conveyancing, and there is usually very little work from about December through to February unless it falls into the category of staff leaving or maternity cover.

Yes they do.

All locum solicitors work on the basis that they are self-employed, and as a result maintain their own practising certificates and their own CPD hours. You cannot expect a law firm or in house department, you are contracting with to pay for this on your behalf as you are self-employed.

If a law firm pays for this on your behalf then in most circumstances you are probably no longer self-employed but classed as employed, because the law firm has paid for some of your professional costs. Self-employed people pay their own professional costs and it is important you ensure this is the case. The cost is usually quite minimal unless you have done lots of work in the previous 12 months, and the best place to look is the SRA website. It is usually a very painless job to get hold of your practising certificate, and you can expect to receive it within a fairly short amount of time, but it is important to remember that this is your responsibility and you should not be doing locum work without a practising certificate in most circumstances.

We are aware of a number of locum solicitors who work as non-practising solicitors in law firms essentially on a paralegal basis. These solicitors have received advice from the SRA and/or Law Society, that their work is perfectly valid and they are able to do this without any issues, but we remain very unsure about this advice as in most cases some elements of the work will involve some sort of advice to a client at some point, and with this, in mind, it does lead to all sorts of issues developing that are probably fairly avoidable if you get a practising certificate.

It’s not exactly as if the practising certificate is going to cost you a huge amount of money, so our normal advice is to get one and make sure it is in place before you commence any locum work.

In fact, don’t even bother applying for locum work until you have the practising certificate in place for that particular practice year, as most firms will simply decline to offer you the locum work because it’s not there and already in place.

When a law firm or business uses our services to procure a locum solicitor, we charge a monthly introduction fee, which is calculated as a percentage of monies paid to the locum during their time working with your business.

The question that quite often arises is how long this fee is applicable for, and we know this has been subject to court proceedings in the past via other companies because we have been approached to comment on it and advise on our own experience. As far as we are aware, all our competitors charge their fees ad infinitum (and beyond).

Interim Lawyers will only request a fee for a set period of time from the date the locum or consultant invoices you for the first time. 

We have decided that it is much easier and fairer for everyone if there is a set limit to how long we enforce our fees for.

This arrangement works particularly well if you take locums on repeat bookings or want to use a consultant for ad hoc work.

You may want to ask our competitors how long their agreements will last for. Expect a Buzz Lightyear answer (to infinity and beyond for anyone who hasn’t watched Toy Story!).

The definition of a conveyancing locum is a lawyer who provides temporary or short term cover in a solicitors firm or licensed conveyancing practice when a fee earner (a fee earner is anyone who generates fees in a law firm), goes on annual leave, is taken ill or leaves the firm without them recruiting a new member of staff.

So a locum will be used to come in and provide a service as a contractor.

Invariably the conveyancing locum will be working as a business themselves, providing their expertise as a professional advisor to the law firm. They are usually covered by the professional indemnity insurance arrangements of the hiring business and will provide the cover during hours agreed.

The work will involve handling the caseload of the conveyancer who is absent, which will include dealing with queries on files, progressing matters to exchange or completion, handling new queries, opening new files, closing old files, dealing with completion, dealing with matters post-completion, completing SDLT forms, processing information returned by clients and solicitors or lawyers acting for the other side selling or buying the properties, and all matters involved in working in residential conveyancing.

The key point for using the services of a conveyancing locum is that they will not generate new work, they will not undertake marketing, they will not deal usually with complaints against the firm and they will not generally get involved in any internal management of the business other than to keep everything going on a day to day basis. They are there basically to ensure that cases are continued to be progressed and do not stop in the absence of a fee earner dealing with them. This is very important to bear in mind if you are a partner of a law firm and looking for locum assistance. Locums are good at what they do, but you must understand the limitations.

To become a conveyancing locum you simply need to have extensive experience in residential conveyancing and be prepared to work in different locations, sometimes at short notice. To find out all about becoming an interim lawyer or locum solicitor please visit www.interimlawyers.co.uk and read our detailed guide.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 Locums are the two different levels of registration available to solicitors and legal executives who want to register with us.

Tier 1 Locums will have:

1. A full CV on our system, detailing all work to date.
2. Proof of ID in the form of a copy of their passport or driving licence.
3. Proof of residence – usually a bank statement or utility bill.
4. At least one reference from employed work or locum work in the past 5 years.
5. Undergone a background check by one of our consultants.
6. Agreed to work to the Interim Lawyers standard locum conditions.
7. Have a fixed hourly rate for work.
8. Signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement with us.

Tier 2 Locums will have:

1. Registered with InterimLawyers.co.uk to receive locum assignment updates.
2. A CV on our system, but not necessarily up to date.
3. Undergone a background check by one of our consultants.

Tier 1 Locums are those we work with regularly and Tier 2 Locums can either be new registrations or locums who simply want to be informed of assignments as they crop up. We do not arrange assignments for Tier 2 Locums until they have provided the documents requested, although in emergencies we may notify our clients that we have someone at Tier 2 level available.