Is There an Age Bar to Locuming?

Is There an Age Bar to Locuming? Article by Interim Lawyers Locum Legal Recruitment, specialists for in house and private practice locum solicitor jobs in the UK.

We have been asked this a few times recently. Firstly it is important to say that we have locums listed with us of all ages and in all locations of the UK. We have locums in their 80s and we have locums in their 20s. Whilst it is much harder to get work at these extremes, both groups manage it because either they have built up a reputation with clients who will then use them continually, or they will be very proactive in how they go about getting locum work.

It is much harder to get locum work if you are only a couple of years experienced and it is extremely hard to get locum work if you are for want of a better term very long in the tooth!

There are good reasons for this.

Inexperienced Locums

The first of these is that firms take on locums to take over a caseload and work it without supervision and competently. If you only have one to three years PQE, then there is a very good chance that you are going to need supervision, and in these circumstances, why would the firm want to pay you locum rates to do the job unless they were desperate? This is why somebody only recently qualified will often find it much harder to get locum work than someone who has 15 to 40 years PQE.

Highly Experienced Locums

As soon as you get to 70 years old and above, questions will be asked by some firms whenever a CV is sent across, unless the firm knows of you. This is the tipping point when some firms will start to ask about whether a candidate can type, their IT skills, their exposure to case management systems, their ability to access cloud services and essentially the parts of practice that have changed so much in recent years.

Take the example of a law firm with an online appointment system using Zoom. We have a client who uses locums to cover, but the locums have to be available on a remote basis to take calls from clients at certain times of the day via Zoom and these are set up externally without any say from the locum. So if you are locum at this particular practice they will expect you to field calls from clients at particular times that are booked in and to be able to access their case notes online, deal with cloud systems, conduct Zoom meetings and keep accurate records, which will involve good typing speeds. If you are a solicitor who has worked 30 years in a high street practice where you’ve had a secretary doing all your typing for you, your files are paper based, you have not worked with case management systems, Zoom is a strange and ethereal distant place that you simply do not understand, then you are not going to enjoy this assignment very much!

Age Bar or Experience Bar?

We don’t think it is an age bar, although there is always some stereotyping that seems to go on. The way to get round the issue is of course to identify if this type of role is going to be something you are comfortable and able to do and if it is, then you need to make firms aware of your skill set so that they can accurately recruit you for it. So if you are 78 years old and fully IT competent, happy to use case management systems, very comfortable with Zoom meetings and able to type at 40+ words per minute, all of these things need to be on your CV. If you are 2 years PQE but have over 15 years experience pre-qualification, again this needs to be very clear on your CV.

This type of detail is something that is sadly lacking from a lot of solicitors CVs and really makes a difference when it’s there. NB: if you don’t know your typing speed, go and do an online typing test. Unfortunately because there are still solicitors out there of a certain age and time who have never used case management systems or cloud software, there is an impact on everyone of a similar generation because some firms have been known to assume that all solicitors of a certain age and law firm background will not be able to function sufficiently well. Your job is to countermand this with evidence that actually you’re very competent and you are able to do these things.

If you do this, your chances of increasing your saleability as a locum will increase dramatically. Bear in mind that locums operate on a business to business relationship, and so the firms can be choosy in who they want to take on and contract with to cover their assignments. Firms choose who they want to to fit a particular requirement and if they have the choice of 6 locums for an assignment, you need to make sure you stand out.

Make sure you are the person who fits the requirement and ensure that your CV reflects exactly what your skills & knowledge are.