Law Society tells profession to pay it’s work experience kids

Law Society tells profession to pay it’s work experience kids

The Law Society has called on the profession to pay those undertaking work experience “where possible” to help ensure diversity in the profession.

In a 2014 survey the Junior Lawyers Division of the Law Society found that 79% had undertaken unpaid work experience. 53% of those had undertaken a month or more, while 23% had worked for six months without any pay.

70% believed it would help them find training contratcs but less than half thought it would increase their job prospects, presumably under the impression that if a company cannot afford to pay an employee, it can’t afford to hire them.

President of the Law Society Jonathan Smithers said: “Legal work experience has become a defining and important step towards a legal career, so competition for work experience can be intense.

“The Law Society guidance on work experience supports law firms to promote fair, equal access to the legal profession and good working practices.”

Leanne Maund, Chair of the JLD said: “While work experience is generally considered to be a good thing for aspiring trainee solicitors, sometimes the reality does not live up to expectations. In some cases, candidates we heard from appear to have been taken advantage of.

“We worked with the Law Society to produce this guidance to ensure that a line is drawn between circumstances where a prospective trainee is gaining a valuable insight into an organisation for a short period of time, and those where an individual is simply working unpaid. We are thrilled to see that this guidance has now been produced.”

The Law Society’s own guidance states that work experience opportunities should be “clearly defined, be openly advertised and fairly recruited, be remunerated to national minimum wage or above, where possible; where work experience placements are unpaid, they should last no longer than four weeks, and cover reasonable expenses incurred by participants.

In 2015, 113 employers were named and shamed for not paying the national minimum wage.

According to HMRC, individuals are not entitled to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) if:

  • Students working as a required part of a UK-based further or higher education course don’t qualify for the NMW if their placement with you or your organisation does not exceed one year. The exemption does not apply to students performing work that is not related to their course, eg to help finance their studies or during a gap year
  • People undertaking work experience for you who are of compulsory school age are not entitled to the NMW. If someone is above compulsory school age but has stayed on in full or part-time education, they are entitled to the NMW unless they are undertaking a work placement with you as a required part of their studies -participants in government schemes or programmes to provide training, work experience or temporary work, or to help in seeking or obtaining work
  • Participants in EU Lifelong Learning Programmes (Leonardo da Vinci, European Community Youth in Action, Erasmus or Comenius)
  • Voluntary workers in your organisation are exempt from the NMW if both the following apply: You are a charity, voluntary organisation, associated fund-raising body or statutory body; you give them no monetary payments and only limited and specified expenses and benefits.
  • If an internship only involves shadowing an employee, ie no work is carried out by the intern and they are only observing.

Employers can’t avoid paying the National Minimum Wage if it’s due by:

  • saying or stating that it doesn’t apply
  • making a written agreement saying someone isn’t a worker or that they’re a volunteer

Josh Morris

Josh is the Journalist for the Today's Group and writes many of the articles for Today's Conveyancer. He graduated with a degree in Physics from Cardiff University in 2009 before training as a journalist. He has previously written for The Times, The Mirror and The Daily Express.

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