Daily Diary

War on Talent: special report

Posted 25/10/2006 by legalweekblogs.com SU

With Allen & Overy earlier this month unveiling the associate equivalent of a Doomsday Device with its 15% pay-hikes, it is clear the war on talent is entering a dangerous new phase.

The ‘Stourbridge Slaughters’, Wragge & Co, this week unveiled its own secret weapon – a super-slick graduate recruitment pack with a ‘Breaking the Law’ theme and more (marketing) gems than an Angolan diamond mine.

The fun-filled pack include a gingerbread-man decorating kit, allowing each legalistic Hansel or Gretel to ice the famed Quentin Poole moustache (now sadly banished to the annals of legal history) upon miniature confectionary fee earners.

Meanwhile, highlights of a brochure so glossy it makes Vogue look like last week’s Sunday Sport include a Trainspotting-style line-up of partners ‘accused’ of various mould-breaking misdemeanours. Chameleon-like outsourcing partner David Hamlett, for instance, is apparently ‘wanted’ for “impersonating a surgeon”, after recent NHS trusts work saw him “metaphorically [donning] a surgeon’s gown so he could better understand his client’s world”. Real estate glamour-puss Emma Pioli “stands guilty of writing legal documents in plain English”, while applicants are warned that corporate wheeler-dealer Baljit Chohan – accused of “crossing international boundaries” – is “likely to be in a different time-zone” if approached.

Remarkably, the brochure also promises that Poole himself will make the tea for trainees.

However, for sheer wackiness, Wragges has some way to go before it can match the madcap mayhem at magic circle cash-magnet Linklaters. Linklatersgraduates.co.uk gives applicants a telling glimpse into their future courtesy of current trainee Susannah Jones, whose gloriously off-message stream-of-consciousness tirades against management were presumably written, Anne Frank-style, away from the unblinking gaze of the Links PR machine.

“We had allocated specific tasks like internet research and phone calls to individuals, but we also kept some people floating so they could relieve pressure points and cope with unexpected developments,” she raps, Kerouac-style, about one training exercise. “It was all very methodical and co-ordinated. The exercise was rather dauntingly entitled the ‘all-nighter’ but we came in on the deadline of 4pm – mainly because we had worked so well as a team.”

Take that, Angel! But the anarchy doesn’t stop there.

“My principal had to invest a significant amount of time in getting me up to speed,” freestyles Silk Street’s answer to Janis Joplin, “but it is seen as exactly that – an investment that brings high returns.”

The Diary knows where it will be applying once that law degree we ordered off the internet arrives through the post. Milk, no sugar, please Quentin.