Best of luck with that.

You might recall last year that Shoosmiths ran into some fairly choppy waters with its treatment of potential juniors.

Firstly there was March’s ‘withdraw or defer, sans compensation’ issue -

SolicitR: There may well be times when standing out from the crowd is a good thing but we don’t think this is one of them. Shoosmiths has asked its 2009 trainees to withdraw from their contract with the firm or defer until 2011 without any offer of financial compensation.

Which led to that April petition -

Solicitr has been inundated with e-mails from concerned would-be Shoosmiths trainees. The worried future lawyers have responded to Shoosmiths request for them to withdraw from their training contracts with the firm or defer without any offer of financial compensation by starting an online petition.

Which, you may recall, contained the following plea:

We understand why firms need to defer trainees. But we should be compensated for the inconvenience this has caused us, arising from the fact that we had relied on starting this September.

According to www.thelawyer.com, Shoosmiths’ last-published PEP was £396,000*. They are only asking 10 of this year’s intake to defer. They can afford to compensate us.

We are asking for compensation at the market rate, to cover our debt repayments and to enable us to do something constructive with our time off.

We thought we were joining a firm that cared about its employees. This is a very poor way to begin the employment relationship.

Then there was That Open Letter to The Lawyer’s student site Lawyer2B, from future Shoosmithers, Tom Goff and George Roberts which had the rotten smell of an off PR stunt flavoured with the stench of sycophancy and obsequiousness on top. A couple of gem-filled extracts.

L2B: We have spoken to the majority of the incoming intake, and there is naturally a sense of disappointment in the way that the economic downturn has impacted our future plans. However we fully understand the reasons why the decision is necessary in order to secure the future of the firm and all its people. We also respect the need for us to share the sting of the recession as part of the team.

…

One of the chief reasons we remain attracted to Shoosmiths is the quality in the way they do things, training being top of the list. We are pleased that the firm remains committed to giving us the best quality of training it can, and we look forward to working with Shoosmiths.

Rather than drawing understanding and sympathy, the post attracted ridicule and abuse both for the writers and Shoosmiths. But Shoosmiths declined to stand by its defenders in public.

The final comment from Anonymous in May last year tied things up neatly:

Anonymous | 8-May-2009 4:33 pm

As a trainee in a top ten law firm I am both horrified and amused to see such a brown -nosed stunt back fire on the future trainees at this firm.

Not only have you made yourselves the laughing stock of your intake, but you have drawn an unbelievable amount of negative publicity to the firm.

Good luck on qualification guys, you will certainly need it.

2010 will hopefully be a better year for Shoosmiths on the recruitment front. Let’s face it; it couldn’t be worse now, could it.