Recruiting: Situation Vacant

Our candidate 123037 has the following attributes: colour reproduction, high speed billing, can collate, duplex, duplicate and can adjust his own exposure while multitasking and hole punching.
But when you actually want a solicitor of your choice, to do some fairly straightforward task such as helping in your whiplash injury unit, or cut price one-stop conveyancing centre, the agencies immediately stop writing. Catriona and Cedilla go on holiday (together) and if you advertise, nobody bothers to reply.
That is not quite true. If you advertise for the young, only the old get in touch. If you want someone mature, only those who have not yet left primary school send in letters in juvenile hand writing.
Or you hear from candidates who would not get a job even if they were the last solicitors in the world. We have had our fair share of these.
You sometimes get a clue by the number of positions they have held - especially if there has been a job change every six months, interspersed with resting periods. Usually but not always they disclose the pending hearing before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
CVs are no real help. If all CVs were to be believed, we would by now have our office peopled with several Olympic Athletic Champions, many experts in genealogy, dozens of great writers and an abundance of train spotters. The reality is that they all copy out of the standard work: "Great CVs I have known", and some even forget to change the hobbies/public works section. Nowadays I look for the jokes (but they have to be good ones). We have recently taken on a trainee solicitor who included in his CV that he had done some stand-up comedy. We felt that it would help him in his first appearance before a circuit judge.
Even if they do seem reasonable at interview, you really cannot tell what they are really like until you get them into the white heat (or in our case the tepidness) of the department.
We took on a locum once who looked good on paper, looked distinguished in the flesh and looked efficient behind a desk. All day long he sat behind a closed door, brow furrowed and head down.
"That man's got commitment" we said to ourselves as we sweated our ways through our days. Later when our colleague returned fresh from holiday (and that is the last time I will mention the "H" word for several long articles) he discovered that he could not sit at his desk, because underneath it, in neat tall piles, were his files. Not one had been touched, apart from a single letter which had been written on each file.
"Dear sirs," ran the letter, "Thank you for your letter, the contents of which have been duly noted"
My partner wrote to him along the lines of the letter which used to appear in the Guide to Professional Conduct, as an example of a communication which should not be sent to professional colleagues. It was full of references to creatures having crawled out from under stones, and slime moulds. This steaming bundle of invective was dispatched to the locum, who, a few days later replied: "Thank you for your letter, the contents of which have been duly noted."
If, by a rare chance, an application is actually received from a candidate who comes within a million miles of our requirements, the next event is the Interview.
Our office manual directs that interviews should be attended by at least one partner of each sex and one of indeterminate sex. We tend to interview, like police do, with one really nice partner and another, preferably with a beard (a slight problem at the moment as none of our partners - not even the women - sports a beard) who sits looking cross. The bearded (or token bearded) partner has no function during the interview except to frown and make snorting noises.
There is then a friendly partner who appears to side with the candidate, lulling him into a sense of false security. He asks the easy questions, such as name, address, age and whether he likes the Spice Girls.
And finally the team is rounded off by the partner of the opposite sex who asks the difficult questions: about attitudes to fox hunting, ethnic minorities and even sometimes the law.
It may be difficult to obtain fully qualified solicitors. What is not a problem is trainee solicitors. Every postbag carries unsolicited applications from trainees in a ratio of about three to every letter from a client. Many are eminently qualified, and will be more than happy to work for a pittance. Presumably these hopeful people get themselves fixed up sooner or later. But then does some Pied Piper lead them away into a hole in the mountain side? They are certainly never seen again at recruiting time.
In the meantime, back at the office, the selection committee has decided to offer the position to the candidate.
The package will include generous salary, company car (a 1952 Ford Popular), a contributory pension (sixpence a week) and free use of the senior partner's parking space on Tuesdays. The offer letter is dispatched.
A few days later comes the reply:"Thank you for your letter, the contents of which have been duly noted."

This article first appeared in Solicitors Journal in September 1997 under the title "Situation Vacant"