
What is a Locum?
When I tell people what I do, I still get some blank faces, even amongst fellow lawyers. When I first decided to give locumming a go, over 30 years ago, it was even more unusual, paternity leave hadn’t been invented back then and many Firms still tried to make do when one of their fee earners went on holiday or was off sick.
In my field, family law, the Family Procedure Rules came into effect on the 6th of April 2011, which almost seems like yesterday, it feels as though they’ve been around forever, but before that, the courts had far fewer sanctions than after their introduction, and the general absence of costs consequences for late compliance with directions or Orders almost certainly added to that feeling, pre FPR, that for short absences, a holding letter and the assistance of colleagues would suffice. Client care, in existence then but not as developed as it is now, must also have played a part.
Things are a lot different now. These days and for some time, I’ve noticed a trend in my field, and I guess in other fields too, for locum help to be required even for short absences. It could easily be argued that we’ve almost gone full circle with client care, with many Firms open at parts of the weekend, offering out-of-hours assistance in certain departments and even renaming the perfectly acceptable word ‘holiday’ as annual leave, just to make sure that clients understand that we’re here to serve them 24/7.
The effect of this is that locums have gradually come in from the cold, from the fringes of legal services as they most definitely were when I started, to becoming a necessary part of the legal services armoury for many Firms, even for short absences but especially for the ever-increasing longer types of absence, like paternity and maternity leave, sabbaticals, as well as for illness and cover while firms recruit for a permanent replacement.
In keeping with the ever-increasing trend to achieve excellence in client care, I’ve noticed also that Firms are much more careful about choosing the right candidate for a vacant permanent role, they are generally much more interested in finding a fee earner who will stay in the role and help to grow the Firm, especially amongst their local community, which most Firms recognize as their main source of new instructions.
These days, personal contact is highly regarded, and rightly so in my opinion. As a partner in a Firm once said to me, we assume that you know the law, what we are especially interested in is whether your face fits. He meant with clients as well as coworkers.
So good news for Locums. It’s not for everyone, but no job is. I’m still asked what a locum is and why I do it, but much less often than when I started.
Nomad