Manchester Met Uni offers lifeline to Halliwells trainees with law firm work placement scheme

Manchester Metropolitan University is offering assistance to the Halliwells future trainees who saw their training contracts cancelled last week with the launch of a new scheme for unemployed graduates.

The university will give £1,000 to firms that take on unemployed law graduates for a month-long work placement. The award will allow the receiving firm to pay the graduates a minimum wage salary for four weeks, without incurring costs.

The source of the money is a £300,000 grant given to Manchester Met by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to help unemployed graduates gain work experience.

The portion allocated to Manchester Met Law School is available to all unemployed law graduates. No links with Manchester Met are necessary.

Manchester Met business development manager Deborah Walker told Legal Week: "We feel extremely sorry for the Halliwells future trainees who have had their contacts cancelled and would hope that some of the heavy-lifting regional firms would be willing to provide them with work under this scheme."

Despite larger law firms' custom of recruiting trainees two years in advance, Walker is hopeful the month-long placements will enable graduates to gain "a foot in the door" that will potentially lead to full-time positions, or at least medium-term paralegal work.

She continued: "Hopefully both graduates and employers will show the flexibility necessary in the current market."

The Halliwells trainees, spread across three intakes in August this year and January and June 2011, were informed last Monday (19 July) that their training contracts had been cancelled. They will be able to reapply to purchasing firms Barlow Lyde & Gilbert and HBJ Gateley through the normal recruitment process, but with no guarantee of the original commitment being honoured.

The other purchasing firm, Hill Dickinson, has announced that it will take on 24 Halliwells trainees across Liverpool and Sheffield over the next two years, with 10 joining this year, eight in 2011 and six in 2012.

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