EXCLUSIVE: A commercial law firm with offices in London, Leeds and Birmingham has come up with a novel recruitment method…
Last month, this advert appeared on Gumtree.
Curious, we sent a fake response.
We received this reply from the law firm the next day:
Soon after, we revealed to 50-lawyer strong outfit Gramdan Solicitors that Legal Cheek was behind the correspondence. At which point the firm’s senior partner, Naveed Arshad, told us that by “investment opportunity” his firm meant an opportunity for potential trainees to “invest time” rather than money. Here is his response:
“We entered into a contract last month with a College and seek LPC graduates to invest their time on evenings and potentially weekends to assist immigrant students and staff. We are looking to train and assist leaders to sometimes teach and at others advise. Best candidates and performers will be offered training contracts. Unfortunately cannot afford big salaries so they will need to volunteer/invest time first. Hope clarifies matter.”
Regarding the ad, a Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) spokesperson told Legal Cheek:
“This situation clearly needs further examination because if Gramdan’s advert is in fact just about potential training contract recruits investing their time and not their money, then their publicity could potentially be deemed misleading, but we would want further information. We will be contacting the firm.”