Ain't no sunshine when she's gone

Visit LC.N Towers this week and you'll be met by a sorry sight. Follow the trail of tear-sodden Kleenex and you'll find the melancholy LC.N team - unwashed, eating cold Pot Noodles and weeping uncontrollably. This scene of utter devastation is, I'm afraid to say, the entire fault of yours truly as, after three happy years here, I'm swapping the Tube for tango and heading to sunny Argentina.

Before I go though, I'll leave you with a little look back at what's happened over the last few years...

Along with the world almost slipping into a black hole (or something) because of the far out experiments at the Hadron Collider and Bob Dylan releasing a "strangely menacing" Christmas album, plenty has happened to change the legal landscape. Firstly, inevitably, I must mention the global financial crisis, which was nothing short of a dream crusher for many law hopefuls. The economic slump caused a dramatic reduction in the number of available training contracts and pupillages meaning that hordes of driven and well-qualified wannabe lawyers had to shelve their career ambitions. Things do seem to be improving, so fingers crossed it won't be long before the legal job market is back to buoyant…

Despite the economic doom and gloom, there's plenty for aspiring lawyers to be excited about though. The downturn has caused some practice areas - for example litigation - to experience a boom and opportunities are growing for different types of legal professionals such as paralegals and legal executives; just look at the success of the SRA's work-based learning pilot and the introduction of alternative business structures. Other groups who seem to be increasingly welcome in the profession are women and those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds - clearly a cause for celebration. Don't get too excited if you're from a lower socio-economic background though; recent media reports suggest that those from state schools are less likely to get a job than their publicly educated counterparts. Maybe the recent work experience initiative I wrote about in my last post will do something to change all that?

Anyway, that's more than enough from me. All that's left for me to do is leave you in the very capable hands of new team member Josh Richman, who you'll be hearing from in the near future...