Law graduates paid to stay away - graduate jobs

Law graduates are being paid up to £10,000 not to start work at London legal firms hard hit by the recession.

The companies are asking trainee recruits - with a starting salary of £30,000 on a 24-month contract - to "do something useful" for a year instead.

Said Penningtons spokeswoman Andrea Law: "By deferring their employment, hopefully the economy will pick up and we'll be able to keep them on.

"We're hoping they'll travel or work and gain interpersonal and business skills, although the fact we've already chosen them shows they are ready to join us."

She said that more than a third of the 2009 recruitment class had accepted the offer, and that it would be left open for the foreseeable future.

Others are following suit. Norton Rose has asked 55 trainees to do something "meaningful and constructive", while others are allowing recruits to work for other law firms as paralegals.

Herbert Smith has said it is paying 79 of its trainees more than £5,000 to push back their start date from this September to March next year.