Why? Re: IT jobs in legal firms

[206XSi]

In my constant search for a new and challenging role within IT I keep happening upon tempting roles at Legal firms in London.

I'm totally qualified except I have no experience working in a legal firm.

Why do these companies demand previous legal experience - and how do you get the experience if they won't employ people without it?!?!

[onedsla]

In my experience it's agencies / HR who make up the job descriptions rather than the actual recruiting manager - the agency know the job market in that field and ask for all the experience they can get away with.

I remember seeing a 1st line service centre job which wanted MCSE and CCNA which I found amusing - especially as it only paid about £10k per year!! I wonder if whoever wrote the job add had any idea about what they were asking for...

[pdV6]

Beats me. I keep getting calls from recruitment agents in London wanting to place me with law firms because I have a smattering of words including "law", "solicitor" and "legal" on my CV.

Tip to recruitment consultants: Please read the covering letter... that's what its there for!

[apeebles]

I too have seen some excellent jobs advertised and I am also suprised at the demand for legal experience. IMHO I think that they are restricting their market if they want to find a good person.

A network is a network which ever company you work in. Applications are different but usually revolve around some kind of database.

Also IT people are expected to understand the business of the company they are working for. In my limited (sixteen years) experience of IT every company I have worked for has done things differently. Especially when technology changes so quickly! Therefore it usually takes a good three to six months to get fully up to speed. Therefore it would make not a lot of difference if you recruited someone with legal experience or not. IMHO

[_DJ_]

I'm not convinced. I thought the reason for asking for experience in law/finance was because the procedures and standards in such companies and both a) unusual and b) pretty similar. i.e in a finance company you have be obligued to conform to data classification guidelines (and the industry regulator will insist upon it). Could be wrong mind.

DJ

[onedsla]

I work in the 'Corporate Centre' of a huge company which includes the legal and financial departments amongst others. Sure, they use different applications, but they also use the same hardware, XP build, the same mail servers etc as everybody else in the building, from company chairman to catering admin staff.

[_DJ_]

I suppose it depends what role you'll doing in the company. The people who support the desktop OS, mail servers etc would have the same (or similar) jobs regardless of the company, I agree. However, if you're looking at a design/consultancy role I believe it would be different.