Every time there is a recession, the solicitors’ profession likes to reconsider minimum salaries for its trainees. For a while this was a kind of annual sport. Chairs of the Trainee Solicitors’ Group and the Young Solicitors’ Group Lawyers (I did both jobs back in the days when the Law Society Council was busy tearing itself apart) would be invited into the Law Society equivalent of smoke-filled rooms (biscuits and too-strong, rather rank coffee) to be told that they were standing between hundreds of new training contract places and they should allow the abolition of minimum salaries.
At some point (usually at the then well-lubricated Council dinners) they would be approached by the Law Society Council member they were most friendly with to be told: don’t ask for an increase and everything will be alright. They duly, usually, did that and everyone claimed common sense had prevailed. We know what both Len McCluskey and Ed Milliband would say.
