Does my DD have a constructive dismissal claim?

[teafirstmum]

My DD(24) has been on a training contract at a reasonable sized firm since 2023.
She is about to go into her final seat. However due to poor management of her time in her seats, she is only getting two months in this seat before she is set to qualify.
She has been told she needs to be perfect from day one in this seat in order to get a job at the end. No mistakes, arriving early and leaving late, working through her lunch break and her weekends.
She feels as though she’s been set up to fail, and at a really awful time for newly qualified solicitors to apply to move.
She is still waiting for her Solicitors Qualifying Exam results, and if she fails she may get some extra time.
I think she could have a claim for constructive dismissal. They’ve made it impossible for her to perform to their standards and made it clear she won’t have a job in two months.
Does she?

She’s hasn’t been dismissed yet!!
why not have a bit of faith in her

and taking on a firm of solicitors in a constructive dismissal case? Good luck!

I doubt very much this is how it actually went down in reality She has been told she needs to be perfect from day one in this seat in order to get a job at the end. No mistakes, arriving early and leaving late, working through her lunch break and her weekends.

Infact, not just she hasn’t been dismissed yet

she has not even started yet!

OP ask your own daughter and she will tell you, as solicitor, how daft this is.

I have every faith in her. Just not the firm.

She only has her side of the story, but she was told every piece of work needs to be perfect, if she can she can turn up early and leave late, spend her lunchtimes and weekends revising all of the content she needs for the seat.

I just really feel for her. She’s worried sick, not eating and not sleeping.

To be fair, I work in law and all trainees work v long hours and their performance has to be top rate if they want a job at the end of it. There's a lot of competition

A claim before she qualifies won't bode well for any future career either

She’s hasn’t started at the firm op

You come across as really rather peculiar

let your adult daughter who is training to be a solicitor FGS to handle her own matters.

not a chance would she has a case by the way op. And she can tell you that

I suspect your daughter is pretty sure she’s going to fail due to other reasons and she’s sowing the seeds with her mother to blame something / anything / anyone aside from herself for the fail.

Constructive unfair dismissal is only a potential claim after 24 months of employment. She’s going to have to get over that bar. Next I’d be surprised if there were any guarantees about jobs. I qualified a long time ago, but it’s not unusual for there to be more qualifying trainees than jobs…

My firm (or rather one solicitor) screwed up offering me a job and then changing their minds. I’m sympathetic - it was incredibly stressful. I’d advise a conversation with someone sensible. But don’t go in threatening CUD.

She’s on her FINAL seat having been training for 2 years

the final seat…. The expectation is basically you work to the level expected of a qualified solicitor by that point op

perhaps her previous seat having the incoming partner a heads up?

No. She is going in to a tough industry. Maybe it’s not for her.

They have high standards and have let her know the bar is high. It’s not THAT high if you think about it - pure dedication and commitment for the next two months of her life will be rewarded

Get her some Lions Mane tablets maybe?!

No she doesn't. Tbh I'm a lawyer and high performance is expected on your training contract, especially at the latter stages. That's not grounds for constructive dismissal.

I was never told in so many words that I was expected to be perfect and work every weekend etc but I did work several weekends and overnighters (we had actual beds in the office so we could grab an hour or two of sleep before carrying on!) - not saying that's ok but it's far from unusual!

If your DD is likely to not be kept on by her firm and is struggling with the hours may I suggest applying for in-house jobs after she qualifies? I've been in-house ever since I qualified (although I was kept on by my firm, just sent on secondment immediately and that turned into a permanent job offer)

I think it’s disgusting that they’ve told her she has to go into an area of law she has no experience in and she has to master it in two months, after being led to believe she had a job in her current seat!

Those requirements sound absolutely normal.

i did my training in an adjacent field. It was utter hell, but it was amazing training, jumpstarted my career, and helped me land my dream job. Some careers require trial by fire.

She feels so badly treated that she's going to resign and not complete her last seat, not qualify, and then sue them for the notice she would have got if they dismissed her? (As it would be only wrongful constructive dismissal without two years service)

No. That would suggest her legal reasoning and even general commercial sense would mean she had made the right decision and was best kept away from clients.

Solicitor here - training contracts are usually only two years long (fixed term) so at the end there is no guarantee of a job. It is very common for trainees to leave at the end of their TC either because there isn’t a job available in their preferred specialism or because they have decided that after two years, they don’t like the firm. She would be able to apply for newly qualified roles at any other firm and given her treatment at her current firm, that sounds like the best option for her.

It’s cultural and not all firms are like this. I work for a local authority and our department is nothing like private firms. Work is obviously still expected to be at a high standard, but people aren’t breaking their backs to work (unpaid) overtime. Time recording is also less of a pressure, some LA’s don’t even do it.

Once she’s qualified the world is her oyster!

our local authorities don’t have jobs going.

I feel for her because it’s looking like she’ll be unemployed in September. She’s been told informally to look for jobs, so of course she is, but very few firms near us are hiring.

Yeah this. In my last role (I'm a contractor) I helped supervise five trainees while I was there. Four were awesome. One was...frankly a bit crap. It was noticeable by everyone and no amount of coaching or management helped.

In my law firm training contract cohort of over 40 only two weren't kept on, and again they were quite obviously subpar.

Not saying your daughter is like this OP, maybe her firm is making cuts (although that would also further exclude her from claiming anything like constructive dismissal - it's a two year contract and terminating at the end of it isn't actually dismissal, it's just not extending her contract), but I'm just saying that in my experience the vast majority of trainees are very high performing and willing to work long hours to qualify.

She is not crap.

Hopefully your very own daughter will be able to tell you that a claim for constructive dismissal would have her partners belly-laughing

No she really shouldn’t do this. Her priority should be getting through the training contract so that she qualifies, not claiming constructive dismissal for a small payout and ending up unemployable.

A fourth seat trainee should be working to a very high standard. It’s also completely normal to be doing long hours. It’s a tough world.

If she has been specifically advised to start looking for jobs, she should take that seriously and start looking in tandem with her work and trying for a job at her current firm. Every year there are NQs who are not taken on- it’s normal- and there will be firms recruiting at that level. She may even end up at a better firm- just depends on who has vacancies at that level in the right department.

Alongside this she should be speaking to people she knows at her current firm to get as much of a steer as possible on her chances. But if a department doesn’t have a vacancy at NQ then they can’t offer her a job, so she needs to be proactive and pragmatic. She could also consider whether there are any departments she would consider- occasionally people even end up qualifying into a new dept if there is space and they’ve done well so far, so she might think about that. Does she have anyone appointed to mentor her through all this?

Which is why I said I'm not saying your daughter is like that. I was trying to explain what the expectations are of trainees.

Right ok so this is different to what was initially suggested in the OP

Typically larger firms ask trainees to apply for the qualification roles prior to this point so I’m assuming they did this and she hasn’t been successful in getting allocated what she hoped for. To be blunt either because the department don’t think she is good enough or she has been edged out by other, better, candidates who wanted the department too.

It sounds like they are trying to throw her a lifeline in there MIGHT be the chance of a job in her new department BUT they would want her to prove herself quickly and to a high standard. And so advising her on how she could get up the curve quickly. Being an NQ with only 2 months experience presumably in a specialist area would be tough.

Disappointing, sure, but a very long way from CD grounds even if her had length of service.

It might be worth sending an email to their legal services department with her CV because they might have capacity for one reason or another, not gone out for recruitment. We find it really hard to recruit lawyers because a lot of the time they would be taking a pay cut if they’re coming from private.

Also, there are a million legal recruiters on LinkedIn. If she sends out a few messages to them they’ll do the leg work for her! It might be that there are remote roles available in firms further away.

No. She wasn’t asked to apply. She asked to extend her current seat as she loved it and wanted to qualify into it and was told this wasn’t a problem.

Looks like her current seat had a change of mind Op

it is quite obvious what is going on here. I also think your daughter also knows hence sowing the seeds for it not being down to her.

OP you need to support your daughter and this isn’t helping