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Here’s £10,000 – come back next year

City law firms are offering graduate recruits up to £10,000 to stay away from the office for a year.

With significantly lower volumes of business, the ‘magic circle’ firms have been shedding support staff, salaried lawyers and even partners over the last few months with job losses in the legal sector estimated at around 2,500 so far. This latest move is designed to keep the talent that they need for the future without bearing the cost in the present and with starting salaries for new graduates of around £35,000 and hot competition for the brightest and best, offering to defer start dates is just the latest in a raft of initiatives in professional services firms.

KPMG are consulting on changes to terms and conditions which will allow an 18 month period during which they can request shortened working weeks or 4-12 week sabbaticals of staff and are hoping that this will give them an edge over the likes of Deloitte, Grant Thornton and BDO Stoy Hayward who have shed staff through more traditional redundancy approaches in the last few months.