legal recruitment market report from specialist online Legal Recruitment consultants Ten-Percent.co.uk

Prepared by Jonathan Fagan, Managing Director of Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited; specialist legal recruitment consultants for solicitors and legal executives seeking legal jobs and law firms seeking staff in the UK. Click here to visit our online vacancy database. This report is based on our recruitment activities in the legal job market for the past month, and is updated on a regular basis. It is divided into commercial and high street areas. Before viewing this information, please click here to read our disclaimer. View our legal recruitment news and blog

Legal Job Market Report 9th May 2011 from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

April was fairly predictable, With all the bank holiday interruptions and Easter thrown in, very little recruitment actually occurred in the month as most people seemed to take the opportunity to book annual leave at some stage. Recruitment went beserk for a few days each side of the compulsory breaks as firms and candidates attempted to fit everything in, but arranging interviews is always interesting when partners are planning to take time off.

In April we had 27 vacancies registered, 17 interviews and 78 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates).

This month will still see the duty solicitor rota deadlines (now extended for a week to May 13th for CDS12 submission) impacting on our business.

In quite a large number of areas there is plenty of activity for solicitors between 1 and 10 years PQE, and most of our business is still from our candidate updates and firms making speculative enquiries about these or by searching our candidate database.

Legal Job Market Report 5th April 2011

We are now extremely busy after a slow start. The recruitment market is a little like the housing market - it follows world events and the weather fairly closely. When the Japanese earthquake hit, recruitment stopped. The nuclear leak similarly slowed us down, together with the initial uprisings in Libya. The same happened back in 2003 when the Gulf War started, despite it being a boom period and lots of interviews arranged etc..

The outlook for 2011 remains positive. The recent Report on Jobs from the REC and KPMG indicates that salaries are now at an 8 month high and availability of candidates has declined. Certainly we are seeing a good number of candidates who have been looking for over 2-3 months for posts are starting to get back to us and say that they have now found something.

We got a number of new sign ups for the Ten Percent Unlimited service (fixed fee recruitment services for 12 months) and think this is a good indicator for activity in the legal job sector over the next 3 to 6 months.

Legal Job Market Report 1st March 2011

The outlook for 2011 is still positive. Reed and Monster, the two major players in job boards in the UK, both keep reporting increases in job postings together with levels of recruitment, and a good proportion of recruitment agencies are all showing strong performance levels across most sectors. We are still getting a large number of enquiries for the Ten Percent Unlimited service (fixed fee recruitment services for 12 months) and again we think this is a good indicator for activity in the legal job sector over the next 3 to 6 months.

In February we had 25 vacancies registered, 12 interviews and 111 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates). A proportion of lawyers registering had been made redundant but the majority of these appeared to be towards the middle/senior end as some firms look to make cost savings by recruiting more junior staff to fill roles.

Vacancies have been coming through, together with tentative enquiries, although the market is not yet operating at full speed. The duty solicitor rota deadlines in April will impact on business over the next few weeks I suspect. In quite a large number of areas there is plenty of activity for solicitors between 1 and 10 years PQE, and most of our business is still from our candidate updates and firms making speculative enquiries about these or by searching our candidate database.

February 1st 2011 - Legal Recruitment and Legal Jobs Market Report

The outlook for 2011 is still positive. The Reed Job Index is showing record levels of job posting across all sectors. In the legal sector we have had a large number of requests for quotes for Ten Percent Unlimited (employers looking to recruit an unlimited number of candidates at a set price) and this is a good indicator as it means those employers know that in the next 3 to 6 months they intend to recruit on a relatively large scale.

Vacancies have been coming through, although they have not yet picked up to their level we would expect after Christmas and we anticipate that over the next two to three weeks we will start to see a large increase in jobs coming on stream.

Less and less candidates of any quality are now available for general recruitment as the market has started to contract back again. That does not mean there are no candidates looking for work at present, far from it - but the pool of suitable candidates stays very small indeed for most positions. Newly qualified and more experienced solicitors are still going to struggle for the next three to four years to find good positions in certain areas of the country and particular fields of law. However, in quite a large number of areas there is plenty of activity for solicitors between 1 and 10 years PQE.

We are still getting firms requesting solicitors with the following, which is always a problem as they do not really exist anymore (restrictive covenants tend to put paid to that one unless someone is coming from their own law firm but then often they are damaged goods or have insurance issues).

We still have vacancies that have not been filled after 3 to 4 months and do not anticipate a change in this situation for the next 6 to 12 months or longer. If the property market picks up over the next 6 months we will see a large increase in the lack of good candidates as smaller firms look to increase their size.

We have not heard many firms discussing the new multi-disciplinary partnership arrangements coming in over the next 12 months, and I suspect that there will be a slight shudder in the market when these do finally come in but once new companies look at the regulation involved in running a solicitors’ practice or an alternative practice they may think twice before deciding to move into the field (The Co-Op Legal Services excluded of course).

Jonathan Fagan, MD Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment.
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment maintains a database of over 8,000 solicitors, legal executives, fee earners, legal cashiers and office managers - available to view online.

Legal Job Market Update 5th January 2011

Our 2011 Legal Recruitment and Legal Job Market Predictions are as follows. We have also included the REC (Recruitment and Employment Confederation) positive predictions in this newsletter as well:

1. The job market is going to heat up, with demand particularly strong for experienced career paralegals, support staff and legal cashiers. The reason for this is that a lot of firms are finding the need to take on more staff but feel that they do not necessarily need to recruit solicitors to undertake fairly straightforward transactional work and instead can get paralegals and unqualified executives for a lot less money.
2. As this happens, salary levels are going to stay low for solicitors. I do not see any improvement on salaries within the next 2-3 years.
3. The majority of experienced unemployed non-qualified fee earners will find work very quickly, and as this happens more firms will then have to look at recruiting solicitors again.
4. We think that by the middle of 2011 legal recruitment will be at similar levels to 2007-2008 and a lot of firms will be struggling to recruit good quality candidates in most areas, apart from NQ level in and around the South East and London.
5. The Legal Services Commission random changes will continue to affect legal aid fields, but we still expect to see a very busy period in April and October when the duty solicitor rota deadlines come up.
6. On the commercial side it will remain fairly busy but only at 2-7 years PQE. Anything too junior and too senior is not going to attract very much interest.
7. Hotspots for 2011 will be: London, Kent, Yorkshire, South Wales and East Midlands. Coldspots: North West (especially Manchester), South West, East Anglia

Legal Job Market Report 1st December 2010 from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

It has been a fairly typical November. We have seen a calming down again following the slightly manic October but plenty of activity and movement. It is now very clear from talking to candidates that anyone who looks remotely decent is again picking up interviews. There is a demand forming across the UK for wills & probate solicitors, as well as costs draftsmen and legal cashiers. Salaries remain fairly low in some areas.

Despite everything quietening down again for the Christmas break, there are still vacancies coming on stream as firms get the time to consider their plans for the New Year and look to recruit. We have introduced a new service that removes the risk out of any economic fluctuations and firms are signing up for this. We are still getting vacancies which are starting to linger without anyone suitable showing any interest.

In November we had 15 interviews and 30 vacancies registered, together with a further 7-10 speculative enquiries about specific candidates from our database. Over 130 new candidates were added to the Online Database (qualified or experienced legal staff only). Locum assignments are getting more widespread again, we are picking up quite a few enquiries from firms wanting to book ahead to next Spring/Summer. Permanent vacancies are coming in for Fee Earners, Solicitors, Legal Executives, Cost Draftsmen and Legal Cashiers. Some solicitor candidates have indicated recently that they have noticed a change in recruitment from adverts for "solicitors" to adverts for "fee earners and lawyers" as some firms seek to remove the cost of employing solicitors and look to take on paralegals instead. We have not noticed much of this ourselves and have a large number of clients who will not recruit anything but solicitors for the majority of their roles.

Vacancies this month: Crime, Costs Draftsmen, Family, Wills & Probate, Legal Cashiers, Civil Litigation, Agricultural, Clinical Negligence, Construction, Insolvency, Personal Injury, Dispute Resolution and Child Care.

We have found it increasingly hard to find Private Client solicitors, Child Care panel members, cost draftsmen and crime solicitors just about everywhere. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment maintains a database of over 8,000 solicitors, legal executives, fee earners, legal cashiers and office managers.

Legal Job Market Report 2nd November 2010 from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

It has been a very busy October this year. We have started to note a very interesting trend in the market. Whenever a report comes out like the CIPD one today (2nd November - 1.4 million job losses predicted) we see a drop off in new enquiries. Similarly whenever a new report comes out saying that the recession is not as bad as feared (a few weeks ago) we get an increase in new enquiries.

The market has picked up, we are still seeing residential conveyancing and wills & probate posts coming back on stream, and family/crime are both still strong. A cursory glance in the Law Society Gazette job classifieds last week showed a number of litigation posts coming through after a surge in commercial property work in mid-October. We are getting reports of vacancies starting to linger without anyone suitable showing any interest, which takes us back to pre-2008 recruitment.

In October we had 19 interviews and 29 vacancies registered, together with a further 10-15 speculative enquiries about specific candidates from our database. Locum assignments are getting more widespread again and an increasing number of locums are now booked up for long periods of time. Our permanent vacancies are coming in for Solicitors, Legal Executives and Legal Cashiers.

Vacancies this month: Fee Earning - Employment, Crime, Family, Wills & Probate, Defendant Personal Injury and Support Staff - Legal Cashiers.

We have struggled to find Defendant PI solicitors in Bristol, Private Client solicitors just about everywhere, Panel members and Crime solicitors just about everywhere. Crime solicitor front still very quiet indeed and we have been unable to assist most firms this year in relation to their duty solicitor vacancies.

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment maintains a database of over 8,000 solicitors, legal executives, fee earners, legal cashiers and office managers. Our candidate lists include solicitors from NQ - 30 years PQE, solicitors with a following, lawyers with marketing experience and both active & passive candidates.

Legal Job Market Report - October 2010

It has been a busy September this year. The market has picked up, we are seeing residential conveyancing and wills & probate posts coming back on stream, and family/crime are both still strong. A cursory glance in the Law Society Gazette job classifieds last week showed a large and increasing number of commercial property positions are being advertised by law firms across England and Wales, and this is a real change from the situation 18 months ago.

A major change has occured on the candidate side. We are used to seeing considerable numbers of applicants for certain posts - eg crime, family and property jobs - we are noticing candidates are back in employment again and no longer available, or alternatively being offered more than one position. We recently had a post in for a medium sized central London firm looking for a duty solicitor and received no applications, which is completely different to last year when we got 6 applications within 24 hours.

We suspect that we have reached the end of the bottom of the market, and if firms want to recruit good quality candidates they need to invest in them. No longer is it possible to pick up someone and expect them to be grateful for a salary regardless of how meagre this is!

It must be fairly good news at the moment - even the Gazette managed an article on how positive everything was (although they did follow it up the following week with a report that a large London city firm or two were expected to go bust in the next few years...).

In September we had 13 interviews and 25 vacancies registered. Locum assignments are getting more widespread again and an increasing number of locums are now booked up for long periods of time. Our permanent vacancies are coming in for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Licensed Conveyancers, Legal Cashiers and Financial Controllers.

The vast majority of our vacancies remain in the South East and London. As we predicted back in 2008 when the recession hit the industry it is these areas that will improve first, followed by the rest of the country.

Vacancies this month: Conveyancing, Commercial Property, Wills & Probate, Crime, Employment, Personal Injury and Family Law. Most of these have been at a mixed level - both junior and senior solicitor/legal executive roles.

We have struggled to find PI solicitors in Liverpool, Private Client, Commercial & Residential Property Solicitors in North Yorkshire, NQ Family Solicitors for Tunbridge Wells, and Crime solicitors just about everywhere. Crime solicitors, particularly duty solicitors and other LSC funded lawyers, appear to be deserting in their droves, which is not surprising looking at the recent behaviour of the LSC in awarding contracts to firms who do not even have staff on their books and removing contracts from firms who have been doing the work for years...

Legal Job Market Report - September 7th 2010

It has been a busy August this year. A number of firms took the plunge in recruiting to expand their firms, and others needed straightforward replacements. One thing is clear - the market has now picked up and we are noticing candidates are back in employment again and no longer available.

September/October is traditionally the busiest period in the recruitment calendar - mainly because everyone is back from their holidays, workloads pick up, partners wonder how they are going to cope with large increases in work and days get shorter so that everyone tend to work longer hours or think about their business model or plans a bit more than over the summer.

There has been very little talk this year of redundancies in law firms or in house departments which is a good indicator that things have changed, and we are picking up vacancies at high speed.

In August we had 16 interviews and 30 vacancies registered. Locum assignments are back in favour now and a number of locums are now booked up for long periods of time. The vacancies are coming in for Solicitors, Legal Executives, Licensed Conveyancers, Marketing Managers, Practice Managers, Legal Cashiers, Legal IT Staff and Financial Controllers.

The vast majority of our vacancies are in the South East and London. As we predicted back in 2008 when the recession hit the industry it is these areas that will improve first, followed by the rest of the country.

Vacancies this month: Conveyancing, Commercial Property, Civil Litigation, Housing (LSC and non-LSC), Wills & Probate, Crime, Employment, Personal Injury (still quite busy on the PI front), Wills & Probate and Family Law. Most of these have been at a mixed level - both junior and senior solicitor/legal executive roles.

We have struggled to find PI solicitors in Liverpool, Wills & Probate solicitors in East Anglia and Licensed Conveyancers in London. We have a good bank of candidates for each of these fields of law and locations, but the candidates ideally suited to the role have now found posts elsewhere. This is a good indication that the market is getting back on its feet...

The summer is already half way through, the nights are getting darker already and we are approaching the busiest time of the year for recruitment into law firms, in house departments and local authorities (not sure about the last one this year!).
July has been another interesting month for the staff at Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment. We have picked up a large number of vacancies, had plenty of interviews arranged, but just not back up to pre-recession levels of recruitment yet. We know from other recruiters in other fields that the market has been extremely busy for the last 8 weeks, with placements taking place almost every day, but in legal recruitment this has not happened. The market is definitely back on its feet from the total collapse in 2008/2009, but still not up to speed.

In July we had 18 interviews and 35 vacancies registered. We have been fairly busy on the locum side of things and we know that some of our professional locums are booked up solidly for the next 6-9 months in conveyancing, wills & probate and family law, the three main areas for our locum department.

We have also seen an increase in other areas of legal recruitment in recent weeks, with Legal Cashiers, Legal IT Staff and Financial Controllers/Office Manager vacancies all picking up.

The north west of England is going to be quiet for some time we think, with the recent collapse of the Consumer Credit market (we wondered when everything was going to fall to pieces in that line of work!), and Halliwells. Incidentally as an aside, having seen a recent somewhat questionable case that Halliwells were pursuing on behalf of Tesco Insurance for a blocked drain on a house sale (not mine I hasten to add!), and coupled with the news about their interesting Manchester real estate investments, I am not surprised to hear of their demise...

Plenty of solicitors and law staff previously unemployed have been reporting job offers, placements and work opportunities, and it looks as if we are going to be back up to speed within the next 3-4 months on the placement side. A large number of fee earners have been snapped up in recent times, and we anticipate this trend continuing in the next few months.

Vacancies this month: Property Litigation, Wills & Probate, Crime, Employment, Personal Injury (getting very busy on the PI front), Wills & Probate, Crime and Family Law. Most of these have been at a mixed level - both junior and senior solicitor/legal executive roles.

What an amazing budget – I predict pictures of axes on the front of the Daily Mirror and the Sun tomorrow.. More liberal/left wing commentators will say that lower income families have been protected by the Liberal Democrats but middle income families have been hit quite hard, and more right wing observers will applaud the move to get rid of a lot of unnecessary left wing initiatives and benefits..

Highlights:
20% VAT (to start 4th January 2011)
no increase in tax on alcohol, tobacco and fuel.
Child benefit frozen for three years
Cuts to family tax credits removing those above £50,000.
Corporation tax cut to 24%
Small business tax cut to 20%
Income tax allowance increased by £1,000
Two year council tax freeze
Capital Gains Tax increased to 28% for high income tax payers.
Employers NI tax holiday for job creation in the regions
Acceleration in state pension age to 66 years.
Two year pay freeze for public servants paid over £21,000.
Housing benefit – paid up to £400 per week max.
Bank levy to be imposed.
Government departments to be cut by 25% over 4 years.
Forecasts:
Unemployment to fall for the next 4 years after 2010.
Growth forecast to be 1.2 % this year, 2.6% next year, 2.8% in 2012, 2.9% in 2013 and 2.7% in both 2014 and in 2015.
Not certain yet what effect the above will have on anyone, except that small businesses will be very pleased to see the small business tax levels drop to 20%, but no-one will be overjoyed to see the VAT increase to 20%.

CGT increases as well may have implications for any senior partners looking to sell their practices over the next few years, and the state pension age acceleration is going to result in more people needing to work longer, particularly following the recent few years.

I suspect rather a lot of newspapers will be disappointed at the housing benefit restriction as the benefit has been responsible for lots of fascinating stories about claimants living in London mansions and driving convertibles……

Public sector cuts are going to hurt some law firms more than others, and similarly with legal recruitment agencies. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment have never quite managed to get a foot into this lucrative trade, but plenty of other agencies have established whole departments around it. I suspect a couple of larger regional law firms across the UK may well be laying off some of their specialist public sector lawyers in the next few months…

Well now we know that we have a Lib Dem/Conservative government in power, the Ash Cloud has ceased to cloud over the UK and hopefully we can all get on with our businesses.

Recruitment virtually came to a halt at the start of May as we waited for the government to decide to be a government. Prior to this we had the ash cloud circling above us, which put paid to at least one partner's holiday as well as one locum solicitor's assignment to cover him!

May always sees two frantic rushes for recruitment - one before each bank holiday weekend - when partners have the time to think about their staffing plans for the next few months and get in touch.

Our thoughts go out to the family of Kevin Commons, the solicitor who was shot dead in Cumbria. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment have placed solicitors in his firm on a number of occasions over the years and hope the firm can continue as a legacy to him in the years to come.

Vacancies this month: Civil Litigation, Commercial Property, Employment, Conveyancing and Family Law. Most of these have been at a mixed level - both junior and senior solicitor/legal executive roles.

We have had 12 interviews undertaken in between the upheaval in May. Over 50 new solicitors and legal executives registered with us in May (down from 95 in April and 132 in March), but I anticipate that this will go back up again in June as people start to look to move jobs again after the General Election result has been settled.

Commercial is still running fairly slowly, once you take out the larger firms' generic lists, and most firms seem to be avoiding too much recruitment, but the high street is busy, and will remain so, particularly with the locum season almost upon us.

We are starting to see a new phenomenon of Indian outsourcing operations in the UK looking to recruit UK lawyers and paralegals, although the salary ranges we have seen so far have not been anything we can work with.

There is now a shortage of lawyers in certain areas and some law firms are struggling to recruit lawyers at particular levels.

Recent vacancies in: Family - Mansfield, Civil Litigation - Middlesex, Commercial Property - Teesside, Family - Somerset, Conveyancing - London, Crime - Swindon, Employment - London, Civil Litigation - Lancashire.

Legal Job Market Report - 10th May 2010

As I write this, we still do not know whether the Lib Dems have decided to go for a coalition government, or whether they will opt for a minority Tory government and hope to do better in the inevitable election that most commentators seem to think will follow. I suspect that this will have an effect on the mood of recruiters - most of the time as an industry we are very susceptible to world incidents 9/11, 7/7, the Gulf Wars etc.. - as law firms and in house departments tend to have other things to think about..

April 2010 has been a very good month, mainly thanks to the Legal Services Commission and the CDS 12 deadlines we have just been through. There is a shortage of solicitors now for a range of specialist roles - family panel members, children law solicitors, duty solicitors and higher court advocates - and we are getting law firms, charities and NGOs all requesting children panel members in particular (domestic violence module holders appear to be in great demand).

In April we had 42 vacancies posted for a whole range of different areas including Conveyancing, Commercial Property, Wills & Probate, Crime (lots), Family (lots), Industrial Disease, Personal Injury, Welfare Benefits, Employment, In House, Corporate Finance, Offshore, Child Care and Civil Litigation.

Commercial is still running fairly slowly, once you take out the larger firms generic lists, and most firms seem to be avoiding too much recruitment, but the high street is busy, and will remain so, particularly with the locum season almost upon us.

The market has definitely turned, vacancies are materialising and candidates are starting to be tied up again when we send out updates.

If you are thinking of recruiting and hoping to get a bargain due to the number of redundant solicitors still looking, this is now getting considerably harder as desirable candidates are working again, and the market left is getting increasingly B List rather than A List. A number of firms have found this and have had to revise offers upwards to attract candidates into their departments.

The new tax year has kick started the next round of recruitment, and we expect to be very busy now for the next 8 weeks until July 2010 when everything will slow down again.

Recent vacancies in - Commercial Property Solicitor - Cheshire, Crime Solicitor - St Albans, Children Panel Member - Middlesex, Employment - Wiltshire, Welfare Benefits & Debt - West Midlands, Family - Plymouth, Insolvency Lawyer - London, Personal Injury - Stockport.

Legal Job Market Report - April 6th 2010

March 2010 has been a very good month and we are now not only optimistic of the market picking up, but also are aware that legal recruitment is back up and running at high speed. We have watched as vacancies are suddenly grinding to a halt in some areas, particularly for duty solicitors and family panel members, as there is a lack of fresh talent coming onto the market. In March we had 37 vacancies posted for a whole range of different areas including Conveyancing, Commercial Property, Wills & Probate, Crime (lots), Family (lots), Industrial Disease, Personal Injury, Agricultural Property, Housing, Child Care and Civil Litigation.

Commercial still seems to be running at a fairly slow speed. We could go down the route of other agencies and post the generic mailing lists with commercial posts in that some of the bigger firms send out to 100 recruiters and hope for the best, but generally we try to avoid these as inevitably they result in no quality responses from our candidates.

The market has turned, although there is still no sign of a major pick up in non-contentious work despite vacancies starting to materialise. The conveyancing and wills posts we have picked up have been for replacement partners or long term cover and tend to be from old clients who trust our skill & experience in assisting them rather than from new start ups or clients.

The new tax year will almost inevitably kick start the next round of recruitment, and we expect to be very busy now for the next 12 weeks until July 2010 when everything will slow down again.

The new Ten-Percent Unlimited Service has taken off in the last 4 weeks, and we are already assisting firms with expansion plans at very low cost to use our Candidate Database and recruit directly without agency involvement.

Recent vacancies in - Duty Solicitor - Preston, Personal Injury Solicitor - Bradford, Family Solicitor - Twickenham, Crime Duty Solicitor/Caseworkers - West London (Ten-Percent Unlimited), Civil Litigation - Plymouth, Senior Conveyancing Solicitor - North London, PSL - Bristol, Business Development Manager (Conveyancing) - London, Agricultural Property - Southampton.

Legal Job Market Summary 1st March 2010

February 2010 has been a reasonable month, bearing in mind the effect the weather has had on the resurgence in recruitment, and we are quite optimistic at the moment that things are going to pick up over the next 3-4 months.

At the start of the year we were very confident that the market was picking up - we have been getting a steady stream of vacancies in from firms all looking to either expand or replace, and this is very good news indeed for jobseekers. If the weather had not been so bad earlier in the year I think the market would be a lot more busy than it is now, but still we are seeing a gradual improvement day after day.

We have had over 25 vacancies in during February, the majority of which have been from good quality firms with definite salaries, plans and stability.

All the research coming out of the recruitment industry is pointing to a slow but gradual recovery, and I think the legal market unfortunately is going to remain one of the those longest hit by the recession. We were one of the first markets to get the full effect of the tsunami wave of redundancies and drop off in work, and also going to be one of the last to recover.

Recruitment is done in waves, and the recent wave is getting towards its peak after a short drop off over February half term. The next wave will continue until the end of March, picking up again in mid April. We expect a busy period towards the Easter break at the end of March.

We are seeing conveyancing and commercial property posts again, including both permanent and locum. However to put it into context, 2 years ago we were regularly registering over 100 vacancies a month, and placing conveyancing and commercial property solicitors at a rate of knots....

Recent vacancies in - Family/Education Law - Colchester, Civil Litigation - Tunbridge Wells, Wills & Probate - Maidstone, Employment Law - Guildford, Company Commercial/Commercial Property - Central London, Duty Solicitor - Wrexham, Family - Plymouth.

February 1st 2010 - Legal Job Market Report

The Legal Job Market looked as if it was going to take off quite dramatically as December drew to a close. All the signs were there – firms wanting to interview over Christmas, indications of the recruitment freezes being lifted by some of the larger firms, lack of redundancies and a stop to the large numbers of CVs flooding the market through redundancy, and requests by law firms with posts.

January has been a little bit slow as a result of the adverse weather conditions we have experienced, although vacancies have still picked up. We had people about to attend interviews two hundred miles away only to discover that not only was the firm they were going to see closed, but the partners they were due to meet being snowed in at their homes. One company had a whole days worth of interview cancelled with people travelling from all over the country to a central location in Derby.

This makes it very difficult on the recruitment side as the work that a consultant puts in to set up one days worth of interviewing can take another week to get back on track, once partners have been tracked down, candidates have made travel arrangements etc.. It is all very time consuming and quite frustrating when adverse weather affects interviews.

We are still seeing some rogue firms and candidates coming through, which has been a fairly common theme throughout the recession. We have had firms offering ridiculously low amounts of money to well qualified candidates and being surprised when they get turned down, candidates who get offered extremely good deals only to turn them down for spurious reasons and candidates who simply fail to turn up to interviews at all.

All of these things have been very rare in legal recruitment during the time we have been involved in it, and thankfully are decreasing as the markets pick up.

The other phenomenon is the non-existent law firm or job offer which usually involves a firm claiming to be starting up and with the money to provide a salary plus bonus scheme, only to get to the interview and find that the firm were wanting to see if the person coming to see them had their own following that a) they could potentially "use" and b) they could base their department on in order to pay the candidate to do the work rather than generating any new work.
We have seen an increase in the number of non-contentious positions with Wills and Probate and conveyancing slowly starting to get back onto the market. In fact we have noticed in some areas that there is already a shortage of conveyancers with a particular level of experience and I expect this to start to become increasingly prevalent as the recruitment season progresses.

The usual litigation positions are there as always although family appears to have died off again, after a surge last year.

Perhaps this is a sign of the increased optimism in the economy, as I write this I hear that the country is now officially out of a recession which of course has an effect on people’s financial and personal decisions.

The outlook for February is good and we hope that the snow stays off and firms start to look to recruit again. The back of the Law Society Gazette is always a good indication of the market and in recent weeks we have started to see a number of law firms and companies looking to expand departments and increase their teams and we hope that this continues for the foreseeable future.

Legal Job Market Summary - 11th January 2010

As one would expect, December slowed down considerably in the run up to Christmas. However, again we have seen vacancies coming into us, including conveyancing, wills & probate, family, commercial litigation, crime and housing. These are not the usual emails from large firms with a multitude of parties being sent the same jobs, but actual vacancies from small and medium sized practices.

The geographical mix of vacancies shows that the regions are at present starting to pick up before London and the Home Counties. The majority of the posts have been spread across the UK, but because of the overspill of London into neighbouring areas the Home Counties are taking longer to get back up to speed.

Over Christmas, as candidates make New Year resolutions to move, we are seeing increasing numbers of grade A candidates registering with us, including for example a senior commercial property solicitor with a following and looking for a salary of about £120k. Employees are getting more comfortable with the idea of making moves, which has changed from previous months when on the whole most people very sensibly were making the decision to remain exactly where they were.

Family panel members and crime solicitors are still going strong in most areas, with firms looking to increase their departments following the delay of the LSC BVT arrangements.

Commercial and Civil Litigation are both gaining ground as clients start to realise that there are a number of outstanding debts available to go after and now have the funds to pursue these.

Commercial law firms still seem to be very cautious, with a considerably fewer number of positions coming on stream so far this year, although reports of large numbers of vacancies coming up for April 2010.

About Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has a range of senior solicitors and executives looking for work as well as at a more junior level. We can introduce you to housing supervisors, crime duty solicitors, family law panel members, children panel members, immigration level 2 supervisors, mental health review tribunal panel members, personal injury panel members registered for work across the UK.

We have a database of candidates that you can view online, and assist with permanent and temporary recruitment. A good proportion of lawyers registered with us are passive jobseekers (ie they like to hear of new opportunities arising as opposed to actively looking for work). The company has about 7,000 solicitors registered at all levels, together with a large number of legal executives and paralegals/fee earners. We are called Ten-Percent because each year since 2000 we have donated 10% of our annual profits to a charitable trust called the Ten-Percent Foundation.

If you would like to use our services, please get in touch. You can view our Candidate Database online and register your vacancies either by emailing cv@ten-percent.co.uk or visiting www.ten-percent.co.uk/er.html

Our terms and conditions can be read on the website, and you can speed the process of recruitment up simply by writing the word “urgent” on the email or form you send through, and making sure you include the PQE level, the salary range, start date and any further requirements. We can usually get CVs for you within 3-4 hours.
www.ten-percent.co.uk/weeklyreport.htm

Legal Job Market Summary - 1st December 2009

November has been a good month. We have had considerably more vacancies in than in previous recent months, and the market is definitely showing signs of picking up. Instead of redundancies we are starting to see candidates registering for the right reasons again, which means that more grade A candidates are again considering moves, something which has not happened for a while (a large percentage of candidates registering in recent times have been as a result of redundancy etc..).

Family panel members and crime solicitors are still going strong in most areas, with firms looking to increase their departments following the delay of the LSC BVT arrangements.

Commercial and Civil Litigation are both gaining ground as clients start to realise that there are a number of outstanding debts available to go after and now have the funds to pursue these.

Personal Injury and Consumer Credit are two other areas where we are seeing vacancies - Consumer Credit is back on the agenda with new firms opening up and old ones developing departments. The recent House of Lords decision appears to only affect bank charges and hence the chances of success for the potential flood of claims on the credit card and mortgage side remains highly possible.

In the South West we are starting to see all markets picking up with vacancies in contentious and non-contentious work coming in for a range of levels and posts. Other areas have not been so strong, but still plenty of signs across England and Wales.

Commercial law firms still seem to be very cautious, with a considerably fewer number of positions coming on stream so far this year, although reports of large numbers of vacancies coming up for April 2010.
Housing law remains the hot area in terms of shortages, although this does have something to do with the remuneration available very often on LSC rates, and vacancies are coming in across the South East and London.

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has housing supervisors, crime duty solicitors, family law panel members, children panel members, immigration level 2 supervisors, mental health review tribunal panel members, personal injury panel members registered for work across the UK. We have a database of candidates that you can view online, and assist with permanent and temporary recruitment. A good proportion of lawyers registered with us are passive jobseekers (ie they like to hear of new opportunities arising as opposed to actively looking for work). The company has about 7,000 solicitors registered at all levels, together with a large number of legal executives and paralegals/fee earners.

If you would like to use our services, please get in touch. You can view our Candidate Database online and register your vacancies either by emailing cv@ten-percent.co.uk or visiting www.ten-percent.co.uk/er.html Our terms and conditions can be read on the website, and you can speed the process of recruitment up simply by writing the word “urgent” on the email or form you send through, and making sure you include the PQE level, the salary range, start date and any further requirements. We can usually get CVs for you within 3-4 hours.

6th October 2009 Market Report

September has been a mixed month. We have had more vacancies in, mostly on the high street side, with family and crime appearing to be the main areas of expansion, and still no sign of any movement on the conveyancing and wills & probate sides (unsurprisingly).

The commercial markets appear to be still shedding staff, whereas the only redundancies we are now seeing on the high street side seem to be in the conveyancing side still as the market has not yet picked up.

Through our work with the Job Centres (we have a contract to provide support to newly unemployed professionals) we are able to say that there is still a trend in a lot of firms and companies to lay off middle ranking fairly high paid associates and management, particularly if businesses can cut a salary by getting rid of someone now, holding out for say 12 months, and then employ someone on a lower salary to do the same job.

We expect this to occur quite often, as it is a powerful business tool for a lot of companies, cutting significant costs, making the business leaner, and perhaps not losing too much goodwill amongst clients by taking this level off the payroll.

An interesting phenomenon that has occurred in the recession has been the candidate who plays hard to get at a time when you would expect any lawyers out of work or looking for work to be quite keen on joining a firm able to provide security, good conditions and quality work and instead either opt for a firm who are almost certainly going to be a very poor option or opt to remain where they are and hope for the best.

We recently had a candidate who was offered a good salary (matched her other offer), pension contribution, 6.5 hour days (you heard that correctly), 27 days holiday and life insurance at a firm who had an average retention record of about 10 years, together with partnership prospects, to join a firm probably likely to employ her for less than 12 months, and spit her back out onto the conveyor belt. I have seen this so often in the time we have been involved in recruitment, I am just waiting for the call from her to ask if the firm who made the good offer will still consider her...

Interviews this month are up as firms try to expand their family departments, housing lawyers start to see the boom times (if LSC work can ever be considered that!), and firms with a bias towards non-contentious try to recruit contentious solicitors and expand their departments.

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment has housing supervisors, crime duty solicitors, family law panel members, children panel members, immigration level 2 supervisors, mental health review tribunal panel members, personal injury panel members registered for work across the UK. We have a database of candidates that you can view online, and assist with permanent and temporary recruitment. A good proportion of lawyers registered with us are passive jobseekers (ie they like to hear of new opportunities arising as opposed to actively looking for work). The company has about 7,000 solicitors registered at all levels, together with a large number of legal executives and paralegals/fee earners.

We are starting to see an increase in in house lawyer positions, as companies start to see the benefits of keeping work in house and paying accordingly. In house solicitors can be recruited to work on projects from salaries starting at £45,000 (plus benefits), and this can be considerably cheaper than paying for an external firm to work on a project. We have recruited into a range of industries recently including oil & gas and construction. Litigation solicitors can be particularly profitable in house as fees soon start to mount up.

If you would like to use our services, please get in touch. You can view our Candidate Database online and register your vacancies either by emailing cv@ten-percent.co.uk or visiting www.ten-percent.co.uk/er.html. Our terms and conditions can be read on the website, and you can speed the process of recruitment up simply by writing the word “urgent” on the email or form you send through, and making sure you include the PQE level, the salary range, start date and any further requirements. We can usually get CVs for you within 3-4 hours.

The summer of 2009 has been one of ups and downs. We have placed good quality candidates into good quality positions, both in house and private practice, and had a busier July than we have had in about 3 years. In the last three weeks of August, we had more vacancies into us than for the previous 4 months, and there are definitely signs now that the market is picking up. A couple of conveyancing positions again were posted, although these were not particularly of a good standard, and the focus remains on contentious work.

We have had 17 interviews, 10 job offers and 28 new vacancies since our last newsletter in January. All of these interviews have been for employed positions with salaried roles. Smaller firms appear to be recruiting more than larger firms at present, and this probably relates to the smaller levels of overheads the high street and niche firms have to service. Some frustration on the recruitment side including the Legal Services Commission prevaricating over funding for a couple of clients and leading to the withdrawal of a couple of offers..

In fact whilst redundancies appear to have slowed down, some of the volume and insurance client firms are still laying off staff, and I suspect that this will continue for some time until their accounts are more comfortable. A good time to be a small business I think...

Recruitment is done in waves, and the next wave always starts in September, finishing at half term in October and then starting again January.

Legal Job Market Report 1st June 2009 from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

May 2009 has probably been the most disappointing month we have had in the last 4 years. The reason for this is because traditionally May, June and July have been our busiest months each year, but this year nothing much has happened. We often see dips in the level of business in the May bank holiday weeks, but this year it has simply been very quiet.

We have had 5 interviews, 1 job offer and 8 new vacancies since our last newsletter in April. 80% of these interviews have been for for employed positions with salaries.

In the recruitment press at present we keep reading of agencies who are bucking the trend, doing business in new areas, and taking the time to develop other fields. All of this is simply code for "we are in trouble". Similarly we would like to pretend that business is booming in legal recruitment, but it is not. If you look in the back of the Law Society Gazette recently, the amount of vacancies has dropped, and only 2-3 of the larger agencies are still advertising, possibly because they have tied-in contracts.

However - it is not right to say that as a result of this the market has completely collapsed. We are still getting vacancies into us and there are still fields of law and geographical locations where firms are short of candidates.

We are aware that there have been large numbers of staff laid off, but the vast majority of these have been from medium to large firms who have taken the opportunity to reduce their wage bill (rightly so as otherwise staring bankruptcy in the face!), and not necessarily because the work is not likely to be there in a few months time (or when the market picks up).

So in summary, the market is not good but similarly not completely gone. We are hearing of lawyers finding jobs across the UK in a range of fields whether by agencies or direct applications. Some firms have indicated that work has picked up.

As a guide on the recruitment front it has been reported recently that permanent recruitment across the UK is down over 50% in terms of level of profit for recruitment consultancies.

Legal Job Market Report 6th May 2009

April 2009 has not been a good month in the legal job market. Unsurprisingly really, and when I look back at previous years the month includes our lowest ever fee income levels (2003 - Iraq War + Easter), our lowest number of placements (April 2005) and our quietest month in job vacancies. In fact, it has been so quiet at times we have actually closed the Ten-Percent offices in the first week of April and sent everyone on annual leave for a week.

We have had 14 interviews, 5 job offers and 50 new vacancies since our last newsletter in March. Some of these interviews have been for consultancy posts, but the overwhelming majority have been for employed positions with salaried roles. Although a number of larger firms poked their heads above the parapet this month, most of them popped back down again quickly, and the majority of these positions have been with smaller practices.

Whilst numbers of candidates are up and the number of job vacancies down, there does seem to be a different atmosphere taking off which will hopefully lead to a resurgence in the legal market over the next few months, albeit not to any great extremes.

Legal Job Market Report April 6th 2009

March 2009 has been an interesting month. At present recruitment is a little bit like a farmer sowing seeds in a field, watching plants grow, only to be eaten up by rabbits and having to start again! We saw a small resurgence in conveyancing, with a few vacancies being registered as well as posts turning up in the Law Society Gazette, and have also had tentative enquiries on the commercial property side as well. Wills & probate continues to surprise us - very few firms have reported doing much business at all in private client, but we are seeing some posts back on the market.

LSC funded work is still thriving, as firms with low cash flows and expertise in LSC funded work look to get back in again, and family, corporate immigration, personal injury and employment are all busy areas in some locations. One v.well known aggressive expander in recent times closed an office at very short notice a few weeks ago, suggesting that the grass is not always that green when doing LSC work!

Commercial and civil litigation both quite busy, but we are starting to see higher level intellectual property, corporate commercial, banking, media and corporate finance solicitors register for work, and I have heard reports from candidates to say that there has been little going on in central London for some time now.

We have had 43 new vacancies since our last newsletter in March.

Recruitment is done in waves, and we are at the bottom of a wave at present. The next wave will start again in mid April, peaking in June, dropping off in August and then picking up for September.

Legal Job Market Summary 1st March 2009

February 2009 has been a bit of a resurgent month for us. We have had good quality job offers from good firms for good candidates, and although the fields of law have mainly been in new or quieter areas, we have introduced and placed two candidates into conveyancing posts.

We have had 33 interviews, 8 job offers and 41 new vacancies since our last newsletter in January. Some of these interviews have been for consultancy posts, but a large number have been for employed positions with salaried roles. Some of the larger firms are actively recruiting and expanding departments, which is always a good sign.

Whilst numbers of candidates are up, redundancies up and the number of job vacancies down, there was a refreshing atmosphere in the middle of February 09 that the job market was picking up, and there was the distinct possibility of a spike in the downward trend of recruitment.

Recruitment is done in waves, and the recent wave is now over. The next wave will start again in mid April, although we do expect a busy period towards the Easter break at the end of March.

The conveyancing posts that came in were filled within a few days, and we had shortlisted candidates within 2 hours for both of them. It feels very strange when you think it was only last year we had 800 conveyancing and commercial property job vacancies and were constantly emailing out and getting perhaps 1 or 2 responses for each...

11th February 2009 Monthly Legal Job Market Report

With increasing redundancies and law firm closures across the UK, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was all doom and gloom and that very little recruitment was taking place. This could not be further from the truth – we have had a very busy period of six weeks, which is partly why this monthly report is about two weeks late. Legal recruitment has changed and there is no denying that, but there are certainly opportunities coming in that result in our caseload being quite busy.

We have seen a large number of vacancies posted with us during the January and early February periods. The difference is that quite a few are difficult vacancies to fill in that the firms want something that does not necessarily exist or is close to impossible to achieve. More on this in a bit. We have seen a marked change in the quality of vacancies and firms recruiting. The small to medium sized firms who have been well established for a good number of years with quality work and well paid positions are simply not recruiting at present. They are probably the ones who are hardest hit by the credit crunch as they have been paying their staff reasonable wages and offering good conditions which does not necessarily result in increased productivity. The firms that are benefiting are those who have offered low salaries and now have staff working on these with no prospects of changing position simply because there are no positions to change into that offer any more.

There has also been a marked change in the standard of firms who are recruiting and LSC funded work has come to the fore again. There has been a marked increase in the amount of interest shown in LSC funded work and in positions coming up in firms doing predominantly LSC or litigation work.

In brief, litigation and insolvency positions are up and non-contentious positions are down, if not gone for the time being.

The outlook is far from rosy but we expect all markets to pick up in the next three to four months. There are certainly signs of this as more and more jobs get posted by firms as new areas of law are explored.

The high street on the non-contentious side has been decimated. We have gone from 800 conveyancing vacancies down to no conveyancing vacancies. I can repeat that confidently that there are no conveyancing vacancies registered with Ten Percent Legal Recruitment or any of its websites at present. However, we did get a vacancy registered last night for a conveyancing solicitor to undertake conveyancing work and get paid 40 percent of the profits. If you read this, please do not telephone us about this post as there is nothing else to tell you except the name of the firm and it will simply be a case of needing to get a CV in so best to email!

Wills and probate has not performed as expected. We predicted last year that wills and probate would be a boom area and most firms would expand rapidly on the wills and probate side and cut the conveyancing side. The problem has been that although firms are picking up wills and probate work, it is being done by the lawyers who were conveyancing solicitors and have moved over.

This in turn has meant that there are no jobs for wills and probate solicitors and again, although we have a few registered with us, most are not recruiting unless you have something to bring to the table (i.e. the mysterious following).

On the contentious side, there seem to be openings just about everywhere, although again, firms are still very, very reluctant to commit to anything and salaries are stunted. Firms almost put out as a matter of course that they are looking for candidates with a following even though they must know that on the whole, such candidates simply do not exist and the chance of finding one with a following in the current climate is nothing short of a miracle.

We are seeing new patterns starting to emerge and payment protection insurance misselling is going to hit our doorsteps very shortly as firms start opening departments dealing with this. Similarly everybody seems to be interested in insolvency work at present and there is certainly plenty of interest in insolvency solicitors from various sources.

Crime, mental health, family, housing, social welfare and employment from an LSC funded perspective are all very busy and firms are extremely interested in recruiting in these areas. The majority of the posts that we are picking up come in these fields.

In summary, the high street is buoyant if you are not a conveyancer or wills and probate lawyer, but if you are one of those, then it is still pretty terrible.

Commercial law has been pretty much decimated by the recent events of the credit crunch. It almost appears that legal recruitment in the city and the larger commercial practices has disappeared as large corporations cut back on just about everything.

The redundancies that have been reported in the press are a very good example of just lazy reporting by journalists who can’t be bothered to go out and research a story as the figures put out for firms like Baker and McKenzie and Linklaters are pretty much dwarfed by the number of redundancies being made in the high street, except the number of redundancies being made in the high street cannot be put in a press release and sent to journalists simply to copy out.

We have seen vacancies dry up quite considerably on all fronts, but there are certainly still posts out there in the regions. We are currently interviewing with a large national firm on a whole host of posts, but nearly all of them are linked to litigation fields, that have some element of high street work in them, albeit from a defence side.

Not a good time to be looking for work especially if you’re a newly qualified and I am not sure that the market will pick up on the commercial side for at least another three to four months. I could be mistaken, but that is the feeling I get on this.

Support work is also very difficult and the number of secretaries being laid off is probably similar to the number of solicitors, especially when secretaries in some firms are paid almost as much as the solicitors and firms are realising that they can actually do without them when they haven’t got any work for them.

We’ve seen a large number of secretaries who have been with firms for 20 years +, being made redundant and their salary levels are simply unsupportable in other firms, where the new firm had no loyalty to them.

It is becoming a new world out there for everyone, and this does include support workers in the legal profession.

Ten Percent Legal Recruitment also has divisions in architecture, financial services and tax and from these the financial services sector is very busy for independent financial advisors. If anyone is thinking of cross qualifying as a financial advisor (I did it myself some years ago), it may be a good idea to start looking into this as there is certainly a gap in the market opening up. On recent flyers out to financial advisor firms, we have had a very high take up of enquiries, although most are only interested on a self employed basis.

In summary, things are not as bad as the press make out in some aspects, but in other aspects, they are not particularly healthy and the press are correct. If you are a conveyancer who has been made redundant and want further advice, please have a look at the Law Care website (www.lawcare.org.uk) or read our recruitment blog http://www.legalrecruitment.blogspot.com

Ten Percent Legal Job Market report, December 7th 2008

Things have picked up. Well, you would expect us to say this as our whole livelihood depends on the legal recruitment market and it is in our interests to promote its well being to encourage others to recruit. However it is it is correct to say that we have more vacancies this month than last, and interviews are starting to be arranged again. The only difference is that the market has changed quite dramatically, and instead of us scraping around for one or two candidates to send through for referral we suddenly have a whole choice of candidates and are finding this very interesting from a recruitment point of view as in the past it has always been to determine whether or not a particular candidate is suitable and then to work on that candidate and their CV to get them in to the firm in the best possible light. With there being so many candidates to choose from for every post it has become more of a case of filtering the candidates to send the best couple through.

It is clear that the litigation side of things is starting to pick up and we are starting to get requests for litigators which have been forecast and expected for quite some time.

We think that over the past few months there has been a great reluctance on the part of firms to request CVs of litigation solicitors when they are busy making redundancies on the long contentious side in conveyancing and commercial prompting. However I think that reluctance has now gone and firms are starting to recruit litigators to bolster their income at the expense of non-contentious fields.

I have come across some candidates who have indicated to me that they are experiencing pressure at work from non-contentious colleagues and almost bullying from the partners in the non-contentious side keen to see the contentious side make considerable amounts of money to support them whilst the market on the non-contentious side is flat.

There is a lot of pressure in the work place at the moment to keep firms going and this is only one example.

This week I have also heard of two market firms who have taken a collective decision as a firm to share the burden of the crash in the property market and have reduced their working week to four days from five. I clearly commend these firms as it means the staff that is with them will be impressed by the loyalty shown by the partners to them and it should ensure a good and stable working environment once the market picks up.

Those firms who ditch staff at the first opportunity without really thinking through the consequences are usually those firms who have a fairly rapid turnover of staff unless of course there are financial issues of a pressing nature to bear in mind, such as the firm going bust very rapidly.

So to break down the market report in to sections we’ll start with conveyancing.

At present the market remains dreadful. There are very few conveyancing vacancies out there but we have noticed a few creeping in in recent weeks in the back of the Law Society Gazette I commend those firms who are looking to recruit as they are very brave to put an advert in the gazette – I suspect they have been thoroughly inundated with CVs from redundant conveyancing solicitors looking for work.

I’ve also noticed a couple of firms advertising for commission based conveyancing posts which are becoming increasingly common across the legal profession but difficult to make money in at the high street end.

We have picked up a couple of locum conveyancing positions in recent weeks as well as a couple of commission based posts. Our most recent full time position was in Cornwall and the firm recruiting very honestly told us that they had had so many applications directly it was unlikely they would take an agency candidate which was understandable, bearing in mind the number of conveyancing solicitors currently looking for work.

So in summary the conveyancing market does not really exist at present and our predictions are now for late spring, early summer for the market to pick up at all.

For conveyancers wanting to know what other property lawyers are doing who have been made redundant I have heard of a large number who are out of the profession at present in temporary work waiting for the market to pick up so that they can come back in again. Activities have included working at their local supermarket, taking local authority work or looking at managerial posts in either companies or organisations.

Commercial property posts have suffered a similar fate and it is only in recent weeks that we are getting CVs through from top London and larger legal 500 firms who are shedding staff in their property departments.

This is a good indication that the market will not pick up for a good few months yet although we have picked up a couple of commercial property posts in recent weeks so there is certainly some scope for optimism that the marketing is still there to a certain degree but just not in the same capacity that existed a few months or years ago.

Family law posts are coming in fairly continually but usually from firms looking for family law supervisors or senior family lawyers. There are very few posts out there at newly qualified level and our advice to any newly qualified solicitors looking for family law posts is to stay put for as long as you can as even if you were to join another firm, you probably run the risk of being last in first out which is not a good position to be in at all.

Salaries of these are stunted because firms know that if you are looking for work you will be fairly desperate and so they will use this to exploit your situation.

This was the great hope we think of a lot of firms that the wills and probate sections in their firms would pick up and support the property side of the practice in the difficult times.

However we are now seeing quite a few redundancies on the wills and probate side because the property lawyers in firms are starting to take over some of the wills and probate work and there is no longer the need for as many wills and probate lawyers in those particular firms.

The market as a result is fairly stunted and there are not that many wills and probate posts around at present.

Civil and commercial litigation posts are fairly common and there is certainly recruitment going on on this side now after recent weeks of reluctance on firms to recruit. It is likely that this will continue for quite some time and we expect to see more posts coming up as the weeks progress. This is because firms need a new area to focus work on and it looks as if it is the litigation side that they hope will take them through difficult times.

I have heard from firms to say that their litigation departments are quite busy and expect to carry on being busy and pick up in the New Year.

Crime has been a funny market for quite some time and there are certainly vacancies out there but the whole nature of the market has completely changed. It used to be that if you got a crime solicitor for a particular area there would be a couple of firms interested in seeing a CV for a salary post that would be reasonably paid. That has now gone, and firms try basic plus commission, commission only and insist on freelancing in order to recruit duty solicitors, thanks to the LSC's reluctance to pay reasonable rates for the work that crime solicitors do.

There seems to be quite a lot of commercial posts coming in, but they are usually very senior corporate posts or specifically compliance, regulatory, insolvency and commercial litigation work.

We are hearing of redundancies in the banking sector and also from solicitors in corporate finance but it does not seem to be overly effective at present.

There are also a good number of posts coming up on the corporate side overseas in the Middle East, although the couple of times we have dealt with recruitment in the past few months in Dubai and Abi Dhabi the companies have taken CVs and then said they are putting the vacancy on hold as there are concerns about the state of the market over there.

However for the past few weeks we have registered about thirty new positions, although some of these are not exclusive to Ten Percent Legal Recruitment.

In summary the market is not good, but there are signs that things are starting to pick up and recruitment will begin in earnest in the spring and early summer of next year. Quite how many law firms and recruitment agencies will be left by then is another matter entirely, but there is no reason for any firm to, or recruitment consultant to disappear at present unless they are reliant on bank loans or finance to continue.

It was estimated in the last recession that forty per cent of recruitment agencies disappeared as market conditions got harder, and I have heard evidence that the same may happen to solicitors firms this time. I sincerely hope it doesn’t as there is no reason for firms to disappear unless they are struggling to get professional indemnity insurance or there are big banking issues relating to that particular firm.

02/11/08 Legal Job Market Report from Ten Percent Legal Recruitment Consultants

In October 2008, 19 job vacancies were registered with our main legal recruitment site and reflects the legal jobs registered with the Ten-Percent group. 66 job vacancies were also registered with our specialist legal job board, ChanceryLane by other agencies, organisations and law firms. In the same time, over 200 solicitors registered with us and another 70 with ChanceryLane (plus an additional 30-40 via our other websites). 91% of our work last year involved permanent or long term contract placements, and this year, the figure has dropped to about 75%. Out of all the candidates registering in October, at least 60% were conveyancing solicitors, and we have still got a backlog of about 100 to filter and enter before including them in the above statistics.

To put this into perspective, in October 2007 57 vacancies were registered by law firms and in house legal departments, and 74 solicitors registered.

We have gone from over 700 conveyancing positions to a grand total of 4 (check out our vacancy database - enter 'any' for location). Two of these posts are with firms looking for solicitors prepared to take a commission.

In the same time, just above 50% of vacancies registered are for posts involving LSC funded work. We have had a post registered for Dubai (company secretary), and a few of the vacancies have been for solicitors being paid by commission in some format.

I should add that this does not include low quality candidates (LPC graduates, students and applicants with no experience), but does include legal executives and licensed conveyancers.

Over 35% of our posts were for commercial posts including commercial litigation and senior management positions in law firms.

The legal job market has continued to alter considerably as time progresses, and we have watched as a couple of longstanding clients have disappeared without a trace almost overnight. Other firms have indicated that they are closing down, and others have said that they are reducing their hours and those of their staff. At least 50% of candidates registering with us do so at present as a result of redundancy, or because a firm have reduced their hours or their salary in view of the downturn. The report in the Law Society Gazette indicating that the Law Society were aware of 700 solicitors who have been made redundant since the start of 2008 is probably just the tip of the iceberg, as we are getting reports of redundancies across the profession that must be at least 10 times that figure. If the Law Society are correct, all of these solicitors are registered with us...!

However, it is not all bad news. I am hearing reports of firms where the work is continuing to come in, and recruitment remains the same as pre-credit crunch times. Vacancies are still being registered, and recruitment continues. LSC funded work has not been affected, and Ten-Percent is very busy handling housing law vacancies, LSC and privately funded family work, crime (especially duty solicitors), immigration and other litigation fields. NGOs, charities and local authorities are all carrying on, and there is little sign of much impact there.

It appears that the main part of the market to have been affected is anything linked to the property market or firms who have invested heavily in any related fields. Other firms have not been faced with the same drop in business, and start up firms appear to be doing quite well out of the situation as they have no overheads to carry into the new scenario.

The credit crunch is going to have an effect on the recruitment market for some time. It is estimated by commentators (most recently in The Recruiter magazine) that it will drop off further and 25% of recruitment agencies will close in the next 6 months. A large number of agencies who specialise in temporary recruitment are dependent on continued finance to foot the wage bill every week, and will be watching the banks very nervously over the next few months.

On the legal recruitment side a lot depends on the property market, both for commercial and residential work. It is still going to be very hard to predict when the conveyancing market will pick up, but anecdotal evidence suggests that there are still houses being bought and sold and there are still plenty of sales and purchases for the conveyancing firms to deal with. We have already seen vacancies come in again for conveyancing, and as the buying and selling of houses picks up after Christmas and in the Spring, the market will slowly start to recover I think. The conveyancing job market is unlikely to move much before the Summer of 2009 however, because of the sheer number of firms making redundancies across the UK.

This will continue to have an ongoing effect on other areas, but as soon as the markets start becoming fairly buoyant, the other areas will no longer be affected by conveyancers trying to get out.

For advice on how to deal with issues of recruitment during the recession, please visit our website and download our free advice booklet. You can also read our blog, which contains lots of advice and information on being made redundant, looking for legal jobs and advice for law firms. You can also register for our monthly newsletters and details are at the top of the page.

Ten-Percent has a range of services offered to law firms, but in the last few months we have also opened new divisions in Architect Recruitment, and we have been quietly operating IFA recruitment (which has involved some crossover with the legal division) for the last 12 months.

We are also offering our Outplacement Service to all firms with Employment Law departments. There is an opportunity to utilise our Redundancy Support Service with Career Coaching, Skill Testing and Job Application/Interview Training either as your own service or on a fee/commission basis. Please visit www.jbfagan.co.uk for details.

This legal job market report is prepared by Jonathan Fagan, Managing Director of Ten Percent Legal Recruitment and specialist recruiter for law firms up and down the UK and overseas. He also coaches lawyers and law graduates at all levels, writes the award-winning Legal Recruitment blog, and is a recognised expert in the field of legal recruitment. If you would like to contact him, please email cv@ten-percent.co.uk

We look forward to being able to assist you. If you would like to know about salary levels, get in touch. You can view full careers advice by clicking this link, including negotiating salary, attending interviews, considering changing career or field of law. We also offer CV Writing Services to lawyers who do not want to use our recruitment services.

Jonathan Fagan, MREC Cert RP LLM Managing Director & Solicitor (non-practising), Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited. Visit my blog Legal Recruitment

This information is provided strictly on an informing basis. ten-percent.co.uk limited does not supply this for viewers to rely on in any way, and the company accepts no liability for anyone doing so. The above is copyright, and should not be reproduced without ten-percent.co.uk limited's express permission.

© Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited - March 2000 to 2006 all rights reserved. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment (www.ten-percent.co.uk) acts as an Employment Agency in the introduction of candidates to its clients for legal jobs. Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited recognises that it is essential to provide equal opportunities to all persons without discrimination. We encourage our employees at all levels to act fairly and prevent discrimination on the grounds of sex, age, race, sexual orientation, religion, marital status or disability.

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Legal Recruitment Report & Forecast dated 8th May 2011 on UK Legal Recruitment & the UK Legal Job Market.

Legal Job Market Report 9th May 2011 from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

In April we had 27 vacancies registered, 17 interviews and 78 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates).

This month will still see the duty solicitor rota deadlines (now extended for a week to May 13th for CDS12 submission) impacting on our business.

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LEGAL RECRUITMENT REPORT

www.ten-percent.co.uk

Legal Recruitment Report & Forecast dated 8th May 2011 on UK Legal Recruitment & the UK Legal Job Market.

Legal Job Market Report 9th May 2011 from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

In April we had 27 vacancies registered, 17 interviews and 78 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates). This month will still see the duty solicitor rota deadlines (now extended for a week to May 13th for CDS12 submission) impacting on our business.

Legal Job Market Report 5th April 2011

Legal Job Market Update 5th January 2011

Legal Job Market Report 2nd November 2010 from Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment

Legal Job Market Report - October 2010

Legal Job Market Report - September 7th 2010

Legal Job Market Report - April 6th 2010

Legal Job Market Summary 1st March 2010

February 1st 2010 - Legal Job Market Report

Legal Job Market Summary - 11th January 2010

Legal Job Market Summary - 1st December 2009

Legal Job Market Report April 6th 2009

Legal Job Market Summary 1st March 2009

11th February 2009 Monthly Legal Job Market Report

Ten Percent Legal Job Market report, December 7th 2008

02/11/08 Legal Job Market Report from Ten Percent Legal Recruitment Consultants

In April we had 27 vacancies registered, 17 interviews and 78 candidate registrations (solicitors, fee earners and legal support staff candidates).

This month will still see the duty solicitor rota deadlines (now extended for a week to May 13th for CDS12 submission) impacting on our business.