Financial Legal Recruitment Market Report 2011

Over the last few years, the legal recruitment market has encountered a series of changes which have affected the way financial institutions, in particular, recruit for legal vacancies. The 2011 Legal Market Report created by Barclay Simpson, addresses these issues in addition to focusing on the current recovery of the financial legal recruitment sector.



The past two years bore witness to several changes within the financial legal recruitment sector. During the recession, 2008 to 2009 dealt a devastating blow to the finance sector in turn, delivering vast setbacks to legal jobs and recruitment throughout the UK. The recession saw the implementation of an 18 month external recruitment freeze by many financial institutions. This period of austerity brought about a phase of re-organisation, which generated several in-house legal staffing cuts and redundancies.



Positive signs of recovery for the legal recruitment sector were made evident within the first six months of 2010, which saw a period of frantic recruitment activity. As recruitment freezes ended, significant numbers of new vacancies were created, fuelling the need for additional in-house legal staff. Previous redundancies made during the recession ensured that subsequent vacancies were filled by qualified unemployed lawyers with highly marketable skills.



The intensive recruitment reached its peak by the middle of 2010, where activity balanced out to regular levels. This was principally due to the smaller number of vacancies available coupled with the decline of candidate availability.



Although employment trends during 2010 had improved, there was a stark difference in the type of legal employment sought by financial institutions. Due to the nature of employment requirements the report highlights two main areas why contract workers are deemed preferable to permanent candidates. Firstly, employees noticed the necessity to recruit contractors to temporally fill the void of resources required to "undertake specific projects which are not available internally". In addition to this, companies seeking permanent lawyers found it difficult to secure their services primarily due to candidate shortages.



As the legal recruitment sector began to bounce back from the ashes of the recession, the same cannot be entirely said for each legal discipline. Demand for transactional lawyers for example, contracted during 2010 affecting those notably at senior levels. The decline in interest to fill emerging roles within this discipline was primarily due to non-competitive salaries which failed to encourage candidates to move.



Although 2011 is unlikely to echo the ‘frantic recruitment activity’ seen at the beginning of 2010. The outlook for 2011’s financial legal recruitment sector remains positive.