Legal sector hiring going ‘through the roof’

Hiring within the legal sector has grown exponentially since the beginning of the year with vacancies within private practice firms already at 60% of last year’s total. That’s according to the latest sector trends report from The Association of Professional Staffing Companies.

The data, provided by labour market analytics from Vacancysoft shows that vacancies for private practice lawyers in April were up by over 750% when comparted with the same month last year while openings for in house lawyers were also up by an impressive 306%.

This is in line with recent data from the Office for National Statistics which showed that the UK legal total revenues increased by almost 20% between March 2020 and March 2021 This is particularly significant as the 2020 data represents revenues that were largely booked before the UK’s first lockdown on March 23rd.

Unsurprisingly, given the stamp duty holiday, real estate was the busiest specialism making up almost 15% of all vacancies, litigation specialists were next highest in demand making up just over 11% of openings followed closely by corporate and commercial at 11%.

The top four busiest firms in terms of hiring: Eversheds& Sutherland, Slater & Gordon. Irwin Mitchell and TLT have already surpassed their hiring levels for lawyers from the whole of last year.

Commenting on the data, Ann Swain, Chief Executive of APSCo said:

“The legal sector has been very resilient throughout the pandemic and, like many other professional sectors is now suffering a skills shortage. We are finding that those that are able to offer agile working practices and which can focus on employee wellbeing will be the winners in what is now very much a return to the war for talent.”

ENDS
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