Welcome to possibly the shortest legal job market update I have written in over 15 years of writing monthly legal job market reports for Ten Percent Legal. In a nutshell the permanent job market has shuddered to a halt, locum work has dramatically dropped, but the law firm sale market seems active still (whether or not any deals will take place for some months is of course another matter..).
Essentially the permanent legal job market stopped functioning as a going concern on March 17th 2020. Face to face interviews are impossible to arrange. Phone, Zoom (if less than 40 mins) and Skype interviews are all fine, but would any firm recruit permanently off the back of one unless they had to?
The locum market is still just about functioning with a small trickle of roles coming in, and we expect to see this continue, albeit on a small scale. Remote working locuming is clearly going to be the requirement for at least the next 2-3 months.
Permanent Jobs – Candidate Advice
Our advice to candidates looking for new permanent roles is to register and apply for jobs wherever you see them as you would normally, but don’t expect a response from law firms or agencies for some time to come. However you never know who may be in need of staff and when the market reactivates itself so it is still worth going through the motions.
Locum Jobs – Candidate Advice
Be prepared to compete for work. As an example – we have had a remote working commercial role in over the last few days. We would usually get around 5-10 locums express an interest, but for this one we had over 30. The hourly rate range indicated by these locums is from £40 to £125 per hour. Some locums indicated a keen willingness to drop their rate to get the work.. This is the new norm we think.
Statistics
General Statistics for March 2020 (comparison is with March 2019)
New permanent vacancies added: 10 (48)
New locum vacancies added: 11 (10)
New candidates registering: 62 (54)
We have 35 law firms for sale at the moment for details of current law firms for sale please click here to view our list.