Here is our summary of the current state of the legal job market:
Locum Recruitment – Busy
Numbers of locum roles coming into the company have remained high (75%+ increase on last year). Usually we see a decline prior to the start of the busy season (May to September) but this year locum work has remained steady. This is almost certainly because of the extremely busy conveyancing market and the overload of work on existing conveyancers. Another source of work is the current permanent recruitment shortage – very few candidates available and looking for permanent work (see below). This has resulted in longer term locum contracts.
Locum assignment updates here: https://www.interimlawyers.co.uk/category/locum-solicitor-updates/
Permanent Recruitment – Very Busy
Salaried role work is very busy, but partly for the wrong reasons. We are seeing a continued decline in the number of new candidates registering with us (55 last month when we would be expecting over the 100 mark) and this is reflective of the job market in the UK generally at the moment. Whilst we make over 75% of our placements from our existing candidate database (over 12,000 lawyers) we are dependent on new registrations to regularly refresh us. Our anecdotal experiences suggest that there are two main reasons for the decrease in candidates. The first is that there is just too much uncertainty at the moment for candidates to want to make a career move and the second is the lack of catch up yet with the shift in work culture across wide sections of the market. Many firms are returning to full time office based work, but employees have got used to much more flexibility..
Vacancies can be viewed here: https://ten-percent.co.uk/vacancies/
Law Firms for Sale – Busy
We are approaching deal time on a number of sales that have been ongoing for a while, but we are seeing numerous new enquiries coming through and an increase in the number of firms for sale, in part because we are growing as a business but also because of the time of year (for most firms we are c6 months away from the next PII renewal point). New instructions are primarily linked to retirement (see our article below) and most buyers coming through seem to be either younger solicitors looking to start a firm, struggling to get reasonably priced PII and looking to purchase an existing firm to get going or national law firm buyers looking to expand existing networks or start one.
Full list at https://www.jonathanfagan.co.uk/law-accountancy-firms-for-sale/. For valuations or a confidential discussion about a potential sale or acquisition please ring 01824 780937 and speak to Jonathan Fagan or email jf@jonathanfagan.co.uk
