Who’s in demand – June 2010

Deadlines for firms to apply for LSC grants caused a significant uplift in demand throughout April. With the next deadline being in early November this year we’re anticipating a further surge in demand for criminal lawyers during August and September.

Having been hit particularly hard during the recession, structured finance lawyers are back in demand. UK firms are now struggling to compete for the best candidates as US firms are offering top salaries to attract the few candidates that have the requisite experience in order to avoid a skills gap.

Leanly staffed regional firms have struggled to cope with workloads through the bank holidays in the first half of the year. We’re seeing increasing numbers of requests for locums across family, property, probate and childcare as we enter the summer holiday period.

It appears that companies are now pressing ahead with systems upgrades resulting in an increase in demand for software licensing lawyers in technology companies. Mergers and acquisitions activity has been driving demand within corporate support departments with areas such as employment, intellectual property and tax are particularly short of lawyers.

Pharmaceutical organisations are looking to extend product life cycles and are hiring research and development lawyers as a result. As companies continue in their quest to cut costs there seems to be a trend for amalgamation of roles. Quasi legal-compliance roles are emerging in pharmaceutical companies as they seek to abide by ABPI rules.

We’re also seeing cross-over between legal and finance roles in sectors where sales are picking up and there’s a need for review of contracts and tenders and clients are looking for a cost effective solution.

It’s only critical hires that are under consideration by central government at the moment with extra assessment being applied to ensure roles are critical. As regulation is viewed as an area that will ultimately save the government money, the demand for lawyers with regulatory experience has not abated. In addition to this childcare rarely seems to be far from the headlines with continued shortages of lawyers in the public sector. Some organisations are compromising by granting more junior staff such as legal assistants ‘rights of audience’.

Links in blue go to current vacancies on the Badenoch & Clark website and are live and up to date as of 21 June 2010