Legal jobs could increasingly come to focus on litigation between businesses and their employees, with the current economic environment increasing the potential for unfair dismissal cases.
According to Work Wise UK, businesses under a great deal of financial pressure as a result of the recession may find that this results in more employees feeling they are being forced to work unpaid overtime.
Phil Flaxton, chief executive of the non-profit group, which encourages best practice in the UK workforce, said it has become much more common for employees in certain sectors to work 50 hours a week.
"For a lot of employers, probably in the SME sector, there could be cases where staff are being asked to put in additional work because of pressure on the business," he explained.
"I suspect that some staff would react to that [by] trying to bring some kind of legal action against their employer."
Mr Flaxton was speaking after research by Contact Law indicated that there was been a 15 per cent increase in the number of people looking for employment-related legal advice in July.
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