Overseas Markets Update
September 10, 2009 by Damian
The most overused phrase at the moment is ’green shoots’. I hate that phrase. (It’s like marketers talking about going for ‘low hanging fruit’ – I really hate that one.) What is wrong with asking: ’do you see any signs of recovery?’ or ‘are things getting any better?’ Why do people insist on talking about ‘green shoots’? Does no-one realise that ‘green shoots’ can get trampled on very easily? If anyone catches me using it, please feel free to slap me. Hard.
In any case, to answer the question: ‘ are things getting any better?’ I thought that it would be a good idea to give the views of colleagues of mine working in London, Australia and Asia. I will give my twopence worth on the NZ market in a separate post.
I work very closely with an agency in London and was speaking to them last week about the state of the market over there at the moment (not once was ‘green shoots’ mentioned). Their view was that even though it is still ‘incredibly tough’, the worst is almost certainly behind them. They are basing that view on the fact that they are now starting to receive instructions from firms to look for people other than litigation/insolvency/restructuring lawyers. Some firms are even going so far as to hire for their corporate or finance teams. That is the good news. The not so good news, from a NZ lawyer’s point of view, is that these firms are only looking for locally qualified (preferably Oxbridge educated), Magic Circle lawyers who have not been made redundant – that is quite a tight brief.
As such, if we are to look to the future, the first ‘cabs off the rank’ (a cliche I don’t hate as much as ‘green shoots’ or ‘low hanging fruit’) are going to be exactly the type of lawyers mentioned in the previous paragraph – the absolute superstar candidates. When we are at the point when this candidate pool has been exhausted, I think that the firms will then turn to the well quailfied, well educuated, solid City lawyers – ‘the safe pairs of hands’ (the cliches are piling up now). Only after this pool has been emptied will, I believe, the firms start to look at really high quality overseas lawyers but it really will only be those at the ‘top of their game’ over here (that’s another one to add to the list). Then it will go to good quality UK lawyers and then to good quality overseas lawyers and so on and so on.
In other words, there is going to have to be quite an uplift in vacancies in the London market before overseas lawyers will start to get a look in because there are plenty of locally qualifieds to get through first. When this will happen is anyone’s guess but if you asked me to look into my ‘crystal ball’ (another one), I don’t think that there will be many overseas lawyers securing positions in London until mid next year. I hope that I am wrong about that but it will take an incredible turnaround in fortunes for it to happen any time before then.
It is a similar story in Australia. The market there was hammered in the last year but it seems to have ‘flat-lined’ (I promise that will be the last one) and to be on the improve. Again, it will take some time for NZ lawyers to secure positions over there in numbers as there are a lot of good quality Australian qualified lawyers to be slotted in first before employers will start looking at Kiwis. However, the economy over there has rebounded very well so hopefully Australia may be a viable option, if not this year, maybe early next.
Which leaves us with Asia which may well be at the forefront of recruitment activity in the very near future. My colleagues over there told me that they are ‘very busy’ at the moment, admittedly with a lot of insolvency/restructuring work but again they are coming across some corporate/finance roles as well.
This view is backed up by this article from the Asian Legal Business magazine – http://legaljobscentre.com/career-tips/37016/details.aspx although be warned, it does mention ‘green shoots’.
Again with the good news, comes the not so good. The not so good news is that getting a job in Asia has never been easy and only those candidates who have worked in a top tier firm, have excellent academics and at least three years could hope to get a job in a good market. In a tighter market, this quality threshold has been raised even higher to include language skills as being a more important consideration and candidates’ motivations for wanting to move to Asia will be more closely monitored than ever before.
So, all in all, things are still very tough overseas and there is still a lot of correction needed in the market but if you can stick it out for another 6-12 months, your chances of securing something in London, Australia or Asia will be much better than they are now.
Fingers crossed that those ‘green shoots’ continue to grow.
SLAP.
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!