The Half Year of Two Halves
August 6, 2009 by Damian
Now that we are safely into the second half of this year, I thought that it would be a good idea to give my impression of the legal recruitment market during the first half of 2009.
Overall I think that it has been a half year of two halves. During the first quarter of the year, there was a marked increase in people coming through the door to register and be kept informed of openings in the marketplace.
Some of this was unfortunately driven by actual redundancies, from here as well as overseas, but I suspect that a lot of it was motivated by the fear of redundancy. In other words, people wanted to have some sort of head start in the job search process in case they were next in the firing line.
Unfortunately, this coincided with a decrease in the amount of available positions as firms/companies went to ground and put a freeze on everything except absolutely crucial appointments.
So the first quarter of 2009 can be summarised as ‘lots of candidates, very few jobs’.
The second quarter of this year has, in my view, seen a change in this outlook. Although no-one would be bold enough to say that we are out of the woods and that the market is anywhere near back to some sort of normality, I believe that there has been an increase in available opportunities, including for the first time in 2009, some firms looking for corporate and financial services lawyers. (There was probably not one job in corporate or finance in the whole of NZ in the first quarter of this year). There are also plenty of opportunities for RM lawyers, family lawyers, insurance lawyers and commercial litigators around. One look at Seek or Trade Me will evidence that there are currently some very good roles ‘out there’.
However, I have seen a decrease in the amount of applications/registrations over the last few months, especially from overseas. I have been wondering why this has been the case and I suspect that now, people are pretty confident that they will not be made redundant and have decided to just stay where they are for the time being.
Compounding this is that a lot of younger lawyers especially are just waiting around until the overseas markets pick up before moving so rather than looking for a new position in NZ, now that they know that their current position is probably pretty secure, they are biding their time until the London/Asian/Australian markets start to move again. When that happens, there will be a mass exodus of people leaving here which will mean that the law firms/companies who historically have struggled to recruit but are bursting at the seams now, will be back to square one again.
So the second quarter can be summarised as ‘more jobs, fewer candidates’.
It will be very interesting to see what the second half of 2009 will bring! I will keep you posted.
The Flight To Quality
July 30, 2009 by Damian
I was talking to a lawyer at one of the big firms here in Wellington the other day and he commented that he was busier than ever. When I asked him ‘how come?’, he laughed and said that it was because during tough times, there is always ‘a flight to quality’.
Reading this article from the UK magazine Legal Week, it seems to be the same the world over –
http://www.legalweek.com/legal-week/analysis/1495487/editor-comment-tough.
In the same edition of the magazine, I also found this very interesting article about the headcount in the top 50 firms in the UK – http://www.legalweek.com/legal-week/news/1495495/headcount-holds-level-set-fall-2010.
Contrary to what I thought, headcount has hardly dropped at all in the year to April 2009. The bad news for any Kiwi lawyer thinking about going over in the next year is that the prediction is that it will drop in the year to April 2010.
I will keep you up to date with any information on this that I come across!
The Importance Of CVs
July 15, 2009 by Damian
It never ceases to amaze me how little time and effort some people put into their CVs. I regularly see CVs with typos, bad grammar, inconsistent formatting etc. I remember one CV where a candidate wrote that he had excellent attention to detail but he had spelled ‘detail’ incorrectly! This sort of thing is unforgivable and would result in the CV automatically going into the bin.
Apart from your passport and birth certificate, your CV is probably the most important document that you will ever have. You may be the best lawyer with the best personality but if your CV is not good enough, you will not get the chance to prove this in an interview.
When writing your CV, two things should be paramount in your thinking:
(i) write it from the perspective of a partner/general counsel/hiring manager who does not know anything about you apart from what is on your CV. What information does he/she need to know about you before making a decision on whether to interview you or not? Just because something is obvious to you does not mean that it will be obvious to someone else. Explain everything – if you leave too many questions unanswered, you will not get the interview.
(ii) when you have finished your CV, you must be impressed by it. If you are not, then no-one else will be. I remember being at a seminar and the speaker said: “good enough is not good enough”. What he was trying to say is that if you do something and you think that it is ‘good enough’ to get the job done, that is not enough. It must be the best that you can do and that is surely better than ‘good enough’. So in terms of your CV, if you do not sit back and think that you look good on paper, you can guarantee that no-one else will either.
Writing a CV is a very difficult and time consuming thing to do. At Simply Legal, we can help you put together the best CV possible for you. If you want some information on how to do this, give us a call now or drop us a line. We would be delighted to help!
Only £85,000?
July 8, 2009 by Damian
I laughed when I read this story this morning on The Lawyer’s website -
http://www.thelawyer.com/1001294.article.
Doesn’t your heart just bleed?
I would also recommend having a read of some of the comments made by various posters about the issue. Thank goodness we don’t have that arrogant attitude over here!!!
“Salaries plateau in 2009 – but for how long?”
June 30, 2009 by Damian
Have a look at this article from the Australasian Legal Business (ALB) magazine (and not just because I am quoted in it!) – http://au.legalbusinessonline.com/news/analysis/salaries-plateau-in-2009-but-for-how-long/35739.
It gives a very interesting overview of the Australian legal market and how the GFC has affected it, especially in relation to salaries.
Whether it is just that NZ firms keep this information quieter or whether they are just in better shape than their Australian counterparts is a point for discussion but it seems like we in NZ have not been hit quite as hard as our friends across the Tasman.
It would be interesting to hear some anonymous views on the subjects of salary freezes in the NZ market so if anyone wants to share some information on this subject, please do!
UK/NZ Law Firm Mergers
June 30, 2009 by Damian
The big news this week in the legal world is the merger between UK heavyweights Norton Rose and the mid-tier Australian firm, Deacons – http://www.thelawyer.com/norton-rose-signs-tie-up-with-australias-deacons/1001147.article.
It is the first merger between a major UK law firm and a significant player in the Australian market and has provoked a lot of intense debate on websites such as The Lawyer and Legal Week, some of which has been very insightful, some of it being just downright xenophobic.
The rationale behind the merger seems to be a desire to shore up both firm’s practices in the Asian market. Only time will tell if it is successful or not but as more than one contributor to the debate has pointed out, it will definitely increase the amount of top quality Australian lawyers wanting to join Deacons as people see the inevitable secondment opportunities that the merger will bring to lawyers within the firm.
The merger has got me thinking about the possibility of a UK/NZ merger. I have never heard any talk of it, probably because the UK firms cannot see any upside to it but if it did happen, how about these potential merger partners?
If Slaughter & May merged with Russell McVeagh, the firm could be called Slaughter & McVeagh.
If Simmons & Simmons merged with Simpson Grierson, the firm could easily be called Simpson & Simmons.
Similarly, Olswang and Kensington Swan could be Olswan and AJ Park and SJ Berwin could be AJ Berwin.
It is doubtful that any of these fanciful mergers will ever happen but I am sure that the leading lights in the NZ firms, as well as the Australian firms, will be looking at the Norton Rose/Deacons merger to see how successful or not it turns out to be.
The Recruitment Cycle
June 23, 2009 by Damian
The Global Financial Crisis (or whatever it is now called) has impacted the legal recruitment market in many ways, the main and obvious one being fewer jobs and more candidates.
However, one of the most interesting effects from a recruiter’s point of view, is the length of time it now takes to get someone into a new role. Whereas in the boom market, employers were very quick off the mark to get candidates in for interviews and make them offers before their competitors did, they now take a much more considered approach. The CV evaluation process takes longer, the interview process takes longer and is more involved, the post-interview evaluation takes longer and even getting an offer letter out now can take some time.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with this. In the current environment, employers have every right to make sure that the person that they are hiring is the right person for the role. For them, I am sure that it is a refreshing change to not have to drop everything else just to get someone in for an interview in case they go elsewhere.
However, as it is contrary to the way that the process has been handled over the last few years, candidates can get frustrated at the length of time that it takes to get a final decision.
As such, I think that is part of my (and other recruiters’ jobs) to take some control of this process. We can do this in two ways – (1) we give the candidates a very realistic timeframe at the start of the process – forewarned is forearmed and (2) we keep in constant contact with our clients to ensure that momentum is kept up. We ask them to provide us with information on when decisions are going to be made and we communicate this to our candidates.
Hopefully this way, candidates do not lose interest and clients still end up with the best person for the job.
Welcome to the new Simply Legal blog!
April 30, 2009 by Damian
“Welcome to the new Simply Legal blog! Over time, I hope to provide information on all manner of subjects relating to the world of legal recruitment, both here in New Zealand and beyond. The legal recruitment landscape is changing at a frightening pace at the moment and I hope to give you all some idea of what these changes are, how they may affect you and my own opinion on them.
I also welcome any comments that you may have, both positive and negative, on any of my posts. It would be good to get some healthy debate going as there are very few other NZ legal websites where this can occur. Please check back regularly to keep up to date with what is going on!!”