UK firms remain wary despite elevated recruitment figures
April 23, 2010 by Damian
The title of this post is the title of an article from the latest edition of the UK’s The Lawyer magazine which you can read here – http://www.thelawyer.com/1004112.article.
The tenor of this article sums up for me exactly the uncertainty in the recruitment market at present and the influence that the press has on people’s perception of the state of that market.
What I mean by this is that the first sentence of this article states:
“The UK’s top 25 firms are back in recruitment mode, with an estimated 2,133 people having been brought on board to UK offices in 2009-10 alone.”
I am sure that everyone reading this would think – ‘brilliant – now it’s time to dust off the CV because I’m outta here’.
Well ‘no’ I’m afraid. The next sentence states:
‘However, the total number of hires is still exceeded by the 2,370 people firms made redundant during the downturn, suggesting management caution has far from subsided.”
The article goes on to state that :
‘The highest numbers of hires were made by two firms with large volume businesses, Irwin Mitchell and Eversheds, which recruited 414 and 293 people respectively’. This sounds positive for your chances at Irwin Mitchell and Eversheds – yes? Well ‘no’, the next sentence states:
“Since late 2007 Irwin Mitchell has laid off 16, while Eversheds parted company with 735.’
So the question remains – are firms back in recruitment mode or not?
This article does not answer the question and shies away from coming to a conclusion, finishing off instead with a very bland non sequitur from the Chief Executive of DLA Piper, (incidentally a firm who made more redundancies than most). So what was the point of the article? To be honest, I am not sure as it seems to give hope to people but then tempers it with caveat upon caveat.
What this article highlights to me is that no-one knows what will happen in the coming months, not even the esteemed journos at The Lawyer. The market is still going through a lot of uncertainty and how long it will take for this uncertainty to be removed, is anyone’s guess.
As for whether I, sitting down here in NZ, am going to come to a conclusion as to the state of the recruitment market in London, well if the journos at The Lawyer aren’t going to, then neither will I!
However, if you are thinking about making the move to London or elsewhere, please get in touch with us. We would love to have a chat to you about your background and what we can do to help you over there.
Around The World (In Just Over 1100 Words)
April 14, 2010 by Damian
Sorry for the delay since my last post but sometimes life gets in the way of blogging and we have to deal with more important things than legal recruitment. However, I am back on board now and think that it is a good time to give an overview of what is happening in the recruitment markets worldwide at present.
I have seen one of my competitors advertising that London law firms are now receptive to approaches by NZ lawyers. After speaking to my colleagues over in London last week, my view is that this is not quite the whole truth. It is the case that more jobs are coming on to the market in London. As a consequence of this, firms will not quite have the same pick of top quality candidates that they have had in the last 12-18 months and as such, they may have to reconsider who may or may not be suitable for their particular roles. As the locally qualified talent pool becomes more diluted, employers will have no choice but to look at overseas qualifieds to fill the gaps.
However, what is outlined above is not the reality just yet. Sure, I have heard anecdotal evidence that NZ lawyers in London are securing interviews. The caveat to that is that they are probably being interviewed along with 6, 8 or even 10 other people. In the candidate v law firm power struggle, the firms still hold all the power. Firms are still being very discerning about who they employ and they are willing to take their time to find the right person. As I write this in April, it is still going to be a rare occurance that that ‘right person’ will be an overseas qualified lawyer.
Don’t get me wrong – the market over there is improving. There is a general consensus that the worst is gone and that it is now time to look at and plan for the future. This forward planning, however, will be cautious and gradual but as it continues to take shape, opportunities for top quality overseas lawyers will come about. It is fair to say that those who are in the UK with their visa status secured will be at the vanguard of this trend. It is also fair to say that the most attractive prospects will be those with 3+ years experience. Candidates with less than that will struggle due to the enormous amounts of locally qualified junior lawyers who have fallen victim to the GFC over the last 12-18 months.
Looking further afield, the bottom has dropped out of the offshore markets completely. A search this morning on Seek for jobs in the Cayman Islands turned up one job and there is not one job being advertised for the Channel Islands. Compared to 2 years ago, this is an astonishing drop off in demand. Judging by what I have heard, it will take a very long time indeed for these markets to pick up from a recruitment point of view. The current economic crisis has fundamentally affected these economies and until these jurisdictions work out what place they now occupy in the economic world, opportunities in these island paradises will be very scarce.
The Middle East seems to be at an interesting juncture at present. It had the most spectacular fall from grace of all as dozens and dozens of lawyers were retrenched or made redundant. The simple fact is that the whole region was massively overlawyered and when the work dried up, there was very little for anyone to do. It is very doubtful that the Middle East region will ever be quite so attractive as it was a few years ago but it is showing some signs of recovery.
Some of the larger firms in the region have started undertaking some major projects and have consequently started to look for staff again. The catch is that they are being absolutely inundated with quality applications. However, if the big firms continue to be busy, it is likely that activity among other firms will start to pick up, thus increasing opportunities for lawyers to come back again. How long this takes is anyone’s guess but I would suggest that we are at least 6-12 months away from there being many options for NZ lawyers in the Middle East.
Which leads us on to Asia – the shining light, it seems. My colleagues in Hong Kong say that the place has gone ‘gangbusters’. A lot of this activity has been in the insolvency/restructuring area but they are starting to receive instructions from firms on the look out for corporate and finance lawyers as well. China is obviously behind a lot of this activity and opportunities are opening up in China and surrounding regions as well as in HK.
With every bit of positive news comes the sobering news. Yes, there are positions in Asia but employers are now looking foremost at people with language skills or some ties to the region. It is not to say that it is impossible without either of these but it does make life a lot harder if you don’t speak the lingo or have a particular reason to want to move there.
Finally, to our good friends across the Tasman. The media has painted the picture that Australia is in great shape and is back to normal. Having spoken to people over there, it seems, again, that this is not quite the case. The economy is improving but this has not translated into large numbers of new jobs yet. Yes, firms are starting to recruit again but as in the UK, they are being overwhelmed by the amount of quality applications and are in no rush at all to fill the roles. Locally qualified lawyers are still the most attractive so, even though NZ lawyers can practice over there, Australian employers will still favour Australian lawyers if given the choice.
So, where does all of that leave the NZ lawyer desperate to head offshore? Well in summary, the legal recruitment world is in better shape than it has been since mid 2008. Confidence in the future is up and firms are generally making positive noises about increasing headcount in the coming months. However, at present, competition is fierce, employers are still in control and locally qualifieds still are the most attractive option.
If you can hang on for another 4-6 months, I think that you probably should. However, if you can’t stand it any more and you just have to move, then my advice is to be flexible as to what you will look at, be patient as the process will take a long time and when given the opportunity to attend interviews, make sure that you perform to the best of your ability.
I look forward to looking back (if you know what I mean) at this post at the end of 2010 and comparing how things are like then to what they are like now. It will be an interesting comparison!!!
Encouraging News From London
January 20, 2010 by Damian
I received an email from one of my colleagues in London this morning which should give those people thinking of going to London some hope.
The tenor of the email was that although it is still very difficult for an overseas lawyer to secure a position in London, some firms are now are starting to look at overseas lawyers again.
The catch is that, as it stands, you really need at least 3 years experience from a leading firm, have a work permit (i.e. do not need to be sponsored) and be on the ground in London for interview.
I realise that these criteria are reasonably hard to meet but for those that do meet them, it looks like there may be some opportunities for you at present. For those that don’t, I’m afraid that the best advice that I can give is to sit tight and wait for the market to develop further and take your chance later in the year.
If you would like to have a chat about this in more detail, feel free to give me a call!!
To specialise or not to specialise?
December 11, 2009 by Damian
From years of experience in overseas recruitment, the main feedback that clients give me about NZ (and Australian) lawyers is that one of the main reasons that they are so employable is because of their versatility.
Due to the nature of the market down here, few practitioners are what UK lawyers would call ‘specialists’. For example, there would not be one finance lawyer in NZ who would be dedicated to only doing aviation finance. My own legal career in the UK (for what it was) was purely in tobacco litigation – I did nothing else. This degree of specialisation just does not exist in NZ firms.
Until now, allowing practitioners to specialise in London has worked. The deals are huge, sophisticated and specific so people with detailed knowledge of the subject matter are necessary. One unforeseen consequence of the GFC, if the Linklaters’ plan as laid out in The Lawyer article below works, may be that the specialist lawyer may be a thing of the past in London -
http://www.thelawyer.com/1002837.article?nl=TL-LND.
If the way of the future for London lawyers is to become generalists rather than specialists, this could have some effect on the employability of NZ lawyers in the future. If that point of difference is taken away, it will be up to NZ lawyers to come up with another selling point to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market.
Any ideas?
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.
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!