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Recruiting Trends for the Legal Industry in a Changing Workforce

Our Director, Sharon Henderson recently had the pleasure of presenting to the ALPMA HR Workshop in Melbourne. The event teams up industry experts with HR specialists and Practice Managers to network and develop skills to deal with the challenges of their role.

Sharon spoke about current recruiting trends and the changing Melbourne legal industry landscape. These trends are particularly relevant for firms recruiting over the next 6-12 months.

Recruiting Trends in 2018

There is no doubt we are currently experiencing a period of exponential growth alongside rapidly changing technology.

Victoria

Victoria has had the most growth in legal jobs in Australia. In the year Jan 2017-Jan 2018 Victoria experienced growth in legal industry jobs of 16.7%, this is compared to 11.62% in NSW and 12.82% in South Australia.

Candidate Tight Market

We are in an exceptionally tight market for experienced, talented lawyers. Supply is very much struggling to meet demand. Candidates are often fielding multiple offers.

Hard to Source Roles

There are many areas of law where it is difficult to find candidates that have the requisite skills and experience. Based on analysis from Seek these are the areas and specialisations currently hardest to find suitable candidates:

Banking and finance law
Construction law
Corporate and commercial law
Environmental and planning law
Family law
Industrial relations and employment law
Insurance and superannuation law
Intellectual property law
Legal secretaries
Personal injury law
Property law

In other words…. Most legal specialisations! Consider this if you are recruiting in these areas in the coming months.

What Does the Future Look Like?

So what does the future hold in a candidate tight market with massive growth in the Victorian legal industry?

Recent ALPMA benchmarking study undertaken in January 2018 revealed that 75% of Australian law firms are expecting to grow by at least 10% in 2018. We are also seeing firms shifting their focus away from cost savings and towards investing in their people and staff retention.

Some 25% of firms in Australia have partners retiring in the next 18 months, meaning they are having to focus on succession planning to reduce key person dependencies.

We are also seeing that boutique specialist firms are outperforming larger firms on pay -this is particularly relevant to junior lawyers. This is a strategic staff retention strategy.

We expect the market for high quality, experienced candidates to continue to be tight for the foreseeable future.

How do I Secure Legal Talent in this Market?

To attract high quality candidates firms need to:

Act quickly to make decisions and make offers
Identify the key areas of recruitment in the business over the next 5 years
Move to a pro-active recruitment framework rather than re-active
Think outside the square, look at the transferable skills candidates have
Educate key decision makers about the current market to manage expectations
Look at your succession plan well in advance
Review graduate intake levels to ensure coverage for 2-3 years down the track

Firms should familiarise themselves with the current market conditions. This puts them in an informed position particularly in relation to time to market, compensation packages and candidate expectations.

Legal People is your gateway to legal talent. We are specialists in the Legal Industry and recruit Lawyers, Support staff and HR professionals in Melbourne, Australia. If you enjoyed reading this article, you can follow our Company Page on LinkedIn for regular updates.

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