UK Legal Job Market Down but Jobs Still Coming In

Nov. 2, 2008 - PRLog -- Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, online recruitment specialists and part of the Ten-Percent Recruitment Group, reported today that legal jobs for solicitors and qualified lawyers registered with them were down by 66% compared with the same time last year.

Jonathan Fagan, MD, said "during October 2007, 57 legal jobs (all at solicitor or higher) were posted with our agency by law firms and in house legal departments. In October 2008 this had reduced by 66% to 19 jobs. We have also recorded a reduction in the numbers of permanent posts as opposed temporary, and our temporary business has increased to 25% of our job postings."

Fagan added "it does not follow that this has affected our business however. We specialise in recruiting solicitors, and usually the posts we recruit for have only a couple of applicants if we are lucky, so we would not have filled even a third of the 57 vacancies last October. In the current market we have lots of candidates available for almost every job on our database, so the change is quite apparent".

"The market has been hit particularly badly by the influx of conveyancing lawyers trying to get a new post, whether as a conveyancing lawyer or other field. This means that our candidate registration numbers are up, but the vacancies are down. We have gone from 700 conveyancing jobs earlier this year to less than 10 currently live. There is still a lot of optimism though, and law firms are still recruiting litigation lawyers and those making a living out of Legal Services Commission funded work."

"I think law firms will see a reduction in the number of agencies bombarding them with sales calls in the near future as a number of recruiters are not going to survive the current economic downturn".

"Our company is well established with low overheads thanks to our unique online operation, and we also have other strands to our business which can support the recruitment during the credit crunch".

Fagan added that for example Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment are currently offering Redundancy Support Packages with Career Coaching & Interview Training to law firms to either sell on or incorporate into their own redundancy service for clients.

Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment donate 10% of their annual profit to charity, hence the name. The company specialises in legal recruitment, and Jonathan Fagan is recognised as an expert in the field, writing the award-winning www.LegalRecruitment.blogspot.com blog.

To view the Novermber 2nd 2008 legal job report, please visit http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/weeklyreport.htm

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Legal Recruitment Consultants for international & UK Legal Jobs. Recruiting solicitors, lawyers, attorneys and fee earners for law firms across the world. Low cost fee structure and well established, with MD Jonathan Fagan recognised as a leading expert.