Employment lawyers reap the benefits in a depressed economy
2008 may not be remembered for the high times if you’re a conveyancer or a capital markets lawyer, but for employment lawyers, workloads are piling up. We have seen a growth in demand for employment lawyers across every sector in the last few months – from private practice to the public sector and in-house. This tends to be affecting the interim and temporary market in particular, where we have seen an increase in 3-6 month vacancies; where previously a maternity leave position would be covered off internally, the increase in workload has forced the requirement for an external hire.
It’s no coincidence that in this climate we are finding contentious employment experience in much more demand than non-contentious. With redundancies gradually on the increase, employers will have to deal with more disputes and claims from their ex-employees in the near future and many of the top City law firms are being kept busy with their financial institution clients.
While the economy remains depressed, we predict an ongoing need throughout 2008 and beyond – not only from those companies directly hit and having to deal with redundancies, but also from employees being offered compromise agreements.
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