A chance for in-house to recruit the best
Thanks to a wealth of good quality candidates on the market, now may be a good time for in-house teams to consider their recruitment activity. Although the market is in a downturn, in-house often struggle to attract legal staff and with such quality available, particularly at the senior end, now may be the perfect time to attract key talent.
Badenoch & Clark’s recent workplace study ‘A ticking time-bomb’ showed that in-house employers struggle more than both the public sector and private practice in retaining and attracting staff. Therefore, with so much talent on the market, and the elusive 2-5 year PQE level more readily available, now could be the perfect opportunity to recruit.
Attracting talent will always be an important factor
Whether the UK goes down the North American route or not of increasing the size of their in-house teams to cut costs, attracting talent will always be an important factor, recession or no recession. With the market as it is, and law firms struggling to find enough work for their employees, where once it may have been difficult to attract lawyers in-house, this task has now become so much easier as in-house is perceived as being a safer option.
There has been a long-held but misguided belief that the best time for lawyers to move from private practice into in-house is at 5 years PQE, but that simply isn’t true. In fact, a good time to move is at the 3-5 years PQE level, before you are too engrained in law firm culture. Likewise, it’s worth dispelling the myth that you can’t go back into private practice after in-house – if you’re good enough and have picked up the right skills, it should be relatively easy to do. As the Legal Services Act comes into play and law firms become more commercially focused and aware, increasingly an in-house background will become more valued. Commercial awareness is one of the defining competencies that lawyers pick up in-house and so now is a great time for a private practice lawyer to move over.
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