Gloomy Legal Jobs News Continues

Gloomy Legal Jobs News Continues

LawFuel - The Law Jobs and News Wire
DLA Phillips Fox continue layoffs

Gloomy news continues to hit the legal jobs market with more layoffs and a continuing downturn in the international market.

DLA Phillips Fox, who laid off 12 lawyers across both their Australian and New Zealand offices late lat year, have laid off a further 20 fee earners and 23 support staff, affecting all practice areas.

Among those affected have been articled clerks in Australia although it is unclear how many fee earners have been affected in New Zealand. The layoffs follow a business strategy review conducted by the firm, which has also adopted flexible working arrangements during the downturn.

The flexible working arrangements are likely to last 12 months from July.

LawFuel spoke with Sydney-based recruiter Louise Leecy of First Counsel, who specialize in international legal placements, who said the situation for law jobs was grim everywhere, particularly in London. The previously buoyant Mid-East market is also down and what jobs are available there are generally being taken by those with prior Mid-East legal experience, she said.

In London, major firm Linklaters is to pay £50m in compensation to departing partners, as new details emerge of the cost of the firm’s restructuring activities, which have seen them agree to exit packages of one year’s pay to partners leaving under the “New World” programme.

As average earnings are over £1m in 2008, the firm is faces a bill of nearly 4 per cent of its global revenue, even before partner capital is repaid.

And Allen & Overy, previously another significant employer of lawyers from Down Under, has delivered a blow to trainees by becoming the latest major firm to close applications before the usual July deadline.

A&O, like most major firms, would have ordinarily recruited law undergraduates this September for training contracts due to start in September 2011 and March 2012.

Are there any bright spots on the legal jobs market? Not many, although Malaysia has indicated that it will open its markets to international law firms in the Islamic finance area.

International firms are unlikely to rush at the opportunity to open offices in the country in the current climate and given that there’s only one practice area open to them. Most interntional firms who have opened offices in the Mid-East, Asia and Eastern Europe have sought to provide full-service offerings rather than dabbling in a single practice area.

ENDS

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