Booming Bristol

The thriving and growing South West legal recruitment market replicates many of the other regional legal hubs across the UK, in that recruitment for solicitors continues apace, with commercial property, construction and commercial roles being the most prevalent.

While it was the larger law firms that were first
to start recruiting aggressively, we are now seeing
a rise in the number of medium and smaller law
firms looking to recruit, with both focusing on commercial property and residential conveyancing recruitment in the main.

The demand is mainly focused towards the two to four years’ post-qualification experience (PQE) bracket. However, many firms are now beginning to look outside this bracket as the pressures of an increased workload take their toll and additional resources are desperately needed. Newly qualified (NQ) roles are out there but not in great numbers, which is due to the significant improvement in firms’ retention rates for their own NQs.

The days of the NQ ‘season’ in the summer months (when NQ roles spiked ahead of the September qualifiers coming to the market) has tailed off to a certain degree. There is now more of an even split in the numbers of those qualifying in March and September. As a result, there is less of a ‘panic buying’ scenario in the summer months so as not to miss the NQ boat, and more of an even distribution of NQ roles during the year. The really good news for NQs, however, is that where firms have been struggling to recruit more experienced lawyers for roles to fill urgently, good NQs – with relevant experience – are often slotting in.

With certain areas of recruitment now operating at pre-recession levels, as well as a limited supply of talent, some roles are subject to generous pay rises as firms compete to attract new employees (as well as retain existing ones). To date, the greatest salary increases have been in areas suffering from the biggest skill shortages – namely, commercial property and construction. With salaries in the Bristol legal market generally being the highest outside London, Bristol is doing well at attracting top legal talent from the City, but at a high price.

Given that firms are now more confident about the year ahead, and have plans to take on more fee earners, we expect to see the competition for skills and salary increases take a greater hold over the next 12 months. Some employees have seized the opportunity to earn more and have already moved, but it is likely that others will follow suit over the next couple of quarters.

Specific areas of legal recruitment are going through different conditions at present and each one has its own driving factors.

Property and construction

After getting the worst of the recession’s cold shoulder, property lawyers of all types are now highly sought-after across the South West. Many
of these talented lawyers turned away from the profession altogether after being made redundant during the economic downturn, so there is a huge skills shortage now that we are in an upturn. Having gone through difficult times, those lawyers that did hang on to their jobs have been understandably reluctant to move, despite the potential to hike up their salaries. However, we are now seeing more movement of lawyers in this area as confidence grows.

Tim Heal, head of the real estate team at Ashfords, a national firm with its roots firmly
based in the West Country, said: “In the last 12 to 18 months we have seen significant growth in work levels across the board. We are doing substantial amounts of work for renewable energy companies and also for developers looking to take advantage of the relaxation in permitted development rights under planning legislation, eg conversion of offices to residential and farm buildings to commercial uses.”

This increase in development activity, both
in commercial and house building, around parts
of the South West has led to a big increase in recruitment for development roles as well as
plot sales. As the housing market has warmed
up, conveyancers for high street firms are in high demand as well. I should also mention that we have recently seen an influx of property portfolio management roles for larger firms dealing with clients in the retail and leisure sector. This – again – has been a knock-on effect of the improving economy.

Meanwhile, the recovering economy has seen many construction lawyers transitioning from what was back-end work and litigation, to a definite upswing in front-end work and new projects. Additionally, the increase in government subsidiaries for renewable energy projects (in order to meet the EU target of sourcing 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020) means that construction and energy lawyers
are busy and in high demand.

Planning

It’s been positive to see that planning positions have enjoyed more space on the job boards as firms seek to recruit to cope with an increase in instructions on matters pertaining to planning. John Bosworth, head of the planning team at Ashfords, suggests this is as a result of the relaxation of planning policies and the attempts by the government to reduce red tape, which has resulted in a huge amount of activity by developers.

He said: “We have seen an increase in our work from both local authorities and housebuilders, who have noticeably stepped up their activities. This has meant that in the last three years we have taken >> >> on two more partners in the planning
team, plus an associate and a newly qualified (homegrown) solicitor, as well as an extra paralegal.”

He added: “There has also been a substantial growth in planning applications for renewable energy schemes, especially wind and solar power, which need careful handling due to the extreme reactions from local residents they often excite. Reductions in staffing levels in local government combined with increased workloads have also meant there is more work being farmed out to private practice and we are acting for local authorities throughout the country.”

Due to the changes in planning policies and the recovering economy, we expect to see the number of planning vacancies continue to come through across the South West in the medium to larger firms and niche planning practices.

Employment

Employment law has been one of the few areas where recruitment has been sluggish over the past 12 months. Malcolm Gregory, partner and head
of the employment team at Withy King, told me
that employment tribunal claims have dropped
off considerably, which has impacted on some
firms’ employment teams. He said: “ACAS’ early conciliation and the introduction of fees to issue
a claim is behind the drop in numbers. We have made up for this by working on better quality employment tribunal litigation work as well as focusing on advisory work. Corporate support work has also increased as the number of corporate deals we are working on has risen. Our strategy has paid off for us as we are now taking on two NQs for our Bath and Swindon offices.”

Although there is no specific growth in this area, we are starting to see some more employment roles coming through. These tend to be concentrated on the magic two to four years’ PQE level as firms are looking to recruit solicitors that can handle a caseload without too much training or supervision. The roles are generally aimed at employer-focused advisory work, as well as corporate support and respondent litigation, rather than employee (claimant) work.

Commercial and corporate

I’m pleased to report that the number of commercial roles that we are working on has remained high over the last six months across
a whole host of areas. Going into 2015, public procurement and state aid lawyers are hot property for the larger law firms, as well as those with experience in projects, private finance initiative (PFI), public-private partnership (PPP) and infrastructure. Smaller firms are also seeking to recruit company or commercial lawyers to focus on both mergers and acquisitions (M&A) work and general commercial contracts, relating to areas such as outsourcing and distribution, IP, IT and
data protection.

In terms of corporate jobs in the South West, the majority are for general M&A lawyers. However, some of the larger law firms are gunning for banking, asset and project finance lawyers over M&A lawyers. Over the course of 2015, assuming the economy continues to improve, which will in turn increase confidence in the market, I would expect to see the number of corporate M&A roles in particular to increase, as well as banking and funds.

Litigation

Recruitment for litigation roles has been quiet
of late in the South West, particularly in relation
to general commercial, IP and IT litigation. Professional indemnity, clinical negligence, personal injury (PI) and property litigation are the busiest areas, as well as contentious construction. It won’t come as a surprise, but the claimant PI market has shrunk massively as a result of the ban on referral fees, which has caused a shake-up. The end result is fewer firms are now offering PI services.

On the flip side, the defendant PI market has stayed pretty stable and we are seeing upturns in higher value motor, employers and public liability litigation work. These types of cases are usually billed on an hourly rate basis so offer good profit levels, which drives confidence.

Recruitment in the South West has picked up significantly over the last 12 months and firms
will continue with recruitment drives in key
areas throughout 2015. Larger Bristol law firms
in particular are recruiting aggressively, and competition for top quality lawyers in a candidate-short market is really heating up. However, the South West is fortunate in that it now attracts some of the best lawyers out there – and the reasons are twofold.

First, one can find a high quality of life here,
with glorious scenery, beautiful housing stock,
good schools, great connections and low unemployment; second, we are lucky to have a large, thriving, and growing legal market, with some of the best firms in the country now having offices based here. The South West (and Bristol in particular) is no longer viewed as a backwater for firms, but is now a major legal centre. All of this is proving a real draw and, in my view, 2015 is set to be a time of great opportunity for lawyers and could well be a turning point for many careers. SJ

Georgina Inson is a senior associate at BCL Legal