Where have all the lawyers gone?
A number of firms are panicking over their recruitment strategy and wrongly assuming that all the good lawyers are going to competitor firms. Set out below are some of the common myths which are currently surfacing in the legal market.
We don't pay high enough salaries. That's why the US law firms are recruiting all the good assistants. No they are not!
Of course salaries are a crucial issue. There has been a larger than ever percentage increase in salaries this year. The Silicon Valley firms set the ball in motion earlier in the year when they hiked up salaries and it has not stopped rolling since. The Magic Circle firms responded aggressively while the response so far by the medium sized firms has been varied. Some have set out to directly compete with the global firms while others have made it clear that in the long term, paying these salaries is simply unsustainable for them.
Salaries are of course a high motivator. A corporate assistant working round the clock in a UK law firm may decide to work round the clock in a US law firm for twice the money! But it is not the only motivator. If it were, then the US law firms would be meeting all their ambitious recruitment targets.
