Ireland’s been buffetted more severely than many jurisdictions when it comes to the financial crisis – and the law jobs crisis – and so its great news for lawyers to learn of 50 new legal jobs being created  by law firm Mason Hayes + Curran  to take its headcount at the practice above 300.

The Irish Times report:

“These are real and they will happen,” Mason Hayes’ chairman Declan Moylan said yesterday.

“There will be 20 new trainees. We will also provide new jobs in litigation, a small number in corporate, and some in tax,” he explained.

“We’ve developed a niche in aircraft finance and I’d image two or three will materialise there and we’ll be recruiting two real estate lawyers, to buck the trend.”

Mason Hayes didn’t make any staff redundant during the crash although salaries were frozen.

Moylan said pay rises have been awarded of late at “modest levels”.

“I’m not saying this is all fantastic. There’s pressure on pricing; a lot of competition on marketing, trying to get new clients; and tightening margins. We are living in tough times.”

Speaking from Mayo, Moylan was attending a conference run by the Pennsylvania-based Brehon Law Society, which attracted several high-profile Irish-American lawyers and former Irish politicians here.

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Law Jobs Upsurge!

Is it too early to pronounce that the law jobs market recession is over?

According to recent reports, including this one from the American Lawyer there has been 1500 new law jobs after a couple of months of declines.  The current position shows an increase of 1500 law jobs over the same period in 2010.  This comes from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics which nonetheless also showed an overall increase in general unemployment from 8.8 per cent to 9 per cent.

As AmLaw Daily reported:  The good news for the legal sector comes after the industry lost 300 jobs in March and 2,000 in February. (Last month, we reported that legal jobs were down by 500 in March, but BLS has since revised those numbers.)

The upheaval in the law  job market is especially troubling for the many  lawyers and law students who are ready to graduate this month but have no jobs to go to.  The law jobs positon has been through some serious upheavals with the recession, law firm closures, shrinking departments and more. 

Last week, in an article for The New Republic, University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos said the jobs picture is far more dismal than most law schools let on to students.

Law school employment statistics are flawed, Campos wrote–he says the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) and U.S. News and World Report often inflate graduate employment in the legal field. These reports–the ones students largely rely on–include temporary jobs and low-paying gigs that barely require a legal degree, Campos claims.

Whether the law jobs market is set for a sustained recovery only time will tell.

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AbovetheLaw reports that the issues this year for legal jobs is not so much unemployment as UNDERemployment.

To quote ATL:  “The year isn’t off to a good start, but it’s the same bad news it’s been for a while. Focus is increasingly turning to the underemployment rate, rather than the unemployment rate.

It’s the same old denominator problem. Unemployment looks not bad (relatively speaking) at first glance – it was flat at 10.2%. But 661,000 people left the US labor force last month and a similar number of jobs were lost. Had the denominator remained constant, unemployment would have been 10.4%. Overall, 1.7 million Americans left the workforce in the second half of 2009, which was a 1.1% decline, and the workforce as a percentage of total population hit the lowest point since 1985.”

Those seeking legal jobs have little to seek solace about during 2009, but a Lawyer story reported in LawFuel gives a good insight into the changes that have taken place in the UK legal industry in the past decade, with a major move towards the major legal centers of London and New York.  Clifford Chance’s David Childs (pictured) and others speak.

The ABA Journal reports all the bad law jobs news – as do we, regrettably. According to seasonally adjusted numbers, the law industry lost 2,900 jobs in November in the US, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics says in this month’s report. 

The New York Times noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics “revised the job loss in September and October, shrinking the overall number of job losses by 159,000.” But comparing the revised numbers in this month’s report to the original November and October reports, reveals that legal services sector job losses for those months have actually increased.

Where it was originally reported that 5,800 law jobs lost in October, the stats in this month’s release indicates 6,000 jobs were lost; and where 2,000 law jobs were reported lost in September, the stats in this month’s release indicate 2,400 were actually lost.

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Kiwi legal job recruiter Damian Hanna wrote in his law recruitment blog about the strange world for recruiters at present.  Tell us about it!  But there’s some light out there, says Damian:

“There is definitely more of a sense of optimism around and for the first time in quite a while, there have even been a number of options for junior lawyers. I have recently met quite a few younger lawyers who, after sticking things out for the annus horribilus that has been 2009, have said ’stuff this, I’m off to London’.

“Whether it is the onset of summer, the prospect of a new year which will hopefully bring a new beginning or just people being fed up with being pessimistic about things, it seems that the tide has turned and to borrow a phrase from one of Ireland’s most over-rated performers D:REAM – “things can only get better.”

“So with this in mind, I opened up the latest edition of (the very good) NZ Lawyer magazine to see who was advertising, only to find a total of 3 job advertisements in the whole edition. Back in the heady days of 2006 and 2007, there probably would have been 20-30 and it seemed as if the whole publication was one big recruitment fest with some articles thrown in to break up the ads.

“Historically, Seek would have 300-400 legal jobs. As I sit here now, it has 223 legal jobs in NZ, quite a number of which are different agencies advertising the same job. (Yes, we do do that!)

“So where is the truth? Is it getting better or worse?

“My opinion, which I’ve outlined in earlier posts, is that the worst is behind us. I believe that people will start moving jobs, if only because they are sick, sore and tired of what they are currently doing. This will create some fluidity in the market which will result in the current stagnant market unraveling somewhat. Hopefully in conjunction with this, the law firms will feel confident enough to start making some positive hiring decisions and will be considering how they should be staffing up in anticipation of the wave of people who will leave these shores when the overseas markets pick up.”

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