Tatiana Gracheva, Manager of Antal-Laurence Simons (International Legal Recruitment)
Law firms
While there are signs of practice/law firms recruiting once more by showing interest in professional lawyers who can potentially join their team, there are still some companies still planning some redundancies. However overall the mood is positive reflected in the fact that new Western legal companies are making tentative steps into the Russian market and are opening up gradually. Many firms are going through a restructuring process, as can be seen in M&A activity.
Meanwhile the established and stable are also showing signs of progression as they look to strengthen their different practice areas. With corporate/M&A lawyers are most in demand, the greatest need is for those at the highly professional middle level. High calibre lawyers are also in demand to fill the developing banking practice area. Finally, very experienced lawyers are being sought for some companies to push business development – individuals who can not only work the law, but are able to take on the task of attracting new clients as well.
In-House
With so much happening in the business world over the last year – restructuring, redundancies, mergers and acquisitions - it is little surprise that the banking sector leads the way in terms of the number of legal vacancies open. Legal professionals with the right experience to work through these activities are pivotal. At the same time demand in the sector remains for lawyers specialised in non core assets, such as real estate – so much so that lawyers from the construction/real estate sector are being tempted to move to banks. Meanwhile the ever-solid-in-a-downturn world of private equity funds continues to open legal vacancies.
Litigation and arbitration lawyers are still in demand generally – the key attribute sought after being a wide network of business contacts. Meanwhile the FMCG sector shows continuing levels of turnover and recruitment for lawyers, led by companies restructuring their legal departments. Good average executives are most appropriate here.
The greatest sign of moving forward in the legal in-house sector comes not from established firms but those that have never had their own legal department before. Although traditionally many have outsourced this function to law firms, the number of roles created for first time in-house legal positions is noteworthy, and lawyers are being attracted to these ‘start-up’ positions. The in-house legal world is looking to strengthen and grown, on all fronts.
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