Introduction Over the course of 2023, niche skillsets have continued to be in high demand. We’ve seen lawyers with experience in capital markets, derivatives, funds, banking and finance, corporate and regulatory experience (particularly payments and retail), in most demand this year across in- house legal teams within the financial services sector. Nevertheless, we’ve seen a decline in hiring demand this year in comparison to 2022. In the first half of this year, there was a 35% decrease in roles being advertised within the financial services sector in comparison to H2 2022. This is due to a combination of factors mainly in relation to the economic climate, cost cutting strategies such as hiring freezes and fewer transactions taking place due to market conditions reducing demand to grow teams, which we saw
affect both private practice and in-house transactional legal teams. However, given the reduction in the competition scrambling for top legal talent, many financial organisations who are still growing their legal teams have benefited from this state of the market, as strong candidates in processes have had fewer options to consider in comparison to last year. In the transactional space, we saw an increase in the number of excellent candidates moving in-house from top tier firms within private practice as a result of firms over-hiring in 2022 and the reduction of numbers of deals leading to them having to shrink teams.
“In the transactional space, we saw an increase in the number of excellent candidates moving in-house from top-tier private practice firms”
Market Overview London
3
2023
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