Outlook for 2021
I started this article at the beginning of January, hoping to “take the temperature of the market” and try to make some cautious predictions for 2021.
Events have well and truly overtaken me, and although the pandemic is still raging dangerously (and the UK is deep in the midst of its third lockdown), the “COVID-19 pause” which I wrote about back in May is well and truly over. I’m pleased to report that the level of recruitment activity in the London law firm market has gone through the roof. We are very, very busy.
So the market’s “pause” is over, but the un-paused world is a very different place, and plenty of the disruption from 2020 is likely to persist into the “new normal”. Law firms and companies have been and are still interviewing and hiring remotely, and candidates are moving internationally for roles they’ve secured over VC.
But it’s far from normal. In normal times I’ve met the vast majority of candidates I place, and it’s unusual that I or one of my colleagues haven’t met the clients they’re placed with. In person you can get to know a candidate in a way that’s just not possible on the end of the phone or through a Zoom call. In normal times, lawyers starting a new job have met their new colleagues and seen the offices, usually several times. Most of the lawyers I placed last year have started work from home and not yet seen their office or met their colleagues.
Far from normal, and a little jarring at first, but the pandemic has shown that we can make it work. Amongst the general COVID malaise there have been plenty of success stories – I’ve placed several candidates into their first role in the UK from another jurisdiction, a couple from postgraduate study into roles that seem a perfect match.
It works, but recruitment is a people business, and I for one am hanging out to meet some of those candidates and clients in real life to celebrate their new roles and new colleagues. Social interactions, meetings, (and indeed, business transactions) remotely by email and phone or Zoom calls are all very well, but a pale substitute for a shared laugh, shared meal, shaking hands.
On a positive note, in the face of growing nationalist tendencies from Western Democracy, with Trump threatening (and failing) to build a wall, and agitating (and failing) to invade the Capitol, the UK awkwardly extricating itself from the EU to uncertain benefit (I’m still waiting for my unicorns), far right political noises seem to have paused themselves. Trump has gone, and Trumpism will hopefully soon be a forgotten, embarrassing nightmare. 2020 saw unprecedented international collaboration. That the world’s countries have worked together against a shared threat is something to celebrate in what was starting to look like an age of nationalism.
Hopefully we’ve seen the end of the culture of presenteeism. The pandemic has enforced "working from home", and made that work too. Lawyers may never go back to the assumption that they must be seen in the office five days a week in order to be seen to be working. This has flow-on benefits for family life, mental health (once we can escape the bedroom/home office when we want to!) and the environment as fewer people are forced to crush into the same small piece of high priced City real estate five days a week during waking hours.
Society will adapt (if it hasn’t already) to working from home, and perhaps outlying “villages” will spring up away from City centres, encouraging local businesses and community.
So, on balance, the outlook for 2021 is good.
Keep washing your hands…. the time when you can share a laugh and a drink in person with your friends and colleagues again is on the (hopefully near) horizon.
David is a Director at Jameson Legal. Prior to moving into recruitment in 2006 David qualified as a lawyer in New Zealand and worked in private practice in New Zealand and in-house in the UK. This is not his first downturn (but it is his first pandemic). [email protected].