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What areas of law are in the most demand?

:confused:
Original post by chocomalbom
:confused:


Good question.

I think at the moment probably commercial property. Commercial property is highly cyclical. Commercial property lawyers are usually the first to get the boot in any down turn which means that firms have to hire again when they see green shoots.

For a very long while young wills, trust and probate lawyers were as rare as hens teeth, but there now seems a reasonable supply.

I don't understand the PI market. Supposedly at the beginning of the year costs changes were going to destroy the industry yet since then there has been a lot of sales/purchases of PI portfolios for eyewatering sums and recruitment is high.

Criminal lawyers with duty solicitor accreditation are like new potatoes, coming in and going out of season as firms seek to play the legal aid funding system.

City corporate/commercial lawyers will always have the highest earnings but the extent of the "overhang" in the industry from the recession is not yet clear. In past recessions the market has recovered quickly and surplus capacity absorbed but it is not clear whether that will be the case this time. One danger is that there may be a reaction against the "city" method of corporate transactions which is enormously expensive. Pointless due diligence that no-one read and no-one took into account in making decisions on deals earned city firms enormous sums, but didn't spot (and probably couldn't spot) that various deals were lemons. HBOS didn't go bust due to missing planning permissions, late payment of pension contributions or a defective data protection policy.

My tip would be residential conveyancing. The "factory" conveyancing model seems to have lost money for virtually everyone who tried it and it has ruined quite a few. The market, certainly that with any profit in it, has been left with the High Street. The area has not recruited solicitors substantially for many years and the age profile of residential conveyancers is now poor.

The areas to stay clear of at resent seem to me to be family and employment.

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