Recruiters in the legal sector have been battered by the economic turmoil as placements fall and the property market crash crushes demand for lawyers in the sector.

Nick Root, founding partner of legal recruiter Taylor Root, told Recruiter he had seen a dramatic decline in the number of jobs advertised for property lawyers.

“There is no demand. I don’t think we have a property job in the country and a year ago we had thousands,” he said.

“At the moment nearly all markets have gone down, apart from one or two really niche areas like litigation, restructuring and regulation.”

Toby Williamson, partner at G2 Legal, said the non-stop boom over the past decade in legal recruitment is changing.

“The market was so buoyant, there were too many vacancies and not enough candidates. It was a gravy train for everybody,” he told Recruiter.

But now Williamson agrees that the property and conveyancing recruitment markets has been “decimated”.

According to industry publication The Lawyer, 819 legal consultants have been made redundant since October 2007.

Root said the markets outside the South-East are being hit the hardest, predicting that some recruiters may stop trading altogether. According to the Monster Employment Index, the biggest reductions in the number of positions advertised online have been felt in East Anglia, North England and Scotland. The legal sector dipped by three points across the whole of the UK in October, compared with a two-point increase across all sectors.

Root said even the City, which had experienced the biggest growth in law firms of any region, growing by 26% between 2006 and 2007, according to trade body The Law Society, was starting to be affected.

However, the downturn has also created opportunities for legal specialists in areas like litigation to deal with the fallout from the banking crisis and personal debt.

Scott Gibson, director of Hughes-Castell, told Recruiter he expected to benefit because he concentrates on litigation, regulatory, government projects and “anything which is focused on the Middle East”, which have not been affected by the downturn.

Root said the expected dramatic demand for litigation experts had not happened yet, but he added: “I think that will follow.”

Williamson explained that firms did not want to be seen hiring litigation experts while firing property lawyers.

“They are having a hiatus. They need to recruit people, but don’t feel like they are able to,” he said.

Claire Whisker, director of totallylegal.com, told Recruiter that in-house corporate roles had also increased, fuelled by a need for firms to reduce legal costs in the downturn and the increase in demand for lawyers to manage cost and risk.

The number of practicing solicitors in commerce or industry-based roles has been growing year-on-year, increasing by 6.7% from 2005 to 2006 and by 14% between 2006 and 2007, according to the Law Society.

Libby Child, publisher of The Lawyer, told Recruiter that there were still opportunities in the sector because there are never enough good candidates at the top end.

“It will always be a healthy recruitment area, it’s just whether it will be a gushing oil well or a pipe line,” she said. “Even though it’s depressed now, it’s still an extremely profitable area.”

Market pressures have caused a change in candidate behaviour. Greg Holt, head of business development at legal job board www.legalprospects.com, told Recruiter that even in the past two months their behaviour had been “dramatic”, as more legal professionals look for jobs.

According to Holt, the website has registered a 31% increase in unique candidate applications between January and September this year.

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