Demand for commercial lawyers in Ireland remains buoyant and law firms are having to take an imaginative approach to ensure that vacancies are filled and staff turnover is kept to a minimum. In recent weeks, most of the major law firms have placed recruitment ads seeking to attract substantial numbers of financial lawyers.
‘Recruitment and staff retention are the things which occupy my mind most as managing partner. The difficulty of finding suitable lawyers on the business law side is very significant. Basically there is more work than there is lawyers,’ said Declan Moylan, managing partner at Mason Hayes & Curran.
At Arthur Cox, managing partner Eugene McCague is also spending increasing time on recruitment. ‘There continues to be very strong demand for our banking services. In the last six months we have hired around five solicitors in this area and we plan to hire perhaps six more in coming months. Additionally, we have trained people in the firm into the area. The volume of work is increasing - there’s no doubt about it.’
A spokesman for A&L Goodbody said, ‘There is always a shortage of good quality people and good quality people can always be accommodated. There is a quality of work that a big firm like this can offer’.
Many of the recent higher-level recruits are Irish nationals who have gained valuable commercial experience overseas, especially in London, and are now returning home. Common law jurisdictions, such as the UK, Australia and New Zealand are the source of qualified applicants, McCague of Arthur Cox confirmed.
Donal Roche, managing partner at Matheson Ormsby Prentice stressed the need to remain selective: ‘It’s not about hiring for hiring’s sake. We seek to ensure that people are of the right quality and that they will fit in with the ethos and core business focus of MOP, which is financial services, taxation, property and IT. Besides recruiting people in England, we have also hired Irish lawyers who previously worked in Australia.’
Moylan confirmed the trend: ‘A lot of our recruits are now coming from London. A lot of applicants we get for jobs especially on the corporate side tend to come from Irish lawyers wishing to come home. We also have a couple of English people who have chosen to locate here.’
The A&L Goodbody spokesperson said ‘We have a London office which would know people on the ground who would be interested in coming home’. |
