According to a quarterly hiring survey by legal staffing firm Robert Half Legal, close to one third of lawyers are planning to issue new hires in the first quarter of 2012.
The survey revealed that 31 percent of lawyers said that they plan to add legal jobs in the first three months of 2012. This is up from the 25 percent who projected that they would hire new legal positions within the fourth quarter of 2011. The majority of the hiring is expected to come from law firms, with the strongest growth in bankruptcy and foreclosure, litigation and labor and employment.
Two hundred lawyers were interviewed by the survey across the country (100 lawyers at law firms with at least 20 employees and 100 corporate lawyers at companies with at least 1,000 employees). Jonathan Witmer, the metro market manager for the District of Columbia and Baltimore at Robert Half Legal, said the following:
“A majority of the lawyers we surveyed nationally and here in D.C. are feeling good about hiring,” he said. “Firms are being smarter about how and when they add personnel.”
Charles Volkert, the executive director for Robert Half Legal, said the following:
“General counsel are handling more matters internally in areas such as corporate transactional, labor and employment, intellectual property, litigation and regulatory law,” Volkert said.