Welcome. This is the 2022 state of the legal hiring market which is a webinar we've been doing every year for as long as I can remember. And typically this is a very long webinar today. I don't know that I want to. Make it, as long as it probably should be. But there's a article that's going to go on the BCG site and it will be there in the next couple of days.
And so most of the information that I'm going to cover here will be on there as well. I'll try to go for. Talk get through most of this as quickly as possible. This is over 200 slides. I'm not going to go through all the slides. I'll share kind of the highlights of it with you guys and girls. And then after I will take questions about the content of the presentation, but the article will be online and. The important thing about this is that there's a lot of charts and other information that are important for you to review as part of this. And we'll show you where the demand is in the market.
And just this, these are the topics that we'll be covering today the legal jobs to grow the first bureau of labor statistics report without an August, 2021. So we'll go over that. Then we'll go over the hiring and interview statistics for BCG attorney search.
What's important to understand about our interviewing and hiring success. X's there, they're a very good insight to the market. And the reason is because at any one time we're typically working with over 10,000 people looking for jobs. And so that's all over the country and then in different international markets as well.
But because of working with so many people, we have a very good insight into what's going on in the market by the number of people that are getting interviewed at different practice areas and the number of people that are getting hired. And I would argue because we're a placement firm and not a recruiting firm, we have a far better insight into the market probably than any comparable group of people.
Because that 10,000 number, your average recruiter may work with 10 people or 15 people searching for jobs in our company. Is working consistently with over 10,000. It may be even as of today over 15. So we have a lot of people. That we're working with and we have a lot of employees and artificial intelligence and so forth that we use to track down jobs and also to understand what's going on in the market.
So the information I'm giving you is really information that is good information. It's not necessarily anecdotal. Meaning, 15 years ago, I might've said corporate always gets active when the court, when the economy's good. These are actual information about what's happening for hundreds, if not thousands of people in different practice areas and who's getting interviews and who's not.
So I think it's very interesting. And we'll go over real, briefly not, and I'm not going to spend a ton of time on it, but we'll go over each practice area. We'll spend a little bit more time on litigation because that's the most popular. And then we'll show you the placements where there's been the most growth and decline, and that's actually very interesting.
And before I talk about. Most of our growth really has been in consumer facing practice areas. So those are things like workers' compensation and and other things where a lot of placements have happened, where people typically wouldn't even think that firms there would use recruiters.
And what's funny about what we do is there's always among young attorneys, not older ones, but among young attorneys, there's always this idea that, oh, recruiters say, if I used them in my job searches it's not, it's not always, for smaller firms won't help me.
Actually it helps a lot more with smaller firms than any type of firm. Cause that's where most of the placements have been happening with smaller firms and large firms obviously hire a lot of people too. But at the same time that the small farm market is just absolutely gigantic and there's a huge demand, smaller to mid-size firms for people.
We'll also talk about regional differences. Obviously you have the coast, but you have other areas that I'm sure you've been aware of are growing like Texas and Florida. Cause a lot of people are moving to those states for political and also taxation reasons. And then we'll talk about niche, practice areas.
And then just some other kind of big practice here is like the M and a, and what's happened there. Bankruptcy. Tax and estate planning deployment and then just some outlooks for what I see are going to be the top practice areas.
So the first thing is just that in terms of the the, in terms of, the job search market in terms of what's going on and in terms of your market stability right now there's really never been a better time to to look for a position.
I've been at this in terms of. For almost a quarter of a century. And in terms of what I've seen, I've never really seen a market that's as good as the market is right now. This is an exceptional market. The other thing is at BCG turn your search and law cross, and then also other sites like.
Whether it's LinkedIn or but people are going to find you if you if you're interested in looking for a job, so having your resume in these sites and then getting job alerts or, and things is very important because you're going to learn about a lot of opportunities that normally you wouldn't what tends to happen is there's there's kind of two types of markets.
One of them is when it's very employer driven where everybody's trying to get jobs and it's very difficult to get jobs and the others when it's candidate driven, where there's a lot of opportunities for people, and this is a candidate driven market. So if you're a candidate, you actually have a much better, you're in a better marketing position for employers that are good fits for you.
Then than you otherwise would be. So that makes it much easier for you to get a position than it would otherwise. Now of course there's different types of attorneys and so forth, but if you're trying to move up and work at a better firm you probably have a very good opportunity to do that right now.
You may not be able to move from, a consumer facing firm to represent Google but you can definitely move from a consumer facing firm to one where you're representing small companies or a firm firmly represented small companies too when we were representing mid midsize companies.
And if you're working at a farm where you're representing midsize companies, you can move to a firm where you're representing larger companies and mid-size companies. So that's the kind of movement that tends to happen when the market's very good and it's a very good opportunity for anybody to, to move.
And last year, at our company, we made hundreds of placements and most of the people that were placed were actually moving to better firms. And and so you can move to better firms. You can also, if you're working at a small company, you can move to a larger company. If you're working for the government, you can move to a larger or more important government role.
There's just a lot of opportunity out there. And you can get a sense of kind of the way the market is by, just going out and being trying to go out to eat. I was just came back from vacation and a lot of the restaurants were, they had nobody to serve people.
And then I went to. When I came back to Los Angeles, it was the same thing. I'd go to restaurants. And I went into a giant, family restaurant and they only had one server in the afternoon. And so everyone had to wait because there was only one person there. So this is a very good market for lots of people.
Especially in large markets firms are very here to hire people. And it's a very good time to move up if you're unhappy with their situation. And and the other thing is that, there's a lot of people that now have the ability to work remotely and and that's a very good thing.
So you should not be just applying to firms in your home market, you should be applying to other markets, and a lot of people will hire you to work in other markets. I just hired an attorney to work in our company in I think she is in Brooklyn. And and she can work remotely and I, and we interviewed probably, 25 people for her job.
And she was the best person and we hired her and she can, represent us there. No, it's fine. But one thing I would recommend is just, this is just for your own sake to get jobs, I would recommend uploading your resume to different websites, whether it's BCG or law crossing or LinkedIn, just to make sure you understand the things that are going on in the market.
And if you upload your resume to BCG, we will always send you positions and also firms that we think would be a good fit for you, regardless of whether or not they have jobs. It's just fun to look at it and people like getting us. And we have, I don't know, tens of thousands of people that we tell about different firms we think are good fits for them.
So that would be something that you might enjoy. And then the other thing is, right now the statistics are one in 10 attorneys is actively seeking. Job opportunities, meaning that they're, approving firms or they're applying to jobs when they received them very regularly with, from job alerts and so forth, but also nearly half of all liars are report.
That they're there open to new job opportunities. And so that's actually a very good thing too, as well. And and also I think. A lot of people, especially young attorneys do feel very overworked even when they're working from home. And so the market is definitely exploding and and these are just some, statistics, I'm sure, every day when I read the paper, I read about people resigning from their jobs and so forth that we've really seen very high resignation rates and people between the ages of 35 and 45.
And and attorneys a lot of people in July quit their jobs. And so there's just been a lot of opening openings and so forth. If you look at a law crossing, for example right now we have, I think over a hundred thousand attorney openings different job boards have, different amounts and there's literally an, it's not dozens.
It's, hundreds of jobs posted every day. And it's very very busy out there. And the other thing too is there's a lot of money going around, so there's a lot of investment being made in the market. So there's there's, money is very cheap.
I Interest rates are low. The stock market's doing well, so companies have a lot of money to invest and people have a lot of money to invest and companies. To give new companies and so far. So there's a lot of in-house positions as well. And growing companies also have the money to hire law firms and so it's, it is a very good time took hire people.
People are resigning from companies and mass and so forth. And it's just a very active market we've had at our company at BCG. We've had the recruiters did very well. The majority of them did twice as many placements last year as they did the previous year, which which should strike you.
It's not that they're they're very skilled and so forth when we have very good technology, but at the same time that, that has made a big difference in terms of the should show you that, how good the market is. And then I think that lawyers are much more open to leaving and looking for jobs than they used to be.
The market used to be even when I started it was rare for people to look for jobs right away. And and then if you go back even further in the 1980s and 1970s, it was almost unheard of for attorneys to to look for jobs beyond their current firm. And everything is changed.
So one thing I just would recommend now if you haven't done it is regardless of the situation you're in, you are likely to. See positions that interest you you're likely to learn of things that may be better than where you're at. And I certainly believe that it's a smart thing to stay with a current employer.
If things are working out and you have a future, but if you are interested in getting exposed to potentially more sophisticated work or a firm that has a better opportunity or an employer with a better opportunity it is important to make sure that you have your resume updated and there really is nothing wrong with sending your resume to different places where if you feel just to learn about jobs instead of job alerts and so forth.
And because th there are many life changing opportunities out there. Yeah. We have these when we have our meetings with our the people that work here, people, a lot of our own employees, are moved to tears in so many cases just by the how significantly people's lives can change and how quickly they can change.
And so it's something to look at very closely. So even if you're not active in the legal market you should understand that that this is one of the most active hiring markets probably in history. And it's important to have a good resume.
If you're a a corporate attorney or your transactional work, Highly recommend getting a a deal sheet done and to reach out to old people that you may have worked in the past if you're interested in doing different things, but just be ready to understand that you do have a lot of opportunity right now, regardless of what may have happened to you in what you may believe in the past.
I, I think that what happens a lot of people that start their job, their careers in recessions, or when the market's not that good, or then when they come out of law school and they have a difficult time finding a job where they are, they look for a job in a recession when a good time comes along they're scared and they don't necessarily think that good things are gonna happen.
But there's definitely a lot of opportunity out there right now. And I can just tell you that from experience that there's a ton of things that are happening. And and it's a very good market right now. So it's just something I would recommend just before I get started with everything, just that you'd be aware of that you do have a lot of opportunities right now.
In most cases, when people don't take advantage of those opportunities, it's their minds that are holding them back their beliefs about themselves, their beliefs, about the market, their preconceptions, and so forth. And, keep in mind that you're listening to someone right now that.
Works with, tens of thousands of people looking for positions. And I can tell you that that this is a very good market. It's a good market to move up. But it's also a good market if you want to try and get clients and do other things as well. So this is just a report from the bureau of labor statistics.
I, I don't need to spend a ton of time on it but it just shows you the first one came out in August of 2021. There were, obviously jobs added there's this is there's more than, the market, meaning the market's expanding in terms of its size.
And so it's just, the whole legal market and the job market is doing well. And that's, obviously a good thing. One thing I did want to and then you can see 74,000 jobs for professional business services in August unemployment rates falling and it's it was so forth.
There's just quite a bit going on. In terms of how the legal market's doing and and one of the things that we've done is we use data science. So we're able to it's exciting. We're able to match people with we have with all the firms in the country and we can obviously see a lot of demand in different areas.
And and pretty much BCG, we used to be very selective. 20 years ago, the company would only work with the candidates looking to get in the best firms and the best jobs. And and now the market really, we believe is open to everyone and all law firms, small, large use recruiters to find jobs.
And it's honestly, this year was one of the best years of all time. It doesn't really, Hey, this may not be news that people want to hear that everyone believes, but it honestly we place people that are in their seventies and more than senior we've placed people that are Six months out of law school or even three months out of law school.
It doesn't matter really the school you go to. That's the most important thing really to be marketable in this market is just to make sure you have some sort of skill that you're good at. I You do one thing to do it. It could be anything, it could be trust in the states. It could be, a form of litigation and it doesn't matter.
One of our recruiters just I, the Friday before Christmas or the, the Thursday made four placements. It's just I think our, we made my team, I think made nine or 10 the week after Christmas. So it's just, it's a very active market and these are not the kind of numbers that you normally hear about.
This time of year. So the market is very good right now and going into the new year. And and the key to that is, is really knowing where to look. If you've been looking for a position there may be a lot of stuff that you're doing wrong. You may be only looking at openings and the biggest firms, and you need to be coming from a small firm.
You may be looking at in-house openings and the biggest companies that are looking for people coming from other big companies, and you're at a law firm or a small company, I you may be making mistakes, but if you're looking in the right place you should be doing very well right now.
And and the other thing that's very important that I always stress to people is making sure that you're always looking at places that don't have openings. I share this statistic almost every single call that I do, and every single webinar, over 80% of the placements that we make BCG are at firms that don't currently have openings.
And the reason for that is because we know the firms that are interested in people on an ongoing basis firms don't always have openings. But the big thing is when you're applying to firms that don't have openings you're the only applicant. So why would you want to be one of a hundred plus applicants or two or three or 400 applicants for a position when you can be the only person?
It seems counterintuitive. Some people, but that's just how it works. Most firms are not organized enough to have formal openings and the biggest ones are, but most of them are. And the other thing I would say too is this a, a temporary trend in terms of what happened last year?
I see no idea, but no, it's not. So the big thing to understand is one reason it's very important that you should probably be active in the market right now is always what goes up, goes down. This is every time the market has gotten very good, right before 2008, it was a very great, it was a great market.
And then everything crashed right before the re the.com boom happened, more 1999 to about November of 2000 and then fell off the face of the earth. And then, and then everything recovered a little bit. And then you have 2001. So everything goes in and in waves and the bigger, the wave, meaning the higher, the.
The more active things get and the better the market the worst the fall. So that means you want to be really in a place. I would say that's right now, that's very well managed and you think is going to do well in the future when the economy does that now, because it will, and I don't know if it's this year.
I don't know if it's next year I'm not an Oracle on this, but what I can tell you is that that you have a very good opportunity right now to to increase your marketability and and law firms that are looking for people right now are a lot of them are having a very hard time.
I we get requests for people, all day, every day. And they're so voluminous is it's hard to respond. And when we do want the people to tell us about their jobs, but there's just, there's a lot of places that want people and you can apply to places, whether or not you're using a recruiter or not, you can just apply to places or many times, regardless of where they have openings.
And so that's something just to be aware of and but again, be very aware of that being in a good place for when the market slows down is important. One thing I can tell you that I just, I wanna, I want to share a couple of antidotes just because. I think there's a lot of very smart people that, are on these webinars and and are watching us if you are get hired at a firm where you're not w where you're not going to be the biggest fish in the pond.
That can often be dangerous. So one of the things I saw is I've seen this. In the, one of the times when the market was arguably, just as busy as is now would be, the coast markets. I Places like Palo Alto and New York and with corporate and and the busiest than ever was prior to now, it was probably in 2000.
And so what happened is there was so much demand for people then that law firms were hiring people out of fourth tier law schools. And that hadn't done that well there. And they were hiring people out of small firms and the second the market turned, all those people were let go almost regardless of how well they were doing.
So you don't necessarily want to overshoot. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. If you're nervous about staying there you want to, and the firms that let them go were typically the ones that weren't the best managed, but they're large firms that are badly managed and they're small firms that are badly managed.
Taking a position with a firm where you're not going to necessarily have a future. If you look at all the partners here and stuff, this is not necessarily the best thing because you will you, the market is good enough that you actually have the opportunity now to get hired at those sorts of places.
It's almost comical. How good the market was before and how good at, it could possibly, be getting right now with everything. So these are some of our interview and hiring statistics and I'm, these are just different practice areas where you can see declines and so forth.
I'll go into more detail about this later. But you can see some of these practices, which I'm sure, probably don't involve you like alcohol and beverage law and antitrust and competition are typically niche practice areas. So w what in terms of what goes on there is not really probably that important, but it should show you that it's been a little bit of growth and antitrust, there's been the banking and finance for some reason there, wasn't a big growth bankruptcy for the past couple of years has not a ton of stuff has happened with those practice areas.
And then you do see some other things that construction and corporate continually does well corporate always does well when the economy is doing well. Data privacy is a very small practice here. So I, at present, so I don't put a lot of weight into what's happened there.
And these are a lot of the smaller practice here is in the smaller practice areas. These kind of niche practice here is it, this year there wasn't really as much growth that this has been in previous years. You have seen some growth in environmental, which I think would probably have something to do with the administration, but I don't know.
You've seen some growth in some other practice areas here. Family law was a little surprised about, cause I just keep seeing so many people get family law interviews and. And it is a very good practice area. And it's we've had instances where, people were, it's just crazy.
How the, how receptive different markets are. Very small markets, like people moving to, a market of, 20,000 people in Wisconsin from Colorado and getting seven interviews and stuff. With every person. Did he, practically, so it's the family law market is very good.
But it certainly wasn't our most active practice area. And then you see just some of these other practice areas which aren't really where you don't see a ton of growth healthcare is w there was quite a bit of growth there that practice area is always doing well, if I was an attorney and going back into the market, I might think about doing that just because it's such an active practice area.
Immigration also did well during the Trump administration, it was it was not doing well because obviously there were all sorts of limits and immigration. And now I think that practice here, I won't do very well over the next several weeks several, for awhile, at least, but, COVID obviously doesn't help it.
And and you can see here with insurance defense is w for a recruiting firms, by the way, most recruiting firms do not make a lot of insurance, any insurance, defense firm placements. And you can see here that it's literally among our top 10 practice areas in terms of boxing.
So there's a lot of opportunity for insurance defense firm for attorneys, and and it's. It's a good practice here. Now. It doesn't always pay the most, but it's definitely an active practice here. This IP category is the general intellectual property. And then you can see things like IP litigation is slowing down.
IP litigation has been slowing down for years. And so there's there's it's to do with Supreme court decisions regarding patent trolls. So it's so that our Supreme court decision and it's been slowing down for a long time. That is not the greatest practice here to be in at the moment.
Patent prosecution is always doing well, especially in the hard sciences, which are like electrical engineering and so forth. You can see that's always the place where we typically do make a lot of placements. The reason for that is just because there's no. A lot of patent attorneys are among all the attorneys out there.
It's it's a niche practice area. And and then we have these other places, like things like international trade and which we don't make a lot of placements internet. It's not a very active practice area outside of DC. And then trademark and copyright I'm surprised that it slowed down so much over the past year.
It's a, it's, but I would think that would be more active trademark and copyright typically does well when there's a lot of new businesses being started. And they need those services. Labor and employment was a consistently, one of our top practice areas. And then litigation is always the place where we get the most interviews and the most the most activity and the reason for that is most attorneys are litigators.
I don't know what the percentage is exactly, but I believe it's, way more than 50%. I knew it. I just, I know it, but I don't know it off the top of my head, but this second so most attorneys come out of school and most attorneys go into litigation. And that's always our top practice area in terms of what happens.
And and then you have maritime municipal laws, always a good practice here. You can see there that it's a top, one of the top practice areas this year it's number 12. That's another good practice here to be in. And then we have a practice here at called other we are coming up with different practice areas that we're going to be launching at BCG in the next 30 days or so.
And so things that aren't covered on here, we put it under there. And then you have patent agents, we were in a. I just confirmed, but a lot of times attorneys will not take the bar and we'll just be pat patients. And so we've always consistently worked with them and that's an active practice here as well.
Real estate is always in the top different in terms of practice areas. And then you have five tax, which is I'm surprised that it sits so well. And then technology transactions telecommunications is not that act. That was a very active practice here at in the nineties and early 2000.
But it's never been that active since then. And then trusting the state to state very active as and again, most placement number coding firms do not make a lot of trusts in the states placements if at all, because it's typically consumer plate facing business consumer facing practice here, but that is one of our busiest practice here.
It's it's very active. I would I'd like to give advice for people's career ambitions, if you ever want to start your own firm. That's a very good practice here to do it in there's lots of guidance online for people that are trying to do it. And it's just a very I have to practice area in all respects.
It's a it's a good practice area. And and people can do very well candidates that we work with and trust and estates get a lot of firms and opportunities from us. So many so that they often get scared away because they're like, why are they sending me so many jobs? Or why are they sending so many firms?
There's just a lot of demands for trusting the state's attorneys. And then the same goes with workers' compensation. I mean that you can see there that that's another area where we make placements, which most recruiters don't another consumer facing type of practice here where there's a lot of demand and it's, and frankly it's been untapped, I think by our company,
very active practice area. And then here is a breakdown. I hope you guys can see. These are our placements and interviews. You can see placements compared to the number of interviews. So what's interesting about these by the way is, you can see that quite a few and actually I would, I think this may be verdict, but I think they may have done an improperly, but you can see quite a few placements.
I think the placements actually are supposed to be the other color in it, but anyway you can see here that lots of activity on trust in the states and telecommunications and also. All these kinds of different practice hairs. And this just gives you a sense of, what it looks like from our standpoint in terms of the number of placements and interviews.
You can and what happened oh, sorry. It's this year compared to the last year. What, where was the growth? And the growth really was, it looks like a worker's compensation trusts for the state municipal law. And then government contracts, and then you can see down here as well.
So these are more of that and government, is a very active practice area, which you can say healthcare, immigration and and these charts, by the way, while I'll be online immigration, you can see just massive grubs which is pretty awesome. And and then some of this other stuff.
And then this also right here we'll cover is the growth by region. Our most active area in terms of where the most growth was it was in the Midwest and This is a very good market. I've been very surprised at how receptive and open and how much hiring has happened in your market cycle, Ohio and and I Michigan and and then Chicago right there, they're all very good markets.
And the, there's a lot of growth there's been less growth in the south and the Southwest but there's some growth in the west and then east and then you can see also that a lot more interviews and at different areas and placement.
In the Southwest, for example there's definitely growth in the number of placements that we made. But pretty much every region except for the west has been was very positive in terms of the number of placements last year. So that's good news and and you should get a sense of kind of that.
If I was an attorney looking for a job and I looked at this information, I would say that the most growth is probably happening right now. And the interior of the country, which just the Midwest and and in the west, which, I'm sure you've been reading about a lot of people that leaving California, I just was reading a bunch of articles, but today and and there, there's definitely some growth in the Southwest.
And other areas you've heard of people moving to Texas and so forth. And so that's that's important to understand, but all this information just shows you where where there's the most interest and it doesn't break it down by practice areas. This is just a little bit about some different practice areas.
I don't want to spend too much time on it. Cyber data, privacy, cyber security is a good practice here to get into. If you're not in it you can take get certifications in it and you can learn about it. And and people that are in law firms doing that are able often to get a lot of business at a very young age, I've met a lot of attorneys that have, four or five, 10 plus million dollars in business.
And a lot of them are doing things to do with privacy and so forth. They that is a very good practice here to be in if you're interested in that M and a is an interesting practice area as well. No, that is always a very busy when the economy's good. They it's mergers and restructuring and so forth and and and so that is going to be growing.
And if you're a corporate attorney, it's obviously a very good market to be in, and there's a ton of demand. People get lots of interviews. I have some candidates that basically, worked for. This is a very common story, but they may have worked for two years as an M and a attorney five years ago and then quit.
And then I've been traveling. I want to come back to work and are getting tons of interviews. So there's a lot of opportunity right now for MNA attorneys, a bankruptcy is not doing all that well in terms of a practice area there may be some activity.
There was a lot of people believing that. When law firms stop having PPP loans. And not law firms, but business law firms got to, but when businesses, when they ran out of those funds, they would file for bankruptcy. It's really not happening at the rate. People thought it would happen trust in the states.
This is doing well. And again employment as well as doing well there's a lot of activities employment, and you can see all the interviews and so forth. We got I'm not sure exactly. What is driving all of that in terms of the market, but I think a lot of people.
There are a lot of there's a lot of openness on the coast, too. A lot of lawsuits against employers and receptive courts and governments and so forth. So there's a lot of people a lot of that going on. And and then there's, questions about what policies are when people are working remotely and so forth.
There's been issues with that. So employment, I foresee being an active practice here for some time. That's another practice here where, if you're thinking about what practice here to go into is a very good practice area for longterm employment security, because most employment attorneys get clients that are companies and they advise them on an ongoing basis and they have a, a lot of them and that can be very helpful to them.
So that it's easy to get business but there's plenty of work. There's lots of employment firms and you can do it as a plaintiff and defendant and so forth. And so people do very well on that. So here's the litigation outlook for 2022. You can see here just continually a very active practice area.
I don't know, it's one third of our placements 40% of our interviews. So it just, it continues to be an active practice area and is doing very well. And I see a lot of ongoing activity there. I think, everyone understands the kind of remote courts and so forth, which it's making things a little bit difficult for people, but the this is just some information about stuff first, so virtual litigation which I actually enjoy the extent I have to go to court.
For various things, it's all been virtual, which makes it much easier because you don't have to commute so forth. And and it probably actually creates more work for attorneys. And there's a lot of cases are taking longer to try. So that's just some information this is some stuff about politics, which I don't think it's really bad, important to.
Cover right now. It's in our, it's in the online report that you guys will begin shortly. But there's definitely a lot of opportunity for for attorneys, if, if you're thinking about breaking out and working on the open working on your own with your own practice, I think you can do very well.
And and there's definitely a lot of different litigation trends and so forth going on, you can learn about corporate it continually does well the w what tends to happen is the corporate is doing so well, that there's actually even though the interviews have gone up people will get hired without with a lot less interviewing because the firms just don't have people there's a major law firms out there that don't even get people applying for their corporate jobs.
If you're a corporate attorney right now, you have a lot of opportunity. It's just something to be aware of. And it's just a very good market for a corporate attorneys right now. And and the thing is that that there's enough money going around and companies that are doing well that.
They're actually happy to hire external CA external attorneys right now. The number of the spend of what it was in 2016, for example, is 35% higher than it was in 2016. And there's just a lot of optimism about hiring and so forth. And and and most clients, I, four of 10 corporate clients anticipate an increase in legal spending, which is very good and only 20% anticipated decrease.
So that means that if you're a corporate attorney, you have a lot of work coming down the pipeline. And and then there's also regular, all these kind of different issues, which corporate attorneys for college, I don't want to spend too much time on. And and same thing here in terms of the overall risk this is not a lot of information which you guys can read about it, the report.
But there's just a lot of opportunity right now for corporate attorneys and corporate legal department and legal departments inside of law firms. Real estate is another practice area that has been doing well. Real estate always does well in a low interest rate environment fairly consistently.
And then and so it's, you can see here that that our number of placements it's almost 7% of our placements, which is very high for that niche of a practice area. But it's been going up around the same thing with interviews. So real estate attorneys are very marketable and I don't anticipate that will change in the near future.
The real estate market, obviously the residential real estate market is doing well. The office market is another story, but there's a lot of investor funds out there and so forth. And so people have been spending a lot of money on real estate. And and you can see I know there's just a lot of capital out there.
And so forth chasing real estate and that's creating work. And then there's also infrastructure, investment act, which is creating a lot of work for commercial real estate attorneys in the future. And and so all this stuff is driving a lot of real estate work.
So if you're in the real estate market, you should be continuing to do very well. I don't see that's slowing down even probably, even in a recession because of all the government spending going on I would see it continuing to do fairly well. And and then there's there, there are issues in terms of the tax code, so that may affect some things to some extent.
But I'm not sure trust in the states again is as a practice area that's been growing you can see that H how much our placement activity grew over the past year. It's it doubled in terms of the number more than double, triple, quadruple, it actually, in terms of the number of placements and then and doubled in terms of interviews, as I said, that's just an awesome market.
And it's a good practice here to get into. It's something that people can start their own practice with fairly easily. There's just a lot of Opportunity there. And I don't anticipate it will continue going on as the population ages. There's just a lot of things going on and trust in the state.
So it's a very good market labor and employment. Again, you can see that are a number of placements did decrease. But the interviews stayed fairly steady. I don't see anything decreasing too much there's in labor and employment, by the way, there's two kind of aspects of it. There's what's called counseling and then there's litigation.
And then so counseling means, when employers have questions about policies and so forth. At our company, for example, we use outside counsel to advise us on things, even though we have inside counsel. But we were constantly, emailing and talking with our outside counsel about various issues.
And it's the same thing in companies like w in all companies, they do that. There's opportunities for counseling, then there's opportunities for litigation. A lot of attorneys that do counseling also do litigation, and then. There's the plaintiff and defense aspects of labor and employment as well.
People will, there's also a big market and filing plaintiff's plus it's so there's just a lot of activity labor and employment, and it's another good market to get into. The thing that's cool about labor employment is if you're a litigator it's fairly easy to transition into it, or if you're a labor employment attorney, it's fairly easy to transition to litigation.
People litigators can often do both. And and it's very common for one person to transfer into for people to move between different practice areas. The other thing I liked too, by the way about labor and employment is it's very easy, not only to get business, but to go and house.
So that's something to consider if you're thinking about practice areas there's a lot of demand for goods and services, a lot of money going around arc in the market. There's a lot of hiring at all levels of retail manufacturing.
There's a lot of people quitting their jobs. A lot of businesses have a lot of work. I saw a banner ad yesterday where Amazon was offering $3,000 starting bonus to people to, work on boxes and their warehouses. There should just a lot of opportunity and out there and and a lot of openings for people which again, it's w we'll create more and more work for attorneys, which is all very good.
And and then, again there was a little bit of drop in services, the beginning of COVID, but because of, less demand for vacations concerts and so forth, but in terms of travel, I don't think, I think that's probably picked up right back to pre level, at least domestically.
And a lot of people are returning to work. And again, they're saying that global business travel is going to increase 30%, 7% this year over 1 trillion. And just. All of these different sectors are very active more jobs because of spending bills. I don't want to get too far into that, but there's as I mentioned with the real estate, that's going to have an effect on the jobs and also the economy by putting more money in the economy.
And people that were displaced by the pandemic. I see coming back to work, which will also create a lot of legal work unemployment work radar. I see steadily continuing to decrease and and doing. These are just some other things here where you can see the interviews by region again, in different practice areas which, I believe the, with our sample size of candidates, which is, probably 40,000 attorneys w may have worked with over the past year it gives you a pretty good understanding of what's going on in different practice areas and locations.
So you can see telecommunications, it was pretty much all in the east. And then you can see immigration was in the east and then to a lesser extent in these other areas. So the very interesting to get up a sense of, where's the activity for different practice, here's all this would be put online by the way.
So are, you can see it there too. And then the same thing goes with placements. You can see for whatever reason on the Midwest, it's very active for real estate and litigation was the most active it looks like in the Southwest. And so all of these different. Kind of areas where there was growth and so forth is interesting.
And it can give you a sense of the different areas of the country. What are active and where you do your search and where you work does typically have a big impact on your career. There's a lot of studies show, if you start your career in a recession your lifetime earning capacity is much, much lower than for you starting in a good economy.
There's a lot of studies, that talk about, where you start, your career will have a lot of impact on what ends up happening to you in the long run in terms of the legal market you're in or the size firm you start with and so forth. So all this stuff can impact you and you should, when you review this stuff, when it goes online, you should, think about these numbers and what it means because, putting yourself in a pool where there's a lot of activity, as opposed to where there's not can, it's not necessarily something to be aware of.
Here, you can see antitrust and competition is pretty much confined, most of our positions to the east and west coast which would be obviously, if you want to do that, you have. The side where you want to work. And you can get a sense too, of different things happening.
And these practice areas in and now this will be online too, by the way, and a few days but you can get a sense of kind of what's happening in these different practice areas by different locations. You can get a sense of w where was the bankruptcy activity, where was the activity and construction law and so forth construction typically is always on the coast and in the Southwest construction law, by the way is also a very good practice here.
I I don't think that we promote those jobs very much, but it's an extremely active practice area. Corporate, you can see is this almost always, fairly active on the coast, but it's been active in different areas in terms of placements and interviews. And so you hear the energy and oil and gas.
It doesn't look like we had much to do in different areas there. Entertainment is always, pretty much if a lot of people are interested in entertainment law, Almost all the activity is on the east coast and on the west coast. So if that's something you're interested in doing you're much more likely to have luck there.
There's so many people that try and are trying to do entertainment law that it's a very hard market by the way, for recruiters to, to really do a lot of value add unless it's a very specific type of opening. Like it could be, trademark work for entertainment companies or a special type of because typically the problem with entertainment is people are so desperate or want to do this so much.
I don't know. It's one of these practice areas where people are really excited about it. And so most entertainment attorneys and law firms receive, tons of unsolicited resumes all the time. And most of those openings are just filled by. People hiring friends and that sort of thing.
It's not a very active practice area entertainment and then you have environmental land use. That's been a much more active practice area than it has been in the past. I'm actually very surprised because it really did shut down for several years recess always fairly active and executive compensation.
And then you can see some of these other practice areas here. And immigration obviously is very active healthcare. And then insurance defense, which I talked to you about earlier we were made placements in pretty much most markets where we work for people, which is good.
And and then you can see patent same thing, very active and then trademark fairly active in most markets and then litigation very good in almost every market. So agents tax attempt by the way there's a lot of tax attorneys out there and I just bring it up.
People go get textile platinums, and they go into different forms of tax law tax cuts. It's a difficult practice area for working in law firms, just because a lot of people first of all, it's often a support role. So it's ports the corporate department, which means, that, right now, for example, it would, you would think it would be a very good market, but there is, it's the work it tends to be supportive.
It's not like a lead thing. Most of the time tax attorneys in order to be a marketable, really need to be coming from law firms. And then. And then, there's other issues with that as well. There's a lot of them that come out of very well respected LLM programs.
And I love tax. I would have loved to have been a tax attorney, I think, but unfortunately it's a difficult market to make placements in and to get positions in if your attorney many times. But it's a good practice here. W if I was a tax attorney, by the way, I would the people that do a lot of taxations stuff and are marketable, most of the time tend to be involved in Rissa or trusts in the states.
It's both involved tax. That's what I would spend most of my time doing, just knowing what I know. The other thing I would just say about taxes. There's a lot of opportunities in accounting firms for tax people, but not as protection attorneys, but not as much in, in large law firms. And then these are just some other things you can see with trust in the states and these other practice areas.
And then they're broken down here by states. I don't want to spend too much time on it on this. I think all this information is online and it can be very interesting for people to look at and see where the activity is. And again I do think we have a very large sample size.
When you see us getting interviews in different areas, it means that there's probably a lot of activity. If you see us not getting the interviews, it may mean that we don't have a lot of people we're working with there. But these are just different types of attorneys in different markets.
And you can see all these us statistics and it's fun to go over these. I like studying them and seeing what's happening, different rankings of different law firms and so forth. And again the middle market, just a couple of things to consider, and I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but the market has really been moving in there's been a lot of changes that have happened.
There's w what happens and any time the market's changing is the most people get very happy with a way of business model working. Law firm partners, typically if they've come out and they've spent, 20 years learning how to practice law, one way or 30 years are not going to be comfortable.
But change most law firm leaders are not going to say that they're happy that they want to offer clients greater value other than reducing rates. So there, most, 70% of companies we'll say that there's a lot of resistance to change, and this is just from a wild survey.
And and so what that means is if you're a young attorney there's a lot of opportunity out there to do things differently. I think in terms of how you deliver legal services. I think that, hopefully someone listening to this will be a leader and we'll go out and figure out, how do we develop, how do we, offer clients greater value?
And there's a lot of inefficiency in the in the legal market, there's a lot of things that could be done much better and and in terms of how things happen. I think there's a lot of opportunity one of the things now is remote work.
So obviously with remote work the, all the cost of attorneys in the past and the high bill hours were a lot of that was to support a very active office. Lots of staff and a bear, expensive offices and people coming in there and cafeterias and all that sort of thing. And and now the people are so excited about working from home.
Arguably you could, they could work in different states and so forth and provide the same type of service. And I think that remote work offers a very good opportunity for some sort of entrepreneur to come in and and really wrap, and get and reduce legal costs for employers.
So that's something that people are very interested in and so it, it alleviates the need for a lot of these high legal fees to some extent and and I think that one thing that someone said to me, a very well-known attorney at the beginning of this whole COVID thing was that it was going to accelerate remote work.
I didn't really think about it very much, but at the time if he was right. And and so I do think there's going to be different deliverable models and law firm rate school entrepreneurs will step in and do a lot about the work that different clients our pain a lot of money for right now in a different way.
No in law firms, by the way. I It's, there's, it's very difficult for new attorneys because the training can be more difficult when you're remote. I think a lot of the learning that happens in law firms is in face-to-face meetings and and lunches and things that aren't necessarily always happening.
And and I think that that, that, that presents another opportunity for different types of training and about the kind of stuff that I've talked about in terms of, how to succeed inside of law firms. I think that that's one thing. And then I think in the future just just a few, things, you need to understand that the market's going to change.
And and let's see here. Yeah, man fell a part of the pandemic and yeah, I had an attorney growth group between that states. Yeah. Yeah. And so just a couple more things 20, 22 the the people are a lot more people are going to law school now it's slowed down of course, after the recession for several years and lawyers are aided and there's a lot of demand for attorneys at the moment.
And as people retire and so forth, there's going to be more demand. And the market as I said is doing very well, let me just go through this. And I think, if you're a new attorney, I think it's a very good time to be an attorney.
And I also think that if you're thinking about starting your own business that's a very good opportunity right now. And and these are just a few things added to the report, which I don't know are going to be that important for you to read about world markets.
Let me just see here, legal process outsourcing, which is another good opportunity for entrepreneurs legal pro legal billable hours that's just an ongoing issue talked about business mergers and acquisitions new paths for big law firms. I don't know if that, that important, let me just sit here.
Yeah, paralegal jobs, which I don't think most people are that can be that concerned about. And then part-time work is another one. Is that becoming more acceptable to some extent it is in law firms, that's a an opportunity to think about as well predictions of legal technology.
Yeah, so that's about it. So I am going to just, I'll wrap this up with a few conclusions here and then and then I'll take a break just for a minute or two, and then when I come back, we'll answer questions. But the big thing, I just wanted everyone to understand in this report. And then again, everything will be online is that the market is very good for attorneys for right now.
And because it's so good you have a lot of opportunity and that opportunity is basically to go to a better employer regardless of where you're at or to to do well and get business wherever you are right now. And And if it was E I pro if I was still practicing law and unhappy where I was, I would probably do one of two things.
I would either go to a smaller firm probably because I would have more opportunity there, or if I wanted to go to a larger firm I think that would definitely be very easy, but I would be careful. The other thing I would do if I was an attorney, and this is just because I have an entrepreneurial mind is I would look at some of these practice here is whether it's a lot of demand.
And I would think about maybe specializing in them if I didn't align my practice here. If I was doing tax, I might think about trucks in the states I was doing different things. I, I might I, I dunno if I was doing litigation, I might think about doing employment.
Cause you have to look at like where's the demand in the market. And you also have to look at the market you're working in. If you're in a market where there's not a lot of demand or the demand is increasing, it may make sense many times to go to a market where there is a lot of demand.
I also advise everyone that I work with at BCG to look at as many markets as possible. So a lot of times people will, be interested in they say they want to work in New York city. That's great. You can work in New York city or you can work in Texas or wherever, but, I've had people I've placed people in Texas that are still in New York city and stay in New York city and practice remotely in Texas.
So placed people in New York city that are in, in the south in Savannah, Georgia. So it, the nice thing is when you look at different markets, you really have an opportunity to do that right now. And then finally the and that's huge. I It's never, there's never been an opportunity, like the risks right now to move up in terms of the quality of firm you work with and then also to work in different markets like there is, there's never been a, it's never been like this.
And and many states you can wave into, or you can take a farm in that. You have some states like New York and California have difficult bar exam since Florida, but, for the most part it's not that difficult for people to get into other, states and to practice law there, you can look, there's a BCG guide to reciprocity and align.
You can look out, but that's one thing I would do. And then the other thing I would just recommend. Really see, where your marketable it is to, to to just look online. Look, while crossing, look at positions on BCG get set yourself up for job alerts and various sites and and just see where the opportunities are because there are a lot of opportunities.
And then finally I do think, because of all this remote work, I do think that there's a lot of opportunities out there and I think legal services will be delivered probably in a much different way in the future. I would think that some will come in probably do that and maybe you but that's one thing that's going to happen.
And and when that happens, I will also create a lot of opportunity, but this is a great time to be an attorney. It's a great time. To be a law firm because there's a lot of work out there. And and so I think that it's a very positive report to share. It's one of the most positive I've ever frankly bait, cause I don't really see anything block, slowing people down at the moment.
But the big thing is that when the market does slow down should always does you definitely need to be prepared for that. And and it's going to slow down and there will be something that happens in the future that slows it down. I don't know what that is. I can't predict it, but everything goes in cycles.
And you have to think, one of the things is when you talk about, people that get rich investing which would be people like Warren buffet and so forth. They all make money when the economy crashes. So they buy things at the very bottom and then, cause they know what's going to go up.
So right now, I know that things will go down and when they do go down the best thing you can possibly do is be in a place that safe you know, where we're at 12 managed where you're in a practice area, that's going to be resistant to recessions. And and where you realize and where you have where you can have a good career because the sun never shines forever.
People get old law firms go out of business companies go out of business. So just finding an environment regardless of what practice area you're in or level where you're likely to have a lot of longterm success, if your choice is to remain in a law firm and that's easier said than done but a well managed place for you can do well and also you can Excel and then the final.
The example that I gave you earlier during recessions you can get into a much better law firms than you could during a during good economies, you can get into much better law firms than you otherwise could during a a slower market. And when when the market slows down, which always does law firms will always let people go almost all of them do.
There's very few law firms. I know they don't like people off in the market slows down. And when it does slow down the people that they let go, unfortunately are often the people that wouldn't get a job there and an average economy or a slow economy. It's not always in your best interest to move to a firm that's like incredibly, awesome compared to where you're at.
If you're not among the, the highest the most qualified people there, unless you feel like you can really add a lot of value and work really hard, and you understand everything. So those are just things to be careful of. And th that's for early stage, people early in your career and that's just the pattern that I've seen.
And it's just a kind of a warning to be. But and then the other thing is and I guess I'm saving this for the line past and and this is very important when the market is active, people get very entitled. And when the market's doing well, they get entitled because they know that the, their law firms need them.
They get entitled because they know they can make more money elsewhere. They get entitled because they know they can get more interesting work elsewhere. They get entitled because they, other firms are giving them out their benefits. They take it entitled for all sorts of reasons. And and that's not always a smart thing because what happens is if you take that entitlement, the law firm will, will tolerate it.
If the economy is very good and they absolutely need you, but in the long run, they're going to be looking to bring in people that are not entitled. That's the whole cycle that happens at every law firm. People come in and they're entitled, and they think that they're entitled to this and that, and the law firm will always pushed them out and and then and figure out a way to do and it just happens in every law firm. That's the way it works and partners won't like it. And if you're an entitled partner that formal, like if you're on title associate, they won't like it at fair entitled summer associates. They won't like it. And so entitled people always the firms will always get back at you and and you need to be very careful about that.
Not being entitled and working hard and and being a team player and so forth, it's easier said than done, but those are the people they get ahead. And I told a story. We have a weekly recruiter meeting with all of our recruiters and staff, and then we had one yesterday and I was telling him a story about I was talking to.
A high level, a partner at a major us law firm. And and that partner told me that all of the and there's obviously there's, I don't want to criticize anybody out there, but there's, there's publications out there that specialize in putting out negative news about different law firms and in things or, different people.
And and so the slot guy was telling me, he said that, they monitor the, I don't know the search history or the internet usage, whatever of all their attorneys. And this was about a year ago, he said this to me, or maybe a year and a half ago. And they saw that, the P anybody that made partner in their firm or was an doing well, was associate or anyone that it was a partner had business.
Wasn't looking at all this negative news, and then they give them news, basically, it's, know, it's website that maybe talks about salaries and talks about, bad things happening, make fun of different firms and stuff. And the idea is that when you're when you're doing very well in your legal career, like you, you put your head down and you work hard, you don't participate.
And entitlement and negativity and it's kinda been like that. It's been the whole my whole career. I can think of when I started people that were very negative and I and nothing ever happened with them in the legal profession and and people that weren't, and the people that weren't were always people that have gone the farthest.
And doing well as a, an attorney is it's about your attitude, it's about not having a sense of entitlement. And it's about also in this type of market, not letting this stuff out to your head, because if you let the fact that you're in demand go to your head and you and you act in that way, and it's especially for failing among attorneys you will be expelled from the from law firms, almost like a virus.
And it's not a good thing. And when that happens to people, most of them don't know, what's happened. They assume that the world's unfair and they blame others and so forth. But as a rule, you have to understand that, being positive, not negative not being entitled and so forth.
It was very important. And I bring this up because I've seen people. Catapult their careers when they're in their fifties by doing that. But I've seen a lot of young attorneys catapult their careers or actually it would be not caterpillar, more like flushing them down the drain. When they're in their twenties by doing this and the thirties.
And so just when it's a good market, you have to be careful. You have to, you have to be thankful for that. And you have to be because people like people that are thankful and they just like people that, that have entitlement
