Legal Staffing
Paralegals: Paralegals are in a hot job market! The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says “Employment of paralegals and legal assistants is projected to grow 15 percent from 2016 to 2026, much faster than the average for all occupations. Formally trained paralegals with strong computer and database management skills should have the best job prospects.”(September 2018). Look to see if your state has certification requirements.
Contract Attorneys: We need you! We ALL need you, in litigation, consulting, corporate law departments, law firms and dot orgs. This market continues to grow through 2019 in litigation, data privacy, contracts, compliance, and other specialties as law firms test their levels of permanent staffing and companies seek to grow their in-house capability without necessarily adding to permanent headcount. Call your recruiter!
Legal Tech: Technology continues to advance and reshape the legal industry. Our recruiters are very busy
- Executive-level
leaders (chief information officers, chief technology officers, chief knowledge
officers) - Help desk and
desktop support personnel - Application
developers - Applications
support personnel and analysts - Network and
systems engineers - Document
management system (DMS) specialists - SharePoint
administrators and developers - eDiscovery professionals
- Legal support
personnel - SQL DBAs
- Legal technology
trainers
In-House Lawyers: This is the fastest-growing segment for lawyers in the market for jobs. Growth in lawyer staffing is about the same as U.S. job growth overall, but we see increasing demand for In-House attorneys. Many companies want the in-house capability for their most critical and strategic needs. As you know, they offer great pay, great benefits, and many lifestyle advantages. If you have specialties in contracts, privacy, financial services, insurance, healthcare, international transactions, or litigation, you’re hot!
Professional Services and SaaS
eDiscovery Services: eDiscoveryis growing faster in 2019 than the overall cloud and SaaS markets generally. According to a Forbes report last fall, overall cloud services expect more than 17% growth in 2019, as companies (including law firms) seek to move out of expensive and static local infrastructure. They are moving historical. Other studies predict CAGR(Compound Annual Growth) at over 25% for the SaaS portion of this market. Professional Services generally are one of the hottest areas of growth nationally, (behind mining and construction). Based on the demand we have with our clients, we expect to seeeDiscovery Services on steroids in 2019. Biggest areas of growth are Relativity, O365 eDiscovery services, RelativityOne, and integrations with O365. Also topping the lists are Litigation Response Planning and legal hold solutions.
Data Intelligence, Analytics
Mergers & Acquisitions: Corporate consolidations in 2018 reached record proportions. Our staffing and services are in great demand for corporate compliance reviews, contract analysis, due diligence data collections and assessments, and attorney review for M&A and second requests. Though government challenges resulting in Second Requests are down from two years ago, the need for M&AProfessional Services and SaaS is strong and growing, due to the growth in number of corporate combinations.
Contract Management and CLMS: With 2018 being likely a historical record year for M&A, the resulting combinations have given us a growing market in post-combination integrations. Among the fastest growing is the need to normalize the new organization’s body of contracts. These companies have between a thousand contracts a year to tens of thousands of contracts per month that scream for automated controls in CLMS (Contract Lifecycle ManagementSystems). We see continuing strong demand to specify and install these systems and to analyze and normalize and manage the content and lifecycle of contracts among acquired organizations, geographic locations and languages.
3 Areas of Growth:
Information Risk Management and Cybersecurity: These are the “new black”, the two hottest areas of siloed professional services for 2019. They transform Information Governance with a new sense of urgency based on the risks of cyber attack and theft of PII. Companies of every size need documented, defensible and repeatable processes for document creation, information management, and retention. We predict
Privacy Assessments: While GDPR “readiness” was last year’s news, active GDPR compliance
assessment is decidedly urgent and on the rise. Our EU and multinational clients are digging into GDPR in day to day operations and
practice. The ability to assess and isolate sources of personal information is
paramount. The need efficiently to conduct Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR)
will continue to rise. As we approach
the January 1, 2020 effective date for the California Consumer Privacy Act
(CCPA), our U.S.-based colleagues will need these services too!
Defensible Deletion: We are seeing a huge uptick in the demand for defensible deletion of ESI, backup archives, and paper document repositories. The demand is a byproduct of litigation response planning, information governance, information risk management, and domestic and international privacy concerns. Corporate financial and risk managers and CIOs are looking for ways to trim their information stores for cost savings and risk management.
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