Conveyancing job vacancies have remained buoyant even though a recruitment website has reported showing the pandemic has reduced legal job vacancies by 60%.
Simply Law Jobs have reported that the average number of legal jobs posted every month in 2020 was 60 per cent less on the previous year, while applications increased by 53% for each one.
The recruitment website also found that two-thirds of those searching for a job said the pandemic had altered their priorities – with the top three most popular reasons for this were ‘searching for a better work/life balance’, lowering salary expectations and “the willingness to branch out into other sectors to secure employment”. The recruiter said average number of jobs that were posted on the site last year had fallen to just over 5,300 a month, from over 13,000.
Today’s Conveyancer has been observing and monitoring the number of recruitment adverts that included the term ‘conveyancer’ had been placed on the Indeed website – from the end of July to 28 September the number of job roles advertised has seen over a 100% increase (802 vacancies). And last October, vacancies exceeded the 900 mark, a 130% increase since we first started monitoring the situation in July.
Conveyancing job roles have continued to remain strong and steady since last summer. According to public information made available by the online recruiter, Indeed, conveyancing roles are being advertised 2.8 times more from last July. There was a obvious gap at Christmas but still consistently there is over 1,000 jobs a day being posted.
Only this month, North West law firm, SAS Daniels LLP has announced a raft of new appointments to its commercial and residential property teams following a surge in property transactions in the region. They have boosted their legal property team with ten new appointments across the firm’s four offices and include five in the Chester office.
Nigel Read, head of the residential department at SAS Daniels LLP, said:
“Despite the continuing effect of the pandemic, both the residential and commercial property markets have been very busy in 2020 and we are delighted to welcome these fantastic additions to all of our offices. They bring a wealth of experience and local knowledge to our teams.”
In addition, Tom Lyes, Key Relationship Manager at Lawyer Checker has seen an increase in enquiries from firms/conveyancers using outsourced title checking. He said:
“The challenges that the market has posed to firms over the last 6 months means that firms have had to be agile in their thinking with regards to managing capacity. We have seen a significant increase in the number of firms using our outsourced title checking solution; ntitle. Getting recruitment right takes time and is often impacted by many factors. Therefore we see our clients use ntitle to manage busy periods, holidays, to reduce a backlog and seasonality.”
