Tara Parry of Robert Half, which conducted the survey, says the problem boils down to labour shortages
Finding skilled talent is harder today than a year ago, according to two-thirds of the legal leaders who responded to a recent survey by employment agency Robert Half, which also found that many legal teams are facing skills shortfalls in areas such as legal technology, operations and workflow, and research and analysis.
For Tara Parry, Robert Half’s director of permanent placement services, these hiring challenges can be attributed to two factors – only one of which is unique to the legal industry.
When it comes to hiring lawyers and legal support staff, there’s simply a shortage in candidates, Parry says. But she argues that hiring is currently challenging across the broader job market because fewer candidates are interested in leaving their current roles.
“People are generally pretty risk-averse right now,” Parry says. “The market is volatile.”
“When the markets are nervous, candidates don’t move because they’d rather the devil they know than the one they don’t,” she adds. “They’re also nervous of the idea of ‘last one in, first one out’ if the market does totally go sideways, if a company really starts struggling.”
Released this month, Robert Half’s report is based on responses by 138 legal leaders across Canada, Parry says. The survey was conducted in November and December.
Every respondent told the agency they didn’t have the necessary headcount or skill sets to accomplish priority projects this year. Meanwhile, 58 percent of respondents said they need to train current team members to upgrade their skills.
Forty-two percent of respondents identified legal technology as the area with the largest skills gap. Forty percent of respondents pointed to legal operations and workflow, 32 percent to legal research and analysis, and 23 percent to data privacy and cybersecurity.
While a larger talent pool could help legal employers meet their needs, Parry argues that employers could benefit from taking a risk on candidates who require additional training, especially legal support staff.
“One thing I do notice in the legal space in general is that a lot of firms are hesitant to train. They all want to hire people with experience,” Parry says. “But at some point, you’ve got to hire somebody without experience and train them.
“Firms would do well to look at their own training and onboarding policies,” she adds. “Could they take somebody from a different field? Or maybe they want a corporate paralegal, but they can only find a securities paralegal. Can we not train a securities paralegal to be a corporate paralegal or vice versa?”
The current shortage of qualified legal support staff is due to several factors, Parry says, including policies curtailing immigration, workers retiring, schools cutting back on programs that offer paralegal and law clerk training, insufficient marketing to high school students, and the legal industry's reputation.
“All of our research shows that especially amongst Gen Z, they are more and more interested in work-life balance and that is a priority for them when they look for a job,” Parry says. “How is the law space dealing with that? How are lawyers compensating for that?”
