| The Hudson Report’s quarterly survey Report in Asia reveals that the legal industry is perhaps best poised to buck general market and economic expectations. Despite the current climate of financial malaise and uncertainty, and the finding that hiring expectations in Hong Kong were the lowest among the four countries surveyed (Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore), 54 percent of participants from the legal sector had high expectations when it came to headcount growth.
Demand was particularly marked for practitioners with several years experience in M&As and IPOs, with banks not severely affected by the credit crunch reporting they were still actively recruiting in-house positions. Lawyers were also the most optimistic sector with respect to 2009 company performance, 67 percent anticipating good performance and a further 13 percent expecting excellent performance. Unusually, the legal sector reported the lowest increase in work-related stress. Only 13 percent found the it to be relatively higher than the previous quarter. As increase in volume of work was the number one reason cited across all sectors for stress, it could be that the dramatic decline in transactions from record levels of activity of 2007 is linked to the decline in stress-levels. |
Hudson report reveals high expectations in legal sector
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