Good news for... real estate lawyers?
With the increasing number of real estate lawyers losing their jobs, you’d think that recruiters would be banging on every law firm door saying “I’ve got just the person you’re looking for”.
But apparently the phone isn’t ringing at Dewey & LeBoeuf, according to one real estate partner there.
“I’ve got a good relationship with a lot of recruiters, we put on a party for them every year, but for some reason they’re not calling,” he laments.
The same partner then goes on to tell me that they’ve effectively got a recruitment freeze on in his team at the moment. So perhaps the word has got out and the recruiters have found new best friends.
Like Olswang for example. Apparently the mid-market firm has been in talks to bring on new lawyers, including those at partner level and those in real estate.
Sources at the firm point out that some great people can be picked up in this market, while being eager not to appear like vultures preying on the dismembered partnerships of larger firms.
In what is becoming a familiar picture across the UK 200, it’s the international offices that are expected to see greatest growth. Olswang wants to grow Germany. It wants to build on the success of the eight-lawyer IP team it brought on board from Linklaters earlier this year ( 27 March, perhaps open elsewhere in the country.
Given the importance of the international dimension, with news this week that Dewey is poised to open real estate departments in Abu Dhabi and Doha, perhaps it won’t be long before the hotline from recruitment central will start ringing again at that firm too.
