OPINION
THE GREAT RESIGNATION – CAN WE BEAT IT?
If you’ve read the news in the last 12 months then the unprecedented attrition of employees from businesses in all industries across the globe cannot have escaped your attention. The Great Resignation, as it’s been termed by the media, left over a million jobs open across the UK in July 2021 with more than 40% considering a move within the year, according to a survey by Microsoft writes Chrissie Wolfe, Freelance consultant, Founder of Law and Broader and Chair of the BLS Professional Development Committee As a member of club “TGR” and former Chair of the Birmingham branch of the Junior Lawyers Division, I was invited to speak at this year’s Legal Geek conference about the impact specifically within the legal market, which, you will see from the data below, has proved no exception to the trend. This data provided by Codex Edge shows almost double the exodus from private practice within the last 12 months compared with the previous 12.
Breaking this data down a little further, there are some clear trends in the demographic of leavers. Firstly, they primarily fall into the 0-3 years PQE bracket and 26 www.birminghamlawsociety.co.uk
secondly, there are more women than men within this bracket.
There are also some key themes in where they are going. This graph below shows the movement solely of those shifting within private practice and we can see that the vast majority (just under 50%) have actually moved to a lower ranked firm by revenue. Down at 27% are those who have moved up and those who have moved to a similar-sized firm make up 26%.
Whilst there was significant movement within private practice, the most common moves overall were from private practice to in-house and from private practice out of the traditional framework altogether; either to an alternative legal model e.g. ALSP or consultancy, as I did, or out of the law entirely.
