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New EMEA benchmarking survey finds in-house departments still planning to expand despite downturn
A benchmarking study of 123 corporations operating in the European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region has found over half expecting to expand the legal department by 2011, with around one third expecting headcount levels to remain stable and only around 20% predicting the need to shrink their teams.
The study, carried out by the international legal recruitment specialists, Laurence Simons, and the law department management consultancy, Rees Morrison Associates, also found the UK to be one of the busiest countries in Europe for the recruitment of in-house lawyers. 15 companies are planning to recruit in the UK in comparison to ten in France and seven in Switzerland. The country envisaging the most demand for in-house lawyers is Italy and the two quietest are Ireland and Germany.
Total legal spend per in-house lawyer varies dramatically across the sample with the median being ?497,529. There is also a wide disparity in internal spend per lawyer, with the median being ?250,000.
The perception that in-house departments are attempting to keep the cost of external help down is reinforced by the finding that, on average, they are handling more than half of all their organisations' legal work. Actual spend per in-house lawyer is still relatively high at a median of ?187,000. However, the cost of employing an in-house lawyer with all costs accounted for has decreased since the last study in 2004 from an average of ?204 per hour to ?178 per hour.
Professional services is still the sector most keen on in-house lawyers, employing as many as 11 legal specialists for every billion euros of EMEA revenue, followed by high technology which employs 7.5. The sector with the least lawyers is manufacturing with a ratio of 2.7 heads to every billion euros of revenue, despite the fact that total legal spend in the industry has actually increased from 0.12% to 0.14% of turnover since 2004.
To request your copy of the Benchmarking survey please contact Naveen Tuli by email.
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