July 7, 2022
  As we emerge from the impact of Covid-19, one of the many decisions for GCs is how to resource the in-house legal team effectively. The combination of permanent headcount freezes, rising salary costs and a competitive market has made it more challenging to recruit, especially in some locations and specialisms. Even where recruitment is possible, it can take many months to on-board the right person, which doesn’t solve the immediate need created by ever increasing workloads. This is why we are seeing a growing number of GCs turn to interim lawyers as they consider what the structure and size of the team should be over the next 18-24 months. Since the start of 2021 and continuing into 2022, our legal resourcing teams across Asia, the UK and US have seen demand for interim lawyers grow significantly. Breaking this down further, we are seeing the following trends: The highest demand in the UK and Asia is for interim commercial lawyers, followed by transactional banking and derivatives lawyers, driven by the large IBOR transition program and other regulatory change projects within banks and financial institutions. We are also asked frequently for technology, data protection and employment lawyers. In the US, in addition to the traditional demand for commercial interim resource, we are seeing an increase in requests for attorneys with data privacy and IP experience. A lot of requests are from the financial services sector in the UK, US and Asia, which is not surprising given the relative size of some of the teams and highly regulated environment. However, we have also seen increased demand across all other sectors. Clients...