Firms forecast growth

Lawyers appear to have shrugged off the fear of a global recession and are looking ahead to future expansion, with the latest survey from recruitment consultants Michael Page Legal showing continued growth expectations and rising salaries among the profession in London and the south-east.The survey of 80 firms and 150 in-house teams showed an optimistic outlook, with 44% of firms with more than 50 partners predicting expansion in the next year of between 10% and 15%.

Of the smaller firms, 45% predicted growth of 5% to 10%.The in-house sector was equally upbeat, with almost half pred-icting recruitment of between one and three lawyers in the next year.For the private sector, skills shortages continued to be the biggest bar to growth, with 77% of firms questioned citing it as a problem, compared with just 6% seeing global recession as a threat.

In-house lawyers saw company mergers and consolidation as the biggest threat to team expansion.Salaries in private practice con-tinued to rise, with newly qualifieds in top tier, large City and West End firms up 11%, 5% and 10% respectively over the last year.In-house lawyers saw their pay increase at a steadier rate, with those in the telecom sector rising by 3.5%, and in banking and finance by 6%.Victoria MacCallum