Real Estate, Real Opportunities

There are certain words which you don’t hear very often in day-to-day life;

‘Belton’ – a two-toned dog

‘Belonephobia’ – the fear of pins and needles

‘Aglets’ – the hard plastic bits on the end of shoelaces

‘Bataphobia’ – the fear of passing tall buildings

Part of our work at VG Charles & Co is involvement with discussing strategy with clients; attempts at recruiting the best staff is pointless unless we are able to advise candidates as to why a firm is moving in a certain direction and where they hope to be by a certain point in time.

Recently we were involved in a key strategy meeting with a new client who is keen to make key lateral hires in the coming months to improve their standing within their local market. As a firm they have an enviable brand and are looking to promote this further through attracting talent in a number of areas.

Whilst firms may have a range of requirements there always tends to be one or two fields which are key to their strategic aims. It was during this discussion that another word which you don’t hear very often made an appearance:-

Q - “Which particular disciplines are you most interested in developing and recruiting into at the moment?”
A – “Property.”

Part of the role of a legal recruiter is to remain fully up to date on market conditions; unless we are able to advise our clients on how the market is evolving and where there appears to be opportunities for growth it is likely that our clients will be playing catch-up as their competitors recruit the best talent ahead of time.

The fact that real estate is back on the cards backs up the belief that firms are continuing to see an increase in their transactional business, which not only boosts revenue in this particular area but also as so much of a firm’s other work feeds off the corporate & property teams the impact of additional activity can be seen across the board.

It would be unfair to portray this as confirmation of the new dawn for the real estate market and the return to the golden era that we experienced three years ago. The recruitment of property specialists is still opportunity-driven; not many firms have openings for candidates who not have a portable client base or busy contacts book, but the fact that they are particularly interested in real estate lawyers at all demonstrates a definite shift in market focus and confidence.

Looks like the request for real estate specialists may be about to return to our vocabulary......