Jason Reynolds and Andrew Fragnito-Day discuss the state of the Accounting and Legal recruitment market, analyse how the industry is developing throughout 2025 and how they foresee the industry moving this year.
In a lot of situations, there is now an easily identifiable line in the sand when remarking on how things may or may not have changed; salaries, working patterns, employee mindset, inflation and interest rates: Covid-19.
Whilst pre and post-covid is a line in the sand, it is difficult to identify the exact moment that the market changed, or perhaps more accurately, started to move back towards normality. That buyers-market dynamic is not quite the same.
The recruitment market in 2025 does perhaps feel a bit more like it did in the pre-covid days of 2019. Definitely difficult to find the right talent. Definitely competitive with a lot of firms looking for the same experience and skillset. But not quite as chaotic.
Accountancy Recruitment
In the accounting sector, the “post-covid” market has previously differed to pre-covid. In discussions with hiring managers, business owners, recruiters, it is invariably a view that the post-covid talent market has been busy, hectic, buoyant, or any other adjective that indicates that it has been difficult to hire the right people. The vast majority of businesses were hiring, across multiple disciplines and levels, and for those looking to move employers, it was a buyers market. They were in demand, able to dictate terms like salary, signing-on bonuses, working from home flexibility.
The influx of private equity into the accountancy market has also led to high numbers of acquisitions, which in turn has reduced the amount of practices in some areas that are in growth mode. This has in places naturally led to a shift in the supply and demand for talent, and therefore what the salaries those who are on the market can hope to find.
Senior level salaries continue to increase, but linked to the above, perhaps now at a more slow and gradual rate that in the last few years.
Legal Recruitment
Legal recruitment is really busy right now. We’ve seen salaries increase across the board and firms competing hard to acquire the best legal talent. In some circumstances, we’ve seen high street and boutique firms attempting to compete with regional firms.
Most practice areas are pretty buoyant at the moment with no plans to slow down. In the last 6 months, conveyancing and private client have been in demand but we are starting to see dispute resolution rising up as a popular practice area.
As always, work-life balance is important for so many Lawyers. Hybrid working has seen some changes with firms allowing individual teams to decide what is best for office presence depending on client demand and some departments are requesting full office presence which understandably, can be a deal breaker for some people.
There’s also been a rise in performance related bonuses which Lawyers are beginning to expect as part of the package, especially for those who exceed billing targets. Obtaining a 10-30% bonus on your exceeded billings certainly helps when deciding on what firm to join.
Conclusion
As ever, wider economic and political factors have a huge bearing on the recruitment market, and indeed salaries in the sector.
One big challenge, particularly to smaller businesses, has been the increases in employers’ national insurance and minimum wage. Minimum wage in particular has had a knock-on effect not only of hiring trainees at competitive rates that offer a return on investment for an employer, but also impacted semi-senior salaries. Clearly there needs to be an increase from those of trainees, but that gap seems to be shrinking, perhaps due to the increase in NICs.
AJ Chambers ® is a specialist recruitment and M&A consultancy for the Accounting and Legal Sectors. If you would like to discuss your future, our team will be happy to help.
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