Candidates | UK Roles for Australian & NZ lawyers

UK roles for Australian / NZ lawyers

The London legal market is currently very buoyant and the demand for ambitious commercially aware lawyers who specialise in many of the ‘commercial’ areas of law remains high.

In certain specialisms some practices are experiencing a shortage of appropriate UK-origin candidates. These same firms believe it would be wrong to lower their standards in order to allow them to fill their skills shortage/staff shortfall. In this situation, many of London’s top law firms will consider candidates from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa or Canada, providing they are currently working for one of the top legal firms in their own country. Furthermore, we see that firms are increasingly prepared to cover some or all of the relocation expenses for those Commonwealth lawyers whom they ultimately recruit.

London firms are keen to see candidates with experience in any of the following disciplines:

Banking/ Asset Finance
Capital Markets
Commercial Real Estate
Construction
Corporate Finance
Corporate Tax
Derivatives
IP/IT/Media
Pensions
Projects/ Energy
Planning
Securitisation
Structured Finance
Shipping
Tax & Trusts

In terms of the job search itself, your geographical location at the time of your application will have some effect on how successful or otherwise that application is. If you happen to apply from your country of origin, you will find that although many of the top London firms have video conferencing facilities and could undertake an initial interview in this manner, some departments within these practices are reluctant to use video conferencing for interviewing purposes. Furthermore, the majority of smaller/ niche and medium sized firms simply may not have direct access to such facilities.

Therefore the ideal scenario is that you make yourself available for UK-based interview and depending on your circumstances this can be achieved in one of two ways:

The first and most obvious way is that you quit your current job and you arrive in the UK for an indefinite period and commence your search once you arrive on these shores. This is fine but you would need to ensure that you could survive financially until you land a role. Quite often the process of finding a job can take longer than expected and the time lag between arriving in the UK and securing your first role can be, and frequently is, measured in months rather than weeks. The popular solution to escaping from such an elongated job search is to land a temporary or contract role. You will find that this not only eases any financial pressures, but also provides you with at least some UK-based legal experience, which should (if it exceeds 3 months) make it easier to find work next time around. Moreover, if you perform well, you may well find that the practice you’re working for is prepared to offer you a permanent role. From your point of view, having already worked there for a number of weeks or months, you will already have decided whether you are content to remain with this particular practice in the longer term.
The second way is to remain with your current practice in your country of origin, but have a specific time period in your mind’s eye when you are prepared to travel to the UK for face-to-face interviews. Ideally, this time period should amount to at least 2 weeks, so that if any practices are interested in you, you are in a position to be able to see any recruitment process through to its conclusion. The advantage of doing this is that any practices you see when you come over, feel more compelled to complete the recruitment process before you return home and so you know whether you have a job to come back to the UK for.

UK roles for Australian / NZ lawyers

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