Mark Levine – head of BCL Legal’s in-house team – gives an overview
There has been plenty of activity on the in-house legal recruitment front in 2014, including internally at BCL Legal. The in-house team welcomed Rachael North to our London office and Joanne McKernan joined to focus on the Midlands alongside Victoria Moore.
With over 17 years in legal recruitment Rachael is incredibly knowledgeable and is able to assist clients in and around London as well as further afield into Europe. Joanne has taken the step in to legal recruitment, previously being an in-house lawyer at BAE Systems.
This is the first year that the in-house team has had a presence across the whole of England as well as some European expertise. This has allowed us to assist clients in a range of locations from Gazprom in Manchester and Paris to Compass in Birmingham and Uxbridge. We have always been honest with our clients in terms of our abilities to help them and, in the past, we have passed up on opportunities to assist clients if we didn’t think we were best placed to give them the best possible service. With a team of consultants based in five major cities across England our national presence is in situ – with more growth planned.
This year the team has placed close to 150 in-house lawyers, company secretaries and paralegals into permanent and temporary roles. This has given us an interesting insight into the in-house legal market.
There is always a lot of commentary about women in the law with the general consensus being that the profession prevents females rising to the top. The ratio of in-house placements that BCL Legal undertook was 67% female to 33% male – something that goes against the general tide of opinion!
We had the honour of working with some of the largest companies in the UK in 2014 including; Alliance Boots, Asda, Avaya, BAE Systems, Balfour Beatty, boohoo.com, BUPA, Halfords, Lafarge Tarmac, Molson Coors, National Grid, Rolls Royce, Siemens, Sports Direct and Yum! Restaurants International (otherwise known as Pizza Hut and KFC).
Please do read the Q&As from my in-house colleagues as they give more detail on the main trends across the country.
On behalf of Ruth, Craig, Joanne, Lauren, Michelle, Rachael, Tom, Victoria and I, thank you for your support in 2014, we look forward to working with you in 2015.
