July 2022: Edwards Gibson Director quoted in article on Law.com

July 2022

Edwards Gibson Director, Scott Gibson, has been extensively quoted in Law.com’s article published on 11th July 2022 titled ‘Lateral Hires to Cool Drastically in Certain Areas, Say UK Recruiters and Partners’ (subscription required).

The article reports on the lateral hiring landscape in the first half of the year and presents future predictions in hiring activity. Relying heavily on data from the latest edition of Edwards Gibson’s Partner Moves newsletter, the article observes that, despite a busy first half of the year, lateral hiring will slow down in the second half.

Quoting Scott’s predictions for the shift in the market, Habiba Cullen-Jafar concludes that “the hiring boom was a continued consequence of post-Covid saving and heavy transactional activity”.

Commenting on the hiring boom in the first half of the year, Scott said: “Initially there was a major productivity boost from lawyers working harder and longer hours from home as well as cost savings from rent reductions and reduced travel. Firms benefited from this and the huge amounts of government money being pumped into the system creating a deals boom; unsurprisingly this enabled rapid growth.”

Scott predicted, however, that this would all change in the second half of the year: “Corporate activity is clearly reduced… Unsurprisingly M&A is down on last year’s record, but there are no floats and a sharp hike in global inflation (and hence interest rates) has, we’re told, already impacted some private equity matters”.