Profession
Staff turnover at the top 100 commercial law firms has fallen by a quarter in the last year.
New research shows the average attrition rate—the percentage of staff leaving a law firm in a year, excluding redundancies—dropped to 8.2% in 2008/2009 from 11% in the previous year.
A spokesperson for Sweet and Maxwell, which carried out the survey of human resources directors at 25 top 100 firms, including two magic circle firms, said lawyers were wary of moving to a new firm in a downturn in case they were made redundant on a “first-in-first-out” basis. Law firms, in turn, are “poaching” staff from other firms less frequently.
