b'The race for talentThe recruitment market for qualified local government lawyers is the tightest that it has been for years. At a time when council legal teams are busier than ever it is putting a severe strain on legal department management writes Derek Bedlow.When Local Government Lawyer firstThere is a lack of good lawyers willing toIn contrast to earlier conducted a version of the careers surveyenter the public sector, lamented one head in 2012, problems with recruitment andof legal (FIG 1). surveys of management, retention barely registered in the list ofThe situation is unlikely to improvemany legal departments challenges facing local government legalin the immediate future. Close to half of departments as they dealt with the effectsheads of legal (44%) (FIG 2) expect thenow want to have more of the cuts to local authority budgets in therecruitment of qualified staff to get harderexperienced senior Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) of 2010. Figure 2: How is this likely to change In thelawyers in their ranksWhat a difference seven years makes.foreseeable future?Now, in 2019, recruitment and retention has become the biggest single issue facing localDicult to say 2%authority legal departments as the volume and complexity of legal work increases. TheGet easier 0%vast majority (87%) of the 76 heads of legalStay much the same 54%Figure 1: In general, how easy or difficult is itGet harder 44%to hire good lawyers in the present market?still in the foreseeable future while none Very dicult 39% of the respondents to the survey expect it to get easier. As outlined in the first article Quite dicult 54% of this report (The Productivity Puzzle, p4), Quite easy 7% escalating volumes of work mean that Very easy 0% demand for lawyers is to grow further.Moreover, and in contrast to earlier surveys of legal department management, who took part in the survey agreed that themany legal departments now want to have recruitment of qualified staff is difficultmore experienced senior lawyers in their with 39% describing it as very difficult.ranks. In the last Legal Department of the'