Health care is the hot practice area for fourth-quarter hiring, according to a survey commissioned by Robert Half Legal, a legal staffing company. General business/commercial and bankruptcy/foreclosure practice areas come in second and third, respectively, regarding the most hiring in the final quarter of the year.
Of the lawyers interviewed for the survey, 32 percent say they plan to hire legal staff -- mostly lawyers -- during the last three months of 2012, according to the survey results, released Wednesday. That's down 1 percentage point from the results of the company's survey about hiring trends for the third quarter of 2012.
Of the surveyed lawyers, 75 percent are confident about their firm's or company's growth prospects in the fourth quarter, which is a 9 percent decline from the third quarter.
The staffing company used an independent research firm to conduct telephone interviews with 200 U.S. lawyers who have hiring authority; 100 lawyers at firms with 20 or more employees; and 100 corporate lawyers at companies with 1,000 or more employees.
This article first appeared on Texas Lawyer's Tex Parte blog.
