The career path of legal graduates in Belgium based on social media - a study combining traditional and innovative means of data sources

Abstract

In the following report, the career path of legal graduates in Belgium was assessed in order for YouConnect to show thought leadership in their sector. Firstly, this market research project required an understanding of the legal labour market. Little about the career of legal professionals is known in Belgium. Broadening up to academic literature from the US and UK about this topic was thus necessary. The second part of this study contained both a qualitative and quantitative research. The quantitative research was conducted with innovative means of data sources, namely LinkedIn. The qualitative research entailed interviewing legal professionals to gain insights into the motivators of changes in their personal career path. The study provided an answer to the following questions and the most important findings will be discussed. Where do legal graduates start their career? More than 50% of all legal graduates start their career in a law firm. Mainly because it seemed to be an obvious choice for them. From qualitative analysis it appered that starting your career in a law firm is rated higher than starting as an in-house legal counsel. Being able to start in a multidisciplinary law firm or a boutique law firm shows prestige according to legal graduates of all ages. 22% started in a multidisciplinary law firm, 3% in a boutique law firm and 10% in a ranked law firm. Factors that influence the chance on starting in theses categories are having done a second master’s degree, an eramus+ program and obtaining at least a cum laude degree. Where are legal graduates employed? Legal graduates are employed over a wide variety of sectors. 52% starts in a law firm, 8% in finance and 7% in the Belgian government. Most legal graduates work in Flanders (43%) or the Brussels Area (45%). When the career evolves, the sectors evolve as well. More and more legal professionals go to in-house positions. This is especially the case after having obtained the licence at the bar. A reason to leave the bar after a couple of years is to start higher in the hierarchy of corporates. How does the labour market at law firms evolve? 52% starts in a law firm, yet this number goes down gradually when looking at the career path as a whole. Only 32% of legal professionals with over 20 years of work experience are still working in a law firm. Reasons for change seem to be the work life balance or finding better growth opportunities in-house. Work life balance is noticeably an important factor for women in law firms. This because women outnumber men in law firms when starting the career (42%-58%), yet after having 11 years of work experience, women drop out of law firms (61%-39%). When years of work experience go up to 25+ the gender difference has gone to a 75%-25% male-female ratio. What does the flow from law firms to corporates looks like? When legal professionals decide to leave the bar, 21% decides to go work at the Belgian government and 14% goes to the finance sector. 9% joins the consumer sector and 8% goes to education. Legal professionals mentioned that they wanted to find a new challenge as they were experts in their domain at some point in their career and wanted to broaden their scope. What is the average tenure in a company of legal professionals? An often-mentioned trend nowadays is job hopping. For legal professionals this is a valid trend as well. When looking at the legal graduates over the past 5 years we can see that 68% of them changed to a Second company between 1,86 and 3,51 years of work experience. The mean amount of years for legal graduates with up to 5 years of work experience is 2,68 years to stay in the first company. When looking at the legal labour market as a whole it only takes 5 years of work experience for 50% of the legal professionals to change to a second company. This creates a big opportunity for YouConnect. What does the career of a general counsel look like? 63% of the general counsels started their career in a law firm. 31% started in a muldisciplinary law firm, 15% in a boutique law firm and 45% in a non-ranked law firm. 50% of them went in-house after 6 years of working at a law firm. General Counsels changed frequently of company. After four years of work experience 50% changed to a second company. After 8 years of work experience, 40% has already moved to a third company. With all the mentioned knowledge about the legal labour market it is recommended for YouConnect to use these insights to provide even better coaching to candidates and clients. Also using the insights as a branding tool to increase brand awareness and show thought leadership in the sector in recommended. Though, not all knowledge should be communicated. It is important for YouConnect to keep information about the tenure of companies in-house. This will be a competitive advantage for YouConnect and, when combining the knowledge with other players, synergies can be created which can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage.