Business services professionals have taken on increasingly senior roles in law, as firms have recognised their huge contribution and their functions have grown in both size and sophistication. Many now have board-level responsibility: of the top-50 UK firms, half now have a Chief Operating Officer (COO) or equivalent. Today’s business professionals from within law – and from outside the sector too –understand the attractions of working in firms where they can make a real impact, deliver change and be part of the firm’s core decision-making group.
As specialists in business services in law, we work across all levels of seniority in BD & marketing, HR, IT and finance functions, as well as other cross-functional roles in areas like project and process management, innovation and change, and general management. Our breadth of work means that we have had the privilege of supporting many talented professionals to rise through the ranks; and have helped others to transition into the sector at leadership level, often also helping them to then source their team from scratch.
But we haven’t put any figures around our work at more senior levels – until now.
We spend a considerable amount of time on ‘retained’ projects – this is where a law firm exclusively selects Totum to work on a particular role or roles. These projects are conducted on a retained basis because they tend to be more complex and are often more difficult to source – they are generally, therefore, more senior. By analysing our retained work, we have been able to draw a clear picture of some of the latest trends in these more senior roles in law (click here, or on the image below, to see our associated infographic).
We researched the retained projects we’ve worked on over the past three years – since 2015. In this time, our retained work distribution has split across roles as follows: Director (45%), Head of (28%), COO/CEO/CFO type roles (20%), and other (7%). Not surprisingly, Director roles form the biggest bracket, comprising professionals working across all traditional and new business functions too. But it is interesting to see that the Chief roles (COO/CEO, etc) form nearly a quarter of our retained work – these placements have been rising steadily since Totum’s launch in 2012.
As our infographic shows, we have worked with both an increasing number of firms and roles on a retained basis over the past three years. And the great news is that we are maintaining, if not increasing, our placement record on those roles – filling 91% of the roles in 2015/16, and 94% this year. Our deep knowledge of the legal sector – and many years of direct experience of working in business services in law – stands us in good stead for sourcing the best candidates at the highest levels.
It is also great to see how many women are now getting shortlisted and placed in these roles. We already knew from our diversity statistics that we enjoy an equal gender balance among our candidates, if not slightly weighted towards women, with 56% female and 44% male candidates signing up with us in 2017. But this latest research has found the numbers of women rising in our retained work too. So, while in 2015/16, only 23% of shortlisted candidates for retained roles were women, in 2016/17 this figure rose to 44%, and for 2017/18, it was up again by three percentage points to 47% - almost perfect equilibrium.
Our findings
We researched the retained projects we’ve worked on over the past three years – since 2015. In this time, our retained work distribution has split across roles as follows: Director (45%), Head of (28%), COO/CEO/CFO type roles (20%), and other (7%). Not surprisingly, Director roles form the biggest bracket, comprising professionals working across all traditional and new business functions too. But it is interesting to see that the Chief roles (COO/CEO, etc) form nearly a quarter of our retained work – these placements have been rising steadily since Totum’s launch in 2012.
As our infographic shows, we have worked with both an increasing number of firms and roles on a retained basis over the past three years. And the great news is that we are maintaining, if not increasing, our placement record on those roles – filling 91% of the roles in 2015/16, and 94% this year. Our deep knowledge of the legal sector – and many years of direct experience of working in business services in law – stands us in good stead for sourcing the best candidates at the highest levels.
It is also great to see how many women are now getting shortlisted and placed in these roles. We already knew from our diversity statistics that we enjoy an equal gender balance among our candidates, if not slightly weighted towards women, with 56% female and 44% male candidates signing up with us in 2017. But this latest research has found the numbers of women rising in our retained work too. So, while in 2015/16, only 23% of shortlisted candidates for retained roles were women, in 2016/17 this figure rose to 44%, and for 2017/18, it was up again by three percentage points to 47% - almost perfect equilibrium.
