New research finds widespread concerns over lack of readiness with 40 percent of lawyers expecting jobs to move out of the UK over the next decade.

Job moves

Almost half of U.K. lawyers say they are unprepared to deal with the impact of Brexit, according to new research that also sheds light on the extent to which large law firms are expecting to move jobs outside of the UK as a result of its split from the European Union. The report, released by Thomson Reuters, is entitled ‘Helping to understand the impact of Brexit,’ found that 40 percent of lawyers at large firms are expecting their employer to relocate jobs outside of the U.K. during the next decade. More than one in five (21 percent) of respondents said they expect more than 10 percent of their firm’s total U.K. employment to be moved to non-UK offices in the coming years, including 9 percent who said this figure could be higher than 20 percent.

Long-term disruption

Almost half of all respondents (47 percent) said they were ‘not well prepared’ to tackle threats posed by Brexit during the next two years, while nearly two-thirds (63 percent) agreed that Brexit represented more of a threat than an opportunity in the short term. The 5 percent growth of the legal sector in the 18 months following the 2016 Brexit referendum is likely to reverse the study says, with sectors including financial services, competition and intellectual property likely to experience ‘high long-term disruption.’ The report draws on a survey of more than 250 legal service professionals, including interviews with lawyers at Allen & Overy, Baker McKenzie, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Pinsent Masons, and HFW.