Recruitment bod, Matt Harris, at Taylor Root says his phone started running hot as soon as the election results came in.
14 November 2016
Australia’s Lawyer’s Weekly report
Just days after the Donald Trump was elected as the next President of the United States of America, US lawyers are already looking at options abroad, including moving to Australia, according to a recruitment manager.
Speaking with Lawyers Weekly, Taylor Root manager Matt Harris said the recruitment firm started receiving interest from American lawyers looking at opportunities in Australia almost immediately after Donald Trump was announced as the President-elect.
“[Thursday] was the first full working day in Australia following the election results in the US and by 10 o’clock in the morning we’d received calls and emails from three lawyers based in the US, with two of them asking about opportunities in Australia and one interested in opportunities in Australia and Asia,” he said.
“Obviously we then contacted all three during the course of the day and danced around the subject, leaving it to the last minute to ask really what their true motivations were, but once we got to that point in the conversation all three of them said, ‘No messing around, it is directly related to the news overnight of our new President’.”
One of the three has already progressed to the stage of making applications to firms in Sydney.
Mr Harris said Taylor Root doesn’t often see applications from US lawyers for Australian jobs, and he’d be lucky to place one American in and Australian firm a year.
“US lawyers are a very rare breed in Australia and we had three calls within an hour [on Thursday] morning,” he said. “So there are definitely Americans looking to get out of America or explore their opportunities outside of America.”
Given the uncertainty in the UK following Brexit, Mr Harris expects more US lawyers to look at Australia and Asia as the best options.
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