News & Views

Season’s Greetings, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Joyous Wishes to you for all of the wonderful holidays and great moments this holiday season.

Well, it seems that overall, the economy is on a slow steady path in recovery.  In San Francisco, corporate hiring seems to be strong and solid, especially in the technology sector.  We did not meet our goal this year of expanding our diversity of clients into the corporate, technology and biomedical fields.  There is always next year!

Thankfully, we did experience a modest improvement in our legal support staff placements, particularly in the temporary arena. Direct-hire placements remained fairly consistent with last year. Many of our law firm clients have been reticent to add additional staff, and/or to pay agency fees for direct-hire placements except in certain circumstances.  We feel fortunate that we have expanded our “active client” base and were able to be of service in times of urgent need and quick turnaround.

We are very optimistic about the prospects for hiring for next year.  On the client side, 95% of our clients report being “busier than ever”. Bonuses are being paid and raises provided. On the candidate side, we have established relationships with very exceptional candidates across the board.  The first Quarter of 2012 should be a busy time for us.

2011 has been a good year for Fusilier Business Services.  We eagerly look forward to 2012 as a better year for us, our clients and our candidates.

Happy New Year to you!

We are very pleased to report that we have been successful in placing a new office manger in a full-time position in the San Francisco office of an international law firm.  As is so often the case, it was a situation of being in the right place at the right time, for the candidate, the client, and Fusilier Business Services.  Even more amazing is the fact that we were also successful in filling a full-time position for a legal word processor two weeks ago–in this same office.  Lucky lightning does indeed strike twice on rare occasions.

We also just filled a “RUSH” order for a temporary mid-level (1-2 years of experience) litigation paralegal to support a team preparing for trial; and a short term assignment for a records clerk to perform quality assurance indexing of legal files.

Our current legal staffing positions include:

-Help Desk Specialist, full-time

-Temporary Legal Word Processor in a large office.

-Executive/Corporate Legal Secretary to Support the Managing Partner of a San Francisco office, and a corporate/litigation secretary in the same office.

-Temporary junior accounting/administrative assistant to support an accounting department in a mid-sized firm.

The job market continues to be sluggish, for all categories of staffing.  While our staffing activity has improved over the past couple of years, it is not as robust as it should be. We maintain a significant client base with several dozen active, profitable law firms. The majority of these firms are “holding the line” on adding temporary staff or considering full-time hires (with or without fees).  The reports from our candidates and staff contacts do consistently indicate that their departments are busier than they have been in years, reaching the limits of productivity almost to the point of diminishing returns (read: errors, burnout, and low morale).  It is still our intention to remain active in our business and client outreach, anticipating the eventual need for temporary staff and direct-hire agency placements.