In-House Legal Recruitment

Growing a legal team right now isn't straightforward. It's not simply a case of hiring more people. What businesses actually need from their legal hires has shifted, and most hiring plans haven't caught up with that yet.

The problem: it's not just about headcount anymore

For years, growing a legal team meant adding more of the same: another commercial lawyer, another contracts specialist, another pair of hands to keep up with volume. That's no longer the whole picture.

Businesses are asking their legal people to do more than review contracts and manage disputes. KPMG's 2026 Global General Counsel Outlook, based on a survey of 468 senior legal leaders across 28 jurisdictions, found that regulatory volume and complexity is now the single biggest source of pressure on legal leaders, and that three in four are being asked regularly to weigh in on issues that sit outside traditional legal advice altogether.

That pressure doesn't stay contained to a specialist compliance or risk role. It filters down into every legal hire, which is why regulatory compliance recruitment and legal compliance recruitment now overlap so heavily with general in-house legal recruitment. Increasingly, even a generalist commercial lawyer is expected to spot a regulatory issue, understand governance implications and flag risk clearly to non-legal stakeholders, not just draft and negotiate. Job specs haven't always kept pace with that, which is part of why searches are taking longer and shortlists are thinner than employers expect.

The Energy Transition Impact

Locally, this plays out through the energy transition. The North Sea Future Board held its inaugural meeting in Aberdeen in January 2026, bringing together oil and gas, offshore wind, trade unions and local leaders to steer the region through a managed shift as North Sea reserves decline. That means new governance structures, new reporting obligations and new commercial arrangements, and it's pulling organisations that never previously needed compliance or governance expertise into the same hiring conversation as those that always have.

We're seeing the same pattern with investor-backed and scale-up businesses across Scotland. As soon as external investment or a formal governance structure enters the picture, the need for legal people who understand risk and regulation, not just contracts, tends to follow close behind. It means demand isn't confined to the businesses you'd expect, and it's put more employers than usual into competition for the same, relatively small pool of talent.

The solution: hire outside the usual channels

If growing your legal team has felt harder than it should, here's what's worth changing about the approach. This applies whether you're hiring a dedicated compliance, governance or risk specialist, or simply want more of that thinking across the wider team. Good governance and risk recruitment doesn't have to mean a narrower search. It usually means a wider one.

Look beyond private practice and traditional in-house backgrounds

Some of the strongest candidates for roles that need regulatory or governance fluency aren't sitting in law firms or legal teams at all. They're in risk, internal audit and regulatory affairs, and they often bring exactly the blend of legal grounding and commercial judgement that a narrower legal-only search will miss.

Decide where the role actually sits before it goes to market

A growing number of roles genuinely straddle legal, risk and compliance, and organisations often haven't settled internally on which one it belongs to before they start hiring. That ambiguity slows the process down and loses good candidates to employers who've already worked it out.

Lead with the mandate, not the job title

Candidates with this kind of profile are choosing between employers based on how much genuine influence and access to leadership the role carries, not the title or the salary alone. Specs that lead with qualifications and PQE, and say little about actual mandate, are screening out people who'd otherwise be a strong fit.

Move quickly

The pool of people who combine legal grounding with regulatory and commercial fluency is tight everywhere, not just in Aberdeen. In a market this concentrated, a slow process is usually the reason a strong candidate ends up somewhere else.

Where to go from here

None of this is a short-term blip. It reflects a genuine shift in what businesses need from legal hires, generalist and specialist alike, and it's likely to keep shaping how legal teams are built across Aberdeen and Scotland for some time. If you're planning legal headcount over the next six to twelve months and want a clearer read on where the talent actually is, Adam and the Eden Scott legal team are always happy to talk it through.