Corporate legal departments largely expect to maintain current in-house staffing levels or hire more in-house attorneys in the second half of 2017, according to new data from legal recruiting firm Robert Half Legal.

According to the Robert Half report, which included responses from 100 corporate attorneys at companies with between 1,000 and 10,000 or more employees, 15 percent expect their legal department head count will expand, while 67 percent expect to maintain head count, only hiring to fill vacated roles.


Jamy Sullivan.

Jamy Sullivan, executive director of Robert Half Legal, said these numbers are consistent with what the firm discovered in a survey a year ago, and that last year, too, law firms expected to hire at higher numbers than corporate legal departments.