BCL Legal, which has offices in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Reading, says it registered nearly 70 in-house legal jobs in Q1 of 2010 compared with 35 in Q1 of 2009.

During the same period, BCL Legal’s registered candidate numbers also grew by around 10%.

Mark Levine, director of BCL Legal and head of its in-house department, says: “These figures are encouraging and bode well for the rest of 2010 and beyond.

“We are not out of the woods yet but these numbers show that employers are now having the confidence to plan and recruit for the future which can only be good news.”

Nick Root, founder of international legal recruiter Taylor Root, agrees that the market is healthier than a year ago.  However, he adds that this depends on which sector of the legal market you are talking about. 

While in-house “has remained constant over the last number of years”,  he says that over the last few months, there been an increase of “more than 100%” in hiring by the big US and UK law firms in London.

However, he notes that this was from an incredibly low base in 2009. “It is too early to say whether this is a sign of things to come,” he says. Internationally, Asia and Australia are very busy, while Dubai “is a bit flat”, he adds.