Nottingham-headquartered legal recruiter Bygott Biggs has launched a team aimed at assisting law firms and in-house legal teams with their paralegal and business support recruitment.

The team will be run by Mike Green who has been promoted from a legal research and administrative role at Bygott Biggs.

Green said: “The market is very competitive at paralegal level. As training contracts get snapped up, there is an excess of law graduates seeking opportunities in a legal environment. Paralegal positions offer an entry in to the legal profession, and career progression options, as it becomes more common for training contracts to be offered to a firm’s paralegals.”

Green said that the competitive nature of the legal profession can be illustrated by the number of students who were accepted to read law at university in 2015/2016 (17,335) against the number of training contracts on offer in 2015 (5,457).

He added: “We have also noticed a rise in career progression programmes at law firms. Firms are now offering apprenticeships and legal assistant roles potentially leading to training contract opportunities in the future.”

Director of Bygott Biggs David Mayfield, who leads the team, said: “For 23 years Bygott Biggs has established close working relationships with clients. We take the time to understand our clients’ recruitment strategies and more general business strategy. From this, we have seen a rise in the demand for paralegal and business support staff recruitment and believe it is an opportunity to provide dedicated services at this level.”