Job vacancies in the UK legal sector plunged by 75% between March and April 2020, according to new research, as law firms across the country suspend recruitment in response to the financial uncertainty caused by the coronavirus crisis.

The latest figures from job board CV-Library show applications for legal roles also dropped significantly last month — 45% compared to March and 36% year-on-year.

The site also found an increase in competition among candidates for the legal roles that are available, with the application to job ratio rocketing by 208% in April compared to the previous year. The data shows that there were an average of 30.18 applications per legal role in April 2020, as opposed to just 9.8 in April 2019.

Lee Biggins, founder and CEO of CV-Library, commented: “Thousands of companies have put a pause on their hiring plans until there’s more certainty in the market and the pandemic is having an impact on all sorts of industries; including the legal sector.”