Hiring trends in APAC

We’re just under a month and a half down in 2026 but early hiring trends across APAC are already emerging. Over the last year, I’ve spent a decent amount of time across Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore and it’s given me a good picture of early trends beginning to emerge across the region. It’s been interesting to observe how local legal teams are navigating resourcing, technology, and regulatory demands, not just from a commercial perspective, but as a reflection of how the profession is evolving.

One recurring theme I noticed as 2025 progressed was the pressure on legal functions to “use AI” - often without a roadmap, budget, or clarity on where AI could meaningfully fit. In many organisations, the message seemed to be: “Don’t worry about headcount, AI will take care of it.” But as the year closed, I don’t think I’d spoken with one client who reported measurable workload reduction. 

There was plenty of experimentation across the region:

·   AI enhanced CLM tools seem popular
·   Early workflow automation
·   Pilots around summarisation, review, and triage

But there was little that materially shifted the workload needle. If anything, uncertainty around AI’s impact sometimes slowed hiring, either because budgets went toward tech investments or because organisations hesitated to commit to permanent roles while “waiting to see” what AI might eventually solve. You could see this straining the limits of capacity among teams first hand.

Against that backdrop, the three markets are shaping up differently so far in 2026:

Singapore
Flexible, project-based hiring is becoming more common across regulated industries - but interestingly, longer-term contract roles are increasing, suggesting teams may finally be relieving pressure that built up during hiring slowdowns. Even if legal-specific data isn’t called out in labour reports, the same drivers affecting tech and finance - regulatory change, digitisation, cost control - naturally spill over into legal and compliance workloads.

Hong Kong
Here, the shift is more pronounced. Regulatory developments, fintech activity and compliance obligations (including cybersecurity and data governance) continue to fuel strong demand for specialist legal and risk expertise. With talent shortages in niche areas, flexible and project-based legal resourcing is becoming a practical necessity rather than a stopgap.

Australia
This remains the most mature market in the region for flexible legal resourcing. Blended teams of permanent lawyers, contract counsel, secondees and fixed-term specialists have become the norm, particularly in highly regulated sectors. While short-term contracting remains common, we saw January bring some longer-term contract opportunities which may again reflect delayed hiring finally catching up.

Across all three jurisdictions, the pattern feels similar. Pressure built throughout 2025 as teams waited to see how AI might reshape workloads. However, most legal departments ended up with more complexity, not less. Now, as 2026 unfolds, we’re seeing selective hiring return, often to plug gaps that never truly went away. Some sectors remain holdouts (Banking I am looking at you), but then some sectors remain highly tolerant of inundation as a workstyle (Banking, still looking at you). It will be interesting if this can sustain as the year goes on and I would not be surprised if job hugging is less of an issue should AI’s impact be realised across decades rather than months.

For me, the bigger takeaway is this: the conversation isn’t just about hiring or contracting; it’s about how legal teams build the right mix of capability, capacity, and flexibility in a period where both technology and regulations are moving faster than organisational planning cycles.

At Pinsent Masons Vario, we’re in a unique position in this regard because of our function as part of a major multi-national law firm. To find out more about our offering, click here, or if you’d rather discuss it directly, feel free to send me an email.