What To Look For When Seeking Out A Legal Recruiter

I have been in the search and staffing business for over 30 years. I founded Lawmatch in 1996, and prior to that I was a principal in three successive recruiting firms serving the legal marketplace. I have seen it all (as you might imagine, there are some outrageous stories to be told), and it is this experience that is the basis for my modest attempt, below, to address the nuts and bolts of working with recruiters effectively: what to look for, how to evaluate, how to manage the process.
What to Look For In A Legal Recruiter

There are several different types of recruiters who approach the marketplace in very different ways. For purposes of this discussion we’ll define these different types as follows:

(1) Partner/Practice Recruiters – These recruiters specialize in helping established lawyers who have portable billings (clients billings that will follow the attorney) to move their practices to a new firm. These practice moves involve potential conflict-of-interest issues and the transactions more closely resemble the sale of a business than a change in employment. This is a fairly rarefied part of the marketplace that we won’t address further in this article.

(2) Search Consultants – For ease of classification, we’ll label all legal recruiters who work on a contingency fee basis as “Search Consultants”. In some cases Search Consultants will act as “headhunters,” where they search out a specific type of talent or skill that their employer-client seeks, or they may function as traditional recruiters, where they try to match active job seekers with open positions. In either case, because the Search Consultant makes money only when a placement is made, this “contingency fee” arrangement determines how this market functions.
In order to get a Search Consultant (contingency recruiter) interested in working with you, you must represent a potential fee to the recruiter. Recruiters’ fees are paid by the employer (typically ranging between 20% and 33% of your first year’s compensation – which may seem hefty, but is pretty much a standard in the wider world of corporate executive search), so the recruiter looks at you (or your resume) and asks: what is the likelihood that I can place this person for a fee?
Here in particular it is dangerous to generalize, because Search Consultants come up with all kinds of search assignments, and it is the recruiter’s fee-paying client – the employer – who ultimately defines what the search criteria are (and therefore what types of candidates they want to see). That being said, the overwhelming majority of placements made by Search Consultants meet one or more of these criteria:

- the candidate is currently employed

• the candidate is a graduate of a top tier (top 40) law school, and/or has a notable academic record

• the candidate is at least two years out of law school, and has a stable work background

The degree to which your resume reflects these criteria will – generally speaking — largely determine how much interest you will generate among Search Consultants. If you meet all of the above criteria, chances are you already receive occasional ‘headhunting’ calls, which is a sure sign that you will be a viable candidate in the contingency marketplace. If your resume doesn’t shine in these particular categories, you may find the following additional criteria correlate with recruiter interest:

- large law firm experience and training

• specialized skills, e.g. foreign language proficiency

• Science or engineering undergraduate degree (for IP)

- notable professional experience (high-profile clerkship, strong career progression)
Once you start to talk to (or meet with) recruiters, I think you’ll discover in short order what I have verified (anecdotally) over the years: most legal Search Consultants are smart, aggressive people who approach their work professionally and ethically (many are former practicing attorneys). Long-term success is usually achieved by building a practice over time based on good will and referrals, and this model in and of itself encourages and rewards professional conduct.
HOWEVER (weren’t you just waiting for it?), you should be aware of the pitfalls, which are also built in to the landscape of the marketplace and its contingency fee business model.
Stay tuned for part 2- Beware Of The Pitfalls Of The Legal Job Search, coming tomorrow.