A Legal Recruiter’s Response To The 'Don’t Hate The Player Hate The Game' View On Recruiter Responsiveness

Good recruiters should make an effort to respond to all inquiries, even if they cannot ultimately work with you.

Michael Di Gennaro

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Michael Di Gennaro is a Senior Director based in the New York office where he focuses on moving attorneys of all levels of seniority into prominent positions with elite firms and companies throughout the United States, with a concentration in the East Coast. Before becoming a legal recruiter, Michael had a career predominantly focused on financial services regulation, including five years of legal practice for the Federal Reserve System. Michael holds a J.D. from The New York University School of Law, a Master’s degree from Columbia University, and an undergraduate degree from Cornell University.

Earlier this month, Ms. Shannon Achimalbe, a former solo practitioner, posited: “If a recruiter blows you off or gives you the cold shoulder, don’t take it personally; it’s just business, as “Recruiters Exist to Help Employers, Not Job Seekers.” As a former practicing attorney turned legal recruiter, I’d like to weigh in and demystify the modus operandi of the recruitment profession.

While we are exclusively compensated by our clients, we serve BOTH our clients AND our attorney candidates. Many of our attorney candidates are not “jobseekers” per se, because we know (and data supports me on this) that some of the best talent is passive talent – talent that is not “in the market.” Some of our strongest candidates are those with whom we have formed relationships years in advance of when they ultimately decide to pursue career alternatives. However, at any given time, we do have a good number of candidates that are actively pursuing employment alternatives.

How We Serve Our Clients

Our law firm and corporate clients pay us to find talent that they would have difficulty sourcing without our help. At any given time, attorneys with specific legal expertise will be highly sought after (supply and demand). Progressive clients seek to bolster the diversity of their attorney ranks. Some clients have minimalist human resource departments with little or no staff dedicated to talent acquisition. Firms and companies that believe that they have sufficient resources to make a hire for a particular opportunity will not permit agency submissions for those spots.

At Lateral Link, we help our clients make sound lateral hires that will “stick.”  Making a bad lateral hire is very costly. We have strong monetary, reputational, and perhaps, legal incentives to get it right. We share the client’s pain of making a bad hire either through a client’s partial or total fee claw-back or the taint it may have on their view of our work. Claw-backs are typical fee agreement conditions stipulating that if a hire goes south during a specified period of time, the agency loses some or all of the fee earned by the placement.

How We Serve Our Candidates

We serve our candidates by placing them in positions where they will get access to high-caliber, career-advancing work. Lack of substantive work is one of the most significant reasons for associate departures. Again, we have strong incentives to make sure placed candidates are pleased with their new position.

To ensure we have a decent shot at securing these positions for our candidates, we are selective about those with whom we decide to work. Stellar academic and law firm pedigrees, in-demand expertise, and, with more senior attorneys, large portable books of business increase the likelihood of us placing the attorney – now and in the future. There are attorneys that, due to market supply and demand factors, are not commodities now, but could be in the future.

There are attorneys who we simply cannot help for various reasons. Of course, our clients are frequently very specific in their requests for pedigree and skill set. They frequently won’t budge from that. Also, in certain instances, our fee can get in the way of a candidate moving. For example, firms covet attorneys with prestigious clerkships. However, many of these firms will not accept a recruiter’s submission of an attorney coming directly off of a clerkship. Other firms will not accept a recruiter’s submission of an attorney with less than one or two years of post-graduation employment.

There has also been a fundamental and likely permanent shift in legal staffing in certain legal fields – namely, litigation. Premium, high-caliber assignments are executed within the firm while document review and niche project work is now outsourced and frequently handled by legal staffing entities such as our company’s Bridgeline division. With a few exceptions, our permanent placement recruiters operating in large markets like New York, the District of Columbia, and Northern California, can do little for litigators that did not: a) go to top law schools; b) earn excellent grades at those schools; c) complete federal clerkships; and d) gain substantive experience at a top firm that currently employs them. However, staffing entities like Bridgeline may very well have interesting project work for attorneys that don’t tick off all those boxes. Some of these projects are temp to perm, and could potentially lead to an associate position.

Being selective about the attorneys we choose to work with allows us to provide exceptional service. We develop an ongoing relationship with these candidates, and in so doing learn a great deal about them both on a professional and personal level. We are constantly learning which positions will work for them and those that will not. We stay on top of their career progression making sure the train stays on the tracks. In fact, all good recruiters I know have made friends with current or former candidates.

What Both Our Clients and Candidates Look to Us For

Our Networks: Through our near daily connections with companies, firms, and candidates we are continually building our relationships and networks. Our clients rely on us to tap into our deep talent pool gaining access to talent that they never could have on their own. Candidates rely on us for our relationships with hiring managers and partners, which in some instances result in exclusive opportunities, niche opportunities with law firm boutiques, and opportunities that are not publicly posted (some firms elect to not publicly post positions because they may not wish to broadcast their business strategy to competitors).

Market Intelligence: Our clients need timely market knowledge to open new offices or add new practice areas. Our understanding of practice dynamics is crucial to assisting them in making sound strategic lateral hiring decisions. We provide candidates with inside information to the culture of a firm, its relevant practice groups and partners, compensation, and the interviewing / hiring process.

Diligence: Good recruiters stay on top of candidate applications. This obviously benefits our candidates by making sure that the firms they apply to give them a look. However, it also benefits our clients when routine-disrupting events such as law firm summer associate programs which take massive amounts of HR time, skill, planning, and coordination can understandably divert attention from the lateral hiring programs.

Communication: We moderate the line of communication between clients and candidates. Clients and candidates both have preferences that they need addressed in a discrete, tactful manner that is neither off-putting nor risks souring their developing relationship. For instance, a client might think it is in a prospective hire’s interest to take a class year step-back to be competitive for partnership and wants the recruiter to take the candidate’s temperature on that proposal. An attorney may need to ask for more compensation or a start date later than what the client had in mind but doesn’t want to appear greedy or self-important.

Our Motivation

Money: Compensation clearly motivates our actions. Many attorneys, risk-averse by nature, have a hard time wrapping their heads around the recruitment profession’s pure “eat-what-you-kill” compensation model. A fairly representative client arrangement is a percentage of a placed candidate’s annual base salary with payment contingent on the fulfillment of a number of conditions. The recruiter placing the candidate shares that fee with agency that he or she works for. Essentially, a recruiter makes no money unless they make a placement that meets a client’s fee-agreement parameters.

Reputation: We care about our reputation with both our clients and candidates. We value repeat business and both client and candidate referrals. We receive both and they return multiple-million-dollar sums.

Accomplishment: We derive a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment for our placements. Some of the placements we are most proud of are not necessarily those that have earned us the largest fees. I have extricated attorneys from unpleasant working environments. I’ve rationalized compensation for grossly underpaid attorneys. One of my attorneys met his wife at the firm where I placed him!

Conclusion

Good recruiters should make an effort to respond to all inquiries, even if they cannot ultimately work with you. However, if a recruiter doesn’t respond to your initial reach-out, consider if that recruiter is the best positioned to assist you. Is your situation such that you would be better served not working with a recruiter? Or should you be speaking with a recruiter at a legal staffing entity rather than one who specializes in permanent placement? Good recruiters serve the interests of both their clients and their candidates. Ultimately, a placement is only successful if all parties are happy with the match over the long-term.


Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click ::here:: to find out more about us.