The ABC’s of Legal Search Firms

In this excerpt from What Can You Do With a Law Degree, law career consultant Carol Kanarek explains the role of the legal search firm in the job-search process:

Most lawyers know that legal search firms (or “headhunters”) exist, yet few understand that they are not the primary means by which lawyers find new jobs. Although there are hundreds of legal headhunters in the United States, the reality is that these firms provide access to only a tiny percentage of jobs for lawyers, and they are almost always used to find “square pegs for square holes”. Search firms represent the employer, and not the candidate; the employer pays a hefty fee if the search firm finds a lawyer to fit the employer’s specific needs. Consequently, if you are seeking a non-legal position or wish to change to a new area of practice, a legal search firm will rarely be of help.

Legal search firms are used only by those law firms and companies that are seeking lawyers with very specific expertise whom they cannot easily recruit through advertising, word of mouth, law school career services offices, and unsolicited résumés.

Because there is no shortage of lawyers to fill most jobs, the vast majority of employers of lawyers — including most small law firms, many corporations, and virtually all governmental agencies, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations — do not use search firms. The reason is simple: it is very expensive to hire lawyers this way. Most search firms work on a contingency basis, and charge employers a fee ranging from 20 to 30 percent of the initial annual compensation of any lawyer placed with that employer.

The employers most likely to use legal search firms are law firms and corporations who require lawyers with sophisticated commercial expertise and/or experience representing corporations or financial institutions in such matters as mergers and acquisitions, corporate or project finance, commercial real estate, securities and other corporate or banking regulatory matters, complex commercial litigation, tax, ERISA and bankruptcy. Most legal employers which represent individuals or small businesses do not use legal search firms, yet those constitute the vast majority of employers of lawyers in the United States.

There are also geographic limitations. Most legal employers in suburban and rural areas do not use search firms. States with significant numbers of legal employers that use search firms include California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas. If you are seeking to relocate to another geographic area, you will generally get the best results by working with a search firm in the state or region in which you wish to practice.

The ideal candidate for most legal search firms is a lawyer with experience representing large corporations or financial institutions, who is looking for a position practicing law with a firm which represents similar clients, or with a corporation or financial institution. Many legal search firms only have positions with large law firms (or branch offices or small firm “spin-offs” of large law firms), as large law firms constitute the vast majority of employers who use search firms. Law firm experience is generally preferred, although many large corporations that use search firms request candidates who have experience in both a large law firm and a corporation, and some law firms will accept candidates through search firms who have specialized governmental experience (e.g. the SEC or a U.S. Attorneys office).

The vast majority of jobs listed by corporations with search firms require general corporate, transactional or regulatory — as opposed to litigation — experience, with the exception of litigation-intensive companies, which may list positions with search firms for litigators with insurance, securities, employment or products liability experience. Many employers who list jobs with search firms specify that candidates must have graduated from “national” law schools, and/or must have high law school grade point averages. Legal search firms do not establish these parameters; employers do.

So what does this mean to you?

Know what you are looking for before you make an appointment to meet with a legal search firm. Search firms are not career counselors, and you should not forget that the only way in which they make money is by finding suitable lawyers to meet the specific needs of their employer clients.

– Carol Kanarek, JD/MA/MSW (www.kanarekandbrady.com) — Ms. Kanarek is a New York-based law career consultant with a national coaching practice.