Valerie A. Fontaine earned her JD from UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings) and her BA, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, from UCLA. She was on the Editorial Board of COMM/ENT, a Journal of Communications and Entertainment Law. Valerie practiced law with a prominent Los Angeles law firm and entered the legal search profession in 1981. Valerie is past Secretary to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC) and former Chair of its Newsletter Committee. She currently serves as a consultant to NALSC headquarters.
Originally posted on LawJobs.com. Due diligence into their target law firms by lateral candidates is even more important in the post-COVID era. The way a law firm handled the economic shutdown and reopening, as well as its management and financial posture afterward, are vital considerations when determining which firm would be the best fit for…
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Originally published on LawJobs.com. There’s no question that COVID-19 changed the world and your interviewing strategy should reflect this new reality. Prospective employers can learn much about the candidates under consideration by exploring how they handled the resultant business shutdown. Digging deeper into lateral prospects’ work experience during the pandemic and their reactions to the…
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As corporate clients more often consider the diversity and inclusion policies of law firms when selecting counsel to represent them, competition to recruit minority talent is fierce. To satisfy their desire for outside counsel that meet their desired diversity and inclusion goals, general counsel expand their searches to include smaller, local, and regional firms. Specifically,…
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The conversation around diversity and inclusion in the legal profession changed over the past several decades. When the principals of SeltzerFontaineLLC entered the legal search profession in the early 1980s, diversity was a topic we brought up to the hiring authorities at major law firms and corporate legal departments rather than the other way around.…
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