Successful lateral partner recruiting is about more than just hiring good lawyers—it’s about gaining good clients. You must show top talent why they should join your firm rather than your competition. Then you must keep them happy long-term by providing the platform they need to bring over their existing clients, properly service them, and expand their books of business utilizing the resources you provide. The firm’s marketing and business development personnel can play key roles in lateral hiring success from the launch of a search to the continuing integration and retention of the new hires long after start date.
Meet with outside recruiters
It’s ideal for the firm’s business development and marketers to meet with your selected legal search consultants at the outset of any search initiative to help them make better matches and “sell your story.” It’s the business development and marketing professionals’ job to sell your firm to prospective clients, so they are in a unique position to help recruiters tell your firm’s story to prospective lateral partners, and then for those partners to sell your firm to their clients in hopes that they will come along with them to your firm.
While individual partners and practice groups know the intricacies of their specific needs, the marketers and business development professionals have a firmwide perspective. What differentiators do they sell to your clients and prospective clients? That’s what recruiters and prospective lateral partners and their clients want to know.
Develop specific recruitment-oriented marketing materials
It’s beneficial to have recruitment-specific marketing materials available (print and online) for both recruiters and candidates. Look for true differentiators. Most law firms describe themselves and the opportunities they offer in virtually identical language. The same is true for how law firms portray themselves on their websites and social media. Consider including information that goes beyond the usual, such as practice areas and industry rankings, and include real information regarding compensation/partnership/origination credit structures, culture, examples of successful lateral growth and how the firm supports its new partner hires. The questions always are: Why should I join your firm as opposed to your competition? And why would I want to stay?
Manage your brand
Candidates and recruiters will research you on the internet, so check for negative information online. Counter with positive social media messages regarding your attorneys’ thought leadership, practice wins, community/pro bono involvement, recent lateral acquisitions, and the successes of lateral partners especially, including case studies and testimonials.
Make sure candidates get the information they need to know
The firm’s marketing and business development professionals should help make sure serious candidates get as much pertinent information as possible during their decision-making process. Preferably sooner—as soon as mutual interest is established—rather than later. Check out the tongue-in-cheek Lateral Firm Questionnaire we provide to partner candidates to guide their due diligence on firms before deciding which to join: https://www.seltzerfontaine.com/lfq/. Affirmatively provide that information to your target candidates to impress them with your transparency and boost their interest in your firm.
Capture information gleaned during the hiring process
Before the handshake, there’s heavy vetting on both sides of the table and a great deal of information is exchanged and developed that would be valuable for integration and business development purposes once the candidate is hired.
- Interview discussions – Interviews, where lateral partner candidates meet with your firm’s partners, often are, in reality, “mini brainstorming sessions” where participants discuss shared clients, expertise, and referral connections. At the end of each such meeting, your firm’s busy partners will get back to work and most likely will forget the details of those conversations soon after they occur, and perhaps won’t even keep track of whether a specific candidate actually is hired. Almost certainly by the time the candidate is hired, the interviewers will forget which candidate mentioned which details. And the new hire is left with unmet expectations of follow-up on those discussions and an impression of broken promises
- Don’t lose this valuable information! Capture all the cross-marketing information developed in those “mini brainstorming sessions” that occur during hiring interviews and formalize a process for actualizing it. Perhaps add a section to the evaluation forms that each interviewer already fills out assessing whether the candidate is someone the firm should pursue further. Have the interviewer note down any business development targets or opportunities discussed (specific clients, industries, market sectors, geographical regions), and anyone else in the firm the lateral lawyer, if hired, should meet for cross- or joint marketing purposes. This information must go directly to your business development and marketing professionals to help develop an individually targeted integration and marketing plan.
- The LPQ (Lateral Partner Questionnaire) – In addition to participating in a series of interviews and meetings, the lateral partner puts in significant time and effort providing copious information to each firm he or she is considering for a move. Most AmLaw 200 firms use some form of a LPQ (Lateral Partner Questionnaire). If yours doesn’t have such a form, look at the Universal LPQ compiled by NALSC (National Association of Legal Search Consultants), based on the firms actually used by numerous law firms. It asks for the majority of the information law firms need to fully investigate a partner and his or her portable business, including biographical information, a three-to-five-year lookback of revenue generation, specific client and billing information, and estimates of high, medium, and low estimates of portable business. NALSC’s downloadable U-LPQ is a free resource. (See a discussion of the LPQ here https://www.seltzerfontaine.com/lpq/ which also links to the NALSC Universal LPQ.)
Most firms require this information for financial analysis and conflict checking before an offer is made. It’s onerous and time-consuming for the candidate to provide it, and they expect you to use it! Even if you wish to keep the numbers confidential, at minimum the identities of the candidate’s current clients and contacts, and target clients, industries, and market sectors should be shared with your business development and marketing teams to help develop the integration plan, cross-marketing opportunities, a list of key players in your firm to meet, and for providing additional tailored business development assistance during integration.
Meet with top candidates
As the interviewing process progresses, it’s effective for your marketers and business development professionals to meet with those candidates the firm wants to pursue seriously, presenting a tailored pitch to help sell your firm and its business development and marketing resources. When rainmakers move, they’re looking for the best platform to service their existing clients and help them develop more business. Show them what you’ve got! Give them examples of your firm’s formal and informal cross-selling initiatives and how your firm specifically helped lateral partners grow their practices. This can make a real difference when your firm’s desired talent has competing offers from other firms.
Create a business development and marketing plan
Legal search consultants often advise candidates to prepare a basic business development plan at the outset of their job search, later to be tailored to fit their target firm(s) with information gleaned as the interviewing process continues. This allows the candidates to clarify, up front, what value they can bring to a firm. It’s their Unique Selling Proposition.
Ideally, through the interview process, the candidate and various departments within the acquiring firm will jointly create a business plan. This can be used for the final recruiting presentation to the hiring or management committee and voting partners when making the ultimate decision whether to hire. It also can be used as a blueprint for the integration plan and initial marketing plan.
Important Tip: Don’t forget to talk about the marketing budget for each candidate! Include in the marketing and business development plan any membership dues for both professional, personal, and community organizations, as well as conferences attended, event sponsorships, travel and entertainment. Also include professional development costs such as for CLE, coaching, and necessary research materials, support personnel required, and the like.
And understand that it’s a living document which may need revision as business and market conditions change. Keep the door open for two-way communication including questions, guidance, updating, and augmenting the plan.
Finally, don’t love ‘em and leave ‘em
Once candidates come aboard, and after the initial onboarding tasks are accomplished, your marketing and business development departments must remain available to the new hire to assist with their client onboarding, as well. The new partners should get help shaping the narrative around their move to appeal to past, present, and future clients as well as their referral sources. Help them tell the story of why your firm is better for the candidate’s clients and target clients than their prior firm. Help them with client contract renegotiation by making sure the new hire is clear on your firm’s billing practices, fees/alterative fees, origination credit policies, process for bringing in matters and clients, and conflicts clearance.
After all that work getting the new talent in the door, your marketing and business development professionals can play an essential role in keeping them there.
