Lawyer Monthly Magazine - April 2019 Edition

APR 2019 34 Special Feature www. lawyer-monthly .com Failed Partner Hires: Why Do Firms Fail to Keep Their Partners? We read pretty much every day about law firms hiring new partners. Without them what would the legal press have to write about? For most of the larger firms, lateral partner hiring is part of a balanced growth and recruitment strategy. However, for many of the smaller and less established London offices, it is their only source of senior lawyers. What is rarely, if ever, analysed or openly discussed is how successful these hires turn out to be. Law firms readily announce the addition of new partners, but are much quieter when they leave, tending to say very little beyond “we wish them well”. One Firm whose US Managing Partner went further and was recently reported as saying, “if our partners weren’t being headhunted then I would be worried. That particular firm has since lost about a third of its London partners, 10 in a year, in fact. When I first started working in legal recruitment 20 years ago, having come from a non- legal business, commercial and engineering background, three things immediately stood out when considering law firm recruitment: 1. The sums of money paid to recruiters were enormous with fees typically at a third of a lawyer’s first year’s salary and uncapped. 2. On mandated searches, two- thirds of the recruitment fee was paid before the candidate had even accepted an offer. 3. Even some of the leading firms struggled to hire lawyers. How law firms allowed this status quo to develop and thrive is before my time and beyond the scope of this piece. Since then, there has been downward pressure on recruitment fees, especially at the junior end, although some branded firms can still get away with charging over 30% for senior hires. Capping is more common now and firms generally only pay the recruitment fee once the candidate has joined. There has been an increase in the availability of candidate due diligence and vetting tools. Some of the larger firms now employ, as part of their HR teams, lateral hiring specialists with recruitment industry experience. Some Managing Partners continue to use their own networks to attract senior lawyers to their firms, something which I discuss in my published article “Why do Law Firms use HeadHunters?” Some of the largest firms still struggle to hire lawyers. My assumption before writing this piece is that over the past 20 years, law firms, in general, must be doing a better job today at Written By Fraser MacLean, MacLean Legal Search