CRPDO Forum - Day 2: Best Practices in Lateral Hiring – Working with the Headhunters

They “lie, cheat and steal – and some are members of NALSC”. So spoke a panelist about some (fortunately not all) of the headhunters he has encountered in his 20-odd years as a recruitment coordinator. The emotion behind this statement confirms my thought that, unfortunately, not enough has been written and said about the perennially strained relationship between law firms and the headhunter community – which made this panel on the second and last day of the American Lawyer Media sponsored "Chief Recruitment and Professional Development Officer's Forum" ("CRPDO Forum") – featuring 3 senior recruitment coordinators and a 28 year veteran of the headhunting business - particularly fascinating. What came out of this panel bears repeating:

1. We have the same interests: The first, obviously, is doing everything possible to ensure the placement in your firm of high quality attorney candidates. The second - less obviously but intrinsically related to the first - is doing everything possible to ensure an free and efficient market in attorney candidates so that, at all times, the best firms have access to the best candidates. Paradoxically, this entails a decision to abandon non-solicitation clauses in recruiting contracts and other tactics designed to “protect” your firm’s attorneys from the headhunter community – i.e., making it easier for attorneys who do not ”fit” at your firm find a better “fit” at another firm – and vice versa!
2. The mistrust persists: It is telling that the panelists could not even agree on a name for the headhunter community (recruiters? search consultants? agencies? headhunters?) – and that various whispered epithets were clearly more popular. It is also telling that all three law firm panelists discussed the need to establish “trusting” relationships with the headhunting community – whether by way of an attitude change towards the community as a whole (uncommon) or (more commonly) by selecting a handful of reliable headhunters who would be given special attention with greater partner contact, better information, faster feedback on candidate status, etc. There are problems in both approaches – not the least of which is the reality, in the second approach, is that a significant chunk of the headhunter community is denied information that could be instrumental in making a successful placement. Finally, it was Lawcruiter’s observation that this panel (and the presence of the headhunting community at this event) was received somewhat coldly by the audience - although the numbers attending this panel might suggest otherwise. That said – this kind of exchange was unusual, probably unprecedented – and needs to be repeated. The more law firms and headhunters talk – the easier it will be to remove the distrust and the easier it will be for everyone to be making placements.