3 Reasons your law firm should partner with a retained legal recruiter

Retained Legal Recruiter vs. Contingency Legal Recruiter

There are many types of legal recruiting agencies that companies can partner with, all with benefits and differences.  In this article, we are going to focus on the two most common: Retained Legal Recruiters and Contingency Legal Recruiters.

 Retained legal recruiters serve as an internal partner to the law firm and manage the entire recruitment process from beginning to end.  This can include first round interviewing, personality screening, and robust candidate presentation to the law firm.  It also can include onboarding assistance, retention strategy and relationship management in the early stages.  In retained recruiting, some fees are paid on an agreed upon basis of milestones throughout the process of the legal professionals’ placement.    

Contingency legal recruiters assist in providing hiring managers with resumes of candidates that match the job description they’ve crafted.  These types of legal recruiters are paid on a successful hire of a candidate, usually at a 15% to 30% of the hired candidates’ first year salary. 

Del.Trust’s top three reasons to use a retained legal recruiter over a contingency legal recruiter:

ONE | This is a role that my law firm’s growth is dependent on, and this role’s job description may evolve with the next stage of growth

Retained recruiters focus heavily on the quality of candidates in their selection process, not the quantity.  Retained legal recruiters don’t focus on sending you a lot of potentially bad and wrong-for-you applicants as fast as we can.  Contingency recruiters focus on speed, as they know if you independently hire this position or another agency swoops in before they can, they don’t get paid.

Retained recruiters, of course, will expedite your hiring process due to their direct industry knowledge, internal perfected processes, and unique skill sets they’ve dedicated their entire career to developing.  The difference is, we are focusing on this candidate for your firms’ long-term goals and focus on quality over quantity, instead of being the first person to send you a potential, unscreened candidate.  We want to make sure their hard and soft skills are on point for the position, but we also want to know that they’re a good cultural fit to add to your current legal team and law firm visions.

A great retained recruiter will always ask you, “What is the intended waterfall effect of this new hire?” They will keep this in mind during the interview and selection process, and only move forward those candidates that have strong potential in not only solving a current hiring need, but also will adapt to the future growth of the law firm.  We identify this through focusing not only on hard skills of the candidate, but also the soft skills and the key personality traits that will align with that intended waterfall effect. 

TWO | My law firm manager’s capacity and schedule are currently full, and we need solid support for our hiring team.

Many law firms have their managing partner or office manager head up their recruitment process.  Working with a retained legal recruiting firm gives you a partner in this transformational stage of your law firm. 

Recruiting top legal talent can be a long process.  When you have a solid working relationship between your leadership team and your legal recruiter, you have hired someone that is 100% working for you.  Retained legal recruiters have multiple clients, of course, but their working relationship within the Legal Recruitment Strategy Agreement creates exclusive loyalty and ethical obligations to your law firm.  A retained legal recruiter with strong ethical standards will not overlap two clients within the same geographical reach. 

On the flip side, a contingency legal recruiter is often sourcing for multiple jobs in your geographical reach at the same time.  They are under no real ethical standards to prioritize your position over another.  Additionally, because they’re working on a percentage base commission, they may prioritize the positions with a hire base salary over yours. 

THREE | The talent pool for the skill set desired is scarce and ultra-competitive (lateral moves), and I’d be interested in seeking out candidates that are highly qualified and not actively job searching.

One major quality retained recruiters carry that contingency recruiters may not is that they have a broad and expanded network of talent and referrals.  They spend the majority of their days making meaningful connections with legal professionals within their respective reach. 

Recruiting professionals that are not actively job searching is a delicate and intricate process.  It takes industry knowledge, a specific communication skill set, and discretion.  A legal recruiter that is experienced and well connected in your specific industry also understands the confidentiality required and relationships between law firms to navigate during the recruiting process. 

CONCLUSION

Though there may be good reasons for you to hire a contingency recruiter, and the idea of no up-front fees sounds lucrative and risk free, retained legal recruiting brings with it a new partnership to add to your law firm. 

As a key point in your law firm’s growth and reputation, a mis-hire can cost you more than just the time it takes you and your internal team to source and search on your own.  The strong relationship you will be able to develop with your exclusive retained legal recruiting firm will benefit your law firm due to their deep understanding of your firms’ needs, market and industry experience and knowledge, and ethical loyalty dedicated to your company.