From disastrous due diligence to delusions of grandeur, leaders from LB100 firms and senior recruitment specialists give their take on making lateral hires work.
Bigger picture
‘Be patient and think long term. Moving firms isn’t easy for anyone. It never works out exactly how you’d planned it and the client market can shift significantly, but if the character fit, quality, strategic fit and business fit were right at the outset, then it should come good in the long term. In the meantime, the profit-sharing system needs the flexibility to accommodate this.
It has to fit squarely within your strategy, and you must want the same things and manage each other’s expectations of what success looks like. Opportunistic hires rarely last and are probably just short-term rentals.’
Jonathan Watmough, managing partner, RPC
Portable skills
‘One of the things we look for in potential partner recruits is those who will be more successful here than at their current firm. Key to this is our sector focus, which may give potential laterals opportunities to leverage their practice that are not available elsewhere.’
Jeremy Hoyland, managing partner, Simmons & Simmons
Fair rewards
‘Lockstep causes lots of problems – underperforming partners sitting at the top of the lockstep annoy partners more than anything else. One of the biggest factors behind good partners leaving is not money, but relative contribution – their perception of what they generate compared to other partners – and if it’s more, but they’re getting paid significantly less, they generally walk.’
Scott Gibson, partner, Edwards Gibson
Market intelligence
‘We first identify the market. Management does not drive this investment – it comes from the partners. They know our market needs better – they have the intelligence. We then find someone who fits – the quality of the lawyer is more important than the book of business. The candidate meets large number of partners and we review the cultural fit – there is no point in finding someone who does not fit the culture and can’t integrate. Any lack of motivation is a warning sign – there should always be push and pull going on between the candidate and the firm.’
Wim Dejonghe, managing partner, Allen & Overy
Plan first
‘Often, too much emphasis can be placed on the partner’s business case and portable clients, and limited attention given to the planning, and then subsequent bedding in, of the partner and their practice. Firms need to be clear from the outset why they are recruiting and what in turn they specifically want. The process ideally needs one person from the firm to run the recruitment process to ensure consistency of approach and maintaining momentum. Partners need to buy into the recruitment and be prepared to commit time to the process. Often firms come to the market without being clear on why they are recruiting and what specifically for, which can lead to mixed and confused messages.’
Jonathan Benjamin, director, RedLaw
Close to home
‘As a general rule of thumb, the closer a potential lateral recruit is to what your firm does currently, the more likely the hire will work. The most important factors are strategic alignment, cultural fit, expertise and whether it works economically. We also look at their business connections and whether these are sufficient.’
Simon Beswick, managing partner, Osborne Clarke
Avoid silos
‘When a partner joins the firm, they should feel like they have more opportunity to win work and clients from our platform, and get more from being part of Stephenson Harwood than just their remuneration. We avoid hiring just because a candidate has a portable book of business, because if the partner just carries on doing the same thing in a different firm, a silo is instantly formed and the new partner doesn’t integrate. We want better work and want to see a difference in the practice a partner joins.’
Sharon White, chief executive, Stephenson Harwood
Proper fit
‘The success of a law firm is dependent on having the right people and getting the right people is intrinsically linked to having an effective recruitment strategy properly integrated into the law firm’s business plan. I say the right people, as opposed to the best people, because there is an essential difference. An effective recruitment strategy is not about bums on seats – anyone can hire people, so that’s not what needs to be measured. It’s about measuring the success of the hires – how many are still there five, ten and 15 years after they were hired?’
Frank Varela, chief executive, Varela & Partners
Settling in
‘Obviously, business fit and cultural fit are both important, but the key to ensuring the success of lateral hires is to put the same effort you put into recruitment into embedding them into the firm. This means putting a support network in place and marketing investment to give the partner a stable platform to build their practice. Also essential is a realistic timetable. An over-optimistic expectation to achieve a return on your investment is a sure-fire recipe for disappointment.’
David Ryan, managing partner, Pinsent Masons
Pride before a fall
‘Our role is to bring the right calibre people to the table and then to keep the recruitment process oiled and running. Recruiters who promote themselves as an intrinsic part of the decision-making process are crediting themselves with a level of importance that doesn’t exist.’
Paul Roxburgh, chief executive, Macrae Roxburgh Appleby