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Recruiting for Corporate Law Departments

Evers Legal Search has placed well over 100 attorneys with in-house legal departments throughout the country since 1996. From major cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver, to smaller market corporate headquarters locations such as Battle Creek, Michigan; Austin, Texas; and Des Moines, Iowa, we conduct local searches as well as national searches requiring relocation.

If you are a General Counsel or managing attorney seeking an addition to your team:

Call us when you want proactive access to attorneys who are truly on-point for your opening. Mike Evers offers to visit your office asap to learn about your goals for the law department, the unique challenges you face, and to fully understand what you want to see in the ideal resume and the ideal team member. When fabulous candidates seem plentiful, our clients appreciate the tremendous amount of time saved by using us to screen candidates, manage expectations, and provide a short list of finalists. We are careful, however, not to over-promise. Based on any number of factors (compensation, location and esoteric practice specialties are examples), the “ideal” candidate may not exist. By leaving no call unmade, however, we can usually unearth the needle-in-a-haystack candidate when presented with a difficult search assignment.

If you are the VP of Human Resources or the internal recruiter assigned to fill an attorney position:

About one-third of our assignments start with an inquiry call from a human resources professional who has been assigned to fill an attorney position. Frequently the prospective client tried to fill the opening via an Internet posting, but the attorney hiring manager became frustrated with the quality and relevance of the posting responses. By the time we get this kind of call, the opening has usually aged well past the target time frame for filling the position – and so there is a rush to get the search on track and fill the order.

We understand this situation and we are happy to work as a true partner with human resources. We will follow your processes and not jump around you to the legal department. However, we do ask for a conference call with you and the hiring manager. Talking with the attorney to whom the new hire will report dramatically improves the quality of our work for you.

If you have a General Counsel search, or if your company is hiring its first in-house lawyer, you have absolutely come to the right place. We know how to screen for the business acumen, interpersonal dynamics and leadership skills that make experienced lawyers successful in a corporate environment.

What About Law Firms?

Placing attorneys with law firms, especially Partners with business, is extremely lucrative. This is why most of our legal search firm competitors focus on law firm placement.

We have made a different choice, because we enjoy our client driven relationships with corporate legal departments. Law firms, unfortunately, do not partner in any meaningful way with search firms. The law firm placement business is candidate driven.

Based on referrals and other relationships, we gladly accept a few special candidates each year for law firm placement. We like making money too. It is the reason you will also see law firms on our Representative Clients list.

To be clear, Evers Legal Search is as capable of making a law firm placement as any other legal search firm. In fact, law firms tend to take our call a bit more seriously, because we don’t inundate them with a lot of resumes and we only work with highly marketable talent. For example, we have worked with a General Counsel from a company that chose to outsource its entire legal department. This “candidate” was able to bring a significant amount of his former employer’s business with him to a law firm. We worked with the candidate to identify his three best law firm options and then facilitated the interview and bidding process for this prized individual.

It’s not unusual for us to place a recruiting call to a top of market law firm attorney, on behalf of an in-house client, only to learn that this individual prefers to move to another law firm. We usually work with three to five law firm attorneys per year in this manner, helping them to move laterally or relocate geographically. If you are a candidate seeking such assistance, please call us for a confidential discussion about your practice.

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of Legal Search Consultants