Lateral Partner Recruiting, Onboarding, and Integration

While law firms recognize the importance of aligning their lateral partner recruitment efforts with their overall business strategies, doing so can be challenging. The lack of hiring success may reflect a mismatch between a firm’s goals - which are aspirational - and realistic opportunities. Or a firm’s recruitment and integration processes may not be geared to maximize success. Even those firms with well-established recruitment and integration protocols as well as a track record of successful lateral hiring can benefit from a periodic and thoughtful analysis of their objectives and processes in light of market changes. This enables them to be proactive—rather than reactive—in their lateral partner recruiting and integration efforts.  

We review; We strategize; We advise.

How we help

Our work focuses on advising our clients on their growth and lateral partner hiring strategies, recruiting processes, and integration practices. To support you in developing and enhancing your recruitment and integration strategies and processes, we use our experience to ask the tough questions and focus on the issues that matter most.

  • We ask you about your current recruitment strategy, how it was developed and how it has evolved. We then review it in the context of practice group needs and lateral priorities, as well as the firm's overall priorities among its practice groups and offices and/or industry sectors.

  • We compare your firm's recruitment goals with your results, and we help you to analyze how realistic and achievable your firm's recruitment strategy is in the context of the firm's profile, reputation, and ambition.

  • We analyze what role opportunistic hires have played in your firm and advise you how to make your efforts more disciplined and productive so that you can focus your efforts and investment on strategic hires.

  • We recommend enhancements to the structure and substance of your recruitment process, such as developing interviewing methodologies that are more predictive of a candidate's fit and likely success and shortening the recruitment process while maintaining rigor and a focus on quality.

  • Drawing on our extensive market knowledge and experience, we recommend various options for you to consider developing your lateral partner integration practices, both pre- and post-hire.