Three behaviors lateral recruitment teams need to thrive in a changing hiring landscape.

The lateral attorney acquisition landscape for Am Law firms is rapidly changing across North America. Firms are looking to their Talent Acquisition leaders for answers, with leading firms seeing high churn in mid-level roles and fierce competition in the lateral hiring market. To meet hiring expectations both now and in the future, recruitment teams need to evolve their behaviors and skillsets to succeed or risk becoming obsolete.

Talent Acquisition (TA) is the evolution of traditional Recruitment skill sets and behaviors to skill sets and behaviors more relevant to the task of hiring in today’s lateral hiring landscape – turning herders into hunters.

Adopting a proactive legal TA strategy will ensure firms gain a competitive advantage against peers through their hiring strategy’s efficiency, adding to the firm’s profitability, building their reputation as an employer of choice, and positioning the team as a highly valued asset to the firm.

High-functioning legal TA teams should be responsible for identifying and acquiring new talent, future resource planning, diversification, building and nurturing talent communities, and employer branding.

Recruiting excellence is built upon operationalizing best practices. Identifying good behaviors and enabling teams to repeat them over and over again effortlessly.

These three behaviors exist in every high-functioning TA team. It will mean a total rethink on the people, resources, and strategy in TA/recruitment for some law firms. In others, it will be an evolution.

Proactive Strategy

Thinking longer-term (yes, we all have short-term targets to hit), the best TA teams in the world understand what they will be hiring for in 12-36 months and then put in place a strategy to execute upon that. Annual reviews and planning meetings are great but typically mean that at least a quarter of the year’s hiring window is lost in the planning.

Micro talent mapping to create an engaged talent community that acts as a live sourcing funnel. However, not one Am Law 200 firm even has a ‘Register your interest Button’ on their careers site. Many have done a great job creating career sites that genuinely capture the firm’s culture but only allow an attorney to apply for an open position. What about all those attorneys that aren’t quite ready to apply yet?

Encouraging every employee, no matter their function, to act as a recruiter sounds simple. However, taking a sample of individuals who do not have direct hiring responsibility in the legal industry, 7/10 replied with ‘that’s not my responsibility.’

Direct Sourcing

Having team members who have a hunter’s skillset rather than a harvester. This one skillset can change a firm’s reliance of 3rd party recruiters in months, not years.

Mature TA organizations have teams of these individuals that identify and acquire talent directly, acting as the firm’s dedicated search firm. Lateral hiring is incredibly well suited to this skillset with a limited number of peer firms and applicable talent.

Those who can build a direct sourcing function internally will stand head and shoulders above their competition in the war for attorney talent.

Better Influence Decision Makers

Changing the dial from a support-minded function to becoming a thought leader and respected opinion on all attorney hiring matters is a prerequisite of a high-functioning TA team. It should come as no surprise the most profitable companies in the world have the highest respect for their talent acquisition teams strategies and thought leadership.

This change is not easy, but by empowering and training TA team members, the dialogue between them and a hiring partner becomes two-way rather than one. With that change in communication comes influence, and the more knowledge a firm can impart on its hiring team, the better placed the TA team will be to advise partners with their hiring decisions.

Individuals in the TA team need to be able and encouraged to create their brands internally.

Conclusion

The first step on the journey is to understand the TA/Recruitment team’s current skillset and whether they can evolve or become obsolete, as a new or different skill set is now required.

No one wants to become the next Blackberry, Alta Vista, or Kodak; still, it happens. Those firms that create a high-functioning TA team with the correct behaviors and skill set will position themselves in an enviable position for the ongoing lateral attorney hiring war, positioning their firms as an employer of choice while creating vast time and cost efficiencies.

Up or Out is a direct introduction platform, bringing Am Law firms and associates wanting to make a lateral move together directly, affording both parties a more efficient hiring experience.

The Blockers of Innovation – Risk Aversion, Inertia, Apathy and Ego

Innovation is the creation, development and implementation of a new process that improves efficiency and effectiveness. As important as it is, there are many natural cognitive biases that make innovation difficult to achieve. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the lateral hiring of top attorneys.
Here, we highlight some of the most common barriers to innovation.

Four Barriers to Innovation

1. Risk Aversion

Risk aversion is one of the primary reasons why managers avoid exploring new solutions to their issues. As described by The Decision Lab, risk aversion is a cognitive bias that can prevent people from making the best decisions. That is not to say that a firm/company should take on the maximum amount of risk. Still, researchers find that many decision-makers are not well-calibrated in their willingness to adopt innovative solutions.

2. Inertia

In physics, inertia is the resistance that a physical object has to change in its speed or direction. You may be surprised to learn that inertia exists in businesses and organizations as well. In a 2016 study, researchers observed that organizational inertia is a fundamental barrier to innovation in many industries.

3. Apathy

Innovation requires creativity. An innovator brings a new solution to an existing problem. Apathy—a simple lack of interest or enthusiasm—is a major obstacle to creativity. Eliminating apathy and putting a renewed focus on a problem can help spur organizations to find better answers.

4. Ego

Finally, ego can also be a significant blocker of innovation. When successful managers (or organizations) have always done something the same way it can be difficult to bring in new eyes and make changes.

Up or Out Brings Innovation to Lateral Hiring

Taken together, the common barriers to innovation go a long way towards explaining why there has been so little development in legal hiring over the past several decades. Our team is bringing true change to the industry. Up or Out is an exclusive direct introduction platform for Am Law attorneys, top-tier Law firms, and leading organizations.

Using our proprietary technology, we connect law firms, businesses, and non-profit organizations directly to the most gifted lawyers who are actively searching for their next opportunity.

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We’ve Always Done It That Way – The Most Expensive Words in Business

Former IBM executive Catherine DeVrye observed that “we’ve always done it that way” are the six most expensive words in business. Drawing on her experience in the computer industry in the fast-paced 1980s, she noted that companies and organizations that fail to innovate are all but doomed to stagnate.

The world is constantly changing and top firms need to change with it. Only 52 companies have been on the Forbes 500 list since 1955. Even more surprising, nearly half of the companies that were on the initial list are now out of business entirely. Innovation is not only important for the world’s largest business—stagnation can be an existential crisis for top tier law firms .

Successful Executives Look for New Solutions

There is nothing wrong with consistent and effective business practices. If something is working very well, there is certainly no need to make a change. At the same time, the top executives are always looking for new solutions that will improve efficiency and better solve problems. In many cases, companies stagnate because they fail to recognize that their systems and processes actually are not working all that well. Or worse—they know there is a problem, but they fail to take action to fix it.

Traditional Attorney Recruiting Methods Can Lead to Stagnation

There is perhaps no better example of stagnation than lateral attorney recruiting. Unlike most other industries, attorney recruiting has seen relatively little innovation in the past two decades. Many talent acquisition teams and human resources departments are not satisfied with the results that they are getting. They are stuck dealing with the same problems over and over again, finding highly qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds when the firm needs them.

Top-tier law firm selection processes are not broken. In fact, they are some of the most robust and successful of any industry. Yet the problem comes at the sourcing stage, the element on which they rely on third parties. Relying on these third parties to populate the top of their hiring funnel has led to complacency, lack of choice, and constantly missed diversity targets. To be sure, mediocre input leads to a substandard end result. It is a textbook example of a case where “we’ve always done it that way” fails to deliver the best results for many leading law firms.

But, consider the opposite; high-quality legal hiring can lead to excellence. Indeed, there is a better solution available.

Up Or Out Brings True Innovation to Legal Hiring

Up Or Out is a direct introduction platform that is bringing innovation to attorney hiring. For too long, third parties have controlled the process. We introduce top tier law firms and leading corporations to elite attorneys. Your firm can get confidential access to the best candidates while retaining control over the hiring process. To find out more about our platform, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

Does Greater Choice Drive Better Diversity?

Most top law firms across the country are currently looking for diverse, well-qualified attorneys to fill positions. And, to be sure, this makes sense; a diverse team can be a powerful force in achieving success. Yet, the data shows that many top-tier law firms are falling short on their own diversity goals.

Traditional lateral attorney recruiting may be driving the problem. The old, stale hiring methods tend to deliver firms the same types of candidates over and over again. Law firms should be able to access a broader pool of well-qualified associates. Greater choice is one of the keys to better hiring practices and a more diverse and successful firm.

Research: Diverse Firms are More Successful

One of the biggest misconceptions out there is that top law firms should increase their diversity simply because it is the “right” thing to do. While it is true that the world’s best law firms should reflect society as a whole, the fact of the matter is that diversity brings tangible benefits to a law firm. Recently, the Harvard Business Review published a report on research that found that more diverse companies reaped financial benefits. The study found benefits for ethnic diversity, gender diversity, and school background diversity.

The specific paper focused on venture capital (VC) firms. Studying a number of different VC companies over several years, the researchers noted that more diverse firms tended to make better decisions. Similar to law, decision making is critically important at the top echelons of the venture capital industry. Researchers emphasized their findings that a more diverse group of decision-makers tended to access a broader spectrum of information and come to better solutions.

Law Firms and the Legal Profession Benefit from Diversity

The American Bar Association (ABA) is committed to increasing diversity across the entire legal profession. A good reason for this is diverse workplaces are also creative workplaces. With a variety of different perspectives, law firms are better able to answer client questions, increase productivity, find innovative solutions, and tackle difficult problems. As leading corporations and organizations are increasing the diversity in their own workplaces, they are looking for top-tier law firms that are keeping up with the times.

Beyond this, diversity leads to retention; lawyers at diverse firms may avoid constantly seeking a better option. And this, in turn, leads to a more effective firm driven by lawyers who feel empowered and eager to collaborate.

Traditional Legal Recruiting Falls Short On Diversity

There is no way to sugarcoat it: the legal profession is lagging behind most other industries on key diversity metrics. According to data provided by The National Association for Law Placement (NALP), only 19.6 percent of equity partners are women and 6.6 percent of equity partners are racial or ethnic minorities. Even more alarming, A report from ALM Intelligence found that the nation’s largest and most prestigious law firms scored slightly worse on diversity metrics than the industry as a whole. While the data is somewhat better for younger lawyers—reflecting the commitment to progress at top firms—there is still a long way to go.

So what is the problem? There is a clear desire among leading law firms for more diverse candidates. Yet, too many firms are struggling to meet their own goals. The answer may simply lie in the traditional model of legal hiring. The industry has seen relatively little innovation on this front. To find the best candidates, many firms continuously turn to third party recruiters. They tend to show the top law firms a relatively narrow slice of the lateral associate market—essentially delivering them the same type of candidate from the backgrounds that the law firm has hired time and again – therefore crippling the ability of the firm to become more diverse.. It is very difficult to get more diverse outcomes with the exact same inputs. With little choice other than using third parties to act as the sourcing element of the hiring, it is no wonder that so many firms struggle to meet their diversity metrics.

Up or Out Connects Law Firms With a Broad Pool of Qualified Candidates

Up or Out solves a problem. Until now, there has been no truly effective mechanism to allow AM Law 200 firms to connect directly with the most talented attorneys in private practice – the lawyers who are actively searching for their next opportunity. Indeed, law firms have relatively little control over the hiring process and are reliant on third party recruiters to source qualified candidates against a commercial model that rewards them purely on a success fee basis. This in turn ensures that these firms will find the simplest route to earning that fee, a route that involves supplying the same type of attorney over and over again to that law firm. As such, they are no way incentivized to help that firm drive their diversity metric. In reality, the current system is set up to fight every step of the way against better diversity in lateral hiring.

It is clear that traditional legal recruiting—and especially lateral hiring—is in need of innovation. The lack of diversity among candidates is one of many problems in the industry. Up Or Out is a transformative direct video introduction platform that allows law firms to engage with the top lawyers in private practice. We make the connection—law firms and attorneys determine what happens next. Through the platform, law firms can engage directly with actively looking Am Law 200 associates while retaining control of the hiring process and their own EVP. In other words, they get real choice. That choice drives diversity in hiring.

Learn More About What Up Or Out Can Do For Your Law Firm

Up Or Out is an exclusive direct introduction platform for top tier law firms and talented attorneys. Disrupting the traditional hiring process that has long given the lion’s share of the benefit to third party recruiters, we connect law firms with qualified lawyers who are actively searching for their next opportunity. Save time, save money, and get better results. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your law firm connect with a broader pool of diverse candidates.

5 Cliches About Your Career

Everyone gets tired of hearing cliches. Too many of them are meaningless, trite platitudes that offer little real value. At the same time, most cliches became popular (and overused) for a reason. There may be some true wisdom hidden in the words. Here are five of the most common cliches about your career and why they might actually be more useful than it initially seems.

1. “Opportunity Doesn’t Knock Twice”

Opportunity is simply a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. As a high-achieving attorney, you have valuable and transferable skills. There are many job opportunities for top lawyers out there. At the same time, each individual opportunity comes and goes. If you do not explore and pursue it, you may miss out on a career prospect that is truly rare—maybe even a one-time chance.

2. “Do What You Love and You’ll Never Work a Day in Your Life”

Every top professional knows that this cliche is not literally correct. There are some elements of all careers that are frustrating or mundane. Alternatively, you may simply want a day off from something you generally do love doing. Still, there is a deep truth in this cliche. Work is a lot more fulfilling and enjoyable when you are in a career opportunity that you love.

3. “You Can’t Learn to Swim Without Getting in the Water”

Like so many career cliches, it is true to the point of being obvious: Of course, getting into the water is a necessary condition to swim. Once again, there is some useful career wisdom within the cliche. You are not going to move up in your career or forward to a new opportunity without putting yourself out there and getting exposure. That seemingly simple initial step is an important one.

4. “Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket”

Often used to reference investments, this cliche also offers some useful career advice. Diversification is valuable. Are you ready to move forward in your career but restricting yourself to a very narrow subset of opportunities? That might be a mistake. Lawyers have valuable skills that are desired across many industries. It may be worth considering all of the options that you have on the table.

5. “The Grass is Always Greener”

The cliche is important because professionals need to consider the full implications of every opportunity—the upsides and the downsides. If the grass does always look greener to you, that strongly suggests that you are ready to move up or move out. However, it does not mean that every other position is right. You need an opportunity that suits your personality, skills, and career objectives. The grass really is greener on some sides.

Job opportunities for top lawyers with Up or Out

A direct introduction platform where the world’s best attorneys are connected with top law firms and leading corporations, UpOrOut is disrupting the archaic legal hiring system that only benefits traditional recruiters. Legal hiring needs innovation. Are you an attorney looking to advance your career in or out of private practice? We are here to help. Contact us today to learn more about what we can do for you.

The Anatomy of a Lawyer Looking for Their Next Career Opportunity

Changing jobs is challenging. If you are a top legal professional who is starting to get the feeling that you might be ready to move up or move on, you are certainly not alone. Below, you will find an overview of some of the most common traits that are shared by attorneys who are looking for their next opportunity. If any or all of them apply to you, it is probably the right time to start exploring your options.

Four Common Traits of Attorneys Looking for a New Challenge

1. Ambition and Aspiration

One of the defining traits of successful lawyers is their drive for excellence. Law is not for everyone. The top professionals in the field have ambition to achieve results through hard work and dedication. Lawyers who are looking for their next career opportunity also often have a desire to get more. They often set clear objectives to move up or move on—always with a gnawing feeling that they need to take on the next challenge.

2. A Passion for Learning

To move to a new career opportunity you have to have a willingness to learn. If you are not passionate about expanding your skills, it can be difficult to truly thrive in a fresh setting. Lawyers with a passion for learning are highly desirable as candidates among the top law firms and leading global corporations because they are already starting with such a strong knowledge base. Attorneys who always want to learn more are rare finds for employers.

3. No More Room for Growth

Many lawyers start looking for their next opportunity because they are simply out of room to grow in their current position. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that anything is wrong with your job. It may eventually be time to move on from even the best of opportunities. High achieving lawyers who have a growth mindset and core ambition often need more room to grow to be fulfilled in their professional life.

4. Valuable, Transferable Skills

Finally, lawyers who are ready for their next career opportunity almost always have valuable, transferable skills. This is important for several reasons. To start, those skills must be utilized and appreciated in their career. Additionally, top attorneys have many unique career prospects available—both in private practice and outside of the legal field entirely. Knowing that so many opportunities are out there, a lawyer owes it to themselves to explore everything that is available.

We Connect the Top Law Firms and Leading Corporations With Exceptional Attorneys

UpOrOut is an exclusive direct introduction platform aimed at the top ten percent lawyers in private practice. Bringing true innovation to legal hiring, we connect talented attorneys to the world’s most prominent law firms, investment banks, and multinational corporations. If you are a high performing attorney looking for the best opportunities while also retaining full control over your own career, we are here to help. Contact our team today to learn more about our services.