Two legal recruiters walk into a bar...don't be the punchline

In this episode, Murray Coffey and Steve Nelson delve into the intricacies of legal recruiting, offering a blend of practical advice and personal anecdotes. They discuss the best ways to manage recruiter inquiries, key considerations for those contemplating a career move, and the importance of building solid relationships with reputable recruiters. Additionally, they cover current market trends and emphasize the significance of carefully evaluating counteroffers. This episode is designed to equip you with the insights needed to navigate your legal career with confidence.

Episode Highlights:

• Best Practices for Managing Recruiter Inquiries: Learn how to effectively handle calls and messages from recruiters.
• Controlling Your Identity: Safeguard your resume and personal information by only sending them to authorized firms. 
• Importance of Ethics in Recruiting: Recognize and avoid unethical practices by some recruiters.
• Candidate Preparation: Ensure you have your statistics and relevant information ready before engaging with a recruiter.
• Choosing the Right Recruiter: Identify recruiters who have strong relationships with hiring firms and understand your market and practice area. 
• Working with One Recruiter: Build a strong, trusting relationship with a single recruiter to increase your chances of successful placement.
• Personal Relationships and Referrals: Use your network to get referrals for reputable recruiters. 
• Recruiter Methodology: Understand the recruiter’s approach and ensure they can effectively reach suitable firms. 
• Assessing Opportunities: Utilize a recruiter’s expertise to determine if a move is in your best interest.
• Long-term Relationships: Work with recruiters who are committed to your career growth and provide honest assessments.
• Evaluating Offers: Be cautious with counteroffers and consider their long-term implications. 
• Market Trends and Insights: Stay updated on the latest trends and dynamics in the recruiting market. 
  
  

Key Takeaways:

• Be Prepared: Have your market statistics and relevant data ready when engaging with a recruiter. 
• Ask the Right Questions: Ensure the recruiter has a genuine relationship with the hiring firm and understands your needs. 
• Control Your Identity: Avoid having your resume sent to multiple firms without your consent.
• Work with One Recruiter: Develop a strong, trusting relationship with a single recruiter for better results. 
• Evaluate Offers Carefully: Consider the long-term implications of counteroffers and trust the insights of experienced recruiters.

Join Murray and Steve as they share valuable insights and experiences, helping you navigate your career with confidence and professionalism.

Contact Steve
McCormick Group

Contact Murray
M Coffey

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Murray, welcome to Steve's rules periodic podcast featuring Steve Nelson, executive principal at McCormick group in the law and government affairs practice. My name is Murray Coffey, and I am the principal of M Coffey, a law firm marketing and business development Boutique. For more information, please visit my website at M coffey.net Steve has been an executive recruiter for nearly three decades, and without naming names, he is ready to spill the tea on best practices, and maybe a few not so best practices by firms and candidates that he has seen during his career, recruiting some of the most driven and successful professional into highly profitable and growing firms. Steve is a former lawyer and journalist and is a fellow of the college of law practice management and a proud son of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Full transparency here, Steve has helped my career immensely through the years and has become something of a career shaman to me and I know many others.

Steve: 1:05

Hey, Steve, how are you okay? How are you doing? Murray, I'm

Unknown: 1:10

doing great. I'm doing great. Summer is starting to starting to get off to a run here in beautiful Dallas, Texas, we are having nearly triple digits already this early in June, which is unusual for us, but won't be unusual in the next couple of weeks. It's darn hot, though. Yeah,

Steve: 1:28

we've gotten the our best weather the last week that we've had all since, you know, since last year, we had four or five good days in a row. So I'll take

Unknown: 1:37

it and when look where the weather's lovely in in your neck of the woods. It's, it's, it's really nice. It's beautiful. So that's great, blue skies and all so, so listen, we're going to talk today about a couple of cool, interesting things. We're taking a slightly different approach than we have in the past, and we're going to put but so we're going to be talking about the kind of kind of best practices in how one manages inbound calls and and inquiries from recruiters, and also what you as a candidate. Number two is what you as a candidate need to be doing if you think it's time for you to to make a move right and correct and but, but, but, before we do that, as we often do, we are going to take a quick look at some of the intel that McCormick group has been putting together. As you know, they're, they're, they're famous for their intel, understanding markets and deriving a lot of a lot of insight from the Intel work that they've been doing. And I think you've got some some interesting news to share with the folks. So Steve, why don't you go for it? Okay,

Steve: 2:55

so we just completed, well, we come a couple weeks ago, we completed April, the April recruiting and April was the best month by far. So far, 2024 and have actually made up for what we found at least in our DC and Texas market studies, where the actual number of laterals was trailing a little bit from 2023 April forced us, forced both numbers ahead of pace. So April was a huge month, and that was unexpected, because usually the it's February, March is usually the big months, right? But I think a couple of things are going on this year that have made that happen. One is, I think the firms have been a little later in paying out the bonuses and distributions, and I think that once they've done that, it's taken partners a little longer to finish the process. Usually they're pretty close, you know, they've got everything done except the final agreement, you know, in December, and they wait and they wait until the bonus comes. But I think the conflict checking in particular is taking longer to do. I think firms are really careful about it. And there was one fairly celebrated incident that occurred in the month of April, actually, if somebody had moved in March, and she had a move again in April, because the conflict, the conflicts turned out, you know, to be they didn't run the conflicts problem, and so she had to move again. So we're not going, we won't go into specific names, but if you, if you check your, if you're up on your American lawyer, you could probably find it out, did,

Unknown: 4:38

did did they move back to,

Steve: 4:40

they went to a new firm. They didn't go the original firm, since three firms, right, exactly, right. This person was clearly valuable, but had to, had to go to plan B, so to speak. And maybe they were already, you know, good, and we're going to get to this a little bit, but they were probably talking to. Both firms during the process. She chose Firm A, and then Firm A ran into conflicts. You know, I ran into conflicts after she accepted, actually, she started and she went to, you know, she went to firm B. So, anyway, so, but we've heard from others that conflicts is taking a lot longer to finish. Firms are being extra careful. And, you know, relationship partners are holding things up because they want to make sure that the client, that their existing client isn't gonna have a problem. And I think that, you know, I think just gets complicated, and I think that's delaying things. So that was April. I expect, I expect, expect may to be pretty solid, although probably not as good as April, but I think we're again. I think we're going to be running a little bit ahead of last year's pace. Yeah,

Unknown: 5:49

the other thing I know too that clients just are getting very picky about any kind of, any kind of conflict waiver requests that are coming in. It's just they're saying, you know, you got to figure out who you want to do business with, right? And, and it's they're getting sticky about that, which, I don't blame them. I don't blame the clients for a minute, you know, to be a little pickier about that, right? Because, you know, it does. It may not benefit them in a long, long run. And that's that's not great the for in the DC market. Now, we didn't, we didn't pre discuss this before, but in the DC market, any you're seeing, any, any, think the numbers were, were nudged along at all by, by the national elections that are coming up. I know historically, you said it kind of, it kind of tamps down things for a little bit, especially right now, because it's just

Steve: 6:50

well government there. Yeah, there were a good number of government moves in April, and so I think that did pick up. I think they're largely in areas of of like non controversy, terms of political so a lot of white collar types are moving, and I trust people continue to move, because I think the antitrust will be there one way or another with whichever, whichever party gets into power. So, so I think that that it will, it will continue. I mean, the other thing is big right now is data privacy, cyber security, and that's been a big, big boom as well.

Unknown: 7:37

Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely and you're seeing it all over, the firms are recruiting folks from all over the place. It'll be interesting to see how, how, how, you know, how much of that holds water after, after a little while, is there's a lot of people claiming levels of of skill and knowledge that maybe are almost impossible to actually have. But so let's, let's, anything else on the Intel side, anything you're seeing that you anything else want to share?

Steve: 8:07

No, not for not, yeah, not right now. I think we're, I think it's even a pretty solid month. I continue, it continues to be solid. No major sort of, like, surprising changes other than that April blimp,

Unknown: 8:19

yeah. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so, as we alluded to earlier, we're gonna, we're gonna switch gears here a little bit. And, you know, we've been talking, in most cases, sort of about the way the lateral process, lateral recruiting process works, and, and things about, about how to consider pay and, and, and, you know, a lot lots, lots of kind of the granular details. But today we're going to talk about the little bit more about the candidate experience. And so the first, first bit is something that I think those of us who have been in the business for a while have experience with and have also, you know, frankly, had some bad experiences with, and that is when the phone rings, or the LinkedIn, LinkedIn, you know, message pops up, or the DM pops up from a recruiter saying, Hey, I've I've got a I've got a opportunity. I want to talk to you about and kind of what happens from there, and what you as a candidate need to be thinking about. So Steve, first of all, take us through sort of what happens with the recruiter before they are making that outreach. Generally speaking, I know some, some of them just do a shotgun but, but recruiters like yourself, who are very, who are kind of very studied and very determined about what you do, what are you doing before you make

Steve: 9:52

the Yeah, so you're right in that there's a shotgun approach and and there are. Um, you know, I think, what's one of the problems, I think you run into, is that, um, it really goes back to the law firms. Law firms will talk to any number of recruiters out there and tell their story. And the kind of the nature of that conversation tends to be, yeah, let's get on the let's get on a zoom, and let's talk about all the areas we're interested in. We're interested in corporate, we're interested in antitrust, we're interested in findings, we're interested in white collar, whatever it is. And they'll go through the list and and that is, I mean, their expectation is, the law firm is, if the recruiter is actually representing a candidate that's in the marketplace, that's looking they want to hear from that. They want to hear from that recruiter. They want to be part of the game, like if there's a partner with significant book of business who's who's moving in the finance area, lots of law firms want to talk to them, right? And they don't. They don't want to be left out. But the danger is that a lot of those law firms use that as a invitation to blast like this firm is looking to hire blank and therefore they will send it out, even though they really have a very good relationship with the with the law firm itself, they'll make it sound like they've got this great assignment and and so forth. And so that means there's a lot more sort of traffic out there and and it means that a lot of times there's a lot of misinformation, but they don't really have their information and the actual your relationship between the recruiter and the law firm, the the hiring law firm is not that strong, and you can't, you can't really tell, just based on a an email, how that's done now our our firm, just so you get an idea of what we do. I mean, we will only really go out with a story if we've been sort of approved to recruit on that assignment. We've gone through the whole, you know, the whole story of what we're doing, that sort of thing. So we've been authorized. It doesn't have to be retained by and we can get into that, but we're authorized to do the recruiting in a particular area, so that's so that's that. And I'll tell you, one of the things that I think you got that a candidate has to watch out. This is something we run into all the time, and it's very can be very appealing, because it, you know kind of works through flatter, which is a less than ethical recruiter, will write a note, whether it's LinkedIn or usually right these days, not that many write a note to a partner, saying, I've been asked by blank firm to reach out directly to you to see if you're interested in talking to them. And then there's a variation of what that message is that is often a ruse and is unethical. And then that if the partner says, yeah, no, I I talked to them and give me information, give whatever information to get. Then the recruiter goes back to the the firm and says, I'm working with this partner from x firm, and he's interested in talking to you. So I mean, that is, that's one of the, one of the many things that unscrupulous recruiters do. So you've got to be have to have your your spidey sense up, and you've got to make sure you know that this is you're talking to a recruiter who really has a relationship with the firm. They're there, they're well, how do you figure that out?

Unknown: 13:56

You know what I do is, I always ask, is this, are you on retention? Are you retained? Or are you You contingent? And usually, frankly, if they're if they're contingent, I'm not uninterested. I'm just more interested in working with somebody who's been retained. Now,

Steve: 14:18

I would make a distinction between the professional staff side, where it's where retainer is going to be very important, and the the partner side of things, where retainers, I mean, we, we have several retained searches right now, but we do some non retained searches, just because there's no guarantee that we do A search for ex partner. Are we going to find that partner every time? No, it's just, it's just the it's just whoever's in the market that fits that particular firm's requirements. You know, it's probably less than 50% chance that they're that we're going to, that we're going to locate the partner they will hire. Um. So my approach would. Number one, definitely ask that question. But the, but the non retained part of it is lesson, but then asking, I would ask, okay, so who you working with?

Unknown: 15:13

I can find at the firm, like, are you work? Are you can they, can they name check the partner? Or can they name check the right of recruit. Lateral recruiting right

Steve: 15:23

now, a lot of them will give you the name of you know, they know the recruiter, so they'll give you the name. But if you you know, if you say, Well, what partner are you working? Even if they're not necessarily working with partners, and most of the time, when we're doing a search like that, we're going to talk to the partner, yeah, as so, so we'll have somebody we're going to talk to. Talk to. But in that case, you know, you they should be able to answer what partners they want. All right, so that's, that's the first thing I would do is to really figure out, what's your relation, what's your real relationship? Is this, you know, that sort of thing, because, because, again, there's just a lot of, yeah, yeah, you know, there's no, you know, I always say, if you've got a phone, you've got a recruiter, because there's no, there is no barriers to entry to the recruiting business. So, so I think you've got to be, be careful about that. So that's the first thing I would do. And then I would, you know, I go into a real discussion about, what's, you know, what are the exactly they're looking for? What is it? What the, you know, sometimes you just get that general like, yeah, they want to partner with $2 million worth of business. I don't, I mean, I'm I want more. If I'm a candidate, I want to understand more. What they're really looking for. Is it a succession play? Is it an expansion of a practice? Are they trying to get into a new aspect of the practice? I want to understand more about the firm, and if, if you're just getting, you know, pablum from the recruiter, you know, I'd probably say thanks, but no thanks.

Unknown: 17:04

And, you know, do you, do you? Should you be listening for, as a, as an, as a, as a candidate? Should you be listening for sort of name brand, uh, recruiters, for example, you know, we, we hear about, and this may be more on the staff side, but, you know, you've got Spencer Stewart, right? So I get a call from Spencer Stewart, you know, it seems legit, right? I get a call from McCormick group. Seems legit. I get a call from some of these others that seemed legit. Is that a? Do you think that's a,

Steve: 17:46

yeah, I mean, clearly the well known legal recruiting firms, of which were one of them, right? Um, you know, I mean, it's good to is good to have that? You know, that's a positive, sure, but there's so many recruiters out there, and that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to say, like, you know, if you've never heard of them, don't talk to them, because firms have, you know, the recruiting firms have relationships. There are a lot of boutique firms with one or two people who are, who broke away from one of the big firms, who are, you know, who are very competent. So I think that's sort of less, less of it. Um, I don't, wouldn't even say, I mean, I used to say that if you're not in the location of, like, if you're looking in in Dallas, you know, you want a Dallas recruiter, used to be able to do that, but nowadays, I think it's with COVID and everything. It's like the barriers. Geographic barriers don't mean much, but you want to have somebody who knows the market right, who understands how the market works, and you should certainly ask them, you know other places you've made with the firm, or other places you made in the general area, whether it's practice area or in the or in the geographic area,

Unknown: 19:04

any is a, I mean, should you be asking them, how many people are they presenting?

Steve: 19:10

Well, again, that's it's, I don't think for a partner search that's particularly relevant, because a lot of times you know, you're, you might only, you may only present one or two people, because, again, the part you know, the law firm has the big, you know, and we've, we've talked about the book of business requirement for and the book of business requirement really limits your candidates, because, let's face it, The candidates who are generally interested in making a move are the ones who don't already have the big book of business. They're, they're in the process of trying to make that change because, you know, it's not working at their firm, and they've got look at an opportunity, you know, for somebody else, they can do a lot better. Um, but you. Know. So what happens a lot, I think, in this sort of, what we call the gray market of recruiters, is they'll recruit on money. They'll say, you know, I'm working with a really profitable firm, and they can pay you much more on your book of business than you would make it at any other firm, which usually is, is, is just a lie. I mean, because, you know, pretty much the big firms pay around the same thing for those same kinds of partners, maybe. And you know, there's been, certainly in Texas, particularly, you know, as these firms are coming into town and starting new offices, they've been paying premiums. So it's not, it's not. There are exceptions, but in general, any any time I if I was a candidate and I saw a money focused recruit, I would, I would probably just, you know, erase it from my screen, because that's just not the way you should be recruiting anyway. It should be based on opportunity. Better firm, better culture, better opportunity. You know, more collegiate. Whatever it is you need. You need something. You know, if you're just recruiting on money, then you know, it's probably just something that recruiters just made up. When you, when you, let's say you do author rocks a firm, you know, let's say it is a good fit, and you know, you trust them and so forth. I it's really important that you that as the candidate, you set some of the ground rules for this relationship that you had, and the key thing is to make sure that your resume and your identity is is only going out to that particular firm, because one of the one of the things we hear, and this is particularly true on the associate side, less so with partners, but does happen is the recruiter will send your resume everywhere. We were talking to a fellow recently who said, you know, he gave us three firms. He had, he had sent his resume to, at least, he thought he had, and then when we got into the market, we started making some other inquiries. There were, like, 20 firms. And he said, I never authorized that, you know, but the problem is, if you don't have it in writing that you are only, only authorized to send my resume to x, they're going to end up doing it. And even if you claim that you didn't authorize them, you're, you're going to get locked out of whatever firm. This is really true with associates again, like if you're, if somebody's done that to you. You can't you're sort of in jail for six months. You can't recruit. You can't go anywhere, because they will not consider you as a candidate while that somebody else has credit for you, even if that was never authorized, because the firms do not want to get into a battle between recruiters. I mean, they'll walk away from that in on day one. So that's the key here. Is to make sure you control your identity, your resume, your future,

Unknown: 23:12

yeah, yeah. I typically won't send my resume until I've had that conversation. So,

Steve: 23:19

but again, I've been putting I would do it in writing, because I just thought, yeah, I don't, I mean, I just think nowadays, having that conversation is not good, because there's too many charlatans in our industry,

Unknown: 23:32

right? Is a good word, right?

Steve: 23:36

Was a great race horse named charlatan who ran a couple years ago, but that's, that's a story for another podcast

Unknown: 23:44

that's on our equestrian podcast right, which we're starting next week. But alright, so now let's flip it a little bit and flip the script on this. And so now you're a partner, you're an associate, or, you know, you're somebody who's thinking, it's time to go what, what do you do? And how do you start that process with the recruiters, which, by the way, the recruiters know where the good gigs are and and you know, you can, you can. I mean, unless you've got a direct wire into a firm that you want to go to, it. It's you gotta, you gotta work with recruit, with recruiters,

Steve: 24:25

right? All right. So I think first of all, if you, if you've known, if you know people who have moved in the last year or two, right, people you that you're friendly with, you know, you may want to call them up and ask for recommendations, because they've obviously used somebody, and sometimes it's not even the person they used, it's somebody else that they considered, but for one reason or another, they didn't use them. So try to get a sense of, okay, who's, who's, who's qualified there, who has other people used, um, you know, you look at the, you know, um. A, you know, National Law Journal, until recently, had a list of the top recruiters in every market. That's, that's reasonably accurate, um, as a, you know, so sort of brand names are good to, you know, the brand names are probably reliable as a possibility. And then, and then, you know, pick a couple, you know, three or four that you're thinking about, unless you've already got this good relationship, which often you do, you know you, you know you, you've worked with somebody before. Sometimes you've worked with them when you were looking for somebody, or, you know, your firm was looking for somebody you work on, and you really liked, what, how they went about business. So that that's obviously but then really talk to them about what their methodology is, what's, what's their approach in the market. How well do they know? Do they understand my, you know, you know my practice, and understand what the nuances are? I mean, I so I really think that's important, and also a little bit of it again, back to methodology. Is how you know, how extensive can they reach? Because I know our methodology is such that there is only rare firms that we will not be able to you know that we cannot, uh, contact for for a good candidate, sometimes because of contract relationships or something else or a bad recruiting agreement. Again, subject for another podcast. Um, but for the most part, you know our we can reach any firm that makes sense. We want to make this about the candidate, not about who my clients are. And I think that's the stuff you want to have from the candidate side. Is, you know, do you have a range of firms that make sense for me to reach out? And then also how, you know, I want to work with I want to use your expertise. To to help me guide which firms make sense for me. Because sometimes, I mean, I can tell you that, yeah, I've been in this business long enough, and you've been in this business long enough, there are certain firms that have reputations, and generally, you know those reputations generally are accurate. You know, there may be exceptions, and there, you know, you could, you can poke holes in it, but I, you know, I can tell you the firms that you know have have their, you know, have a high jerk component. And I know firms that are like, you know, more collegial. And interestingly enough, I'm just, this will be a plug a little bit for something we're working on, a we're, we're in the process of a study of lateral attrition rates at for the am law 200 so, so that'll be something that you know you want. You want somebody who can give you that kind of information so that you can say, well, you know, is this firm really right for me, you know, like, you know, I, you know, I've got, you know, I've got small kids at home. I need, you know, I'm going to work hard, but I can't, you know, I can't be in the office every day. I don't want some firm that's just requires me to build 2400 hours. I've got a lot of clients, but I'm only billing 1500 right? Makes sense for certain, certain firms. That's, you know, you're not, you know you're not going to go to certain firms, if you have that mindset, and you've got to have a recruiter who understands the the differences between firms, and there are differences, and

Unknown: 28:39

what about our? What about our, you know, our lateral partners, it's what's, what's going on for them with, with in terms of comp expectations and and, and are they do they need to protect themselves more than the associates do, right?

Steve: 28:57

All right. Well, some, from a partner standpoint, it's, it really, where the differences come in are on the on the low end and the high end. So if you're you know, if you're going to a less profitable firm, they might, they won't pay their entering partners and their council at a smaller firm, there'll be some major difference. And at the high end, obviously, only you know, I think I saw something that Simpson factor is paying a bunch of partners $20 million I mean, you know, you can't, you know. I mean, you're not competing with that at an am law 80 firm or a law 120 firm, right? It's just, it's just not, you know, that's that's on the totally high end. It doesn't make sense. But in the middle, you know, in the in the sweet spot for most of these firms, which is really the person who's. Of you know, at a let's take that big am law firms out of it for a minute, because they're so high. But you know, for for many of the firms that we deal with, we're talking about partners with a million to$2 million worth of business. It doesn't matter if you're in an am law 50 or an am law 200 for the most part, because that's going to depend a little bit more on not the profit per partner, but on the actual overhead. So the overhead number is sort of a forgotten number in the am law in the am law rankings. You know, I've had kind of a running, I wouldn't say it's a feud, but a disagreement with am law over what they publish and what they don't publish, because profit per partner is the most manipulated statistic out there, compensation for all partners, less so. And then the overhead figures, the overhead figure. And therefore, if you're making a change, you need to know that overhead figure, because you could have a, you know, again, million dollar practice with a 50% overhead figure, you should be making $500,000 at many am law 100 firms, you can't make 500 on a million dollar practice. So it's all, it's all, it's all relative. It's all, you know, it's deeping in the weeds. And that's really one of the things you want to have the recruiter as as your ally in terms of getting that kind of information and understanding, you know, instead of sending me just to the amlock one, I need some, you know, a recruiter who understands that The Comp variables, you know, is really helpful to you to figure out, okay, I don't have to just go to those firms to equalize what I'm making. Now I can go to other firms I make more. So I think that's, that's the important part of it, so, so the comp is, is varied. I will say one other thing, which is, certainly, it'd be good if you have this before you before you talk to recruiter, because recruiters going to ask you these really key questions about your practice. Get your statistics in order, get, you know, figure out a way, you know, you get the reports, keep them. Don't throw them in the waste basket. When you get your monthly reports and your yearly reports, you know. You want to have a good idea what your what statistics they use. Every firm has different statistics. You want to have a good idea of what your you know what your originations are and what your managed billings are, what your how many hours you worked, and what's the value of those hours, and your Realization. And again, the recruiter can help you that with that process if you don't already have it, because a good recruiter will start asking you those kinds of questions and try to get it. It's harder if you don't have that information going in, a recruiter has more trouble giving you, like, a really good evaluation of your chances to move. One of the things a recruiter is really valuable for as a partner candidate, or as really, as any other candidate, but partner in particular, is an evaluation as to, is it in my interest to move right now, or is it not in my interest? I'm really doing okay here and and a recruiter can do that. And not only that, the recruiter usually is in a good your your interests are aligned, because a recruiter won't. If the recruiter sees that, it's not going to, you know, you're not going to be able to match what you're doing now or get a better opportunity somewhere else. Recruiter will tell you that on the front end, because recruiter doesn't want to work with you if you're not going to be somebody they can, they can easily place. So getting that kind of Frank evaluation, I think that's really important as you you choose the recruiters. It's not just so much. I'm ready to move I want to use you. I want somebody who can give me a really honest assessment of where I am. Where am I position getting a recruiter tell you, you know you you know you really probably better off staying where you are. That could be a really valuable insight and that, and then maybe two years down the line, you'll have a different situation. But point is, use the recruiter to give you a good assessment of where you are. Now,

Unknown: 34:24

you know something we talked about early in one of our early, much earlier podcasts, which was related to the LPQ Is that is that there is great variability in lpqs, and there's also within lpqs, even though they may be asking the same questions, the answers can be variable because, for example, realization, okay, one, a lot of a lot of lawyers, don't even know what that word means, two, but, but, but also that even if you do know what it means, it's calculated differently at each firm, or there's some variation of so. Guess the other thing, not just to know your kind of, your your stats, but also know how those are derived. So you can have a discussion, a really educated discussion about, you know if, if your realization number is, let's say, 75 but if you, if you use the calculation of the target firm, your realization would be 85 that that's a that's an important thing for you to be able to understand. But you can't understand that until you understand how your current firm is is looking at realization, is looking at how they calculate profits, is looking at what they count in terms of revenues and write offs and all the rest of that. That's why it behooves the partners to pay attention to that stuff at a kind of a granular level. You agree,

Steve: 35:48

right? I agree, and actually really appreciate my next point, which is, if you're a young partner or a mid level partner somewhere, and you're not even interested in moving, good idea to call a recruiter, not to, not, you know, just say, Listen, I'm not moving. But I would really like your input on some things, because I'm not I'm confused about our system, or I I'd like to get more information so recruiter can give you that information. The best recruiters will do that at even if they know that they're not going to place you anytime soon. A good recruiter do that, because that's part of their that's part of the reason they became recruiters. They want to help people in their in their career prospects, and they're willing to take time out to help people, even if there's no, you know, immediate stream of money coming down the line. No,

Unknown: 36:37

yeah, I'll tell you, from my own experience, just from my experience, you want to work with, with recruiters who are investing themselves in you and your future. It just, it just, it's, it's, it's a much more you wind up with much better results, and you wind up with better relationships,

Steve: 36:56

right? And I think this might have been, this may be implied, but I want to just emphasize the fact that when you start, when you start your process of making a change, whether it's associate or a partner, try to work with just one recruit.

Unknown: 37:12

That was gonna be my next question.

Steve: 37:15

Occasionally, you'll have situations that come up because somebody reached out to you directly, or you had a previous relationship, and you have one offs here and there, which that's fine. I mean that that happens, but the idea of trying to, you know, you know, use multiple recruiters, you know, what happens is the partner who's desperate to make a change because their firm's closing, or they've been asked to leave, or whatever, they will call all the recruiters out there and say, What do you got? What do you got? And that's, you know, you know, once you once, it becomes clear that that you're not the recruiter of choice. But this person called you, I'm not going to spend very much time with somebody if I know that they've got three other recruiters throwing firms at them. And then every time I come up with a with an idea, they say, Well, yeah, so I really think that it's in your interest to really work with one, one prime recruiter. Let's put that way, and then occasionally, some others might, you know, might be involved because of particular relationship, one way or the other. So that, that I did want to emphasize, and that particularly true with Associates,

Unknown: 38:34

and that you know, that's all the more reason to have those sort of marketplace conversations with the recruiters, because you start to get to know him, you start to develop relationships with and you start to figure out who you want to work with, right? You know, I really like talking to Steve, and he seems to know what's going on, and I'm ready to make that move. And Steve's my guy, but you don't know Steve's your guy until you spend a little time with Steve. Because you know what they say to know him is to love him. So you know that's that's about you. Steve, thanks, Murray, alright. I'm sorry that was my, that was my very lame attempt at at some humor here. Steve, but, but anyhow, anything else you want to make sure we cover? No,

Steve: 39:27

I think we've covered it. I think we've covered it. You know, it's, it's just important to, is to really, I say, prepare and make sure you ask the right questions that this is a person that you, you know, there's usually no contract involved in this, so it's important to at least get an understanding of what the responsibilities on both sides are.

Unknown: 39:50

You know, this may not be fully something to fully talk about in another, in another, in another podcast. So maybe we. And answer it here, just the idea of the counter. What? Because counters happen a lot, and what's your take on the on the counter? Don't take them, but, but why? I mean, because I You hear that, and it's, I mean, you hear that from a recruiter, and you think, Oh, well, that's because Steve's not going to get his, you know, his money. There's a real reason for that,

Steve: 40:26

right? I think it's, you know, for the most part, you've made a decision to make a change, right, based on certain things that you're not getting at your firm, or that someone else is is offering you that you don't, you can't get at your firm, right? There's some issue that's going on that has that's just not about, I mean, money can be part of it, but it's usually not about money. So what if you know what your your existing firm will always come back with more money, and they'll come up with maybe some promises. But, you know, I don't know whether you know, can they really keep them or not? You know, if they really valued you, they would have already, I'm sure you've had conversations with them about your your frustrations, and they haven't done anything about them. So you know, do you really think that just because you, you know, you, you put their feet to the fire, they're going to actually change, change their approach? Probably not. And, you know, it's funny, because I, when I started this business, you know recruiters, McCormick group, would tell me, you know, 60% of everybody, recruiters, I mean, of candidates who take counter offers leave within the first year, you know? And I thought, well, that's just, you know, they're just puffing. That can't be true. Well, you know what? It's pretty close to that. Yeah, that was a Forbes study within the last year or two, somewhere between 40 and 50% so, you know, it's, it's, you're just not solving the problem and, and, you know, you know, you, you, I mean, you know, there are situations that that it can work, actually, was. It happened to me once, when I was back in when I my journalism career, I was leaving because I had, I, you know, I had an issue with with my superior, and we were just weren't getting along very well, and I felt like I just couldn't do that any longer, and I had to leave do something, something a little different. Because, you know, I was, you know, I was just getting frustrated. And was between the time I accepted the job, or right after I accept the job, she quit. So, so that did change it a little bit, but that was an except, the exception. Rather,

Unknown: 42:50

I think that's the exception, and that's a different set of circumstances. And you're right. I mean, also, if you've made that psychological commitment to leave, you've made it and and whether you do it then, or, you know, as this Forbes report says, you know, maybe it's a little bit in the distance, but I will tell you that that time period from the point that you make the psychological decision to walk out and go to the next opportunity and then accept the and then accept the counter that time until you actually ultimately leave. And you will ultimately leave, um, will suck. It will just suck. That's,

Steve: 43:28

that's the problem, and, and nowadays with, you know, with background checks. I mean, even though you resign after the, you know, resign at the background checks, but the firms can try to hold on to you a little longer than they used to, yeah, and that's just, it's, it's, it's really, it's a tough, it's a tough period of time. And they, they, they really get to you, and they try to give you all of the, you know, all the excuses and all of the things that will change that sort of thing. So it's really hard. The recruiter can help you through that. But I can understand that there's a, I mean, totally understand it where the candidate thinks, well, the recruiter wants to protect their feet, and that's actually true, but, but on the other hand, the good recruiters a look out for the for the, you know, for the best interest of their candidates. I mean, I know not so much in the counteroffer situation, but there have been situations, uh, during a process, where I tell a candidate, you know what, this opportunity isn't, right, they're telling you too many things about this opportunity. That's not what we anticipated, that I think, you know, let's walk away from this. A good recruiter will do that because, again, they're valuing the relationship, the long term relationship, with the candidate, and not looking for the quick fee.

Unknown: 44:53

All right, Steve, Well, I think we've, we've covered all the bases and then some on this topic. Thank you. You. Always, always great to get the the insights of somebody with a level of experience that you've had and your team has had in in doing this kind of work. And I always learn a thing or two through these, these discussions. So thank you, and we'll close until our next until our next edition. Alright, that sounds good. All right, talk to you soon, Steve. All right, take care. You.