For managing partners
Growth is no longer optional.
Almost every line of a growth plan comes down to two moves. Hire the lawyers you cannot train, or combine with the firm you cannot become.
Both are acquisitions. Both are won or lost before the first conversation. That is the work we are retained to do.
Four ways in
There is more than one way to grow.
Which of these you need is usually clear inside a single conversation, and sometimes the honest answer is that none of them is right yet.
Six questions that show which two are actually in play for your firm, if you would rather work it out before you speak to anyone.
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01
Lateral partners
A single partner, treated as an acquisition rather than a hire. Accretive or not, strategic or not, and what actually transfers when they move.
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02
Group hires
Three to twenty lawyers arriving together, with their relationships already in place. Bigger movement than any single hire, and proportionally more to get right.
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03
Merger services
One firm absorbed into another, usually the smaller into the larger. The same decision as a group hire with every stake raised.
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04
Strategic consulting
The work that comes before a search, when the real question is which of these to do at all, and what each one would cost you.
Where most of these start
Two positions, and they are not symmetrical.
Approaching a firm and being approached by one are different problems. One asks what you would actually be buying. The other asks what you are worth before you answer, and whether there is a better counterparty you have not spoken to. We have sat on both sides, and the questions barely overlap.
A group hire makes a larger difference than any single hire and carries proportionally more risk. That is not a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to know which of the two conversations you are actually in.
How we work
Retained, and selective about what we take on.
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Retained, not contingent
No one pays us to bring them a hire they should not make.
A contingency fee rewards a placement. A retainer rewards the right answer, including when the right answer is that a candidate is not what the resume suggested, or that a target firm is not the fit it appeared to be.
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The seller, not the buyer
The partner you want most is not reading job postings.
She is busy, well compensated, and already being approached. The work is not evaluating her. The work is being the firm she chooses, and that is a case you build before anyone picks up the phone.
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Time kills deals
Most searches fail on the calendar, not the candidate.
Committees meet monthly. Conflicts checks sit. Offers get workshopped. Meanwhile the other firm answers inside seventy-two hours. Speed is not impatience. It is the whole strategy.
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Confidential by construction
Your name does not enter the market before you decide it should.
Approaches are made blind, whether we are sourcing a single partner or opening a conversation between two firms. Everyone else learns about it when the principals are ready, not when the market is.
Who you would be working with
A small team, and you deal with it directly.
Three of us run the growth work. There is no account manager between you and the people doing the search, and whoever picks up your call is the person who will still be on it in six months.
Richard Brock
Founder and chief executive
Wrote Win the Talent Game, and built the firm after two decades of watching good laterals get lost to fixable problems.
Kimberly Daniel
Legal search consultant
Runs partner-level searches end to end, from the first approach through to the offer that actually gets accepted.
Greg Boggs
Director of growth
Works with firm leadership on which growth move to make, and what each one would cost before anyone calls a candidate.
Start here
One conversation is usually enough.
Whether there is a group worth approaching, whether the approach you have received is worth answering, and what either one would take. You will know more about your own position by the end of it than you did at the start.
Every conversation is confidential, on both sides of the table.