ON THE HUNT FOR LATERALS: Law Firms Use Networking and Traditional or In-HouseHeadhunters to Poach AttorneysAuthor(s): TERRY CARTERSource: ABA Journal, Vol. 92, No. 10 (OCTOBER 2006), pp. 27-28Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27846329 .

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CORNER OFFICE

ON THE HUNT

FOR LATERALS

Law Firms Use Networking and Traditional

or In-House Headhunted to Poach Attorneys

TERRY CARTER

RICARDO FERNANDEZ INVADED Fort Lauderdale this summer.

And that created buzz in the

city's legal community, the kind of talk that follows him wherever he goes in Florida, hiring lawyers away from their firms. As hiring partner in Miami

based Fowler White Boggs Bank er, he is, perhaps, sui generis in

the law firm world. He's an in-house headhunter. There will be none of the soft-shoe mating dance known

to traditional headhunters, who make cold calls to targets and, with polite misdirection, ask if they know anyone in their practice area who might be interested in jumping ship. Fernandez opens more directly: "Take this call as a

compliment. It's intended to be. I'm Rick Fernandez with Fowler White and we're interested in an opportunity with you. Would you like to talk?"

Fernandez knows the game only too well. When he neared the 20-year mark in his law practice, in the late 1990s, he left the law and joined the headhunting busi ness. He ran the south Florida operation for a national le

gal search firm. After a couple of years, he returned to law

practice, joining Fowler White in 2003. But soon he was named hiring partner. And that quickly became full time.

OFF-PEAK INQUIRIES WHILE FERNANDEZ DOES SOME THINGS DIFFERENTLY? and more directly?than traditional headhunters, he still carries their quiver of tactics. For example, he tries to get into the office earlier than typical law firm secretaries and

receptionists so he can direct-dial lawyers when they are

likely to pick up the phone. He does the same in the ear

ly evenings. "It's gotten to the point that I'd rather people at those

firms not know it's Rick Fernandez calling, because I'm

getting known for it," he says of avoiding gatekeepers. If Fernandez hadn't cut this career path, someone else

surely would have invented it. Lateral movement among law firms not only has lost its stigma, it has become a

way of doing business. Partnerships, in many instances, have become more contractual relationships than the tra ditional mix of personal and professional bonds. Now it's

just a matter of finding and making the right matches. "Where are all these headhunters coming from?" asks

Linda Klein, managing partner of Atlanta's 34-lawyer Gambrell & Stolz. "There are so many of them now I don't know how they make a living."

Klein starts most days with a voice mail from a head hunter making a cold call. Some want her to come over to another firm. Some want to offer her a "stupendous opportunity" to hire a certain lawyer.

Illustrative of the times, her firm hires only laterals. It is a general practice firm, handling just about everything in civil law except divorces. And its niche, to the extent there is one, is in working for business entrepreneurs and

eventually taking them public. Typically, the firm's cli ents aren't "interested in paying young lawyers, and sometimes they resent it," Klein says.

Some Gambrell & Stolz partners prefer to find laterals through networking, but that's not practical when the firm needs someone in a particular practice area immediately. "So I'll make a note to call a headhunter, but my work gets ahead of that," says Klein. "Then comes the cold

Ricardo Fernandez: "The sales mantra is that every no is the next step to a yes."

call. I haven't had to seek out headhunters the past cou

ple of years because they just call all the time." There are no available statistics on the number of head

hunters and search companies. The National Association of Legal Search Consultants has grown to 180 members since its inception in 1984. But the association's presi dent, Marina Sirras of New York City's Marina Sirras & Associates, says the numbers have increased significant ly and are much greater than that. Not all recruiters or

October 2006 ABA JOURNAL

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search firms join the association.

Though they don't constitute the bulk of her business, Sirras special izes in targeted searches. A law firm

will provide her the name of a lawyer it would like to hire. "I'm to feel them out and see if they're interest ed in talking," she says. "As soon as I hear them say 'Let me close the

door,' we know they are."

Though the market is fluid and

lawyers with portfolios move around now like free-agent professional ath letes, the cold calls most often turn

just that, cold. Fernandez has been there. "I get

rejected all the time, but it's nice re

jection," he says. "The sales mantra

MORRIS DEES JUSTICE AWARD

To honor Morris Dees for a lifetime of public service, Skadden and The University of Alabama School of Law announce

The Morris Dees Justice Award.

The winner will be announced October 2, 2006. www.MorrisDeesAward.com

Selection Committee

Morris Dees, Honorary Chair

Co-Chairs Robert C. Sheehan Dean Kenneth Randall Executive Partner, Skadden University of Alabama School of Law

Members

Mary Bauer, Director, Immigrant Justice Project Professor Jesse Choper, University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall Professor Bryan Fair, University of Alabama School of Law Marcia D. Gr?enberger, Co-President of the National Women's Law Center

Robert Grey, President, American Bar Association, 2004-2005

Marjorie Press Lindblom, Co-Chair, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Susan Butler Plum, Founding Director, Skadden Fellowship Program Theodore M. Shaw, Director-Counsel and President, NAACP Legal Defense

and Education Fund

Tisha Tallman, Regional Counsel, Atlanta Office Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund

Vaughn C. Williams, Partner, Skadden

The award ceremony will take place in New York City on November 16, 2006.

The Morris Dees Justice Award is sponsored by

THE UNIVERSITY OF

Skadden & ALABAMA SCHOOL OF LAW

is that every no is the next step to a

yes. I'll hit 20 prospects to get one

engaging with me."

GEOGRAPHIC EMPHASIS HIRING LATERALS IS A SCIENCE FOR

Greenberg Traurig, which, says presi dent and CEO Cesar Alvarez, has hired more laterals than any other U.S. firm. The Miami-based law firm has almost doubled in size since 2001 to nearly 1,600 lawyers. While many firms look mainly at practice area matches when seeking laterals, he says, Greenberg Traurig also empha sizes geography. The firm has 26 of fices in the U.S., as well as seven in other countries.

"Our theory is that law is very local and you need to have depth in those

geographic locations," says Alvarez. "If you're litigating in Phoenix, you

want to make sure you have litigators in Phoenix." Alvarez keeps the spreadsheets on

lateral hiring. For example, he says the firm's growth rate is about 20 per cent a year through lateral hires and the attrition rate is about 3 percent to 4 percent. He compares that to "peer" firms that he says have growth rates of 6 percent to 7 percent and attrition rates of 6 percent to 7.5 percent. He says the firm mostly hires law

yers by ones and twos, though on occasion it has taken on 20 to 25 law yers in one practice-area swoop.

Obviously, Greenberg Traurig is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, users of search firms. Alvarez speaks of lawyers in law firms as "intellectu al capital" and headhunters as the "investment bankers" who bring in that capital. But still, matchmaking is

what it's all about. Platforms are key. A lawyer in a

particular practice area might be able to better grow a practice in another firm with practice areas that offer

synergy for that practice. For exam

ple, Sirras recently worked on find

ing a new firm for a partner who

practices employment law but most of whose clients?consumer products companies?need intellectual prop erty representation as well.

"If he can go to a firm that has an IP

practice," says Sirras, "he can get more business and so can his new firm."

28 ABA JOURNAL October 2006

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