Robert Depew picked a bad time to switch from the practice of law to associate recruiting. In the year he recently spent working for Major, Lindsey & Africa, he made just one placement: himself.

"The day I started was the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the fallout of that in the legal market was huge," he said. Big-law associate jobs dried up. "We went to almost zero jobs open, and layoffs happening left and right."

After six years of law practice, the last two in family law, Depew had felt burnt out. "I found the work engaging, but I also found it very depressing." He turned his sights to recruiting, imagining it as a career he'd be comfortable in for the next 20 years. But he didn't anticipate the severity of the downturn and what it would mean for his prospects in recruiting, so it wasn't long before he was in the market for an associate job himself. And despite the odds, by mining long-established contacts and hitting on an opening that suited his particular background, he landed a job at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati last month.

Career Change No. 2 came after a second round of layoffs hit other recruiters at MLA earlier this year, Depew said. "That's when I decided it was unlikely that legal recruiting as an industry would turn around for the next two years," he said. "It was going to be a very long-term painful contraction, that I was going to be at a junior level at."

By the time he left MLA, the layoffs, attrition and some recruiters' changing focus to partner placements had all left their mark on the associate-focused ranks in Northern California: There'd been more than half a dozen of them when he arrived in September 2008. After he left, there was one.

"You've still got a tremendous amount of talent waiting to be re-absorbed in the market," MLA's Martha Africa said. "The in-house market and the partner market are the ones that are keeping the doors open." The firm has laid off about 35 percent of its people worldwide, including recruiters, in the past year, she said.

And MLA is far from alone.

Harrison Barnes, the Los Angeles-based owner of BCG Attorney Search, said associates have traditionally been his firm's bread and butter. BCG hasn't had layoffs, he said, but at least 30 percent of its recruiters have left voluntarily in the past year because of a dearth of work. "If you're not making placements, you're not making money."

And in San Jose, Calif., The Dubin Group has gone from four recruiters to just two in the past year. Though founder Scott Dubin says the departures were not related to the recession, not filling the positions was. Dubin said the mix of work has gone from about half in-house placements and half law firm placements to about 85 percent in-house, and 15 percent law firm partners and associates.

Perhaps no surprise, then, that Depew didn't place a single associate during his one-year stint, which meant he made no commission.

Finding his next opportunity wasn't a cakewalk, either. He couldn't get an interview with about half a dozen firms; at least two were upfront with their concern about gaps in his resume. He did have four years of past experience as an employment associate, first at Hanson Bridgett and later at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. But he'd then gone on to Hanson Crawford Family Law Group, a small practice in San Mateo. And then there was the past year.

But a confluence of factors fell into place for the Wilson Sonsini job. In October, he joined Fred Alvarez's employment litigation group, making $210,000 as a fifth-year associate.

He learned about the opening through Marvin Dunson III, a law school contemporary who left Wilson earlier this year to start Valdez Dunson & Doyle. Depew went on to contact about five other people, including current and former Wilson Sonsini lawyers.

One was Amy Todd-Gher, who had worked with Alvarez for several years before joining the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Depew had mentored her life partner when they were associates at Hanson Bridgett.

"I was thrilled to hear he was looking for employment with Wilson Sonsini," said Todd-Gher, who added that the work at the firm involves a lot of hands-on employment counseling and requires strong litigation skills. From what she knew of him, "Rob met the mark on all those fronts."

Depew said Todd-Gher's recommendation went a long way. His first interview was in August with Alvarez, a Palo Alto partner, who walked him around the Wilson campus. "He greeted me as a friend of Amy's and introduced me to other attorneys in the group that way, which changed the entire dynamic for me and the whole interviewing process," Depew said. "In most situations, you have nothing but your resume to speak for you. I came in as the friend of someone whom everyone in the group liked and respected."

But Alvarez said his decision to hire Depew was more about what he knew than who he knew. The recommendations made him a more interesting candidate, but Alvarez was looking for a lawyer who knew employment law, who could engender confidence from clients, and who could lead younger associates. He said Depew, a past president of the Bar Association San Francisco's Barristers Club, was all those things.

Alvarez also surmised that Depew had the right combination of experience, working on matters for small, cost-sensitive clients as well as doing big-ticket litigation. "That describes our practice: many small clients and a few big important matters," Alvarez said.

The year Depew took off from practicing didn't bother Alvarez, who himself had left the law practice for a number of years in the 1980s when he took a post in the government. "I think you can get back on the bicycle once you know how to ride it," he said. "If you're somebody like Rob, you incorporate a lot of what you learn about life and business and organizations into who you are as a lawyer."

Whatever magic Depew works on people he meets, it lingers. MLA's Natasha Innocenti, who focuses on partner recruiting in San Francisco, says "everybody loved him" at the office. "He was very facile in meeting people and introducing others that would be helpful to them. He was just a natural." He even founded a book club at the office. "He's welcome to come back to discuss the next book," Innocenti said. "He has a lot of friends here."