With slower markets, 2008 will be the year when law firms start thinking again in earnest about partner and team recruitment. After several years when the biggest challenge was getting enough associates to staff the deals, minds are turning once more to winning business rather than simply executing it. The other side of the equation is that transactional lawyers, emerging blinking from darkened offices and conference rooms, have time to think again – and that is when many of the most significant moves occur.
One thing that will be very different this time around is the role of US firms in the City recruitment market. Thanks to rising profitability at UK firms and the falling dollar, it is obviously harder for Americans to attract good UK partners. Even more important, after five years of substantial growth – Legal Week research shows that 24 firms together hired nearly 300 partners in London over that period – many are now near critical mass. What also seems apparent is that the hiring practices of leading US law firms in London, obsessively focused on attracting senior transactional partners with transferable business to staff lean deal teams, have hardly been a runaway success. With the odd exception, the more fruitful have been polished, upwardly-mobile operators that have targeted similarly upwardly-mobile (meaning not too established) partners, as can be seen with White & Case.
