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P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | W I N T E R 2 0 2 2
All that said, perhaps the largest driver of all was
alluded to above. It's the aggressive competitiveness
among law firms that first emerged after 2008. Firms that
seek prosperity through growth, or that want to further
round out their offer, can choose the M&A route and/or can
target the acquisition of talent from other firms, hopefully
bringing new clients and matters with them. Highly
acquisitive firms will seek rainmakers with the capacity to
bring in lots of new clients to turbocharge their expansion.
Finally, this competitiveness may be thought of as the
preserve of large law – but there's no reason why it should
be. Certainly, it's the large firms that are now retaining
external resource to target and poach lawyers or that have
appointed Chief Talent Acquisition Officers. They're also
offering other incentives: one firm is apparently awarding
a $50,000 bonus to lawyers who bring in valuable new
hires.
2
That said, medium-sized and even small firms
can also make lateral hires to inject growth. Whether it's
a single lawyer with a handful of clients and cases, or a
whole department or team of lawyers bringing corporate
clients and potentially many thousands of matters – lateral
hiring is now a well-recognized route to quick growth that
isn't going to go away.
Management of offboarding
Given this backdrop of permanently increased matter
mobility, what then are the issues and the key governance
considerations that firms should pay attention to?
Helpfully they can be neatly divided into the challenges of
off boarding data, and those of onboarding data – and firms
should have policies, systems, processes and procedures
for both.
The bad news is that off boarding is the sticky
end of the lollipop. It promises negligible upsides (the
chance to burnish a reputation for efficiency?) and a lot
of unrewarding and unremunerated work, which should
only be triggered by the receipt of a client transfer request.
However, often the first the firm knows about anything
happening is when a lawyer gives in their notice or a client
transfer request is received. At which point the lawyer may
submit a list of the firm's clients that they expect to take
with them.
The keyword here is "expect". It's very often the
case that a defecting lawyer, or team of lawyers, will over-
estimate the number of clients that will follow them to
the new firm. So, caution should be exercised. The firm
shouldn't immediately assume that all the listed clients
will leave. In addition, remember that even if the departing
lawyer was the main client contact, the firm continues to
have a contractual relationship with the client by virtue of
the engagement agreement. Also, firms must remember that
throughout the transition period clients are still entitled to
competent and unimpeded representation, and that their
matter transfer should not affect the client adversely.
Notwithstanding, unseen by your firm, the new firm
will probably be given the same list of would-be defecting
Q 4 W H I T E P A P E R S
1. https://www.chambers-associate.com/career-moves/trends-in-lateral-recruitment/10-trends-affecting-legal-recruitment-in-2022 and https://www.
thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/legal/state-of-the-legal-market-2022/
2. https://www.law.com/international-edition/2022/03/14/recruiters-expect-lateral-demand-to-continue-but-firms-growth-may-be-hampered/?slretu
rn=20220622104217
