Most bad recruitment is not malicious. It can feel like it, though, when you find your CV has been sent to every partner at a firm without your consent. It is equally frustrating to take twenty calls in a day from the same recruiter, or to speak to a supposed “specialist” who cannot name the practice or any of the team but is sure, anyway, that there is an opportunity. Lawyers and hiring partners tell us these stories because they still happen. It is why some of the candidates we speak to arrive wary. They are right to be; this is your career and needs to be treated with a high level of expertise. The good news is there are many legal recruitment firms that have been established long term, do know the market inside out, are ethical and can keep confidences. Those are the ones worth staying with.

Pick one. There is a market misconception that certain recruiters have special access to certain firms, and instructing several feels like spreading the risk. It usually just means two recruiters speaking to the same partner. Whilst of course we do know many partners and HR teams directly, almost any well-established legal recruitment firm has access to the law firms a candidate would be interested in. It is rare, in today’s market, for one recruiter to hold a guarded relationship that nobody else can access. This is a candidate-driven market. Although in many cases we do know the partner directly, a strong applicant can be placed just as successfully with a partner we do not meet socially. Appetite differs from firm to firm; merely opening doors does not.

The useful recruiter is a buffer. You should not be the person asking the firm for better compensation, a sign-on bonus, or chasing an update the day after an interview. That conversation sits with us. So does the awkward one, when a firm has gone quiet, or when an offer is close but not quite right. In return you get a running account of where things stand, and somewhere to test the move before you make it. Is the group actually busy? Is the partner someone you can work for? Is the title the job? A good recruiter is more interested in a seat you will still be glad of in three years than in the fee on this one. Reputation in legal recruitment works the way it works in law. It is the asset. Commission on a placement that goes wrong is not worth the next five years of not being called.

Access to the market is also hardwired into any expert legal recruiter, which translates into looking at the market in a much broader context, with many roles that you just would not see in the public domain as they simply are not listed. More often than not we are instructed with roles on a confidential basis which you will not find on a Google or AI-driven search.

After that it comes down to what we are told. A complete first call makes for a short process. An incomplete one means a month spent finding something that could have been said at the start. Put the constraint on the table early. Money, notice, a visa, a city you will not move to, someone you will not work for. A firm can live with a clear limit. A limit that appears after the second interview looks like a negotiation. If the number is off-market we will say so. Better on the phone than in front of the firm, at offer stage.

The reason for looking has to be the real one, at least to us. The interview version can be cleaner. A quiet group, a promotion that did not come, a commute, a partner you cannot sit with: ordinary, and each of them changes who is worth approaching. A polished reason that is not the real one puts you in seats you will turn down. We have seen that more than once.

Say if there is another process. Having two firms at once is normal. Two recruiters in the same firm is not. If we are already in a team, tell us and we will stand aside or agree who leads. A direct application from six months ago is the same point. It is not fatal. Hearing it from the firm is. Work out, roughly, what you want before there is an offer. Another firm or in-house, London or New York, counsel or a partnership conversation. Changing your mind is allowed. Doing it for the first time when the draft offer is on the table wastes the firm’s time and yours.

None of that works unless the discretion runs both ways. We have recruited in London and the US for over ten years, and we were treating candidate data as confidential before GDPR arrived. We are not regulated by the Bar or the Law Society. We are members of NALP, NALSC, ASA and the REC. A partner brief and an associate brief get the same handling. More than 85 per cent of candidates come by referral. That is the figure we would rather be judged on.