In the Ring: Playing for Dominance in the Recruitment Game

Some days, you'd need to pinch yourself to get – really get – that legal recruitment in Canada is barely 10 years old. Open the financial pages of the newspaper or a legal publication and you are likely to see recruitment ads all over the pages. Recruiters' names on awards programs, tribute dinners, cocktail receptions and breakfast seminars all suggest the presence and pizzazz of a much more mature sector.

But inside the world of Canadian legal recruiting is a young industry still very much finding its shape.

Firms have been formed and split apart again to form new firms (Jonathan Marsden and Lorene Nagata). People have left entrenched firms to start their own shops (Caroline Haney from ZSA, Carrie Heller from RainMaker Group). Serious new entrants are emerging. There is John Black at Basic Black, and at least one UK firm, London-based Laurence Simons International Legal Recruitment, which is looking to open an office here. (Anyone interested in the Canadian recruitment market will definitely want to read what Jason Horobin has to say at the end of this piece.)

So we know they're here, we know their names, but not many of us know the way they work or how to differentiate between them.

That's partly because legal recruiting is an industry that does most of its work in the dark. Recruiters are extremely private about their placements for fear of offending the firms from which candidates are leaving. It's the Golden Rule of recruiting. Every law firm is either an existing client or a potential one.