The strategy behind a lateral move with Swan Legal Search

Chambers Associate sat down with three of our recruiters — Andrea Hartwell, Mindy Baggish and Bram Schumer — for a walkthrough of how a lateral move actually works, from the first exploratory call through to a signed offer. Deverie Hart, Director of Partner Talent Acquisition at Davis Wright Tremaine, gave the hiring side's perspective.

The conversation starts with why associates lateral in the first place. The answer is usually not unhappiness: more often it is a lawyer who wants to specialize, or who has looked hard at the trajectory in front of them and concluded that a different firm offers a better one. Spending an entire career at a single firm is no longer the default it once was.

On timing, our recruiters point to the second through sixth year as the window where an associate has enough substantive experience to be genuinely valuable to a hiring firm while still having room to grow into the role, and they walk through how firm hiring tends to move in seasons.

From there the piece covers what firms actually weigh when they assess a lateral candidate, what a recruiter does behind the scenes as advisor, coach and intermediary in a negotiation, and the avoidable mistakes that cost people offers: telling colleagues before you are ready, arriving at an interview underprepared, and not knowing your own resume well enough to talk it through. It closes on how long a search really takes, and on why vetting your recruiter is part of your career strategy rather than a preliminary to it.

Read the full article at Chambers Associate →