Shaking up the legal profession’s approach to recruitment is helping this top 25 law firm stake a place among international law’s most established brands.
Read their story
Recruiting talent
Understanding the state of the most in-demand law candidates will help you make better talent decisions.
- Where are candidates located?
- Where should you open your next office?
- Which of your competitors are vying for the same talent?
- What’s the size of the candidate pool you’re recruiting from?
Read on for insights into how to gain a competitive advantage in the hiring market.
Searching for talent
The first step in hiring the right legal talent is knowing what a successful candidate looks like. Prioritize your desired skills and ideal experience. Then, you can dive into the crowded blur of professional networks confident that you’ll identify the most qualified candidates for your organization. Accelerate the hiring process even further and grow your candidate pipeline with these handy tips.
Today’s qualified legal candidates are in high demand, with top talent often entertaining multiple offers from industry leaders. You need a comprehensive, direct, and compelling job description to attract the best of the best. But crafting the perfect job description for multiple positions throughout your organization can take hours that you don’t have to spare – especially when it involves researching and describing a role that you don’t know much about. Luckily, there’s a better way to create compelling job listings that attract top-tier candidates without logging extra hours. Here are five job description templates to get you started.
For more, check out the full selection of job templates.
An attorney general is responsible for protecting the state’s citizens by enforcing local and national laws and passing new legislation. Their duties are wide reaching, ranging from overseeing criminal cases to ensuring environmental laws are upheld. To achieve these goals, an attorney general relies on other judicial officials within the state, and meets with other state attorneys general throughout the year to discuss relevant issues.
Responsibilities
- Provide legal counsel to the state government
- Oversee criminal cases and appeals
- Enforce judgments and give formal opinions to state and/or federal agencies
- Ensure the state’s resources, interests, and citizens are protected
- Liaise with heads of divisions across the state’s judicial system, and other state attorneys general
Skills and Qualifications
- Juris doctor (JD) degree from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA)
- Experience as a trial lawyer
- Excellent critical-thinking skills
- Ability to juggle numerous responsibilities simultaneously
LinkedIn is the ideal place to identify and connect with millions of potential candidates for legal positions throughout your organization. But sifting through that massive talent pool of professionals is tough. You have to do more than just type the job title into the search bar. Finding the right candidates means knowing exactly which skills and experience you’re looking for and streamlining your search with a few additional industry-specific search terms, rules, and filters that will put the best candidates on your hiring radar.
That’s where Boolean strings come in. Boolean strings let you filter your search results based on the things that matter most to you. You choose which skills and experience you prefer, which job titles might be relevant for the position, and any additional keywords (like experience in certain fields of legal practice) that can make or break a candidate.
LinkedIn’s Boolean operators are slightly different than other advanced searches on other sites, so it’s important to construct your searches properly to get the results you want. Use straight quotation marks (") around a word or phrase that must be included – curly quotation marks (“) won’t work. Or try adding the word “NOT” immediately before a search term that you want to exclude from your results. You can also use the word “OR” between search terms to find people who match at least some of your requirements, or the word “AND” to find someone who matches them all. If you need to narrow your search even further, you can put parentheses around multiple terms (more on that in a minute).
- Always type the words “NOT”, “OR”, and “AND” in capital letters, or else they won’t work
- The “+” and “-” operators, and wild-card “*” searches, are not officially supported by LinkedIn
Boolean searches work kind of like math, meaning LinkedIn Recruiter will read certain parts of the search string first. That means that ambiguously worded strings will lead to bad results. To avoid this, it’s important to know how LinkedIn prioritizes search operators, so you can lay out your searches accordingly. The order of precedence for LinkedIn Boolean searches is:
- Quotes
- Parentheses
- NOT
- AND
- OR
This is where parentheses come in. Using them around certain search terms clearly communicates your intentions to LinkedIn’s search engine, so you should use them as often as possible. Let’s look at some examples of how search strings can help you find talent for the most in-demand roles.
By wording your searches as clearly as possible and including all the details that matter to you, you can target your search to help you find the right talent more quickly. And remember, you can home in even further with additional candidate criteria. Just click “All Filters” near the top after running your search to narrow down candidates by location, industry, schools, and more.
Engaging with talent
Once you narrow the field with your tailored Boolean search criteria, it’s essential to engage those handpicked candidates with timely, meaningful interaction. Top talent, especially in niche or specialized fields, will often entertain several offers at once. You need to stand out from other recruiters and organizations while also getting candidates excited about the position and interested in your company. That means commanding their attention, and conveying exactly why your company is such a great place to work, in a clear and compelling way. Here are some tactics that will help you successfully engage with legal talent.
Getting a message from a stranger out of nowhere can be a good thing, especially if they’re offering you an exciting job opportunity. But in-demand legal professionals typically receive dozens of messages from recruiters and firms every week, both on LinkedIn and via email. That’s why it’s vital to make your message catch their eye.
Here are three best practices for connecting with candidates over email:
- Keep your subject lines short and impactful
- The best-performing subject lines often use keywords like “thanks,” “exclusive invitation,” “connect,” “job opportunity,” and “join us.”
- Design your message as a conversation starter
- Candidates don’t respond well to “look at the job and tell me if you’re interested” messages. Instead, start a dialogue about their career path and goals to encourage candidates to engage with the opportunity. It’s OK to ask questions!
- Use a conversational, enthusiastic tone
- Choose words that reflect your own personal voice. People like knowing they’re talking to another person, not a form letter. Infuse your message with your personality and cut through the white noise of typical email outreach. When you express a genuine interest in helping candidates with their professional goals, you’ll be surprised by the response. But bear in mind that legal professionals may be used to a more formal tone than those in other roles, so don’t get carried away.
Emailing or messaging a candidate on LinkedIn is all about establishing a personal connection and piquing their interest in a role. You’re not trying to hire someone on the spot. The goal is to get the conversation started. You can still use a template, but customize it as much as possible to match the candidate’s interests and desires, as well as your own personality and style. Here are a few examples to get you started!
Hi [NAME],
I saw that you’re a graduate of [LAW SCHOOL] and was impressed with your work on [PROJECT] at [LAW FIRM X]. Would you be interested in working with a dedicated team on a similar project at [COMPANY]? Your skills as a litigation specialist and experience drafting patent law briefs would be perfect for the [JOB TITLE] role, and we’d like to build around your unique insights and specialty in those fields.
You’d be joining an enthusiastic, dedicated team with a passion for critical thinking and debate, and I think you’d make an incredible addition to the culture we’ve created here. I’d love to speak with you about the role and your career goals. In the meantime, I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Best,
[YOUR NAME]
Hi [NAME],
Our real estate team couldn’t stop talking about the tenant advocacy case you argued earlier this summer. At [COMPANY], we’re always looking to connect with people who take on cases that challenge their skills and expand their knowledge. We offer that kind of growth at [COMPANY], and we think you’d be a good fit as our next [JOB TITLE]. Here, you’ll find a strong work-life balance, comprehensive benefits and competitive salaries, and continuous opportunities for growth and professional development, because we value our employees and want them to succeed.
Would you be interested in setting up a time to talk about your career goals? I’d love to tell you more about the role and the exciting culture we’ve created at [COMPANY].
Cheers,
[YOUR NAME]
Hi [NAME],
I’m [YOUR NAME], and I’m growing our paralegal team at [COMPANY]. I took a look at the briefs you prepared for the [CASE AT COMPANY X] and I feel like you could be a great fit for our team. We’re working on a lot of different, interesting things – from patent law and antitrust suits to federal civil and criminal cases. I’d love to find a few minutes to chat soon about the [ROLE] position. Let me know if you’re interested!
[YOUR NAME]
Read our additional hiring guides
