The Associate Pirate

One of my colleagues at Lateral Link likes to point out that we’re not “headhunters”, we’re “legal search consultants.”

It’s a valid distinction.

The typical “headhunter” approach to legal recruiting is to find a need at Big Firm X and then cold call associates at other firms around town until the right associate for the job (or at least an associate willing to interview for the job) has been found.

At Lateral Link, we tend to flip that. We already have a tremendous talent pool, so our time is focused on making sure our candidates know about each position that they’d be interested in, helping them hone their resumes, preparing them for interviews, and so on. That’s not to say that a traditional recruiter won’t do these things as well, but we have a different emphasis.

But “headhunter” rolls off the tongue more easily than “legal search consultant” or even “legal recruiter.” There’s one blog out there that uses the term “lawcruiter”, but that sounds just a bit too close to “law critter” for my taste.

I prefer the title (or epithet) Associate Pirate. I’ll leave to your imagination whether I like this title . . .

• because of my striking resemblance to Johnny Depp

• because I really like saying “Arr is for resume!” or

• because I believe that a good associate is valuable intellectual capital that is best described as pirated, like intellectual property, not poached, like some egg that might otherwise be sat upon until it hatches. Nobody sits on my candidates.

So far, the term has gotten a strong positive response from recruiters, associates, and law students. And, while not exactly a positive response, there are some law firms out there who think “associate pirate” is a pretty apt description of the profession.

But I should point out that it is, in my case, a tongue-in-cheek term. I don’t cold-call associates. They come to me. So I’m not so much a pirate as a ferryman to better shores. But “associate ferryman” sounds a bit too much like Charon’s deputy, and while I like to send associates to “a better place,” that’s not quite what I have in mind. Plus, ferrymen don’t drink rum.

So, associate pirate it is. Raise your hooks if you’ve got a better name.

This is probably also a good time to remind you that this is my own unofficial blog. Neither this blog nor its name are endorsed by my employer, Lateral Link. As far as they’re concerned, I’m a “Director” and a “legal search consultant.” So if you’re not a fan of associate pirates or anything else you find on this page, please blame me, not Lateral Link.