Mitigating Risks in Legal Recruitment
Legal recruitment poses unique challenges and risks. Here, we offer strategies for minimizing these risks, from conducting thorough background checks to ensuring alignment with your firm’s culture and values. Here’s how to protect your firm from potential pitfalls in the hiring process.
Background Checks
When hiring new attorneys, it can be tempting to rely on the thorough background checks performed by state bar associations. This step can be especially alluring to attorneys, who often have vivid memories of the hours of work it took to track down all the information the state bar reviewed for their own background check.
An updated background check, however, is a must. A thorough background check:
- Provides up-to-date information about candidates,
- Addresses any gaps in required state bar disclosures,
- Offers the opportunity to examine educational histories, credit scores, and other information that may be relevant to the organization’s practice areas.
As always, refer to state and federal requirements before conducting background checks.
Reviewing Past Work
A background check can provide basic information on a candidate’s past work, including educational attainment and publications. To mitigate risks, however, it’s also wise to delve into a candidate’s past work.
Learn about the candidate’s past efforts with other employers through reference checks. A staffing partner who specializes in placing legal candidates can handle these checks if needed.
For candidates with past or pending publications, ask for copies of these publications. Even a quick review of sources or a scan for plagiarism can help ensure you’re hiring a candidate whose work is their own.
Alignment with Firm Culture and Values
Finally, screening candidates for alignment with a firm’s culture, values, and work approach is a must. Even the best legal talent will struggle in a work environment that is at odds with their values or the way they do their best work. Focus on culture and values during the interview with questions like:
- What is most important to you about your work?
- Describe a case in which you were proud of your efforts. What did you accomplish? Why were you proud of that?
- Tell us about a place you worked that felt like a poor fit. What didn’t work about it for you?
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