Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / Episode 352 | Your Next Great Associate Hire Isn't Applying — Here's How to Find Her Anyway

Transcript

Episode 352 | Your Next Great Associate Hire Isn't Applying — Here's How to Find Her Anyway · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:01
  Intro: Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more. Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams.
• 0:47
  Now here's Devina.
• 0:49
  Davina: Welcome back to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Devina Frederick, founder of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, where we help women law firm owners build firms that generate multi 7 figure revenue and operate smoothly without your constant involvement in the daily details. Today's episode is for every firm owner who has posted a job listing for an associate attorney, watched the applications trickle in, and felt her stomach sink at what showed up in her inbox. If that's you, here's the truth. Your next great hire is not applying to your job posting.
• 1:25
  She's not scrolling job boards at all. She's busy doing excellent work somewhere else. And the only way you find her is by building a recruiting network that attracts her to you. Let's start with why the traditional approach doesn't work for attorney hiring because until you understand the problem, the solution won't make sense. When you post a job on Indeed or ZipRecruiter, you're fishing in a pond stocked with two kinds of candidates.
• 1:53
  The first kind is genuinely searching because they're unemployed, underemployed, or desperate to leave a bad situation. Some of those candidates are excellent, but many are market because something didn't work out elsewhere. The second kind is barely looking at all. They clicked apply on 10 postings in one sitting without reading any of them closely. Meanwhile, your ideal candidate, the Associate Attorney who is sharp, reliable, and ambitious, isn't in that pond.
• 2:23
  She is employed, she is respected, she is not unhappy enough to go searching, but she is also not so entrenched that she wouldn't consider a better opportunity if the right one found her. When you build a recruiting network instead of simply posting on a job board and hoping the right people happen to see your firm's open position, you are more likely to attract a right fit candidate. Your goal is to build enough visibility and enough trusted relationships that when the right person becomes available or becomes open to a conversation, you're the first call. This isn't a one time project you complete before you need to hire. It's infrastructure.
• 3:00
  Firms that never struggled to hire didn't get lucky. They built the pipeline months or years before they needed it, and they kept building it even when they weren't hiring at all. With that framing in place, let's talk about three places you can begin building that pipeline: your professional and academic community, your own team and their networks, and your visible presence online. The first place to build your recruiting network is inside the legal profession itself through bar associations, law schools, and the attorneys you already know. Start with your local and state bar associations.
• 3:36
  Most firm owners join a bar association for CLE credit and stop there. That's a missed opportunity. Section meetings, young lawyer division events, and committee work put you in a room with attorneys at every career stage, including associates who are unhappy where they are, and judgesclerks who are a year from finishing a clerkship and starting to think about where they land next. You don't attend these events to recruit on the spot. You attend to become a known, respected presence in your practice area.
• 4:09
  When you're the attorney other lawyers think of as sharp, fair, and someone who runs a well regarded firm, you become the person a departing associate calls before she ever updates her resume. Reputation inside the bar is one of the most underused recruiting assets a firm owner has. Law schools are the second piece. If there is a law school in your region, build a relationship with the Career Services Office and, if your caseload allows it, with a professor or two in your practice area. Career Services offices are constantly looking for firms willing to speak on panels, judge moot court, or take on a summer clerk.
• 4:48
  Each of those touchpoints puts your firm's name in front of students before they graduate. And it provides a low stakes way to evaluate talent over months instead of in one interview. A summer clerk you like working with is a far safer hire than a stranger who interviewed well. If a formal clerkship program feels like too much right now, even guest lecturing once a semester or sitting on an alumni panel keeps your firm visible to the pipeline of new attorneys entering your market every year. Often, the most powerful network is your own network of attorneys, opposing counsel you've respected across a hard fought case, attorneys you refer work to or who refer work to you, former colleagues from your own associate years.
• 5:33
  These are people who already know your reputation and have seen how you practice law. A direct conversation, something as simple as, I'm looking to add an associate in the next few months. Do you know anyone good who might be open to a change? Goes further than almost anything else on this list because it comes with built in trust on both sides. The common thread across all three of these relationships is patience.
• 5:57
  None of them produce a hire in a week. They produce a reservoir of goodwill and visibility that pays off exactly when you need it, which is why the firms that never scramble to hire are the ones who never stopped doing this, even in months when they weren't hiring. The second place to build your recruiting network is inside your own firm through the people already working for you and the alumni of your own team. Your current attorneys and staff have networks of their own, and those networks are an underused resource. A well structured referral incentive changes that.
• 6:31
  When an employee refers someone who's hired and stays for a defined period, typically ninety days or six months, you pay a meaningful bonus. The number needs to be significant enough that your team thinks about it and mentions your openings when they run into former classmates or colleagues. A token $200 bonus won't move anyone to act. A bonus in the $1,000 $2,500 range for an attorney hire, paid out after the new hire proves reliable, gets attention. Here's why this works well for attorney hiring specifically.
• 7:08
  Your associates went to law school with other people who are now practicing law somewhere else. They clerked with people. They know who was sharp in their study group and who they trust to handle a client relationship. That's exactly the kind of insider knowledge a job posting can never replicate, and it costs you a bonus instead of months of open role productivity loss. The second piece of this tactic is your alumni network, meaning attorneys and staff who worked for you in the past and left on good terms.
• 7:40
  Too many firm owners treat a departing employee as a closed chapter. That's a mistake in most cases. Someone who left for a clerkship, moved for a spouse's job, or went in house still knows your firm, still has opinions about whether it's a good place to work, and still has a network of his or her own, staying in light touch, a holiday card, a congratulations message when you see a career update on LinkedIn, an occasional check-in keeps you on her radar as someone worth recommending to a friend who's looking or worth returning to herself down the road. If you had a summer clerk or law clerk who impressed you, but the timing didn't work out for a full time offer, that person belongs on this list too. Keep a simple list, even something as basic as a spreadsheet, of every attorney and clerk who's passed through your firm and left in good standing.
• 8:33
  Revisit it before every hiring cycle. It's often the fastest source of a warm lead you already have. The third place to build your recruiting network is your visible, ongoing presence on LinkedIn maybe in Facebook groups, on Instagram, or even TikTok and the informal talent pipeline that presence creates over time. This may require a mindset shift. Most firm owners only post about hiring when they have an open role, and then they wonder why engagement is low.
• 9:03
  The attorneys you want aren't scanning LinkedIn for job posts. They're scrolling their feed the way everyone does. And what catches their attention is a firm that looks like a genuinely good place to work consistently over time, whether it's hiring at that exact moment or not. That means the content that builds your pipeline isn't a job posting it's a photo from your firm's team lunch, a short post celebrating an associate's case win, a note about a professional development opportunity you sent someone to, a glimpse of your firm's culture and values in action. None of it says we're hiring, and all of it plants a seed in the mind of an attorney who sees it.
• 9:48
  This looks like a firm I'd want to work for if the timing were ever right. When you do have a role open, that seed is what makes the difference. An associate who's followed your firm's post for a year and already has a positive impression of your culture is far more likely to reach out or respond warmly when you reach out to her than a stranger cold applying to a listing. This same principle extends beyond social media into any professional community you're part of, whether that's a legal industry Slack group, a mastermind, a niche practice area association, or a regional Women in Law group. Show up consistently.
• 10:24
  Be generous with advice and connections. Become known as someone worth working for and worth knowing. Recruiting from a community you've genuinely contributed to looks completely different from recruiting cold because the trust is already built before you ever make an ask. This informal pipeline is the running unofficial list in your head, or better yet on paper, of every attorney you've crossed paths with who impressed you, whether at a bar event, on a case, in a social media comment thread, or through a mutual connection. When a role opens, you're not starting from zero.
• 11:02
  You're reaching out to three or four people you already have a read on, and that shrinks your time to hire dramatically. Here's the caveat. None of these tactics work if you only think about recruiting the week you decide to hire. Bar association relationships, law school connections, employee referrals, alumni goodwill, and a consistent social media presence are all long game investments. The firms that never struggle to fill an attorney role are the firms whose owners treated recruiting as an ongoing part of running the business, not a fire drill that starts the day someone gives notice.
• 11:37
  Let me share two contrasting examples to illustrate what I mean. Law firm owner a is always on social media, posting in Facebook groups, some she started, some groups with only other attorneys, and some local community groups, and showing up consistently on Instagram and TikTok as well. Everyone feels like they know her even if they've never met her in person because she shares many aspects of her life, including her frequent travels, updates on her kids' lives as they grow, and her thought leadership on legal issues and growing a business. She even has her own podcast focused on her practice area and targeted to other legal professionals in her state. She does this not because she must, but because she loves engaging with colleagues, friends, and others in this way.
• 12:26
  Even when she's home sitting on her couch, something she rarely does, she's still out and about in her virtual community. When it's time for her to hire, she turns first to her social network of other attorneys, professionals, and friends. She still posts a job ad listing the position just to broaden her options, but her most reliable recruiting method is reaching out to her network for their recommendations. Over time, she's cultivated a really solid team of reliable, competent attorneys, ones she can trust to keep her firm operating smoothly even in her absence, which is fairly frequent since she loves to travel the world. Law firm owner B, on the other hand, is still a solo and is just trying to stay ahead of the work.
• 13:12
  She's so buried under the caseload that she needed help yesterday. Alas, that doesn't leave much time for her to engage with the rest of the world on a regular, consistent basis, either in person or through social media. When she is on social media late at night, mindlessly scrolling because she's too wired to sleep and too burned out to work, she's lurking, not really engaging. Nobody but the other late night commenters even know she's there. Her workload also makes it difficult to find the time to create a job ad that will stand out from the crowd and entice anyone, much less the right fit person, to join her team.
• 13:50
  The thought of posting it and then collecting and reviewing resumes feels overwhelming. She can't even think about the chore of interviewing because, honestly, when will she even find the time? Which of these two law firm owners do you relate to the most? Does hiring an associate feel too hard to even think about or like the right person is out there just waiting for you to tap them on the shoulder? Does it feel doable or like a huge hassle likely to yield little results?
• 14:18
  If you own a small law firm and you've been trying to hire an associate for a while now, with little to no luck, know that you are not alone. The unemployment rate in the legal field right now is about one percent. More graduates are leaving law school and starting their own firms simply because they can. Others are being enticed to work in big law or with mid sized firms because they seem like a safer bet, or at least they offer good benefits. If you take one thing from this episode, let it be this.
• 14:50
  The best time to start building your network was probably years ago. The second best time is now. Join the Alumni Association this month, not the month you're desperately trying to fill a seat. Set up the referral bonus now so it's already in place when the right person crosses your team's path. Post the team photo today, not the job listing tomorrow.
• 15:13
  Try to be a little more visible and let people get to know you and your firm over time. By the time you need to hire, you'll be in a much better position and your next great hire finds you exactly the way she should through someone he or she already trusts. Building a recruiting network like this is exactly the kind of system we help our clients put in place inside Wealthy Woman Lawyer Mastery. Hiring the right attorneys is one of the biggest levers in scaling a law firm past what you can personally handle, and it's one of the systems most firm owners never get proper support building because no one ever teaches you how. If you're a woman law firm owner ready to build a firm that operates smoothly even in your absence, I invite you to apply to work with us at Wealthy Woman Lawyer.
• 16:02
  Visit wealthywomanlawyer.com, click on the apply button at the top of the page, complete our short practice growth needs assessment, and schedule an appointment with us. Thanks for listening to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm Davina Frederick, and I'll see you next time.
• 16:16
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.