When I was a twenty-four year old naval officer after my sea tour, I served as a Deming management instructor and leadership trainer in Norfolk, Virginia teaching a new initiative called ‘Total Quality Management’ that the Navy renamed to ‘Total Quality Leadership.’  This program was based on the work of  W. Edwards Deming.  Deming was an American management consultant who pioneered the quality movement and stimulated a major economic impact in the Japanese economy by showing the Japanese how to manage their manufacturing output in their recovery from the second world war.  In the 1980’s, his revolutionary ideas came to America, and the rest is history.

This personal career experience shaped the way I viewed the world, and shaped the way I taught recruiting through my other business, a recruiter training company (over 3500 search firms have invested in my recruiting tools).

In looking at how law firms recruit and integrate prospective lateral candidates, I find that there is a need for a clearly defined process which is communicated to those involved internally in the process.  As a result, I am offering a free process flow chart tool to law firms to help them improve their effectiveness in recruiting and placing laterals.  You can download this pdf tool here: Proposed Client Process.  (once you open it in a new browser you can save it as a pdf for your own internal use)

This tool can be a talking point during management meetings among hiring partners, practice group leaders, managing partners, and recruiting departments.  I would recommend using it as a baseline in shaping your internal protocols.  As Deming said, anything that is measured can be improved.  By using ’statistical process control’, which are the tools of measuring process, we can make improvements.  I hope that this flow chart helps your firm in smoothing out the bumps and rough spots in your internal lateral recruiting process.