Building a Legal Department in a Metrics-Driven World: A Guide to Finding the Best Candidates for the Legal Departments of the Future

In-house legal departments will continue to experience pressure to meet or exceed performance standards across the full spectrum of the legal services they provide. This can only be accomplished if legal managers and their HR colleagues can identify and recruit high quality lawyers who will succeed in a metrics-driven environment. Traditional reliance on academic credentials and “brand name” law firm training is insufficient. Companies will need to develop tools to identify candidates with business literacy, efficient work habits, business-friendly communication skills, well developed risk assessment analytics, and practical judgment. Identifying such candidates requires a combination of new screening techniques and a substantially better use of the traditional interview process. Hiring mistakes are costly, time consuming, and damaging to a legal department’s reputation within the company. Fortunately, several resources are at hand, from psycho-metric testing to effective interview engagements, that greatly enhance the prospects of successful recruiting.