Lex Machina hosted a webcast called “Using Legal Analytics for Lateral Hiring” on August 24, 2021. The webcast featured guest speakers Ojen Sirin (Director of Strategic Talent Management at Sullivan & Worcester) and Raffaele V. Murdocca (Director of Attorney Recruiting at Fisher & Phillips), in conversation with Neil Magenheim, Director of Client Relations at Lex Machina.
They discussed how to leverage Lex Machina to find and evaluate the best candidates and hire the best possible talent, an especially important consideration now that the market is becoming increasingly active and competitive. They covered topics including:
- Identifying the right candidates
- Evaluating real experience with cases, judges, venues, parties
- Reviewing client history of the candidate
- Verifying their true performance
- Comparing claims with reality
“Firms responded [to the pandemic] in different ways, but the positive to all this is that the end of 2020 and 2021 has been booming across the legal industry, which has been quite remarkable to see,” observed Ojen Sirin. “[It’s] a testament to the fact that I think law firms are finally starting to be a little bit more innovative and open to change, and really starting to understand that what’s happening in corporations should be mimicked in law firms as well. . . I think it’s changed the law firm world forever.”
“We’ve done a tremendous amount of advice and counsel work, both on the front end with the employees and coming into the office and how to deal with things,” agreed Raffaele Murdocca. “We actually gained over 6,000 clients because of COVID . . . We cannot hire enough associates or bring in enough partners in that marketplace.”
“[Lex Machina] is incredible because it’s not like you’re starting from scratch. You get to see which client specific attorneys are working with at specific firms,” noted Raffaele. “And then also, you could see what the cases are . . . what type of work they actually work on, and that may be a specific practice area we may be interested in . . . There are a number of ways we can use this data to help us as a starting point in contacting folks.”
“This is super helpful from the internal business development perspective,” agreed Ojen, “[such as] ‘what are we doing internally with this area and this trend?’ And then to the extent we don’t have the internal capabilities in this area, then it shapes our strategic hiring. I think this is great.”
Watch a recording of the webcast or read the transcript.