This month marks 25 years since I left the practice of law and pivoted in my career to become a legal recruiter. For the past 18 of those years, I’ve had the opportunity to focus on recruiting at Sand Search Partners and have been able to practice exactly as I believe recruiting should be practiced: with honesty and integrity and with a core belief that by partnering with great clients and candidates, we all can win (a far cry from my days as a litigator, where it seemed that – no matter the outcome - every litigant lost).
It’s hard not to pause and reflect on just how much this business (and this market) has changed. Minneapolis, in particular, has seen multiple cycles of boom and bust for law firms, faced unprecedented periods of consolidation and nationalization, has seen significant practice group evolutions, and generational shifts that would have been hard to imagine in the late 1990s. Throw in the 9/11 terrorist attack, a global financial crisis and a pandemic and it makes for a pretty wild ride.
But for 25 years, we have continued to find a way to serve the legal community.
Some of the changes of this industry are almost comical in hindsight. Early in my career, candidate submissions were sent by fax machine and when “plain paper” faxes arrived, it felt like a technological breakthrough. We maintained walls of file cabinets filled with resumes, meticulously labeled and cross-referenced. Desks were stacked high with paper resumes, phone systems were immobile and we were just learning what a “blog” was (and wondering if anyone actually read those things). Today, an entire recruiting operation fits on a laptop that slides easily into a briefcase, with tools that allow us to search, analyze, and communicate at a speed that once would have seemed unrealistic just a quarter century ago.
And yet, for all the change, so much has stayed exactly the same. The core of this profession is still about judgment, discretion, timing, and trust. It’s about being a true partner to law firms and in-house corporate legal departments, deeply understanding lawyers, and helping the right people find each other at the right moment. Technology has transformed how we do the work - but not why we do it.
As I look forward to the future, I’m grateful for the clients and candidates who have trusted me and Sand Search over the past 25 years, and I’m optimistic about what comes next. The tools will keep changing. The commitment to the industry will not.
Happy new year, everyone!