Law Department Search : Texas Lawyer Recruiting & Attorney Search : Courtney Sapire : Texas Lawyer Jobs

This month’s Corporate Counsel features the magazine’s annual review of top legal departments.  The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. earned top honors this year for its impressive accomplishments on the precipice of a financial industry meltdown and for its highly-developed internal efforts to promote success within the legal department.  

Building a great team, of course, requires hiring great people, but Hartford Financial demonstrates how to push a legal department to truly excel.  And having a legal department that excels has never been more critical than it is now in times of tightening budgets and increased scrutiny on legal expenses.

Key lessons your legal department can learn:

• Hire not just talented staff, but talented staff with complementary strengths.  Each hire should strengthen the overall team and equip the department to be more agile in the face of changes to the business.
• Systematically implement mentoring and training programs.  These are long-term investments that will pay off in recruiting, retention, and productivity.
• Train lawyers within the legal department to hire and manage the relationship with outside counsel.  Legal departments of all sizes need their lawyers to take a consistent, strategic approach to working with outside lawyers, particularly in times of tight budgets.  Even though most in-house counsel previously worked as outside counsel, many would benefit from training to get the most from outside lawyers.   
• Take a hands-on approach to legal work.  Keeping in-house counsel actively involved in the matters they manage encourages a better result.
• Encourage innovation.  Lawyers are not natural innovators, and change often comes slowly.  However, a culture that encourages experimenting with new methods, new approaches, and new perspectives will yield more successes than failures.

You can learn more about Hartford Financial’s successes here:  http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1202430800136.

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The economic slump has caused demand for most transactions lawyers to come to a screeching halt. Deal flow is stagnant, credit is scarce, and many attorneys who specialize in real estate and structured finance are looking for jobs.  

Areas that continue to experience growth – and hiring -- include:

• Renewable energy project development. Attorneys with experience in power project development, especially wind projects, are in high demand. 
• International trade & global compliance. FCPA violations, import/export issues and customs audits keep GCs awake at night. These are mission-critical positions within legal departments.
• E-discovery managers. For many companies that experience a high volume of litigation, these positions are starting to become more prevalent.    Recessions tend to increase litigation, so this position will likely play an important role on corporate legal teams.
• Regulatory practices. Demand is increasing for regulatory lawyers, including those who specialize in energy, environmental, securities and now banking.

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The credit crisis has wreaked havoc on several practice areas, including real estate and finance.   Many lawyers who specialize in these practices are seeking new positions. The problem is that there aren’t many openings for these lawyers right now. Worse, the trend for the last 5-8 years has been to hire “specialists,” those with niche areas of expertise – the round peg for the round hole. 

Here are some tips on how to break into a new area, or “re-tool” your practice:

-          Start building your résumé and your knowledge base.  Attend CLE courses and list them. Research and write an article about a particular area. Better yet, find the experts and ask if you can assist with an article. These people are usually on the speaking circuit and are frequently publishing. They may welcome some assistance on a particular topic. 

-          Try to get contract work in that area. Many companies and firms need attorneys to fill in on a project basis (not just for document reviews).

-          Take on some pro bono work in that area if you can find it.

-          Work for a government agency. Although it may be a temporary financial setback, the hands-on experience can be fantastic.

-          NETWORK.   Despite the trend of hiring lawyers with a track record in a particular area, there are still employers out there who simply want hard-working individuals with bright minds.   They just won’t pay a search firm to find them.

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We have been exclusively engaged by a top-caliber energy boutique firm in Texas to recruit litigation associates.   In addition to lucrative compensation packages, the firm boasts a Fortune 500 client base and a robust pipeline of sophisticated work.  

TRIAL EXPERIENCE: This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to get hands-on trial experience and work directly with the some of the largest and most successful companies in the world.

Additional features:

·         All associates really practice law from day one and will try cases in their first year. 

·         The dockets are fluid. Lawyers open matters, process them, and close them.   With a full pipeline of cases, the work is steady and plentiful.

·         All lawyers maintain multiple open files, which reinforces experience, expedites the learning curve, makes the work more interesting, and teaches attorneys how to manage big dockets. It’s an environment in which lawyers succeed and careers are made.

·         Lawyers work across the table from the best lawyers and firms in the country.

·         Cases are tried in venues throughout Texas and beyond.

Culture & Values:

This firm’s culture stresses interaction and personalized working relationships among its lawyers, a shared passion for achievement on behalf of its clients, and an overall commitment to finding ways to help each other maximize potential as individual lawyers and as an organization.

Energy Industry:

The energy industry has been a mainstay of the firm’s practice. The importance of energy in the new economy has enhanced business opportunities for the firm’s clients, resulting in cutting-edge representations.    

The firm’s strong relationships with key players in this sector have advantageously positioned it to get the work that really counts – these are cases that shape the energy industry and have an impact on a national and global scale.

It’s an exciting time to practice at this firm.

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Finding the right candidate seems like the most difficult part of the recruiting process, but it’s frequently the offer negotiation that proves to be the challenge. 

A successful negotiation, of course, results in a hire. Ideally, the employer extends the offer and (usually after some consideration), the candidate accepts. Both sides are thrilled and eager to begin a future together.  However, the script doesn’t always read that way. Back and forth salary negotiations put the “new job honeymoon” at risk. 

Coming out with a low-ball offer that eventually is accepted by the candidate is not necessarily successful.  Even a low offer that is later accepted risks leaving both sides with less-than-stellar attitudes. Candidates view the offer as a measure of their value to the company.   They are not thinking – at least on the front end -- about legal department budgets, future raises and incentives, and benefits.   

The best outcome can be reached by understanding the candidate’s motivations and priorities. More vacation time might be worth less salary.  Sign-on bonuses are effective and often can be compelling, even if the salary is lower.  

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Global energy company seeks an executive-level attorney with strong energy project development experience for the role of Vice President and Assistant General Counsel. This position reports to the Senior Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary of the parent company and also to the President & CEO of one of its divisions.

The Vice President and Assistant General Counsel is responsible for providing legal counsel to the parent company and its subsidiaries in connection with complex energy-related transactional, project development, asset management and finance matters, with emphasis on wind, biomass and other renewable energy sources. The position will also be responsible for assisting the company on compliance issues, including local, state and federal regulatory requirements and overall compliance with national, state and/or local laws and regulations in North America.

Specific responsibilities include:

- Developing and executing comprehensive legal strategies and solutions to lawfully facilitate the parent company's and its subsidiaries' commercial objectives while mitigating any associated legal risks

- Providing legal advice and support to the renewable energy business unit, in connection with complex energy-related project development, asset management and finance agreements, and ensuring compliance with national, state and/or local laws and regulations in North America

- Advising on North American national, state and local regulations and requirements, with an emphasis on renewable energy

- Assisting with managing litigation, administrative proceedings and policy matters with an emphasis on matters involving the renewable energy unit

- Providing support to the parent company legal function generally in matters not involving renewable energy, including gas, power and LNG matters

In addition to a great work environment with a strong leadership team, the company offers an attractive compensation package that includes both short and long-term incentives, as well as an annual perquisite allowance.

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Global company headquartered in Houston seeks an executive-level attorney for the role of Associate General Counsel - Commercial. This officer-level position reports to the Senior Vice President and General Counsel and leads a team of three attorneys.

The Associate General Counsel heads the Commercial Section of the Law Department, which is responsible for day-to-day legal advice on business matters for the company's various operating divisions, functional departments and international operations. The AGC functions as a quasi-general counsel for one or more operating divisions with direct responsibility for assisting the applicable division executives and staff. In that capacity, the AGC manages all aspects of that division's legal needs, excluding IP, labor & employment, tax, environmental and litigation, all of which are handled by other attorneys at the company.

The Commercial Section has primary responsibility for providing legal support for issues related to commercial contracts, supplier relationships, distribution/rep relations & termination, FTC regulations, IT licenses and agreements, real estate, secured transactions, UCC, etc. 

Ideal experience would include a strong finance or accounting background and familiarity with corporate compliance, including customs, export control, anti-boycott and other international trade issues, FCPA, and government contracting.

This position will be a key part of the management of the law department and will drive certain law department initiatives, including the establishment of law department policies and developing corporate-wide compliance assurance.

Compensation:

The company is offering an outstanding compensation package for this role that includes cash and equity.

Required Experience: 

•             15+ years of experience, including prior law department management experience 

•             Strong commercial transactions and international experience

•             Strong finance or accounting background

•             Proven ability to work as part of a cross-functional team in overall project management, including the ability to work within established corporate risk tolerance levels.

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My clients frequently consult me on law department benchmarking as an initial step in the hiring process. According to the 2006 Altman Weil/Lexis Nexis Law Department Metrics Benchmarking Survey (conducted and published annually), most legal departments are staffed in accordance with lawyers per total revenues. Averages are as follows:

• 3.49 lawyers per billion in revenues
• 1 paralegal per billion in revenues (or .3 paralegals per lawyer)
• 2 administrative assistants per billion in revenues

According to the survey, average internal costs per lawyer were $333,000. In my experience, the balance tips in favor of adding an additional lawyer to the department when outside counsel costs in a particular area exceed $400,000. However, certain industries have much higher headcount needs, such as electrical and chemical manufacturing. See also the Law.com In-House Counsel section for additional information.

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For an industry that runs on natural resources, it’s the human component that is becoming its newest challenge. The energy sector of the economy is more active than at any other time in the last 20 years. However, the industry has not only failed to attract new graduates, but it has lost seasoned professionals. 

Despite periodic spectacular earnings over the last 20 years, the oil and gas attorney workforce has been declining steadily for almost 20 years. The industry slump of the 1980’s was unusually severe and left long-lasting scars. Moreover, the “dirty industry” image has not done much in the past to attract people to the profession. Many recall the oil-soaked birds and dead otters on the beach following the Exxon-Valdez spill. Others simply viewed the industry as a slow-growth, old economy behemoth. 

Like other oil and gas professionals, lawyers left the industry for less cyclical sectors of the economy. However, unlike other industries affected by the economic downturn, the energy industry recovery did not bring these professionals back, nor were they replaced with new talent.  And the high tech boom of the late 1990’s provided refuge for the best and brightest. 

Adding to the problem, the average age in the oil and gas industry workforce is 49 – among the oldest of any sector in the U.S. economy. According to Martindale Hubbell, 85% of the lawyers who specialize in oil and gas law have more than 10 years of experience. In addition, a Labor Department study found that more than 65% of workers in the oil and gas industry are between the ages of 35 and 54, while only a “small” percentage are in their twenties. 

With the retirement wave approaching and global demand at record levels, energy industry legal departments are headed for a human resource crisis.  

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Courtney Sapire, Esq., SPHR

President, Sapire Search Group

csapire@sapiresearch.com

866.413.2868     toll free

866.793.8007     fax

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Courtney Sapire is a Texas-based legal and executive search consultant specializing in the recruitment of lawyers for corporate law departments. With experience as a private practice attorney and as a corporate human resources director, Courtney brings the ideal blend of industry knowledge and functional expertise to her search consulting practice.

Courtney received her B.B.A. in finance in 1989 from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was on the Dean's List of Academic Excellence. In 1992, she received her J.D. from the Southern Methodist University School of Law and was published in the SMU Law Review. As an attorney in private practice, Courtney specialized in corporate, real estate and energy transactions. She later held positions as the Director of Human Resources and Recruiting for two technology companies. Courtney serves as a member of Board of Directors of The National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC), an organization that represents the legal search profession and is committed to promoting ethical standards among its members. Courtney also maintains a Senior Human Resources Professional Certification, and is a member of the Energy Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Texas, the Society for Human Resource Management, the Women?s Energy Network of Houston, and the National Association of Women Lawyers.

Prior to focusing her search career on attorneys and related professionals, Courtney managed senior-level searches in a variety of functional areas including executive management, marketing, sales, engineering and technical operations. In the legal search domain, Courtney built a successful career as one of the top in-house recruiters in Texas. In addition, she launched a national energy practice as an attorney search consultant with a large Texas-based search firm. Courtney has successfully completed national searches for companies across the country from the general counsel to staff attorney level.

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