Manager of Attorney Recruiting

Bass, Berry & Sims; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 100,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Bass, Berry & Sims is seeking a Manager of Attorney Recruiting to advance lateral recruiting and market expansion. The role requires experience identifying and engaging top legal talent and managing a fast-moving pipeline.

You will build relationships across the legal market and lead candidate sourcing, interviews, and onboarding coordination.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of legal recruiting experience.
• Experience executing lateral associate recruiting strategies with candidate sourcing and outreach.
• Knowledge of NALP Principles and ethics in legal recruiting preferred.
• Strong analytical and reporting skills; ability to translate data into insights.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with clients, candidates and stakeholders.
• Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.

Responsibilities

• Execute lateral associate recruiting strategy in partnership with the Director of Attorney Recruiting.
• Lead lateral recruiting processes ensuring efficiency and alignment with firm priorities.
• Conduct initial candidate interviews and assessments for viability and fit.
• Manage candidate relationships through recruiting lifecycle with timely communication.
• Maintain active pipelines, track status, and provide updates to stakeholders.
• Develop relationships in the legal market to increase firm opportunities and culture awareness.
• Lead recruiting analytics, reporting, and identify bottlenecks to improve outcomes.
• Collaborate with external recruiters and internal teams to ensure process adherence.

Skills

Legal recruiting

Candidate sourcing

Relationship building

Data analytics

Tools

FloRecruit

Firm Prospects

LinkedIn Recruiter

Smartsheet

Job description

The Manager of Attorney Recruiting plays a critical role in advancing the firm’s lateral recruiting strategy and market expansion priorities. This position requires attorney recruiting experience, a proven ability to identify and engage top talent, and the agility to manage a complex, fast-moving pipeline. Serving as a visible ambassador for the firm, the Manager will build relationships across the legal market, cultivate talent pipelines, and strengthen the firm’s reputation as an employer of choice. The role focuses primarily on lateral associates, practice group attorneys, and contract attorneys and supports entry-level, partner, and counsel recruiting initiatives as needed. The Manager will report to the Director of Attorney Recruiting.

Key responsibilities:

• Execute the lateral associate recruiting strategy in partnership with the Director of Attorney Recruiting, including candidate sourcing, direct outreach, relationship building and pipeline development.
• Lead lateral recruiting processes, ensuring recruiting processes are organized, efficient, consistent and aligned with firm priorities.
• Lead lateral candidate initial assessment process, including review of applications submitted by candidates and through external legal recruiters. Conduct initial interviews of candidates both to assess their viability and to promote the firm.
• Manage lateral associate candidate relationships throughout the recruiting lifecycle, ensuring timely communication, professional follow-up and a seamless candidate experience.
• Manage associate recruiting pipelines, including candidate status, outreach activity, interview progress, feedback, offers, onboarding handoff and search updates.
• Maintain a strong presence in the legal talent market by developing relationships with attorneys, professional organizations, and other key talent sources to increase awareness of the firm's opportunities and culture.
• Monitor attorney movement, market trends, competitor activity and emerging talent pools to identify opportunities and generate recruiting leads. Prepare high-quality written materials, including candidate profiles, interview briefs, feedback summaries, offer-related materials, search updates, and candidate-facing communications.
• Manage relationships with external legal recruiters when engaged, ensuring timely communication, consistent process adherence and alignment with firm hiring needs.
• Lead recruiting analytics and reporting, including pipeline activity, candidate flow, search status, acceptance rates, hiring outcomes, and other key recruiting metrics. Analyze recruiting data to identify trends, bottlenecks and opportunities to improve process efficiency, candidate experience and hiring outcomes.
• Lead process improvement and recruiting technology initiatives, including enhancements to recruiting systems, workflows, templates, checklists, dashboards and candidate tracking tools.
• Partner with the Lateral Recruiting Coordinator to ensure accurate applicant tracking system records, consistent candidate data and timely recruiting reports.
• Partner with the Lateral Recruiting Coordinator on lateral search coordination, job posting management, interview scheduling and feedback collection, travel and expense coordination, offer support and onboarding support.
• As needed, assist with entry-level recruiting, partner and counsel recruiting and market expansion initiatives.
• Collaborate across departments, including Professional Development, Inclusion & Engagement, Human Resources, Conflicts and New Business Intake, Finance, Marketing and General Counsel, to support smooth workflows and high-quality candidate experiences.
• Monitor legal recruiting market trends, compensation developments, NALP-related issues and laws or regulations that may affect attorney recruiting, including pay transparency requirements.

Qualifications & Experience:

• A J.D. and legal practice experience is not required but would be a plus.
• 5+ years of experience in legal recruiting.
• Strong understanding of attorney recruitment and the nuances of attracting and hiring lawyers across practice groups and career stages.
• Experience executing lateral associate recruiting strategies, including candidate sourcing, direct outreach, relationship building and candidate management.
• Experience working with external legal recruiters.
• Knowledge of the NALP Principles, the NALSC Code of Ethics, and familiarity with legal recruiting best practices preferred.
• Strong analytical and reporting skills, including the ability to track recruiting metrics, interpret data, build dashboards and translate data into practical insights.
• Exceptional attention to detail, with the ability to manage complex information and maintain high standards of accuracy.
• Strong client-service orientation, diplomacy and ability to work productively with attorneys, firm leadership, candidates, recruiters, and business professionals.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, including the ability to represent the firm professionally with candidates and internal stakeholders.
• Sound professional judgment, discretion and ability to manage sensitive and confidential information.
• Strong networking abilities and a genuine interest in building professional relationships within the legal community.
• Strong organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities, competing deadlines and a high volume of candidate activity.
• High level of initiative, ownership and follow-through, with the ability to work independently while collaborating effectively with others.
• Experience with FloRecruit, Firm Prospects, LinkedIn Recruiter, Smartsheet and other recruiting or applicant tracking tools is preferred.
• Strong work ethic and flexibility to meet the demands of the position, including working in the evenings and traveling as needed.

Position can be located in Chicago, Illinois, or Nashville, TN