We spoke to a Director of Recruiting at an AM Law 100 firm, about how their team uses Pirical to run proactive candidate searches across the firm's US offices at both associate and partner level.

Proactive Candidate Sourcing at Scale

The firm has run proactive associate recruiting for over 12 years and now does partner-level searches too. Pirical helps the team identify the right candidates by practice area, seniority, location, and more.

Evidence to Sharpen Search Criteria

When a hiring partner's search is too narrow to yield enough candidates, the team uses Pirical to show how many people meet the criteria. That snapshot helps start a productive conversation about whether to expand the search.

Seamless Customer Support

Whenever the team has had an issue or needed to bring someone new onto the platform, Pirical's support has been quick and easy. Getting new recruiters trained up and productive is always straightforward.

Having the Right Tools to do More Direct Sourcing and Rely Less on Agencies

The firm has always maintained a preference for direct sourcing. The firm's policy is to use its own resources first before turning to recruitment agencies, using them as "the backup plan".

Proactive associate recruiting has been a focus for the team for over 12 years. In the early days, that meant using LinkedIn to try and find relevant candidates.

As the firm grew, adding offices and entering new geographic markets, the limitations of a general-purpose tool became more apparent. This led the team to explore attorney search databases like Pirical that had filters precise enough to match the complexity of a legal search.

"We've always had a policy that we don't work with agencies right away, we try to use our own resources first. Whether it's a niche practice or a national search, we do our own proactive searches.

An attorney search database makes it so much easier to find people that match what you're looking for.

Director of Recruiting, AM Law 100 firm

Precise Searches Across a National, Multi-Office Footprint

The firm's geographic spread across the US means that the recruitment team needs functional search filters with strong national data coverage.

With Pirical, the workflow is straightforward. A recruitment coordinator receives a new opening, takes the details from the hiring partner, then crafts a search using precise filters like practice area, years of experience, and location. The resulting list becomes the basis for outreach.

Searches can be tailored to match the exact criteria required. The firm has a main market office but also a cluster of suburban offices in the surrounding area. Using the location search radius, the team can set a location and expand outward, meaning candidates based in smaller suburban markets are also captured. Excluding candidates who've made a move in the past two years, or filtering out practice areas they don't want to see in a profile are also useful. This keeps the candidate lists clean and relevant.

Using Pirical to Build Consensus With Hiring Partners

One of the more practical uses of the platform has been as a tool for managing hiring partner expectations. When a search specification is particularly narrow, the team will pull the Pirical results for exactly those criteria and share the snapshot with the hiring partner.

If there are only a handful of people in the market who fit the brief, that's a productive conversation starter, and often the catalyst for expanding the geography, years of experience, or the definition of relevant practice. "Your search is not producing anybody," as the Director puts it. "Let's try to expand."

The team also checks in with hiring partners before starting outreach to understand which firms they'd like to target and which they'd prefer to avoid. That kind of dialogue, grounded in actual market data, keeps the process collaborative and reduces wasted effort.

"Each of our recruitment coordinators use Pirical once they have a new search."

Director of Recruiting, AM Law 100 firm

A Direct Sourcing Model That Shows a Clear Return on Investment

Book a 30-minute Pirical demo to run an example search

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