Your Next Growth Hire Is Already a Partner Somewhere Else
By Stijn van Oirschot ยท
Firms chase growth through pitches and marketing spend while overlooking their highest-leverage channel. Lateral recruiting is business development, if you treat it that way.
Law firms spend enormous energy chasing growth. They invest in pitches, marketing, events, and content, all aimed at building relationships from a standing start. Meanwhile the single most effective growth move available to them is often treated as a human resources task, handled in a different building by people who never speak to the marketing team.
That move is lateral hiring. Recruiting the right partner is the most effective form of business development a firm can do, and most firms squander the opportunity because they refuse to see it that way.
What you are really buying is trust
Strip business development down to its essence and it comes to one word: trust. Clients instruct lawyers they trust. Trust takes years to build, which is what makes most growth slow. A lateral partner arrives with that trust already built, carried in relationships that took a decade or more to earn. On day one, the firm has access to clients it could not previously reach. No campaign produces that.
This is why a good lateral hire outperforms almost any marketing investment of comparable cost. The firm is not buying a person. It is buying pre-built trust, and the work that trust unlocks.
A shared contact is not a reason to hire
The trap is hiring for the wrong reason. A partner whose path happens to cross an old colleague is a connection point, and a connection point is not, by itself, a case for a hire. The case appears when the partner is a force multiplier: someone who opens a target practice area, a new geography, or an industry niche, and brings a shared client whose work the firm could not previously win because of conflicts or capability gaps.
The discipline is to be honest about which one you are looking at. A warm relationship feels like a reason. A force multiplier is a reason. Firms that confuse the two end up paying premium guarantees for partners who never move the needle.
The value lost between marketing and recruiting
Here is where most firms leave money on the table. Marketing and recruiting operate as separate worlds. The marketing team tells the firm's story to clients. The recruiting team tells a version of it to candidates. The two almost never compare notes. The result is significant value sitting unclaimed inside the firm, available the moment those teams begin to share what they each know.
A lateral hire is a marketing event, a business development event, and a brand event all at once. The firm's story is what attracts the partner, what reassures their clients about the move, and what the market reads into the hire. When recruiting and marketing are joined up, every lateral hire compounds the firm's positioning. When they are siloed, each hire is a transaction that ends the day the contract is signed.
Distinction is the new differentiation
None of this works if the firm has nothing distinctive to say. In a market where most firms describe themselves in identical language, differentiation is no longer enough. Distinction is the bar now: being able to say, truthfully, that you are the only firm that does a particular thing in a particular way. A distinct firm attracts the laterals worth having, because ambitious partners want to join somewhere with a clear identity, and it commands a premium with clients for the same reason.
This matters more as artificial intelligence reshapes legal economics. Clients are using these tools to cut routine legal spend substantially, and they will keep doing so. What they still pay a premium for is genuine distinction and the security of a trusted firm's sign-off. A firm with a sharp, defensible story is far better placed to win the laterals and the clients who value that story.
The harder truth about leadership
There is an uncomfortable reason firms struggle with all of this. Partners are trained to be excellent lawyers, which is not the same as being trained to be good business people. Decisions about which laterals to pursue, how to integrate them, and how to tell a distinctive story are commercial decisions, and they are often made by people who were never given the chance to develop commercial judgement.
That judgement can be built. It is the reason we run The Law Firm Growth Game, a business simulation in which partners make real decisions about investment, hiring, and positioning and live with the results. A partnership that has felt, even in a simulation, how a costly hire either compounds or drains the firm tends to approach the real decision with far more discipline. (Integrating a lateral is its own challenge, related to the cultural work we describe in partner alignment.)
Recruiting is a growth strategy, so resource it like one
There are only a few ways a firm grows: organically, by developing its own people; through large mergers and acquisitions; or intentionally, one or two partners at a time. The third route is the most controllable and the most overlooked, and it only works when the firm treats lateral hiring as the business development discipline it is, joins recruiting to marketing, and knows exactly what distinctive story it is selling.
If you want to turn lateral hiring into a genuine growth engine rather than a recruitment exercise, book a conversation with us.
Common questions
Why is lateral hiring a form of business development?
Because what you are really acquiring is trust. A lateral partner arrives with client relationships that took years to build, giving the firm immediate access to work it could not otherwise reach. No marketing campaign delivers that.
What is the difference between a connection point and a force multiplier in lateral hiring?
A connection point is a partner who simply shares a contact with the firm. A force multiplier opens a new practice area, geography, or industry and brings a client whose work the firm could not previously win. Only the second is a sound reason to hire.
How should marketing and recruiting work together on lateral hires?
They should share the firm's story and compare notes on every hire. A lateral move is simultaneously a recruiting, marketing, and brand event. Joining the two functions means each hire strengthens the firm's positioning rather than ending as a transaction.
What does distinction mean for a law firm?
Distinction is the ability to say truthfully that you are the only firm doing a particular thing in a particular way. In a crowded market, ordinary differentiation is no longer enough to attract the best laterals or command a premium with clients.
How is artificial intelligence affecting law firm fees?
Clients are using artificial intelligence to reduce routine legal spend significantly. What they still pay a premium for is genuine distinction and the assurance of a trusted firm's judgement, which makes a sharp firm identity more valuable, not less.
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