What’s next for the legal market? – An Interview with Tim Batchelor

Graham:

What we’re trying to get from this interview is an overview of how you use ATLAS and how the market has been for you over the last year. How you think it will go over the next 12 months, how it’s changed the way you work and obviously how you use ATLAS to position yourself strategically in the market and use it to make money.

Tim:

Well, thank goodness for your product is all I can say, my god, doesn’t it make life easier!

Graham:

Yeah, we’ve loved you, Tim, from the off. To be honest, it’s just your enthusiasm for ATLAS and the way you use it. If I could bottle your infectious attitude towards ATLAS and why firms should use it, I would. Obviously, I’m in sales, and I’m trying to sell it, but I’m always amazed that people don’t even want to take a look at it. Just why wouldn’t you take half an hour? Why wouldn’t you want to look at it and run some searches on your current roles?

Tim:

Well, in the past, I don’t know whether you know this but, I was in St. Paul’s and Liverpool Street and around 2007 to 2013, as a headhunter. I was working originally exclusively in Pensions Law, and we had to map the entire market within that Practice Area. Even imagining trying to do that across multiple practice areas, is well, no way. ATLAS speeds things up fantastically and gets me in front of people.

Graham:

Well, I mean, Pensions Law will take quite a while to do anyway, but it’s finding out who actually does it. You can search on LinkedIn, and you can go to the Law Society and use the SRA. You can do all those things. We’ve just put it all in one place where you can do a quick search and focus on making money speaking to lawyers, rather than mapping markets all day. So for the consultant to do his job is tough going anyway.

Elizabeth:

So the first question is, how is the market currently for you? So in regards to how has it been over the last 12 months? Has it been different? Predictions for the next 12 months for the industry and for you?

Tim:

Okay, well, I’ll tell you about the last 12 months. Unsurprisingly, it’s been challenging. Within recruitment, law firms were only recruiting if they absolutely had to. For example, to replace someone who is leaving, a lot of firms who I work with had recruitment freezes on, those recruitment freezes came straight down from the management team, managing Partners, Chairman, who told senior Equity Partners that they were not allowed to hire, even if they wanted to. Any role that I was working on last year, after March, through to until very recently, actually had to be signed off by the board, which made the process really slow. The interesting thing is that between March and August, I felt like there was a huge amount of resistance. Then we got to about the end of August/September, the market picked up again and I made some good placements. Then, when the second lockdown happened, people’s confidence just disappeared again. The way that I’m finding the market now is much more buoyant.

Graham:

Well, when did it all pick up then? We saw it pick up about October time,  November to December, just unbelievably busy. The last six months, it’s gone from pandemic doom and gloom, redundancies, furlough to October time, it’s okay, we’re in lockdown, but let’s just, let’s get on with it.

Tim:

Well, for me, personally, I found the last couple of months have been much more buoyant. As the decision-makers have possibly had some of their recruiting freezes lifted and had their budget pre-reviews for next year. They know what they want to do in some practice areas, such as corporate real estate and commercial litigation. They seem to be busy all the way along, and now there’s a need for lawyers, as they haven’t been allowed to hire, but now they are, as everything seems to have picked up. So for me, there’s a bit of a split. There are the firms that have done very well even though they weren’t allowed to hire, but now it looks like they are as things are taking off again. So the way that I did things differently during the pandemic was by necessity. I had to speak to a lot more people so there were many more phone calls. 

I could spend all day headhunting, speaking to people and they could say, “well in this current market, because I’ve been at my current law firm. If I’m made redundant, I’ve got proper redundancy pay, if I go somewhere else, I’m going to be the last-in-first-out,” and a lot of people were saying, “well, you know, I’m risk-averse.” Now, some people are still thinking like that, but some people are starting to be more open-minded. Candidates have realised that in some places that the grass is definitely greener elsewhere, and they’re starting to look.

Graham:

When you’re headhunting, do you use the phone a lot? I know many recruiters we speak to simply use LinkedIn and inmails. Do you think you’ve had success by picking up the phone and speaking to people rather than being one of 20 recruiters just sending a message?

Tim:

Yes, I do. It’s my style to talk to people directly, I’m old fashioned like that, and we’ve had a couple of good successes because of that. I’ve gone to people, introduced an idea, and they’ve said, “oh, well, not really”, but then a couple of weeks later, they phoned me back to say, “well, actually, is that role still available?” So when I’m working with people they like to really go away and think about things. I’m finding that the whole world is sending out LinkedIn messages. If I can’t get hold of somebody via the telephone, I send them a LinkedIn message.

Graham:

I think younger recruiters are also less likely to pick the phone up. As we see it, the market has become very busy in terms of recruiters and start-ups. So people are now looking at taking on more and more people, but the younger the recruiters seem less likely to pick the phone up. Are lawyers surprised when you do ring them up?

Tim:

Often yes, some of them say they hear from recruiters a lot, but others are surprised that they are being met with a direct approach. I’ve also got the opportunity to ask them whether they can be open-minded rather than just being ignored on LinkedIn.

Graham:

Do you think that is one of your top tips for young recruiters out there? Just pick the phone up and just remember that people are human?

Tim:

Well, people like to talk about themselves. So that’s my top tip is actually to pick up the phone and talk to people. Now, they are busy, and they’re going to probably tell you that they’re not interested, but I ask them “well, are you sure? I’m wanting to talk to you about a specific opportunity?” It’s not easy headhunting people. The majority of people immediately say they’re not interested.

Graham:

What about the mobile numbers that we have on ATLAS? We have around 20%  across the 83,000 dataset and most of the direct dials.

Tim:

Well, this is what I was going to go on to actually. I was going to just talk about the numbers because it’s interesting that obviously, every recruiter knows that a lot of the direct dials go straight through to people’s mobiles, as they’re still working at home, which is extremely helpful indeed. 

ATLAS allows me to quickly assess practice areas that the clients are looking to hire for and it absolutely sped up the process of identifying suitable lawyers. The time that I save, just from you guys mapping the PQE levels, makes identifying the right candidates really quick.

Graham:

Do the law firms ever ask you how your knowledge is so good across these different practice areas?

Tim:

They don’t actually. They don’t really have that conversation with us.  I get the impression that many of our clients think that we’ve just got a bucket full of people! For example, there’s one law firm that I was talking to at the end of last week, they were looking for construction lawyers, and they said, “well, if there’s anybody on your books”, and that’s not quite how it works. They don’t quite understand that we have to go out and find these people unless we’ve been doing it for years and years and we’ve got a very well developed database. I think many internal recruitment functions are just so glad that they’re finding people and having them be put in front of their Partners that they don’t ask these questions.

Elizabeth:

So, how do you see the next 12 months for your firm?

Tim:

I think it’s going to be really positive, it’s going to be more clients being responsive to really good lawyers. It feels like law firms are catching up on finding people for their teams after having these recruitment restrictions. I see that there will be opportunities to move lawyers who haven’t necessarily had the most supportive experience during the pandemic. I can see that there’s going to be much more confidence in law firms, decision-makers, and candidates generally. So I can see it’s just going to be a much more buoyant environment.

Graham:

Are you going to be focusing on the areas that you traditionally focus on, North Wales, Lancashire, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds etc.? Or will you go further afield now?

Tim:

Well, as a company, Thornton Legal, we cover the Northwest up through Lancashire, we cover Cheshire, South Manchester, I look after central Manchester, and Leeds as well. So one of the things I was going to mention was the focus around our business, and how that’s changed over the last 12 months. I’ve been working in a larger geographical area because there’s been so much resistance in the market. I work with clients that I hadn’t worked with before. So, for example, through ATLAS, I made a placement in Leeds for a Private Client lawyer. I’m also working with Insolvency Lawyers in Leeds at the moment. Also now we can do things by Zoom, so we don’t have to travel to meet candidates. 

Graham:

Looking at the next six months, how do you think more firms will react to bringing people back into offices, working flexibly, working two days or three days in the office? Or do you think some of the bigger firms will be bringing everybody back into Manchester and Liverpool, saying that they need to see that people are working and billing?

Tim:

Personally, I think people have gotten so used to not doing the commute. Obviously, a lot of law firms are in city centres, whereas now people have become used to a better lifestyle. I think it is going to be unlikely that they’re going to expect people to come back into the office five days a week. In fact, many of my clients are using that as a selling point for attracting talent into their firms.

Graham:

Well, I think that’s why things have sped up because before if you were a lawyer in an office, you get the question, “when can I set up this interview?” but they are in the office all week, maybe for the next three weeks, and they are taking care of the kids in the evening. Whereas now, by working from home it could be that they are free around lunchtime and able to have a zoom call the next day. So a massive increase in productivity for recruiters.

Elizabeth:

So in terms of your process, and the job you do, what would you say are the biggest changes you’ve witnessed?

Tim:

So the biggest changes I touched on earlier are that I did start working across larger geographical areas. I then doubled my chances of making placements by looking at the Leeds market as well. As I said, because I’ve got the facility of using ATLAS, I could find people in any geographic area. However, I’ve slightly pulled back into working mainly in the Manchester market now because opportunities have increased. 

Graham:

What about different specialisms? Have you gone after any different practice areas that you’ve had no experience in? For example, Shipping Lawyers? Or have you seen a job advertised, say in Birmingham or London and thought ‘hang on, I know there’s not many of those Tax Lawyers 7 to 10 PQE, but let me have a quick search on ATLAS to see if I can find anyone?’

Tim:

To an extent, I placed a court of protection lawyer, which is a part of Private Client, so that is an area I don’t traditionally work in and didn’t really understand the market then. Still, I was able to work with it, but most of my work is carried out around the large practice areas where there are lots of candidates to talk to. For example, corporate and commercial litigation, real estate are all pretty active at the moment. So basically, practice areas that may take off shortly and things like that.

I had quite intensive conversations with nearly all decision-makers a couple of months ago in Manchester regarding restructuring insolvency practices. They said that because there’s a moratorium put on them by the government with insolvencies. So there wasn’t a lot going on, but that’s about to change soon.

Graham:

So any other areas? What else do you think if you had a crystal ball the next year? From our side, we think Private Equity and Commercial. There’s going to be a lot of distressed assets. So we think Private Equity and Family from what we have seen so far.

Tim:

That’s a really interesting question, I think Private Client as well. That’s an incredibly strong area at the moment with lots of their clients who have reorganised their affairs. Unfortunately, people have passed away through COVID, which changed many things on the Private Client side. So we will just have to see where the law firms start to/want to hire into and will be able to be led by the market.

Something else I just wanted to touch on one of the main benefits that I use ATLAS for, outside of direct recruiting, is that I am able to map the practices that I’ve been asked to find people for. So it’s really important to have that conversation with the candidate who’s looking for a new role.

ATLAS gives me confidence that there is a real opportunity for a candidate and that they can progress because what are the main things that candidates are thinking about? They’re thinking about money, and they’re thinking about progression. They go into a team where there are five or six people, let’s say, for example, who are all at a similar PQE level. They’re not going to be able to progress. If I can see through ATLAS, that there’s a gap at say six or seven years qualified, then the candidates are immediately much more interested in that role. That’s one of the ways I use that list.

Graham:

There’s so much good data on ATLAS in the recent moves section that is great for business development. There’s a lot of trends that you can see. You can see where a lot of gaps are, we find some firms use it to look back 9 to 12 months, and see who moved then. Then they call that person, finding out if they are enjoying the role, how they’re faring in that particular role and it may be that they’re really enjoying it. Even if they’re happy you called but are not interested, it may be that they are a Partner now, and they’re recruiting, so you’ve called it a good time. Or it may be that they don’t like the role and want to find something else so your timing is perfect.

Tim:

Well, I spend quite a lot of time engaging directly with decision-makers and heads of practice and talking to them about who they need and what gaps they’ve got. So yes ATLAS is very helpful in that respect.

Graham:

So how many people do you think you’ve placed in the last year that you could say you found on ATLAS?

Tim:

Of the top of my head three. I actually found a partner via ATLAS, that I placed, which was great. I’d estimate ATLAS has helped me generate fees in excess of £30,000. 

Our final thoughts:

I just wanted to thank Tim for his insightful interview and for his time to speak with us. As we know, the last year has been challenging for many businesses, and it was interesting to hear it from another perspective within the legal recruitment industry. Everyone has experienced this time differently, so we will see how recruiters and law firms will grow, change and continue forwards within the coming months.