“I’m not actively looking, but I’d be open to the right opportunity.”
It’s probably one of the most common things we hear from lawyers, but there can be quite a lot contained in that sentence. For some, the decision to leave has effectively been made and they’re waiting for the right role to appear. For others, it simply means they’re willing to have a conversation.
They might have questions about progression, salary, the quality of their work or the direction of their team. They might be curious about their market value or simply want to know what else is available. None of that necessarily means they’ve reached the point where they want to leave.
That distinction matters, particularly in a market where many of the lawyers firms would like to recruit aren’t actively applying for jobs.
Why lawyers start looking around
Most lawyers we speak to don’t suddenly decide they need another job. Usually something has prompted them to start thinking about their position.
A promotion may not have happened when expected, the work might have become repetitive or changes within the team may have altered how they feel about staying. Salary and flexibility can play a part, as can uncertainty about the route to Senior Associate, Legal Director or Partner.
Sometimes there isn’t a particular problem at all. Someone who has spent several years with the same firm might simply want to understand what their experience would look like elsewhere.
Exploring those questions doesn’t require somebody to start a job search.
Being open doesn’t require a job search
We recently spoke to an experienced specialist lawyer who was prepared to hear about the right opportunity but very clear about how she wanted to approach it.
She didn’t want her CV circulated speculatively and wasn’t interested in moving to a broadly similar role simply because another firm happened to be recruiting. She was reasonably settled, so any move would need to offer a meaningful improvement in the areas that mattered to her, particularly the work, team and longer-term development.
The sensible approach in that situation is to understand what she would consider and keep her informed about genuine opportunities that meet those criteria.
We speak to plenty of lawyers in similar positions. Sometimes there simply isn’t anything in the market that offers enough of an improvement to justify moving. Knowing that can be useful in itself.
What would actually make you move?
This is usually a more useful question than asking whether somebody is looking for a job.
The answer varies considerably. It might be a clearer route to partnership, more complex work, better supervision, greater flexibility or improved salary. At more senior levels, autonomy, the opportunity to build a team or the firm's ability to support a particular practice can become more important.
Understanding those priorities also makes it easier to assess an opportunity when one appears. A substantial salary increase or impressive firm name can be attractive, but if neither addresses the reason somebody started considering their position, the move may not make much sense.
This is particularly relevant for lawyers who have been approached rather than applied for a role. Someone who is reasonably happy has quite a lot to give up, including established relationships, flexibility, accumulated goodwill and the security of knowing how their current firm operates.
The threshold for moving can therefore be higher than either the recruiter or the hiring firm initially expects.
Why a positive meeting doesn’t always lead to a move
We occasionally see this after a lawyer has met another firm and the meeting has gone extremely well. The firm is interested, the lawyer has enjoyed the conversation and everything appears to be moving in the right direction, but the lawyer ultimately decides not to proceed.
That doesn’t necessarily mean there was anything wrong with the opportunity or that the initial interest wasn’t genuine. The meeting may simply have given them enough information to compare the new role properly with what they already have.
This is one of the reasons informal meetings can be useful. A job description can explain the role, but it’s much harder to understand the personalities involved, how a team operates, the quality of the work or how credible the progression opportunity is without speaking to the people involved.
A lawyer can come away more interested than they were beforehand. They can also come away with a renewed appreciation of their current position. Both are reasonable outcomes from an exploratory conversation.
What this means for law firms
The starting point matters when firms meet lawyers who have been approached about an opportunity.
Someone who has actively applied for a vacancy has already made at least one decision about their current position. Someone who has been approached may be at a much earlier stage.
It helps to understand what made that person agree to the meeting in the first place and what would genuinely need to improve for them to consider leaving. That provides much more useful information than assuming attendance at an interview means they have already decided to move.
For a relatively settled lawyer, the opportunity needs to stand up to comparison with the reality of their existing job. A clear explanation of the work, the team, expectations and where the role could lead gives them something meaningful to assess.
Understanding the market before you need to move
A significant proportion of our candidate conversations begin with lawyers who are somewhere between being happy and actively looking.
They’re not asking us to find them another job. They want to understand how their salary compares, what firms are doing in their practice area, whether their progression is broadly where it should be or whether there are opportunities that would genuinely improve their position.
Quite often, the conclusion is that staying where they are makes sense. In other cases, a conversation brings an opportunity onto their radar that they wouldn’t otherwise have considered.
That is really what “open to the right opportunity” means in practice. There is interest in understanding what else might be available, without having already decided what to do about it.
