BH Legal® Case Study
Direct Hire Attorney Search: General Counsel Placement
Long-time General Counsel at large, privately-owned Twin Cities manufacturing company was retiring. The executive team had a candidate identified but wanted to be certain they were going the right route by hiring that person.
Challenge
The Company is in a very niche manufacturing sector and believed that it was not being aggressive enough in maximizing the value of its Intellectual Property (IP) portfolio. The outgoing General Counsel was an excellent corporate generalist and served as the only in-house lawyer for the company. He did not have patent background but did a good job in managing the legal work in that area. However, in order to significantly beef up their efforts with respect to the IP portfolio, the Company wanted to hire a new General Counsel who could handle all the general corporate functions but who also had a strong IP background. Not an easy combination to find in a senior level attorney.
Solution
In late Spring 2014, Beacon Hill Legal’s Minneapolis attorney recruiting team met with the executives of the Company along with the outgoing General Counsel to get an in-depth picture of what type of candidate would be a great fit given the new emphasis on IP. Within a couple of weeks, Beacon Hill had presented the Company with three very strong candidates; the Company ultimately chose one of them for the role. The candidate they had identified on their own had a nice resume and a good mix of the required skills. But ultimately the candidate they chose from Beacon Hill not only had a great skill set for the role but also had the right personality to “lead the charge” on the Company’s new focus on IP. The new General Counsel started at the Company in early June.
