Monday, August 06, 2007 7:26 AM
For all of the talk of lawyers not liking change and legally-inclined folks failing to innovate at the pace of other industries, I find it telling that many of the people behind entrepreneurial ventures in the legal space are lawyers themselves.
On this point, I recently received an email from Chief Executive Officer Bradley Kramer, M.D., J.D., regarding the recent launch of a new venture, PROSUMÉS:
Here is a snippet from the press release:
PRONETWORKS, L.L.C. today announced the official launch of its first business enterprise, PROSUMÉS.com.
Established in 2007, PRONETWORKS, L.L.C. was formed by a small group of lawyers, doctors, and businessmen in southern California hoping to provide urban professionals with cost-effective and convenient networking resources. PRONETWORKS, L.L.C.'s initial venture, PROSUMÉS.com, is the company's first foray into the professional arena, and is aimed exclusively at connecting elite professional employers with elite professional candidates.
In looking over service offerings, it appears that PROSUMÉS is focused on matching legal employers to lawyers seeking new opportunities, but with the twist of attempting to create a "select" database of candidates and employers (note that it is not focused solely on the legal marketplace). Here is part of PROSUMÉS stated methodology:
PROSUMÉS is dedicated exclusively to the idea of bringing together elite professional candidates with elite professional employers. To maintain the highest level of candidate scrutiny, we require that each PROSUMÉS candidate either: (1) be enrolled in, or have graduated from, a Top 25 graduate medical, business, or law program, or (2) demonstrate, via petition for review, that he or she has sufficient credentials (judged by a composite score based on the candidate's education, prior work experience, awards, publications, speaking engagements, years of experience, and particular areas of expertise) to merit inclusion in the PROSUMÉS candidate database.
By the same token, each employer is individually scrutinized before it may be included in the employer member directory by using a variety of critical indicators of its members' success (including educational backgrounds, specific areas of expertise, public recognition and awards, and prior or pending disciplinary actions), as well as that employer's employment and termination practices (where available) and professional growth trends.
PROSUMÉS also appears to be taking a crack at lowering the cost of the recruitment process:
Generally, fees charged by a recruiter for presenting a viable professional candidate to an employer can range anywhere from 25% to 40% of the employee's salary. This can translate into recruiter fees of $30,000 to $50,000 per candidate, if not more. Rather than paying recruiters excessive amounts of money for facilitating candidate introductions, employers now have a choice.
At PROSUMÉS, employers may search for elite professionals at their own convenience, without the need for third party intervention. Our goal is to significantly diminish recruiting costs, while maintaining the highest quality database of professional candidates for employers to choose from. In the end, depending on a professional recruiter's fees, PROSUMÉS aims to provide equivalent professional candidate contacts for approximately 70% lower cost.
In light of The American Lawyer's findings in its annual Associate Satisfaction Survey (see New Reality, Open Season and The Charts (last one requires free registration) as well as my recent post Associate Satisfaction Survey) the market for both new associate-candidates at the largest global law firms is red hot. Add to this reality the increasing mobility (free agency?) of lateral associates (and really partners, if we are honest about it), PROSUMÉS may be onto something. If you just think about the pace of hiring new associates (and backfilling the lateral openings created by the large numbers of associates leaving by their fourth or fifth year), it would seem hiring coordinators at these firms could be interested in getting some assistance with identifying and screening candidates; especially if they can do so in a more cost effective manner.
I certainly do not know all of the players in this space--and there may be others with the same or similar focus--nor the various cost structures involved in legal recruiting. However, my gut reaction to PROSUMÉS model is that in today's legal marketplace, they may well be onto something.
Stay tuned...
http://blog.blawg.com/archive/2007/08/02/Associate-Satisfaction-Survey.aspx