Head of Legal Position: Recruitment Case Study
Background
Our client is the UK’s cash access and ATM network – and the largest interbank network in the UK – with around 50,000 ATMs, enabling the public to access their money easily, conveniently and safely.
Having created its first ever Head of Legal position, the company was referred to us by their principal external law firm.
The organisation required a versatile lawyer who could handle a broad range of legal matters as sole legal counsel, including contracts, dispute resolution, and financial services regulation.
Challenge
When appointing a company’s first in-house counsel in a newly created Head of Legal job, the challenge is commonly balancing the client’s need for seniority and breadth of knowledge with particular budgetary constraints. Fortunately, on this occasion, the client had already been well briefed on what might be likely to be the most appropriate salary parameters for a Head of Legal role. Our primary focus when taking a briefing from the COO and Head of HR was therefore around key deliverables and the most important qualities to be sought.
The ideal Head of Legal candidate would possess:
- Broad, generalist legal expertise;
- Strong familiarity with FCA regulatory frameworks; and
- The capability to serve as a strategic advisor to the business.
The appointee would be serving as the company’s sole legal counsel, and so the range of legal skills and experience required would be broad. The role would almost certainly suit an individual who was working in-house already and had held more than one very “hands on” role – as opposed to someone who had been primarily engaged to manage a small team.
Solution
To identify the right candidate, we executed a multi-pronged approach which included a comprehensive search process, touching upon lawyers who were currently working in the financial services industry (or who had done so in the recent past); leveraging our extended legal network; and some limited online advertising.
After a thorough evaluation, including preliminary interviews and behavioural assessments, we presented a shortlist of 10 qualified lawyers and agreed on initial interviews with six who were perceived to be the most closely matched to the client’s requirements, with a couple held in reserve.
Following four second round interviews, the client appointed a highly experienced in-house lawyer into the new Head of Legal position. This was an individual who had previously worked in three other head of legal roles in different sectors, one of which was very closely associated with the financial services industry. This gave the requisite amount of breadth but also satisfied the client’s need for familiarity with banking and FCA regulatory frameworks.
