Sole Legal Counsel / Head of Legal for UK Sustainable Energy Business
Background
Our client is a leading provider of technology and services to the global offshore energy markets specialising in the supply, installation and support of subsea equipment.
The group had been expanding, following an IPO, with a number of acquisitions and the establishment of new overseas entities. This growth trajectory had led to the need for dedicated in-house legal support and Florit Legal was retained exclusively to find a Head of Legal to take up a sole legal counsel position.
Challenge
Recruiting a sole lawyer here presented a common set of challenges, particularly as this would be the company’s first in-house lawyer. The business needed guidance on the intricacies of hiring a lawyer and establishing a future career development path within the organisation, which might well include expanding the legal function’s headcount over time. A relatively remote UK location and the predominantly office-based nature of the role presented some geographical constraints and challenges in defining the candidate pool. So it was important to identify a range of appropriate skill sets with the CFO, in order to arrive at a sufficient number of suitably qualified candidates, ideally with experience of working autonomously as sole legal counsel.
The brief was sufficiently broad to enable us to develop a recruitment strategy focused around headhunting the most suitable people within a convenient radius of the client’s coastal location, which we anticipated ought to attract senior candidates from two provincial legal centres – encompassing both law firms and other in-house legal functions.
Since the geographical constraints significantly narrowed the available talent pool, it was important to identify a number of unique selling points to demonstrate the attractiveness of the opportunity to prospective candidates – including the level of autonomy, remuneration and the scope to move beyond being a sole legal counsel, in the coming years, by building a small legal and compliance team.
Solution
When conducting a search campaign in a location on the out periphery of one or more city commuter belts , it’s key for clients to remain flexible on a candidate’s legal background, remuneration and level of seniority. This enables the organisation to maximise the extent of the relevant talent pool.
Energy sector experience was clearly preferable, in order to ensure a quick transition into what was a new role. However, a strict adherence to seeking someone from the same sector would place severely limit the extent of the talent pool. So, with some encouragement, our client was flexible enough to consider lawyers from other industries with appropriate commercial contract law experience – which is inherently transferrable.
We identified a broad mix of lawyers with energy and commercial projects experience from both legal practice and the capital projects, engineering and construction industries. A shortlist of eight candidates started the client’s interview process, and the client managed to appoint a sole legal counsel with a decade of energy sector experience.
This situation demonstrates how a thorough search strategy, combined with appropriate flexibility on candidate background and experience, can successfully overcome geographical challenges to secure exceptional legal talent even in locations which present commuting difficulties for some.
