Brian Vogt, Managing Partner and a top Legal Recruiter at ThinkingAhead, shares personal insights into his role, and the keys to building successful relationships with clients and candidates.

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So to start off with my, my background originally, I was a entrepreneur.

I built a business in, uh, in Florida.

Um, had multiple locations.

What I learned I had to do when you are a, a business owner is you have to learn to go recruit talent.

You're up against bigger companies that have more internal recruiting apparatus i-in place, and so you really have to, uh, learn to interview people well.

You have to really learn to recruit them and, and get them to come over to your team.

So that's what really kind of attracted me to search.

First of all, thinking ahead said to me, "Hey, we don't have anybody, uh, recruiting attorneys right now. Why don't you build a brand-new unit and build your own business, if you will, and we'll help finance it?"

That was probably the biggest thing, and I s- I just knew, hey, look, if I can recruit people to come work for me, I knew I could recruit attorneys.

And so the impact I really see is, one, with clients, the law firms that we recruit for, they often have major needs they can't fill.

And so it's great to have someone come to us and say, "Hey, look, I can't find this particular practice area.

I can't find this particular individual.

Can you help me?" And, uh, when I've filled that and they go, "Wow, thank you.

We would have never found this person without you." And then on the candidate side, I love seeing candidates that are in a, maybe a career path.

Maybe they wanna switch firms.

M- You know, sometimes it's just a, "Hey, look, I need a better platform to, to join."

And so it's been great to see situations where they find a great new opportunity, and it really benefits their career long-term.

The market's always changing.

In this market, in this climate, what's happening is, is firms have become a little bit more cautious about hiring.

And so what I tell them is, "Look, no problem.

We all have to make decisions based upon what we see ahead of us." So what we-- what I've been telling clients is, "Look, you have to take people through the process, keep them informed on what the next step will be and where you are in the process, and if the process needs to stop or, or slow down for one reason or another, just let the clients or the candidates know this."

Because if you don't tell them these things, well, number one, they feel like, well, maybe they don't want-- they're not wanting me.

Number two, they kinda get a bad taste in their mouth about a client.

Because, hey, if they're not going to move me forward in the process, they're not giving me information, then they will oftentimes put out into the market negative vibes about that client.

The market has changed a lot.

There has been major changes first with generations.

You know, the baby boomers are retiring.

The Generation Xers are stepping into those roles like myself, and they're taking on leadership roles.

The millennials and the zoomers behind them have gone through a lot of changes in their life.

You know, they've seen the Great Recession.

They've seen the housing market collapse.

They've seen, you know, COVID.

And so the big change now is a lot of people are asking themselves the question, do I really want to work 2,000 hours a year to become an attorney and become a partner?

They're starting to say, hey, maybe I don't want to stay in the legal field.

And so it's becoming more and more challenging to find good talent, especially for attorneys.

There was also a big gap and shortage on the transactional side on the real estate and corporate M&A side after 07, 08 during the downturn.

A lot of attorneys got out of that practice.

And now because there's a five-year gap for a lot of people and they're losing attorneys, it's really becoming more and more of a challenge to fill some of those

roles.