When executive search firm Wilkinson Partners was acquired by global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal in July, it created an opportunity for Tom Wilkinson to apply his data-driven approach to a broader executive search platform. Now managing director at newly created A&M Search, Wilkinson can put the methodology he’d honed over years in the headhunting industry to work in other domains. For instance, could the data-centric approach be used in companies' searches for a general counsel or chief legal officer? Wilkinson thinks it can. 

“I'm a big believer that data paints a picture,” Wilkinson told Legal Dive. “It gives you credibility. It gives you confidence and it allows you to narrate with real authority what's happening within the market.” 

Wilkinson’s approach stems from what he says is a need to provide more than just gut-feel assessments in the headhunting process. “A lot of the communication and narrative ... is based on the here and now, the immediacy of a headhunter's desk and where they operate,” he said. 

The narrowness of this traditional approach, he said, led him a few years ago to launch Talent Consulting, an arm of Wilkinson’s earlier firm that focused on leveraging data to help executive search providers rely on more than intuition in their work.

Talent Consulting will be a cornerstone of A&M Search’s methodology, Wilkinson said. 

The new firm will inherit Talent Consulting’s flagship product, the Global 100 report, launched in 2021 to track moves of top law firm partners based on placements made by Wilkinson’s previous firm (and by A&M Search going forward), law firm announcements and information gathered from market intelligence and legal news articles. 

Wilkinson said his approach can be tailored to help employers match a candidate to the unique legal needs of the space. In the private equity arena, for instance, the requirements for a general counsel differ significantly from those in traditional corporate environments. Given these differences, employers conducting searches can use data analysis to weed through candidates who aren’t right for that space. 

“When we hire a general counsel for a buyout fund, the driving requirements for that individual is less operational cost reduction, tech transformation,” he said. “It is way more geared to business partnering, execution on transactions and being a commercial general counsel.” 

Finding candidates that are well-positioned to understand the investment theses of a PE firm is crucial, he said. 

“When you have a lawyer in a PE fund, their role goes way beyond that of external counsel,” he said. “They need to think about the investment thesis and manage the risk position and start to think about what happens once we close this deal. External counsel [on the other hand] are, let's get the deal done and let's complete the contracts and get everyone signed. The right internal legal counsel needs to adapt themselves to think beyond that. Post-deal integration, right? It’s value creation. The right lawyers in private equity … have that commercial drive to them.”

This sector-specific approach is critical in ensuring that the candidates presented to clients are not only qualified but also fit the unique demands of the role. The data-driven insights, in theory, should help identify the skill sets and experiences that are most valuable in different contexts, whether it’s the transactional focus of a PE firm or the operational needs of a traditional corporate legal department.

For companies seeking legal talent to help them move their traditional corporate in-house operation to a new level, finding candidates who can manage technology integration, and get the team to use it in a way that adds value is key. “You need very good capable lawyers to operate those systems because if you put garbage in you get garbage out,” he said.

Looking ahead, Wilkinson plans to emphasize A&M Search’s capabilities in the general counsel market. He wants to do for in-house general counsel market what he did for the law firm partner market by publishing a report similar to the Global 100 report. 

That would be a way for Wilkinson to bring the data-driven approach of his previous firm to meet the needs of the in-house legal space.