In this episode, Alay Yajnik and Stephen Seckler, President of Seckler Legal Recruiting and Coaching, discuss:

* Why all lawyers should strive to build a book of business
* How to get started with business development
* The benefits of having a clearly-defined niche or focus to your marketing

Alay Yajnik: Welcome to Lawyer Business Advantage, your source for biz dev tips, wisdom and inspiration. I’m your host, Alay Yajnik. We’re unleashing your inner rainmaker in three…two…one….
Alay Yajnik: It is my pleasure to welcome to the show Stephen Seckler, President of Seckler Legal Recruiting and Coaching. Steve, how are you today?
Stephen Seckler: I’m doing great, Alay. Thanks so much for having me.
Alay Yajnik: Delighted to have you on the show. And I hope things are going well in the New England area for you. Now, you run a legal recruiting business and you’ve had an interesting path to that. How did you get started in legal recruiting?
Stephen Seckler: So first of all, I just want to say I really appreciate having the opportunity to speak on your podcast. As you know, I do my own podcast and it’s much more fun to be on the receiving end. So I really appreciate having the chance to just answer the questions rather than have to ask them. So I went to law school and I had some strong feelings when I was in law school that I was going to save the world. But as I got near the end of my legal education, I realized that practicing law wasn’t really something that I wanted to pursue. I really liked being a lawyer. I liked and identified with lawyers. I understand lawyers, but I wanted to do something that was law-related. And so I went to work for Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, where I essentially was planning conferences and I was meeting a lot of the leaders of the bar in Massachusetts. We would plant curricula and then planned seminars. And after I’d been doing that for a while and frankly, after my second child was born, I decided it was time to be a little bit more entrepreneurial, earn a little bit more money. And I just basically opened my own recruiting business. Because really what I was doing when I was working at Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education was recruiting. A lot of putting together conferences is about finding the right talent and then plugging them in to seminars and opportunities to help the organization plan appropriate curriculum. And I already had the skills of going out and trying to recruit the best talent. But I didn’t want to just open a business that looked like every other recruiting business. And I had received some coaching along the way and I had been very interested in coaching. And so I decided that when I opened my business that I would be a recruiter, but I would also coach lawyers. And so since that time in various incantations, I’ve been recruiting and coaching lawyers.
Alay Yajnik: And what would you say is unique or different about the recruiting services you provide versus services that people might find elsewhere?
Stephen Seckler: So I think a lot of legal recruiting is really focused on the high end, a lot of recruiters are very focused on trying to service large law firms. There are also recruiters that focus on doing in-house. I think my own special brand of recruiting is that I am very focused on the candidate. A lot of recruiters tend to be more focused on the clients, which are either the law firms or the corporations. My brand is really all about trying to help lawyers find more career satisfaction. And if that means that I don’t end up placing them somewhere, that’s totally fine. I really want people to make moves that make sense. And so my brand is that I’m helping lawyers, and have for the last 20 years, find more career satisfaction.
Alay Yajnik: I think that’s a very different perspective and a welcome one. For those of you that that aren’t familiar with recruiters,