Volume 39, Number 02
Business
Carving Out a Niche
Legal Futures and Way Simmons Partnership Reinvent the Recruitment Game.
by Benjamin Freeland
The recruitment industry is, by some estimates, the world's largest industry. It is also one of the most maligned, with recruiters often likened to the mosquitoes of today's corporate animal kingdom. Professional recruiters themselves are very aware of their profession's less-than-salubrious reputation, but equally aware of the tremendously important function they perform.
“There is a perception that we're one step beneath car salesmen,” says Damion Way, founder and managing director of Legal Futures, which, since its founding in 1999, has been engaged in hiring lawyers and other legal personnel for private law firms, companies and the banking and financial services sector, as well as recruitment for other industries through its affiliate company Way Simmons Partnership. “However, it's our job to help [companies] hire staff. And decent people do want to change jobs,” he adds. “Decent people change jobs all the time. This is where we come in.”
A transplanted London solicitor who first came to Japan with the esteemed London law firm Allen & Overy and founded Legal Futures initially as the legal wing of another r e c r u i t m e n t company, Wall Street Associates, before taking the company independent in 2001, is quick to emphasize that his company is committed to building relationships with clients rather than manipulating people into changing jobs. “Most of the people we represent don't want to change jobs,” asserts Way. “You have to be very lucky to call someone and have them say, “Yeah, I want to move today, I hate my boss.” That never happens. But a month or two down the line, who knows?”
Since the company's inauguration in 1999, Legal Futures and its affiliate Way Simmons Partnership (established in 2002) has achieved rapid success, maintaining offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, and with plans for expansion to Shanghai, Sydney and Dubai. The key to the firm's success, Way alleges, lies in the company's small scale. “The big recruitment companies make their money by being volume recruitment consultancies or volume agencies,” he notes. “Physically we can't be that kind of agency. What we can do, however, is maintain a greater focus on spending time with our candidates, really getting to know them.”
Legal Futures, described in its promotional literature as a ‘boutique consultancy'—an allusion to socalled ‘boutique hotels' that distinguish themselves through niche areas of specialization, began as a ‘forlawyers- by-lawyers' firm which Way co-founded with his colleague Matt Anderson, a New Zealand admitted lawyer. With banking and financial services among its primary focuses, Way notes that the firm has benefited from the tremendous overhaul that these sectors have undergone in Japan in recent years. “Ten years ago the compliance function at the investment banks didn't exist in Japan,” he notes. “Now some compliance of- ficers are getting paid more than lawyers. It's a nice boom business.”
While he concedes that certain cultural hurdles are an invariable aspect of doing business in Japan, Way contends that the potential rewards far outweigh such challenges. “[In Japan] you need to spend a long time developing relationships and be very courteous in the way you do things. It takes a long time to develop both clients and candidates here, often years. However, clients, once you have them, tend to be very loyal. It's a very civilized place to do business once you get over the hurdles.”
While the central legal and financial services component of the company has a more or less established framework, its fledgling sister company, Way Simmons, which deals with all manner of recruitment outside the legal profession, is intended to function as an organic, ever-growing subsidiary, and to date its industry coverage encompasses consumer goods, durable goods, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, fashion and technology, with plans to expand into advertising, marketing and PR.
Through this branch of the business, Way contends that there are no limits. “[Way Simmons] could become anything. It is my hope that we're going to find from [among the Weekender readership] someone who will say, “OK, I'm an existing recruiter at perhaps one of these volume-type places and I understand that there are limits to how far I can go there.” I would then tell them, “Come to me with your industry knowledge, your drive and your motivation, and you can become whatever you can become with this company and grow a substantial practice with us.” The ideal candidate for a career at Legal Futures or Way Simmons, according to its founder, is a person who is either an experienced recruiter or a seasoned industry professional. “Ideally we want recruiters, because a lot of people who do recruitment don't like it,” he notes frankly. “We don't want people to come here, realize they don't like it and leave.” Otherwise, Way asserts that the ideal candidate is driven, independent, extroverted in nature and passionate about their area of expertise.
With its small but energetic staff, representing ten different nationalities, five continents and a bewildering array of areas of specialization, Legal Futures and Way Simmons has a palpable energy to it, of which its founder is clearly proud. “There's a saying in the legal profession, which goes “Failed at law? Try recruiting,” Way notes derisively. “Personally I think that's just sour grapes, because they're the ones working until midnight while I'm running my own business. All the members of my team feel as though they have that same level of control over their future and that is very empowering.”
With Japan's banking and financial services currently undergoing a rash of drastic overhaul, with the government seeking to bring its country's notoriously unruly, antiquated financial sector into line with the global mainstream, and the continued growth of the legal sector, the timing of Legal Futures' ascendancy could hardly have been more serendipitous, timing that bodes well for its non-legal arm, Way Simmons.
And with its niche-oriented focus and attention to developing personalized relationships with clients and candidates over the long term, Way's budding recruitment firm may well help shift the public view of the profession it represents.
Interested parties should e-mail their resumes to hiring@legalfutures.com.