Manager, Lateral Partner Recruiting

Milbank LLP•New York City, NY

About The Position

The Manager, Lateral Partner Recruiting owns and continuously improves the Firm’s end-to-end partner hiring process, from search through offer, partnership vote, and integration. The role serves as the central project manager and day-to-day operational counterpart to sponsoring partners, Practice Group leaders, and Business Services leadership. It requires direct, substantive engagement with partners, candidates, outside search firms, and other stakeholders. Reporting to the Director of Global Legal Recruiting, the Manager oversees search-firm and candidate relationships, organizes market intelligence to inform recruiting strategy, and manages a coordinator who supports administrative and tracking tasks. The position coordinates the partner recruiting process across recruiting, offer, partnership vote, pre-arrival, onboarding, and post-start integration. It manages vendor relationships, compliance prerequisites, offer workflows, partnership-vote logistics, and onboarding activities, while providing leadership with process reporting and market intelligence. The Manager also develops a recruiting coordinator and builds trusted relationships across the Firm, handling sensitive information with professionalism and discretion.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree required.
7–8+ years of legal industry experience in legal recruiting, professional services operations, HR, or complex project management roles.
Proven ability to manage sophisticated, multi-stakeholder processes involving senior professionals in a partner-led environment.
Strong executive presence and confidence engaging directly with partners and firm leadership, with a substantive, informed point of view on candidates and process.
Working knowledge of law firm economics, partnership structures, and lateral compensation frameworks.
Experience managing outside vendor or search-firm relationships, including fee agreements and resolving competing claims.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills and a polished, forward-facing style.
Exceptional organizational skills, attention to detail, and follow-through.
High level of discretion, judgment, and integrity.
Experience working with document management and workflow tools, such as Workday or similar.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree preferred.
Experience managing or mentoring junior staff preferred.

Responsibilities

Own and manage the Partner Process Checklist, keeping it accurate, current, and consistently followed across partner hires.
Track progress, dependencies, deliverables, and approvals across recruiting, offer, partnership vote, pre-arrival, onboarding, and post-start integration.
Identify process gaps, redundancies, and risks; recommend and implement improvements in alignment with firm leadership.
Define ownership and escalation paths for checklist items, especially where partner or cross-team responsibilities are involved.
Develop internal reporting, status summaries, and dashboards to give leadership visibility into timelines, risks, and milestones.
Manage day-to-day relationships with retained and contingency search firms, including agreements, fee terms, and submission protocols.
Coordinate interview processes and schedules with Practice Group Leaders, Executive Committee members, and senior partners.
Ensure recruiting prerequisites are completed, including search firm agreements, NDAs, LPQs, background checks, and conflicts reviews.
Maintain current records of lateral market activity, practice group movement, and competitive trends using search-firm relationships, industry data, and the Firm’s placement history.
Prepare concise, practical market briefings for the Director of Global Legal Recruiting and firm leadership, and discuss current trends credibly.
Manage offer-stage workflows and coordinate alignment on compensation, capital contributions, conflicts, approvals, and documentation.
Coordinate partnership-vote logistics and materials, including candidate memos, presentations, vote administration, and post-vote communications.
Partner with Governance, HR, Finance, and firm leadership to support consistency with partnership policies and approval requirements.
Oversee pre-arrival and Day 1 onboarding activities, ensuring systems access, paperwork, agreements, and logistics are completed on schedule.
Coordinate onboarding across HR, IT, Finance, Marketing/BD, Facilities, and Practice Leadership.
Ensure new partners receive orientations covering compensation, capital, tax, benefits, billing, technology, governance, and Firm resources.
Track post-start integration milestones, such as the first 30 days and first quarter, and follow up on outstanding items.
Manage, train, and develop a direct-report recruiting coordinator; delegate routine work and review work product for accuracy, consistency, and quality.
Support initiatives and processes outside immediate responsibilities as needed within the Recruiting and People team.
Serve as the primary internal point of contact for partner recruiting and integration matters across Business Services teams.
Build trusted relationships with Practice Group Leaders and firm leadership through clear communication, reliability, and discretion.
Communicate proactively about timelines, expectations, risks, and decision points.
Handle sensitive partner, compensation, and governance information professionally and confidentially.