Counsel to Counsel - Career Advice for Lawyers

There are genuine practitioner nuggets buried in the episode—realistic porting expectations as the most common mistake, 'force multipliers' for evaluating fit, overlooked associate-quality due diligence, and the diversity-initiative blocker example—but roughly 40% of the runtime is consumed by a meandering BD/podcast-strategy tangent that delivers mostly generic advice (be a giver, stay consistent, stay visible) rather than lateral-move substance.

“The biggest mistake I see is that they don't have realistic expectations on what's going to port over”

“There was a partner that joined a firm and he didn't accurately understand the lack of abilities that their associates had”

The 'force multipliers vs. connection points' framing and the specific diagnostic of overlooked associate-recruiting capacity show some fresh practitioner thinking, but the overarching frameworks—two buckets (leadership/strategy), push/pull factors, pros-and-cons matrix—are standard and well-worn, and the BD advice is entirely recycled content-marketing wisdom.

“I channel the self interest of a partner. So it intersects with law firm strategy”

“I put them in two buckets. One of the reasons partners leave is because of leadership issues, and the other one is strategy issues”

Scott Love is a genuine practitioner—not a thought leader cosplaying as one—with verifiable deal volume (80 firm agreements, 50 LPQs read, 6 placements at a single firm in two years), but his vantage point is that of a recruiter rather than a law firm partner who has navigated these moves himself, which limits the depth of inside-the-firm perspective.

“I've got placement agreements with 80 firms. I've read 50 law firm LPQs”

“there's one firm I placed six partners at in the last two years”

The episode offers some concrete operational details—specific deal counts, the pharmaceutical-company diversity blocker anecdote, associate recruiting staff as a due diligence metric—but deliberately avoids naming firms, partners, or dollar figures, and several examples stay at the level of illustrative story rather than replicable data.

“I had a candidate whose largest client, which was a very large pharmaceutical company, couldn't come to that small firm because that small firm did not have a diversity initiative at that time”

“If you just have one or two people handling national associate recruiting for an AMLA 100 firm, that's not enough”

The host asks one genuinely productive follow-up ('Can you give an example?') and pushes lightly on the associates-vs-partners distinction at the end, but he allows a 15-minute BD tangent to hijack the episode, is consistently affirming rather than probing, and never challenges the guest's claims or asks for harder evidence behind assertions like the 70% inexperienced-recruiter figure.

“Can you give an example? Obviously, you gotta keep it confidential and maybe change some of the facts”

“you are truly an enigma. From what I understand, you tend to lean conservative, but you have certain progressive values”