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2021 Market Recap

In 2021, we witnessed a frenzied Chicago legal placement market with legal hiring occurring every month of the year. In total, we placed twenty-two attorneys who received $5,221,500 in cumulative compensation. Thirty-eight percent of our law placements were at large law firms (Am Law 200 and larger) with the remaining sixty-two percent of our attorneys going to full-service commercial law and litigation boutiques.

Litigation accounted for fifty-nine percent of our attorney placements and forty-one percent went to transactional practice groups including Corporate M&A, Private Equity, Commercial Finance and Tax. Thirty-six percent of our law placements were women attorneys and twenty-three percent were lawyers of color. Eighteen out of our twenty-two attorney placements received their law degrees from top 20 law schools including hometown favorites The University of Chicago Law School and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law (Columbia, Duke, Harvard (3), Georgetown, Michigan and NYU were also represented). Two other placements were from The University of Florida and Notre Dame, ranked 21st and 22nd respectively. Out of our thirteen litigation placements, seven (fifty-four percent) had federal clerkship experience.

Highlights of the 2021 year included:

  • Placing a female managing partner at a Chambers Band 1 litigation boutique
  • Our first simultaneous placement of relocating domestic partners (a litigator and a corporate attorney at separate law firms)
  • The placement of a diverse Legal Director at a multi-billion dollar environmental redevelopment project in Philadelphia
  • Obtaining multiple offers for several clients, including five for a relocating M&A associate and three for an exceptional female litigator

We enter 2022 hopeful for continued strength in legal hiring with several candidates currently interviewing and a backlog of open positions in Finance (commercial and real estate), M&A, Commercial Real Estate (A&D), Commercial Litigation, and Environmental Litigation.

Rob McAndrew

About the Author & Atticus Recruiting

Rob McAndrew is President and Co-founder of Atticus Recruiting, Chicago’s Legal Recruiter®. Atticus Recruiting specializes in placing exceptional attorneys in extraordinary opportunities in and around Chicago and the greater Midwest. Our unique grasp of the Chicago legal market derives from our long-standing relationships with managing partners, department chairs, general counsels, associates, law firm lateral attorney hiring coordinators, senior public sector attorneys and law school career services professionals. For more information about our services please contact us.

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