David Chun’s Post

A Director I'm working with isn't leaving for money. He's leaving because nothing changed. Let's call him Brian. For the past two years, his managing partner has been telling him a promotion is coming — new title, new comp band, a clearer path to partner — but every busy season cycle, the conversation gets rescheduled. He's not angry. He's calm. That's the tell. Angry means a person still believes the firm can change. Calm means they've stopped waiting. Here's what partners miss from my seat: a candidate who gets a clear no will usually tell you. They'll push back, ask why, or start interviewing openly. You see the move coming. A candidate who gets "soon" doesn't tell you anything. They smile, nod, keep grinding — and quietly start taking recruiter calls. By the time Brian takes my call, his managing partner thinks the promotion conversation is still open. It isn't. He's not asking whether the grass is greener anymore. He's asking what kind of firm actually follows through on what they promise. The partners who retain Director-level talent don't necessarily say yes more often. They close the loop on whatever they said yes to — and give a clean no on the rest, fast enough that nobody has to guess what it means. #CPAFirm #TalentAcquisition

For Law Firm Partners On The Move: Beware Of False Promises. A lot of firms love to talk about “growth.” The pitch sounds great. The leadership may even genuinely believe it. But once you get behind the curtain, you sometimes realize their definition of “growth” is simply this: Bring over your existing book of business and keep doing exactly what you’re already doing somewhere else. That’s not growth. That’s changing logos on your email signature. BYOB for lawyers. Real growth means a platform that helps expand your practice, deepen relationships, create new opportunities, strengthen cross-selling, increase profitability, and position you for a bigger future than the one you already have. And that’s why choosing the right recruiter matters. You need someone who knows what is actually happening behind the scenes, not just what appears in marketing materials or recruiting pitches. Because the wrong move can quietly turn what should have been a career acceleration into stagnation or, worse, regression. That’s the equivalent of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Don't do that. And if you find yourself already in that bind, having succumbed to the sales pitch, don't stay stuck. It won't get better simply by wishing it so. Recognize the mistake and course correct, and do so now, while the market remains hot and before your business starts to suffer. #lawfirmpartners #BigLaw #lawyers

The Biggest Threat to RIAs Isn’t Competition. It’s Aging. Here’s the uncomfortable reality inside wealth management: • The industry doesn’t just have a recruiting problem. • It has a succession emergency. • Nearly 40% of advisors are expected to retire within the next decade. At the exact same time: • trillions are moving through the Great Wealth Transfer • younger clients expect digital-first experiences • heirs want relationships with advisors who actually understand them And many firms still think recruiting is about offering a bigger grid payout. It’s not. The firms attracting talent today are offering: • mentorship • equity pathways • operational leverage • AI-enabled workflows • collaborative culture That’s why consolidation is accelerating. Large firms aren’t simply buying AUM anymore. They’re buying continuity. The next decade in wealth management may belong to firms that solve one question better than everyone else: “Who inherits the client relationship?” About Us: At www.windwardrecruiting.com We connect wealth talent with RIAs, MFOs and Independent Trust Co. nationwide. #WindwardRecruiting #WealthManagement #RIA #FinancialAdvisors #Recruiting #Succession

Here's an insanely interesting hypothetical for every attorney to think about: If tomorrow, you had to start your career completely over again same skills, same experience but no firm, no title, no clients... Where would you go? I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you did not just say your current firm. Maybe my question was so good that you realized this right now. But more likely than not, you've known for a while. So what are you still doing there?? There's a very funny moment when I'm working with someone and ask: "Are there firms that I haven't mentioned that you've always wondered about?" And they say, "Well actually, yes, there is this one place where I know the team is fantastic and the culture seems nice." They've always had just a little bit of curiosity about what life is like there. The best part is that, when we check with that firm, they almost always reciprocate interest and a whole conversation gets started. I'm not saying that means they're going there for sure (I have them consider other excellent options too). But it's always funny to see someone say: "I just never thought they'd be interested in me." Or more-often: "If they were interested, why didn't they reach out?" Well, probably because the partners at that firm were thinking the same thing as you! Listen - you're never too old or too ingrained in a firm to restart. So if hindsight says you should've been somewhere else, now is the time to make that happen. _ _ _ Volume #50 of The Short & Long Game — a weekly series capturing lateral recruiting lessons & advice. Follow me so you don’t miss one.

As we move into the holiday weekend, it is important to think about seasonality and how it impacts the search process. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, hiring often slows down for a variety of reasons: firms seeking clarity on associate utilization, decision-makers are out of office, and building consensus around hiring needs/candidates simply takes more time. At the same time, searches are becoming more prolonged: KLE data from 2024-26 shows that it takes, on average, six months from initial recruiter outreach to accepting a new offer. We are also seeing timelines lengthen relative to the same period last year. The takeaway is that, even though the summer has not yet officially started, now is the time to begin thinking about a move if your goal is to transition in Q3 or Q4. Our team at Klein Landau & Edelman, LLC will continue to keep the market updated as trends develop. #ITNS #CFIUS #ExportControls #Sanctions #Lateral #BigLaw #legalrecruiting #nationalsecurity

"There are no good CPAs left." We’ve heard it all year. But the data tells a different story. According to our Recruiting Manager, Bryce, the talent hasn’t disappeared; it has shifted its priorities. If you’re still searching only in your own backyard, you’re competing for a pool of maybe 100 candidates while ignoring a pool of thousands nationwide. At White Tiger Connections, we find the leaders you can’t through our dedicated outbound sourcing. By expanding your reach, you aren't just positioning your firm for better candidates. You are building a SCALABLE asset and a service platform model that can finally function independently.

A client told me last week they had four firms working on the same role. Nothing had come in yet, and they were frustrated. Honestly, I wasn't surprised. When four firms are chasing the same candidate pool, a few things happen at once. The candidates everyone wants start hearing from multiple recruiters within days, the company begins to look disorganized in the market, and the firms - knowing they’re competing - start moving fast instead of moving carefully. Speed and care are not the same thing, are they? I told them I’d work it. But I also told them something that needed to be said: as they started seeing quality from us, the number of firms needed to come down. Not because I needed a competitive advantage, but because a search produces better results with fewer people running it. The best searches I’ve run had total alignment. That just doesn’t happen when four firms are tripping over each other.

The firms winning the lateral market in 2026 are not just the most profitable in absolute terms. They are the ones who have built the systems that justify a higher compensation model and have a plan for how to utilize these new partners from day one. The Am Law 100 numbers look incredible but one must read past the headlines: Revenue up 13%. 94 firms grew their top line. 70 firms posted partner profit growth of at least 10%. And yet, the lateral partner market in 2026 is being reshaped by something hiding in plain sight: profit margin disparity. Some firms with revenue of $500M and over $1bn in revenue are only compensate partners 32-35% of their portable book. Others with nearly identical revenue comfortably pay 40% or more and this is directly related to a difference in profit margin. Revenue and profitability are two different calculations, and lower profit margins can be linked to a host of structural issues: inability or unwillingness to modernize their origination system, no incentives for cross-selling to other practice groups, senior partners compensated not for performance but for things they did in the past, inability to increase rates despite increasing partner, counsel, associate and staff compensation for starters. With some reports that up to 62% of lateral partner hires fail to fully port their purported books of business (shoutout to Decipher Investigative Intelligence) we know that this failure is not squarely on the shoulders of the partners changing firms. While conservative and worst-case scenario estimates of portability are essential, some of this failure can be traced back to what happens after a lateral partner walks in the door — onboarding, integration, co-marketing, collaboration, pursuit of existing client opportunities with the firm, leverage and access to available or new support, and so on. Firms that have addressed these issues and developed significant integration pals are structurally able to pay more due to healthier profit margins, ensuring that they don't have to overpay for talent - they are simply compensating them with peer performers in the system. Here is the inflection point: A $10M book of business can be worth $1M+ more in annual compensation — at a different firm — simply based on how well leadership has built the infrastructure around their partners. When a partner realizes that the calculus changes fast. The war for top talent isn't fought at the offer letter. It's built long before that. #lateralHiring #PartnerRecruiting #LawFirmStrategy #LegalIndustry #JavelinSearch

The firms winning in US staffing right now aren't the fastest ones. They're the most precise. Speed used to be enough. It isn't anymore. Every firm in this market has figured out how to move fast. What most haven't figured out is what actually deserves to move forward, and that gap? It shows up everywhere. In the quality of submissions. In interview conversion. In whether a client calls you first, or calls you last. The operations teams I respect most aren't chasing volume. They're eliminating noise before the machine ever starts running. They ask harder questions earlier. They align the team before they accelerate the process. And they treat every submission like it either builds or borrows from the client relationship. That discipline is rare. And in this market, rare is what commands margin. Clients stopped grading us on effort a while ago. They're grading us on judgment on whether our recommendations are worth their time. That's the real game now. Precision isn't just operational excellence anymore. It's what separates firms that grow accounts from firms that just fill orders. The differentiator was never execution. It was always the decision-making behind it. #USStaffing #ITStaffing #OperationsLeadership #TalentDelivery #RecruitingLeadership #StaffingIndustry

Bernie Madoff called private equity's relationship with big box executive search firms, "the most elegant racket in professional services." All jokes aside, Imagine convincing a private equity firm to let a target company do its own Quality of Earnings review. Because that is exactly what big box search firms have done when it comes to leadership assessment. Beyond the obvious conflict of interest, there is the quality issue. They offer assessment the same way my gas station offers sushi.  Except gambling on one costs millions in investor capital. They administer a "proprietary leadership profile." And the client gets to believe they paid for a rigorous selection process. In reality, they gave the candidate an online quiz that spit out a few cute graphs that give the illusion of rigor/objectivity. As someone who evaluates PE-backed leaders for a living, I've heard and seen what happens behind the scenes (and directly from former Big Box Search partners). When the candidate "assessment" conflicts with the search partner narrative, they ask: "How should we frame our findings?" They don't want to do anything that would jeopardize the placement fee (upwards of $300k). They know that most candidates can survive 12 months in the role anyway. The conflict of interest is baked into the model. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲. 𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽. As Madoff famously said on Piers Morgan (from federal prison), "My mistake was Wall Street. I should have gone into executive search. Same conflict of interest. Better margins. And nobody goes to prison!"