Purpose
This role is responsible for end-to-end Talent Acquisition delivery across the US, spanning:
• Early Careers (law school / first year and summer associate recruiting)
• Experienced lawyers (associates and counsel lateral hiring)
• Business teams hiring across all functions
The role combines strategic oversight and hands-on operational delivery, ensuring that Linklaters attracts, engages, and secures the highest-quality talent to support the firm’s US growth ambitions.
Acting as a trusted adviser to senior stakeholders, the role integrates hiring strategies across all talent segments, ensuring alignment to workforce plans, diversity objectives, and broader people strategy
Key responsibilities
1. US Talent Acquisition Leadership (All Talent Segments)
- Lead and deliver all US hiring activity across legal and business teams populations
- Develop integrated hiring strategies covering early careers, lateral lawyers, and functional roles
- Align hiring activity to business growth plans, headcount forecasts and workforce strategy
- Provide market insight and hiring intelligence to senior stakeholders
2. Early Careers / Law School Recruitment
- Define and execute the US law school engagement and campus recruiting strategy
- Build relationships with career services and student bodies to position Linklaters as an employer of choice
- Oversee the on-campus interview program and candidate selection process
- Design and deliver a market-leading summer associate program, including training, engagement and assessment processes
- Manage full-cycle conversion from summer associates to full-time hires
3. Experienced Lawyers Hiring (Operational Leadership)
- Own the end-to-end lateral hiring process for associates and counsel
- Partner with practice leaders to define resourcing needs and hiring priorities
- Lead operational execution including screening, interview coordination, feedback synthesis, offers and onboarding
- Ensure a high-touch candidate experience for senior and complex hires
4. Business Teams Recruitment (US)
- Lead delivery of business teams hiring across all US functions and levels
- Execute end-to-end recruitment processes (briefing, sourcing, offer and onboarding)
- Build and manage proactive talent pipelines and market mapping capability
- Use data and insights to improve performance, service delivery and hiring outcomes
5. Stakeholder Partnership & Advisory
- Act as a trusted adviser to partners, functional leaders and senior stakeholders
- Provide strategic hiring advice, balancing commercial, operational and market considerations
- Support talent reviews, workforce planning and succession discussions through hiring insight
- Prepare materials and updates for senior forums and executive stakeholders
6. Supplier & External Relationship Management
- Manage relationships with search firms, agencies and recruitment partners
- Ensure strong governance, performance management and value for money
- Maintain external networks across law schools, professional bodies and talent communities
7. Process Excellence, Data & Governance
- Establish and continuously improve best-in-class recruitment processes and methodologies
- Ensure data integrity, reporting accuracy and insight generation across US hiring activity
- Maintain compliance with firm policies, governance and data standards
- Embed Talent & Engagement priorities across all hiring activity, driving diverse and inclusive talent outcomes
8. Team Leadership
- Provide leadership, direction and coaching to US recruitment team members
- Build a high-performing, collaborative and customer-focused TA team
- Drive capability development and continuous improvement
Qualifications & Experience
- Significant experience in Talent Acquisition within the legal sector, including:
- Early careers / campus recruitment
- Lateral hiring of associates and senior lawyers
- Proven ability to lead end-to-end recruitment delivery across multiple talent segments
- Strong stakeholder management experience with senior partners and business leaders
- Commercial acumen with ability to align hiring to business strategy and market conditions
- Experience managing search firms and external suppliers
- Strong data orientation with ability to use insight to drive decisions
- Excellent communication, influencing and advisory skills
- Educated to degree level or equivalent, preferably in Human Resources, Business or a related discipline.
- Ability to use data and market insight to support decisions, continuous improvement and innovation and communicate findings in a compelling and accessible way.
- Strong organizational and coordination skills, with the ability to manage competing priorities and deadlines across multiple functions simultaneously.
- Ability to provide clear, pragmatic advice, balancing commercial, operational, risk and cultural considerations.
- Strong interpersonal and influencing skills, with the credibility and confidence to engage and advise functional heads and senior business stakeholders on lateral hiring matters.
- Excellent attention to detail and a commitment to the accuracy and integrity of all candidate and process-related information.
- A collaborative and proactive working style, with the ability to build effective relationships across the People function and wider business
The base salary range offered for this role will be between $190,000 and $220,000 and represents the firm’s good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible compensation at the time of posting. Actual compensation will be dependent upon a number of factors, including but not limited to, the candidate’s relevant experience, performance, qualifications, degrees and location, as well as the needs of the firm. The total compensation package for this position may include overtime pay, discretionary bonuses and other benefits.
Technical Skills:
This list of duties and responsibilities above is not exhaustive. It is intended to describe the general content of, and requirements for, the performance of this job. As such, the role may also include the undertaking of additional tasks as required.
