Guide · For hiring clients
Legal recruitment & executive search fees, explained.
Legal recruitment fees are 25-30% of total first-year compensation, with 30% of the fee paid as a retainer at engagement. The hiring company pays. The candidate never does.
One base, three fee rates, three very different invoices.
Move the rate. The same $435,000 senior-associate base produces a fee that swings by tens of thousands. On our searches, 30% of the fee is a retainer paid at engagement.
A retained search at 30% on a $435,000 base — the middle of the executive-search range. AESC convention × cited base ↗
The base is a cited public figure ($435,000); the percentage is the executive-search convention (25–35%). The result is arithmetic, not a quote — your engagement letter fixes the number that actually applies. Every figure is cited below.
Who pays the fee?
Fee structures in legal recruitment are simpler than they look, but the details vary by seniority, difficulty and engagement model.
Below is how reputable firms — including ours — approach them. Specific percentages and terms are always agreed in writing before any work begins.
The hiring firm or company pays the fee. Candidates never pay to work with a legal recruiter. For a candidate, our service is free.
Candidates never pay to work with a legal recruiter. For a candidate, our service is free.
How are fees calculated?
Search fees are a percentage of the placed hire’s total first-year compensation. The percentage rises with the seniority and difficulty of the mandate.
As a directional convention (as of 2026; always confirmed per engagement), search fees commonly fall in the region of one-quarter to one-third of first-year cash for senior roles, with the exact figure, payment schedule and any caps set out in the engagement letter. In the wider executive-search market, retained mandates are typically priced at 25–35% of first-year compensation (AESC / executive-search norm). Our own fee is 25–30% of total first-year compensation; 30% of the fee is a retainer paid at engagement, and the retainer is kept if the client cancels the search.
A worked fee example.
To make the percentage concrete, anchor it to a real number.
A senior (eighth-year) associate sits at the top of the standing market base scale — about $435,000 before bonus (the documented Cravath-scale figure; see our 2026 salary scale and Sources). Apply the retained-search convention to that base and the fee bands fall out cleanly.
- $435,000
- Senior (8th-year) associate base used as the worked anchor — the standing market (Cravath) scale, before bonus.
- Biglaw Investor / firm salary memos, 2026
- ≈ 25–33%
- Retained search fee as a share of first-year cash compensation — the executive-search norm for senior mandates.
- AESC / executive-search pricing convention
- 30% retainer
- The share of our fee paid at engagement, and kept if the client cancels the search.
- Sartori & Partners engagement terms, 2026
Sort the bands by rate or by total — the arithmetic holds either way. Each row is the retained-search percentage applied to the same cited base.
| Fee rate | On a $435,000 base |
|---|---|
| 25% | ≈ $108,750 |
| 30% | ≈ $130,500 |
| 33% | ≈ $143,550 |
The figures are arithmetic on a cited base, not a quote.
Retained vs contingency.
A retained search is exclusive and starts with a retainer; a contingency search is paid only on a successful hire. The model follows the mandate.
A retained search is exclusive and starts with a retainer paid at engagement; it suits senior, sensitive or hard-to-fill mandates. A contingency search is paid only on a successful hire and suits more replaceable, time-sensitive roles. We work retained only, and explain both models in our retained vs contingency guide.
Exclusive, paid partly up front, and built for the hard mandates — you are buying a search, not a gamble.
| Attribute | Retained |
|---|---|
| When you pay | A retainer at engagement (ours: 30% of the fee, kept if the client cancels the search). |
| Exclusivity | Exclusive to one firm for the mandate. |
| Best for | Senior, sensitive or hard-to-fill roles. |
| What it buys | Whole-market coverage, passive approach, confidential process. |
Paid only on a successful hire — lower commitment, suited to more replaceable, time-sensitive roles.
| Attribute | Contingency |
|---|---|
| When you pay | Only on a successful hire — no result, no fee. |
| Exclusivity | Often non-exclusive; several firms may work the role. |
| Best for | More replaceable, time-sensitive roles. |
| What it buys | Speed and lower up-front commitment, narrower depth. |
What a fair engagement includes.
A fair engagement is written down, guaranteed, transparent and confidential — four anatomy parts, not a black box.
Why a specialist search costs more.
The fee scales with difficulty, and difficulty scales with scarcity. A generalist hire draws on a deep pool; a true niche collapses the field to a long tail.
A generalist litigation hire draws on a deep pool: across our market map of 1,480,000+ lawyers, Litigation is roughly 30% of all US fee-earners who state a practice (the single largest group). Corporate, employment and finance follow. But the moment a mandate needs a genuine niche — a specific regulatory sub-speciality, a rare cross-border combination, a partner with portable, conflict-clear origination — the addressable field collapses to a long tail. US compliance & regulatory specialists, for instance, number only in the low thousands — a fraction of the litigation pool. Fewer qualified, available, conflict-clear candidates means more of the work is genuine search rather than selection — which is exactly what the higher fee pays for.
Litigation — the deepest pool
Roughly 30% of all US fee-earners who state a practice — the single largest group, and the easiest field to source from.
Sartori & Partners market mapping ↗More of the work is genuine search rather than selection — which is exactly what the higher fee pays for.
Fees buy a real search, not a list.
The fee is not a finder’s commission on a name you could have sourced yourself.
It pays for coverage of the whole relevant field — mapping every plausible candidate across the market, approaching passive people who are not applying anywhere, screening for conflicts and fit, and managing a confidential process end to end. A reputable search reaches the candidates a job board never will: most senior legal moves are unadvertised. That whole-market reach is what a real engagement delivers, and what a database export or a CV blast cannot. For exact compensation context that informs fee calculations, see our legal salary benchmarks.
A list / CV blast
- Names you could have sourced yourself
- Only people already applying or visible
- No conflict or fit screening
- A database export, end of service
A real search
- Coverage of the whole relevant field
- Passive people who aren’t applying anywhere
- Conflicts and fit screened
- A confidential process managed end to end
A reputable search reaches the candidates a job board never will: most senior legal moves are unadvertised.
Sources & method.
The worked fee example is illustrative arithmetic on a cited base, not a quotation. Every public figure traces to a live source below; the practice-pool figures are from our own market mapping, structure not trend.
Sources
3 references- Biglaw Investor — Biglaw Salary Scale + Bonuses (1968–2026) biglawinvestor.com ↗
- AESC — retained-search pricing convention aesc.org ↗
- Sartori & Partners research programme ↗
The worked fee example is illustrative arithmetic on a cited base, not a quotation. Actual fees, percentages, schedules and any caps are agreed in writing per engagement before any work begins. Compensation figures are publicly reported market scales current as of June 2026 and vary by firm, market, class year and bonus. The practice-pool scarcity figures (Litigation ≈ 30% of US fee-earners with a stated practice; compliance & regulatory specialists in the low thousands) sit beside a market map of 1,480,000+ lawyers. Snapshot May–June 2026 — structure, not trend.
Common questions on fees
Do candidates pay legal recruiters?
No. In legal recruitment and executive search, the hiring firm or company pays the fee — never the candidate. Our work for a candidate is free.
How are legal search fees calculated?
Our fee is 25–30% of the placed hire's total first-year compensation, with 30% of the fee paid as a retainer at engagement and kept if the client cancels. In the wider market, retained executive-search fees are often 25–35% of first-year compensation. The figure is agreed in writing before any work begins.
What is the difference between retained and contingency fees?
A retained search is exclusive and starts with a retainer paid at engagement; a contingency search is paid only on a successful hire. Retained suits senior, sensitive or hard-to-fill mandates; contingency suits more replaceable, time-sensitive roles. We work retained only. See our retained vs contingency guide.
Are there guarantees if a hire doesn't work out?
On our retained searches the replacement window is 12 months for general counsel, chief legal officer and chief compliance officer seats, and 6 months for other in-house searches. The window is in the engagement letter before the search starts.
Discuss an engagement
Clear terms, agreed before we start.
Tell us about the role and we'll set out exactly how an engagement would work — fees included.