Legal Recruiter Profile
Palmer Legal Staffing By Teresa Cajot Palmer Legal Staffing is a full service recruiting firm that provides direct-hire, temporary, and temp-to-hire placement within the Washington, DC metropolitan area. The firm’s legal division specializes in placing attorneys, paralegals, legal administrators, law clerks, legal secretaries, and litigation support positions within law firms but also serves corporate legal departments and sole practitioners.
Palmer Legal Staffing was founded in 1997 with the goal of providing “professional services to the legal community, focusing on integrity, ethics, and diligence.” Carol Palmer, the firm’s founder and president, functions as the head of the direct-hire placement division. Prior to establishing Palmer Legal Staffing, she spent 12 years as a law firm administrator at the international firm, Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP. She spent an additional four years in the same role between two other law firms. In the firm’s early days, Palmer worked alone and only accepted direct-hire placement assignments. However, things have changed and today the firm consists of a team of professionals who typically have about 15 candidates working on temp-assignments on any given day. Out of every 100 applicants, only about nine make it through the screening process and into the pool of candidates considered for long-term placement. In addition to referrals, the firm finds many of its job candidates through advertising at universities, in newspapers, and online. By maintaining a candidate database of more than 8,000 candidates, Palmer
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Legal staffing is able to quickly fill requests for temporary workers while performing more targeted searches for directhire, temp-to-hire, and long-term temporary requests. Palmer Legal Search recruiters do more than merely glance at a candidate’s resume. Recruiters carefully examine each resume and evaluate candidate qualifications. Candidates are then screened over the telephone to determine maturity level and professionalism. The candidates who meet Palmer’s rigorous requirements are then called in for job skills-testing and a personal interview. References are also checked before any candidate is presented to a potential employer. Clients are billed on a contingent-fee basis for direct-hire placements and temp-to-hire placements, while clients are billed at an hourly rate for temporary employees. Candidates who work with Palmer Legal Staffing enjoy holiday pay, paid-time off after working 1,500 hours within a year, and access to a company funded profit sharing plan.
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