How Empowerment Built an “Empire”: Recruiting as Counseling at Empire Search Partners

James McCormick, Natasha Innocenti and Scott Yaccarino

It was the early 2000s. Scott Yaccarino was a tax associate at a major New York law firm. And his phone was ringing.

And ringing and ringing and ringing. 

As a young associate, Yaccarino was experiencing his first calls from legal recruiters – and he was not impressed. “It felt like used car salesmen,” says Yaccarino, “but it wasn't a car; it was your career. It was your life. There are very few things more important.”

Fast-forward a few years, and tax and compensation attorney James McCormick was having the same experience: Sitting at his desk at a Big Law firm, he was fielding calls from recruiters he felt were trying to catch him on a bad day. Until one recruiter stood out. 

“He took a different approach. He wasn’t selling me a job,” McCormick remembers. “There was this refreshing approach of, all right, I’m not just a commodity being traded from one employer to the next. Here’s somebody who’s paying attention to what is important to me.” 

McCormick was so impressed that he continued talks with that recruiter and eventually made a move to another firm. It was a perfect match – if he had decided that being a lawyer was the correct path for him. When McCormick decided it was time for a larger career change, he was moved by his experience: He decided to become a recruiter himself. When he did, he joined the recruiter who had been by his side the whole time.

That recruiter? Scott Yaccarino. 

See, Yaccarino had an entrepreneurial spirit, and he knew that if he was frustrated by the calls he was receiving, other lawyers had to be, too. He realized he could work in a new way, as more of an agent for lawyers rather than a headhunter for the companies and firms.

“At the end of the day, the legal industry is all about the talent,” Yaccarino explains. “The product is the quality of the lawyers. So, the idea was even though the lawyers are not the ones that pay recruiter fees, if I represented the best people the way I knew it could be done – by really maximizing the value add to the lawyer – that the law firms and companies that pay fees would line up.” By serving as a trusted advisor to lawyers through leading with transparency, empathy and world-class knowledge, he’d also be the key to companies and firms’ access to the best talent – a win for the lawyers, for the firms and for Yaccarino and his team.

By the time Yaccarino reconnected with McCormick, he was two years into the launch of his legal search firm, Empire Search Partners, which he started with partners Jonathan Ross and Andrew Regan. The trio had worked together at a leading legal search firm for several years prior, and in 2006 decided to start their own practice based on those values that McCormick felt on his first reach-out from the firm – commitment, empathy and empowerment. The objective: to be an advisor that exists in the space between recruiter and counselor. 

“My goal in launching Empire, and what I try to impart on everyone that I work with, is the responsibility of empowering the lawyers to make the best and most informed decisions they can make about their career,” Yaccarino explains. “And that's what we do.”

Yaccarino, Ross and Regan opened the firm in New York, starting by working in a single room together in a shared office space. Their firm concept was quickly validated; combining empathy with effective execution yielded an impressive deal list within just the first couple of years. “We knew out of the gates that we had something,” says Yaccarino.

By 2008, when McCormick joined the firm, they had a full New York headquarters and were on the cusp of opening the firm’s second office in Washington, D.C. Regan, whose background is in in-house work, had worked internationally in London, Hong Kong and New York, and had developed relationships in D.C. with lawyers coming out of government practice – so he made the move to establish Empire’s presence in the nation’s capital. Today, the firm also has facilities in Miami and a newly robust office in San Francisco.

Over the last 18 years, the team – which now stands at 21 recruiters across those four offices – has built unparalleled relationships with high-profile law firms and companies, working across associate, partner and in-house platforms. Keeping the firm intentionally small but their reach tactfully broad, each recruiter is able to traverse practice areas and types, providing career counsel to top-flight attorneys through some of the biggest changes of their careers – and, therefore, their lives.

ANTI-SILOING, PRO-COLLABORATION

The firm is as entrepreneurial in structure as it is in spirit. Every recruiter has expertise in associate, partner and in-house recruiting. Then, rather than silo them to specific departments, each recruiter operates across departments and geographies. While every individual is based in a specific office and has deep roots in that market, they are free to call candidates and work with firms nationwide.

'My goal in launching Empire, and what I try to impart on everyone that I work with, is the responsibility of empowering the lawyers to make the best and most informed decisions they can make about their career,' Yaccarino explains.

Similarly, while one recruiter may have more of a background in partner work and another more in in-house, no one is stepping on each other’s toes by working with either demographic. The team explains that this provides more opportunities for their clients, as well as flexibility and satisfaction in their recruiting careers.

“Selfishly, I like the novelty and freshness of needing to be able to be nimble,” says McCormick, who works fairly evenly across each space. He also explains that the firm’s flexible nature makes it uniquely adaptable to the ups and downs of the industry. Take the 2008 financial crisis, for instance. The firm was just two years old at that point. He explains that every recruiter’s broad expertise and ability to pivot toward in-house work was vital to the firm’s survival in that moment.

Stacey Alton, a managing director in the San Francisco office, joined the firm in 2023 – but had noted that determination from afar for years prior. “I really admire that tenacity,” she says. “This is a firm that weathers the storm.”

Working together has been vital to that strength. Everyone working in every area is a catalyst for collaboration. Natasha Innocenti, a partner In the Northern California office, says that the teams she works with are one of the most fulfilling parts of her career – explaining that every recruiter is able to help each other if something comes up in their personal lives, or when seeking advice on a placement.

That lack of competition between colleagues is upheld in the firm’s structure; unlike many recruiting firms, Empire operates on a fee-sharing model. “When you share fees, everybody’s incentivized,” says Innocenti. “The candidates and the clients are happier when I can tap in and cover for somebody else and they can tap in and cover for me. The clients benefit, the candidates benefit and our families benefit.”

It goes back to the name of the firm – Empire Search Partners. “It’s not an individual’s name,” says McCormick. “It’s really a collective. One of the things we talk about is the idea of the ‘collective we.’ There’s an element there of really building off the skill set and strength that we have collectively. I think it makes us an attractive platform for our clients because they get the package. They don’t just get one individual.”

Their close relationships with each other mirror the recruiters’ long-term relationships with clients and candidates. “I really value relationships,” says Alton, pointing to her approach tailored toward each individual, rather than shopping their resume around. “We really pride ourselves on not approaching people like they’re a transaction. I want to help you with your career,” she adds.

That attitude is ubiquitous in the firm, and not just in single interactions; recruiters who join Empire are taught that their approach should focus on the long game, acting as a kind of agent over the course of the candidate’s career rather than focusing on a single move. It’s about acting as a resource – whether that means the initial contact results in a move or not.

Providing candidates with information is one of the key pillars of Empire. When they started the firm, Yaccarino and partners realized that young lawyers were not only being approached by unethical recruiters, but they often weren’t provided with much access to information about the firms they’re being pitched to – or the industry at large.

'We really pride ourselves on not approaching people like they’re a transaction. I want to help you with your career,' Alton adds.

They decided to change that at Empire, with a focus on access to data, research and institutional knowledge to empower lawyers to make informed decisions about their careers. They sit down with associates to discuss what day-to-day life will be like in various firms if they make partner, or if they don’t make partner; they advise lawyers leaving government positions on the current law firm landscape; they help inform law firm lawyers considering a possible move in-house. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the move is made in the moment or not – it’s about counseling and building a relationship for a time when a move does make sense. “It’s a very long-term view of the process,” explains Yaccarino.

Through nearly two decades of transparency and industry-leading knowledge, the team has built an impressive list of relationships with high-profile companies, firms and partners – with a high market share of exclusive searches for some of the most elite firms. It comes down to trust, the partners say, and top firms and companies rely on Empire recruiters to be their voice to candidates.

LOOKING AHEAD – AND REFLECTING

As the years have gone on, the firm has continued to develop; in 2022, the firm revamped its Northern California office, solidifying Empire’s bicoastal presence. 

Firm leadership brought in Innocenti to spearhead development of the office. It was a perfect match: She had been a longtime admirer of the firm – particularly their work in tech and private funds – and was looking to expand her practice with the flexibility the firm’s model allowed. Meanwhile, she brought 20 years of expertise in the Northern California legal search industry, along with all the relationships she’d built over the years. Those relationships included partners: Innocenti built out a dynamite team of star Bay Area-based recruiters, including two recruiters she had worked with previously – Alton and Suzanne Kane – with Shumi Brody rounding out the office. 

Much like the rest of the firm, Innocenti says that they don’t plan for the office to grow extensively – by design. “We want to maintain our conflicts so we can be the best providers to our clients and continue to have what we consider to be a candidate rep model, which is when an associate or a partner wants to move, they know they can come to us and we can represent them to the full market,” she explains.

It comes back to those foundational values. “The number one thing is just being ethical,” she says. “I put the interests of my clients and candidates first, and I look for a fit that is truly going to benefit both parties. If I can put that together, then I’m successful.”

Innocenti adds that the firm’s renewed energy in San Francisco comes at a strategically advantageous time, as many of the firm’s clients have started increasing their business on the West Coast in recent years. That includes firms that may have been in the area for a long time but had never been active in the lateral market. The development couples with a macro trend in the market, Yaccarino notes: As the demand for top talent increases among leading law firms that are only consolidating and becoming larger, more firms are embracing lateral hiring.

After 18 years, many of the young associates the team advised early on have key leadership roles at those prominent firms now. “It really happened very organically, and it’s been the ultimate validation of the model,” Yaccarino says.

Looking back on his turn from lawyer to recruiter, Yaccarino has no doubts about his decision. “It shifted things from practicing law to serving as that counselor, that agent, that consigliere to people as they navigate the twists and turns of their career. Serving in that capacity is very gratifying.”

As a fellow former lawyer, McCormick agrees. “I never intended this to be my career path,” he says. “But it’s been refreshing and very satisfying. And I would attribute that entirely to my experience at Empire.”