Natasha Innocenti on the Strength of Teams in Legal Recruiting

Legal recruiting can be an individualistic, cutthroat industry. Natasha Innocenti, however, finds her strength comes from the opposite approach: forging authentic connections and building a dependable team. 

As a philosophy student and daughter of academics, Innocenti spent her early career suspicious of corporate figures precisely because she assumed them to be competitive and aggressive. But while pursuing her master’s in philosophy in London, she began working as a personal assistant for an executive search firm – and that assumption was flipped on its head. She found herself amongst people she enjoyed, invigorated by the prospect of helping others find the job that was right for them. Inspired, she left the world of academia and moved to San Francisco, where she began working for executive search firms. Soon, she found the legal recruiting industry — and has never looked back. 

Since then, Innocenti has been a key member of some of the nation’s most prominent legal recruiting firms, placing partners at top law firms and spearheading groundbreaking office openings. She spent 13 years with Major Lindsey & Africa, including as leader of its partner practice in Northern California. She then spent over five years at Macrae, where she continued her focus on elite partner recruiting. Then, in 2022, she was tapped by leading search firm Empire Search Partners to renew the firm’s west coast footprint. 

With connections across her former firms bolstered by her passion for working collaboratively, Innocenti quickly built up the San Francisco office with star recruiters she knows and trusts. She and the team operate as a small but mighty office with a deep knowledge of the Bay Area market, but with the ability to conduct national searches. While she continues working with partners at the nation’s top law firms, Innocenti was attracted to Empire’s more entrepreneurial approach, which enables all recruiters at the firm to work at the highest end of both the law firm and in-house markets.

Innocenti is passionate about bringing together and uplifting women outside of her working environment, as well. In 2009, she co-founded the West Coast chapter of the Women in Law Empowerment forum. She served on the organization’s board from 2010 to 2016, working to amplify the voices of women in the legal industry. In other community-oriented work, she also serves on the Executive Committee and Chair of the Fund Development Committee of the board of The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, a non-profit devoted to providing legal services for housing, health and families.

Lawdragon: Tell me about your first foray into the search world while you were in graduate school.

Natasha Innocenti: Because I could type, the best paying job I could get while I was in graduate school was as a personal assistant at an executive search firm. It was a boutique firm in London that was founded by big executive search firm refugees, kind of like a boutique law firm. I worked for one of the name partners, and I truly just loved the business. It was an extrovert's dream!  Even as an assistant, I had the privilege of talking with a lot of our candidates and clients. I got to know the tempo of the business and the etiquette. There's a grace in business that a lot of people don't talk about. The more gracious you are, the more you get done. And although I had expected the industry to be a more cutthroat, profit-oriented space, especially working at the executive level, I found people to be polite, responsive, constructive and practical. The candidates were trying to get their next best job, and to help someone find that is a real joy.

LD: So, then you moved back to San Francisco and decided to pursue executive search. How did you end up in the legal industry?

NI: I interviewed with all the executive search firms, and I got a job at Heidrick & Struggles in San Francisco. After about a year, I got promoted and became the associate to a partner who did both investment banking and legal search work. So, I was 26, 27 maybe, and my first legal search was an M&A partner search for Shearman & Sterling in New York.

LD: Oh, wow.

NI: Which I was woefully unprepared to do. But I worked very hard on it.

LD: Since then, you’ve focused much of your career on partner work, but you’ve kept your practice areas broad. Tell me about that.

NI: Specializing in a level allows me to be a generalist when it comes to practice areas. So, we can do everything from IP to private equity to capital markets to construction litigation. I mean, you name it and we've probably done it. The diversification of my practice allows me to pivot in step with my law firm clients as the market inevitably moves. We aim to have that same balance of corporate and litigation in our portfolio.

LD: Absolutely. But are there any areas that you find yourself placing partners in more often?

NI: Working in the Bay Area, you get a chance to be adjacent to new technologies and innovation in a way that keeps it really fun and interesting. But the space that I very intentionally set out to know is private equity and funds in general, including venture. We don't have a lot of hedge funds out here, but the private equity space has steadily grown in terms of the clients. We have more and more funds based in the Bay Area. First, we had venture, of course, and now we have a broader mix of venture, private equity and growth equity funds.  It's a space that is difficult to penetrate, especially as a woman. But I knew that eventually we would have generations of homegrown private equity lawyers here. So, even before the diaspora in private equity began, I very intentionally built relationships with the general counsel and the chief legal officers, and then by virtue of that, the partners who were working in that space, knowing that I was going to have to play the long game if I wanted to actually make any money representing these people. And eventually, that started to happen. As a result, my team has developed a reputation for doing more private equity legal search than anybody, and that now includes in-house.

LD: Speaking of women in your work, diversity is such an important focus in your practice. Tell me about developments you’re seeing these days.

NI: As diversity becomes a key focus for these firms, the more detail we see, the more differentiation we see, and frankly, the more success we see. It has to be a very intentional thing. When you put one woman on the executive committee, that's a token. When you have three or four women on the executive committee and a woman running the firm, that's a commitment.

As diversity becomes a key focus for these firms, the more detail we see, the more differentiation we see, and frankly, the more success we see.

LD: How did a focus on diversity in the profession become so important for you?

NI: One of my mentors was Marty Africa. She had an understanding of how to encourage women and teach them how to negotiate. What women have needed to do to be successful has changed. There was a time when you would not put your child’s soccer game on your calendar. That has changed, thankfully. Part of what's changed is the top-down approach, but there's also a bottom-up approach. These younger men, they want parental leave, they want to participate in their families, they want to put the soccer game on their calendar. That allows many more women to say, "I need to go pick my kid up from school."

LD: What else did you learn from Marty Africa and your other mentors?

NI: I'm very fortunate to have had a lot of mentors. One of the things that she did was introduce me to people. And one of the things I learned was when a woman introduces you to somebody, follow through. After I had been introduced to all these powerful women by Marty and had really run with it, we looked back on our progress.  One of the women she introduced me to was Ida Abbott, who is a consultant to women lawyers, a luminary author in the advancement of women and women rainmakers, and a dear friend. Marty introduced us by email, and I invited her to lunch. Together, we worked with Betiayn Tursi to open up the Women in Law Empowerment Forum on the West Coast. I served on that board for years, and that led to so many opportunities for me to meet more women, to advance more women. Suddenly, I was in a position where I could invite women to speak on panels and get more visibility or be interviewed for articles.

Once you have the power to be an advocate in that way, it's critically important that you do so, that you do it within your own organization, where you have the internal stature to elevate women partners and diverse partners and to help them make partner, help them establish themselves, mentor them on the board, all of those things. When you have been given an opportunity and that opportunity in turn allows you to provide other opportunities, there's an opportunity and an obligation to do that.

LD: Fast-forwarding a bit, tell me about your decision to move to Empire a couple years back.

NI: I had admired Empire from afar for a very long time. They have a stellar reputation working on elite law firm partner and associate searches, in addition to a stellar in-house client roster.  They’re not industry-specific, but their excellence in private equity, funds and tech is phenomenal. Empire has always prioritized client service and nimbleness over maximizing the number of recruiters at the firm. 

The firm combines the best of a free market approach with a highly collaborative culture. When I began talking to the firm, I asked how they adjudicated split disagreements among their recruiters. They just laughed, “We don’t have disagreements, there is enough to go around.” And I have found that to be true. The client gets the best possible process at the highest level of professionalism.

Once you have the power to be an advocate in that way, it's critically important that you do so.

LD: You were brought in to start the new West Coast office – tell me about that process.

NI: We opened the office with a full complement. Suzanne Kane, who was my partner at Macrae, came over. Suzanne and I are truly a team and do everything together as equal partners. We hired Shumi Brody with whom we had worked previously.  She is phenomenal and handles both partner and associate recruiting. We hired Stacey Alton, with whom I had worked at Major, Lindsey & Africa where she practiced in the in-house practice in New York.  Stacey had moved back to the Bay Area, so the timing was perfect. Our fantastic Executive Assistant, Meghan Shannon, also followed us from Macrae. We put the team together based on what the clients wanted. We don't plan to become a huge office. We want to maintain our conflicts so that we can be the best providers to our clients with specific recruiting needs, and continue to have what we consider to be a candidate rep model – when a law partner or associate wants to move, they know they can come to us and we can represent them to the firms that make the most sense for their practice and clients.

LD: How would you describe your style as a recruiter?

NI: Honest and ethical. I put the interests of my clients and my candidates first, and I really look for a fit that is truly going to benefit both parties. If we can put that together, then we are successful. If you don't take that approach, you just can't last very long in this business because you have to live by your track record. I have managed to be successful on a lot of different platforms, and every one of those platforms had benefits to me. It was good for me to be in a bigger environment when I was a younger recruiter because I had more people to learn from. Now that I'm a more senior person, it's my responsibility to mentor and develop the people around me. I make myself available to anybody who wants to talk, and I feel strongly about that because I was the beneficiary of those people's times when I was earlier in my career.

LD: What advice do you find yourself giving those younger recruiters?

NI: In 2020 to 2022, we went through an overheated market, which has its own challenges, but it had the benefit of being lucrative for recruiters. We handled many office openings, which is particular to the Bay Area and a real art form. Then with the tech slowdown we had a softer market, and the Bay Area is a lagging indicator. I've lived through the internet boom and bust, the financial and real estate boom and bust, and then this more recent softness in tech. Now it is busier than ever again. My best advice is just getting on the phone, networking and adding value to clients and candidates with every interaction. Always focus on building relationships and playing the long game. Be as responsive to your clients as you imagine them to be to theirs. And when an ally gives you an opportunity, take it.

LD: Overall, what do you find most fulfilling about your career?

NI: Building and participating in teams, without a doubt. Giving others opportunity, access to my relationships and a chance to grow in their career. And that cuts both ways. When I'm in a team and something comes up in my caregiving life, either because of an ailing parent, or the kids are home from school, I've got a team that will cover for me. There are enough of us that the client never feels any difference and my teammates get access to the candidates and clients for their own portfolio of relationships.

LD: That’s wonderful. And what do you do for fun outside your practice?

NI: I love to cook, garden, read and hike. I'm Italian, so we always have a vegetable garden, and I cook for the family every night.