Active in the Chicago legal community? Whether you’re a lawyer, paralegal or seeking a flexible, part-time legal position, a Chicago legal recruiter can help you land your legal industry dream role. With contacts at local law firms and corporations seeking legal counsel, legal staffing firms are often the first to know about the legal hiring needs at employers across the city. Thus, such firms are adept at introducing the area’s leading legal talent to local law firms, and vice-versa, when there is a fit tied to a particular practice area, legal specialty or experience level.
Verified Chicago Area Legal Recruiters
Atticus Recruiting is a Chicago-based legal recruitment agency, specializing in placing highly skilled and exceptionally well credentialed attorneys at top-tier law firms and coveted in-house positions throughout Chicago and across the Midwest.
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Job Opportunities
Affectionately called “The Windy City”, Chicago, Illinois, is a place that can put air in your legal career’s sails when it’s time for a change. As the 3rd most-populous U.S. city, Chicago’s metropolitan area includes over 10 million residents. Chicagoans are known for their tough, blue-collar work ethic that helps fuel the city’s global economy in sectors like finance, telecommunications, education, technology and transportation.
Chicago has over 22,000 lawyers that currently practice at its more than 4,500 law firms, 1000s of corporate counsel departments and 100s of government agencies. The average base pay for those attorneys is $104,974, and most seek career-enrichment opportunities through these professional organizations:
- Illinois State Bar Association
- Chicago Bar Association
- Cook County Bar Association
- 6 ABA-accredited law schools
- Numerous other state and local bar associations based on race, personal interests, practice specialties, religion, sexual orientation and other membership criteria
Requirements to Practicing Law
To earn a law license in Illinois, you must pass the state’s Bar Exam after graduating from an ABA-accredited law school. The cost is $950, and all applicants must also pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE). If you are already a licensed attorney in another U.S. jurisdiction who’s been practicing for 5 of the past 7 years, you can also file an Admission on Motion (fee: $1250) to the Illinois Bar if these additional requirements are met:
- You are a member in good standing of the current jurisdiction’s bar.
- You have been certified by the Committee on Character and Fitness.
- You have not failed the Illinois Bar Exam in the last 5 years.
All successful applicants must also be sworn in and complete a 6-hour Basic Skills Course and Mentoring Program. New lawyers must complete 20 hours of continuing legal education (CLE) within 2 years of being licensed. During the second 2 years, 24 hours of CLE are required, and then for each subsequent 2-year reporting period 30 CLE hours are needed. For each 2-year reporting period, a minimum of 4 CLE hours must be in diversity, civility, professionalism, legal ethics, or mental illness and addiction. For more details, visit: www.lawyeredu.org.
Why Chicago?
Chicago’s ethnically diverse downtown area on the shores of Lake Michigan is filled high rises,
theaters, sporting venues, 5-star restaurants and upscale shops. Thirty-five Fortune 500 companies have headquarters in the Chicagoland area, including Walgreen’s, Boeing, Exelon, Caterpillar, McDonald’s, Abbot Laboratories and United Continental Holdings. The city’s cost of living runs slightly higher than the national average due primarily to taxes and transportation, but lower healthcare, utility and grocery costs help offset those living expenses.
For those residing in and around Chicago, there are public transportation bus and light rail services available through the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), including Park & Ride services from the suburbs. There are also 2 international airports serving the Chicagoland area. The Legal District is located near the lakefront and Loop right off I-90/94 and I-290, and many of the city’s lawyers live in its better neighborhoods, like North Center, the Loop, Lakeview, Lincoln Park and Edison Park.
In addition to its many parks, water-related activities and 6 professional sports teams, popular attractions include Wrigley Field, Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, Navy Pier, Lincoln Park Zoo and Museum of Science and Industry. Chicago has a 4-season climate, with July’s average highs of 84 degrees F making it the warmest month. January is the coldest month, with lows averaging around 20 degrees F, and the city does see an above-average amount of snowfall during a typical winter.
A Chicago Legal Recruiter Can Help Lawyers Find Their Competitive Edge in the Job Market
When active or passive legal job seekers partner with legal headhunter they can make their job search much more productive. Instead of scouring legal job boards and over-extending your networking contacts for opportunities at local law firms, a Chicago legal recruiting firm can make much better use of time and resources devoted to landing you a position at a new firm. In doing so, a Chicago attorney recruiter can help you weed through local opportunities, land interviews and help you create a winning reputation in the legal recruitment marketplace.
Discreet & Professional Services From the Leading Chicago Legal Headhunters
Alongside their inside knowledge of hiring practices and available positions at local law firms, Chicago legal recruitment agencies can conduct a discreet job search process on your behalf that will retain your privacy and reputation in the legal community. In addition, the legal industry veterans working at Chicago’s top legal headhunter firms offer the utmost in professional services, while working to find employers and roles that are in the best interest of you and your career goals.
The Legal Recruiter Directory makes it simple for attorneys and legal employers to gather information on all of the legal job headhunters in the Chicago metro area without having to conduct countless online searches.
All the information on this website is published in good faith and for general information purpose only. The Legal Recruiter Directory does not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of the information found on this website or that of the linked sites.