About Juristech

Juristech owns 6 seats on LinkedIn and a national database covering every major and midsized US law firm. It’s total annual fees for these databases is about $35,000. LinkedIn, which we pay for, and Martindale, which we get for free, covers nearly all of the smaller firms. We don’t think any list is truly comprehensive, but the lists we use keep us productive.

Yes, Nicholas Kokoris passed the IL Bar at his first sitting in February, 1986.

As of November of 2016, 29 years.

Throughout the whole course of the time Juristech has been in business, I would estimate 90% law firms, 10% in-house.

Yes, and the President of the firm, Nick Kokoris has attended 14 national NALSAC conferences since 1996. It’s a valuable organization and gives us ideas every year.

The Schultz study involved an original research study conducted through thousands of interviews with top rated attorneys and judges throughout the United States. The study was led and directed by the University of California at Boalt Hall’s HR Department in 2008. It distilled 26 factors which were present in the personalities of approximately 4000 of the study’s research candidates. The candidates in the study were top national partner-level attorneys and judges. The study concluded that there is a negative correlation between academic performance in law school and the LSAT and the presence of the 26 winning personality factors. Apparently, the neurological complexity of many highly successful AMLAW 200 partners includes both the presence of many, if not all of those 26 factors, despite the presence of extremely high academic ability. In other words, AMLAW 200 equity partners and Federal Judges, as one might suspect, are neurological outliers in that they combine the personality traits that predominantly appear in less academically successful people with the extraordinary academic achievement of AMLAW 200 partners. This is what might be described as “street smart” and “book smart”. These top attorneys and judges have an extraordinary temperamental capacity, not to mention another 20 some largely psychological factors. (In many cases, it might be beneficial for a college graduate to work for a few years before commencing law school. Often times, older candidates have stronger temperamental capacity in their mid to late twenties or early thirties than right out of college.) Another permutation of the Schultz study is that the majority of truly gifted academically people do NOT make the best lawyers, but often quite pedantic lawyers who are so detailed oriented they have limitations with leveraging psychological strength. While this is counterintuitive, the data, as well as some of my own anecdotal observations, seem to support it. We try to identify the full personality, academically sound legal professionals by understanding the significance of personality in the legal profession.

A candidate with some longevity of employment and a candid personality, who talks neither too much nor too little. A certain sound, a certain ring of authenticity, when the candidate is not trying too hard to make a point. Each recruiter, we might guess, places emphasis on different factors. We tend to believe that longevity subsumes character and intellect. It says a great deal about anyone.

Juristech began in 1988 by placing patent and IP attorneys. At that time, the biggest players in the I.P. space were remote recruiters, firms which placed attorneys over the phone. That was how the IP attorney search market began- remotely. When the internet took off in the mid to late 90’s, we extended that national approach to general attorneys.

Large or small search firms offer different advantages. Small search firms have fewer “hands off” firms- more places where they can look to find attorneys for given jobs without running into conflicts of interest. As databases and use of LinkedIn have become commonplace, it is often very effective for a small search firm, incentivized by low or no equity dispersion among the recruiting staff, to use the internet to make placements that larger search firms which are less incentivized by lower pay rate per recruiter ( higher overhead ) and greater search limitations due to conflicts, could accomplish. It’s quite ironic, but I’ve seen it. I guess there’s a little of Hunter S. Thompson to it. When the going gets weird……. Our size keeps our overhead low, our incentive high, our conflicts fewer. When Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes over, if we had to guess, we think a Juristech type structure will be one of the last kind of search firm to feel its impact. We could be wrong here, but it sounds pretty plausible. The other advantage of staying small is that we have the option of networking with other recruiters.

In about 1995, there was an article involving an interview with the Computer Science Chair at MIT. He was asked the same question in relation to brokers in general. He replied that disintermediation, while not only not hurting brokers, will actually increase their revenues if brokers use the internet tools to their advantage. This has largely played out for us.

Because it’s a great fee statement that is designed to protect the intrinsic value of the information recruiters provide to hiring entities and because its helps to elevate and keep in our minds, sacred, the role that we play as information providers. If everyone used it, then the hiring entities would have a harder time disagreeing with its clauses. If a fee statement becomes popular, then it becomes universally harder to disagree with its application and its adoption. We especially like clause
“The hiring entity’s affiliation of an attorney or patent agent or any other independent contractor referred by Juristech or the creation of an affiliation with the same subsequent to the receipt of this fee statement shall be considered valid approval and acceptance by the hiring entity to the terms of this fee statement.”