Four years after exiting SSQ and moving away from legal recruitment, Nick Shilton has joined LSS on a retained, part-time basis as adviser for the next stage of its international growth.

Shilton’s appointment will shock the industry given his initial desire to retire from legal recruitment in 2018, a company statement acknowledged. He brings more than 20 years of experience in legal search to LSS.

Shilton told Recruiter he wouldn’t be heading the exec team at LSS, but rather “just acting in a part-time advisory role and supporting their excellent exec team”. He added: “I am too busy having fun managing rock bands and publishing books to be returning full time to the recruitment fray!”

Through his many years in the industry, he gained specific experience of private practice partner and team hiring, the statement said.

Shilton will help guide LSS to fast-track the firm’s ambitious plans for scale. As the firm looks to continue its global expansion, Shilton will play a key part in accelerating the growth plans for the firm’s German office, as well as support the wider focus to grow in North America and Asia Pacific, building upon LSS’s recent placement successes in Japan, China and India.

In addition, LSS CEO Clare Beresford said: “We are now keen to look at how we can disrupt and change private practice search, bringing the same level of candidate and client curation and care we have for our in-house mandates.”

LSS is a specialist legal, compliance, legal operations and IP search firm, which was founded in 1988. Over the past few years, it’s grown significantly reporting a revenue growth of 40% in 2020 and 63% in 2021 and supported a range of clients including FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 firms.

Story updated 08:30, 9 June 2022

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