Increasing productivity seems to be the most sought after goal amongst legal recruiters.  Many legal recruiters spend countless amounts of time and money learning the newest productivity strategies, software and philosophies.  But there may be a simpler solution to the productivity puzzle. As the best and most effective legal recruiters know, understanding your client's needs is probably the easiest, surest and least expensive path to increasing a legal recruiter's productivity. There are basically three major keys to understanding a client's needs:
1.    Understanding the client's industry.  Find out about your client's specific practice area.  What are the challenges, latest developments and specific skill requirements of your client's practice area?
2.    Understand the legal job you are recruiting for.  The most critical knowledge you need about the legal job is, what drives on the job success?  What are the skills and characteristics a legal job candidate needs to find success in this particular legal position?
3.    Understand the profile of the ideal legal job candidate?  For each legal job there is an ideal candidate profile.  You need to know what it is, so that you can target the right candidates in your recruiting efforts. Understand what the ideal legal job candidate desires in a position and make sure you highlight those job qualities that will be most attractive to the ideal legal job candidate.