Highly respected international recruitment agency MLegal is expanding into New York and has joined forces with a superstar recruiter in the city. Brad Bruner will launch Mlegal’s New York office, adding to the firm’s  offices in California, London and Hong Kong. The move brings together two major personalities in the global legal search industry. Recruitment guru Joe Macrae founded Mlegal in California after setting up and selling one of London’s top agencies, ZMB. Mlegal is a top-tier partner and team search business in the legal sector, based in Silicon Valley but working across the US and, in conjunction with its UK sister company Macrae Roxburgh Appleby (MRA), in Europe and Asia.

Cooley laser-like focus

Mr Macrae has been involved in some of the most high profile partner moves in global law firms, including the major recent launch of Silicon Valley law firm Cooley into London and the recruitment of 15 of its 19 London partners from Edwards Wildman.Commenting on the Cooley deal, Mr Macrae said: 'Working with Cooley on the London launch was, and continues to be, a hugely prestigious project for us. Given the firm’s profile and momentum in the US there was a lot of interest amongst London partners in the opportunity. Unlike many firms starting up in London, Cooley were also laser like in their focus on what they wanted and the importance of a sizeable core group of collegiate like-minded partners giving them critical mass from day one.'

National and international 

Mr Bruner, who previously worked as a lawyer at Orrick and Fenwick and inhouse at Yahoo, brings his team to Mlegal from legal search firm The Partners Group, where he focused on partners, general counsel and other high-level in-house counsel placements as well as helping both firms and corporations strategically strengthen their legal practices through adding multiple members to their teams. An honours graduate of Stanford University (where he was also named as a Fulbright Scholar in Germany) and Harvard Law School, Mr Bruner’s practice is both national and international. He works for clients globally – from Silicon Valley to Luxembourg, New York, Houston, Washington DC, Berlin, Milan and Chicago.

Multi-layered portfolio

Mr Bruner's portfolio includes a large group acquisition in Houston which doubled the size of his law-firm client’s office, finding a General Counsel for a prominent public biotech company and multiple Compliance Officer searches for corporations across several different industries and many US cities. He has also conducted exclusive partner/group searches in New York, Washington DC and San Francisco, opening the first West Coast office for a major law firm and multiple senior-level in-house searches in Europe.

Like-minded

‘We have been doing an increasing number of assignments in New York and DC in recent years and have looked hard for a like-minded senior player who would be as excited about our growth opportunities on the East Coast as we are,’ Mr Macrae said. ‘Brad is a prolific legal recruiter with a stellar track record of partner and senior in-house placements and also a great guy who shares our priorities, high ethical standards and passion for being the absolute best in our profession. Brad not only brings East Coast legal recruiting experience; he also has a wealth of law firm and corporate connections in the SF Bay Area and in Europe which collectively make the fit even better than we had thought possible.’ Mr Macrae added that Mlegal and MRA together offered a product that was highly unusual, if not unique, in the global legal recruitment market in terms of their collective expertise, track record and depth on both sides of the Atlantic.