Making Better Human Decisions: AI Is Shaking Up the Early Stages of Lateral Hiring
Artificial intelligence is reshaping the early stages of lateral partner recruiting, but the human element remains irreplaceable at the highest levels of the market. Jeffrey Lowe, CenterPeak's Market President for Washington D.C., draws a sharp distinction between associate and partner hiring, noting that partner-level moves require "much more counseling that simply can't be replaced by using an AI tool." Lowe underscores that legal recruiters exist precisely because of the "real information vacuum or gap" in the market, and that deploying AI without the people skilled in recruiting and counseling still falls short—"We know because it's what we do for a living." As firms like Akerman leverage historical LPQ data to identify which factors most reliably predict long-term lateral success, and as AI continues to accelerate movement at the upper end of the market, CenterPeak's model remains the standard that technology alone cannot replicate.
