Melba Hughes, one of Atlanta’s original legal recruiters, has joined global legal search firm Major, Lindsey & Africa. The two other recruiters and assistant at her firm, Hughes Consultants, are part of the merger.

Becoming part of a global recruiter will make her more competitive, Hughes said, and expand the services she can offer clients—particularly contract attorney placements, which she called a “huge opportunity.”

“We find that our in-house clients want to be served by one full-service vendor that can supply contract lawyers, temp to perm, and global search,” she said.

Hughes’ firm has focused on the more traditional recruitment areas of corporate law staff plus partners and associates for law firms. Clients include Turner Broadcasting System, General Electric, Del Monte Foods, MetLife, Paul Hastings and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hughes Consultants handled the search for Atlanta’s current city attorney, Cathy Hampton.

Hughes joins MLA’s in-house practice as a partner and Ilene Rosh joins as a managing director. Nicole Andres Calandra joins the associate practice as a managing director. Administrative assistant Lydia Davis is also making the move, scheduled for Nov. 12.

“I’ve been serving many of the same clients for decades. In going to MLA, I hope to expand on that,” Hughes said. “It gives us the capacity to be more far-reaching but provide the personal service that we’ve done for years.

Hughes said she’s known the principals of MLA since her early days as a recruiter, in the mid-1980s.

“These are not strangers. These are the people who’ve created the industry,” she said, adding that Miriam Frank, the vice president of MLA’s in-house practice group, is her best friend in the profession.

Frank said in a statement that Hughes Consultants’ “reputation, connections and womanpower” will give a “significant lift” to MLA’s Southeast presence as well as its national presence in in-house search and diversity recruiting.

MLA’s Atlanta office is located in Midtown at 1355 Peachtree Street, which Hughes called “the heart of the legal search business,” because of the corporate firms concentrated there.

Contributor: Meredith Hobbs in Law Firms | subscribe to rss |   share