After a dozen years on the bench as a Fulton County magistrate judge, Jessy Lall has made a mid-life career switch, becoming a legal recruiter for The RMN Agency.

Many judges become mediators, but recruiter is a more novel choice. “It was the right time, right age and right position,” Lall said.

Lall became a judge after spending the first six years of her legal career as a staff attorney for judges—first for Fulton County Superior Court Judge Don Langham and then Fulton County State Court Judge Susan Forsling.

Forsling made the switch to mediator after leaving the bench in 2013 and is now a senior neutral for Miles Mediation & Arbitration. Another Miles mediator, Bianca Motley Broom, is also a judge, serving part-time in Fulton County Magistrate Court.

Working for Langham and Forsling led Lall to an administrative law judge position with the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings, and then she became a part-time Fulton magistrate judge in 2006 with a solo practice on the side.

Lall, who grew up in Singapore, became Georgia's first female South Asian judge in 2015, when Fulton County Chief Magistrate Judge Cassandra Kirk appointed her to the bench full-time.

As a magistrate judge, Lall heard a broad mix of civil and criminal cases, including child support, landlord-tenant, small claims, garnishments and preliminary felony matters. She was also in charge of training new junior magistrate judges, because she was one of the more experienced judges on the bench.

That experience in coaching, mentoring and training makes the switch to recruiting a “natural transition,” Lall said. Now she's counseling lawyers about their career paths.

Lall said she'd known The RMN Agency's proprietor, Raj Nichani, for years from the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association. She got in touch with him to talk about making a career change, and then he offered her the recruiting job.

“It's not a secret science as to what it takes to be an attorney and what law firms look for,” said Lall, who is placing all types of candidates, from partners and associates to in-house and legal staff positions.

While she may not yet be an expert on niche practice specialties, Lall said, “I've got the ability to talk to people and see what they need—and maybe what they don't need.”

“I'm not going to try to push someone into a firm or position they don't want,” she added.

Now in her third week as a recruiter, Lall said the in-demand practice areas she's seeing so far for firms and law departments are corporate and ERISA. Health care litigation and cybersecurity are also hot, she said.

BRIEFLY

In other recruiting news, Major, Lindsey & Africa has hired Michael Albino as a managing director for its Interim legal talent team, serving in-house legal departments and law firms in Atlanta. A lawyer, Albino had been a legal account executive for tech company Doxly and, before that, a business development specialist for Dentons' public policy and regulation practice.

Carlton Fields has added an associate, Yelena Abalmazova Chan, to its Atlanta real estate law team—which makes up one-third of the lawyers in its local office, according to the firm. Chan joined from Kitchens Kelley Gaynes after starting out as an assistant solicitor general for the Augusta Solicitor General's Office. She's also an adjunct faculty member at Georgia State University, teaching an undergraduate class on the legal and ethical environment of business.

Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Aughtry has added senior associate Jeffrey Hord to its labor and employment practice from Paley Rothman in Bethesda, Maryland. Hord is an employment litigator handling worker classification, employee separation, shareholder disputes and other issues for employers.

Christiana Jacxsens has left Greenberg Traurig, where she was a shareholder handling pharmaceutical, medical device and product liability litigation, for W. L. Gore & Associates, which makes Gore-Tex fabrics, as product liability senior counsel.

Dentons principal Eric Tanenblatt has joined the board of Points of Light, an international nonprofit that promotes volunteerism. Tanenblatt heads Dentons' U.S. public policy practice and is its global chair of public policy and regulation.

Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough has awarded one of three firmwide $10,000 Diversity Scholarships, aimed at increasing the number of diverse young lawyers in the firm, to Shadaisa Wilcox, a second-year law student at Mercer University. Wilcox also received a salaried summer 2019 position in the firm's Atlanta office. She is a member of the Mercer Law Review and active in the Black Law Students Association and the Phi Delta Phi Honor Society.