For attorneys looking for an in-house position, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that hiring is up in law departments across the country. The bad news is that competition for the openings is intense. That means job seekers need to cast a wide net to find the right legal department opening.

One sometimes overlooked approach is to contact legal recruiting firms. Most in-house law departments retain a recruiting firm on an exclusive basis to fill openings at the higher levels. While search firms contact attorneys with the requisite qualifications to see if they are interested, they are also open to accepting resumes from candidates they haven't called.

If you decide to reach out to recruiters, don't limit yourself to one recruiting firm. Because corporate searches usually are done on an exclusive basis, one search firm can't offer your resume for a job being handled by a different search firm. Each firm is working for specific companies to fill specific positions and is not a placement firm working to find you a job.

“Reaching out to one search firm isn't enough for those people looking to go in-house,” says Jeffrey Lowe, managing partner of Major Lindsey & Africa's Washington, D.C. office. “You need to find out who handles the in-house searches in your market and reach out to all of them.”

The best way to contact a recruiter is to call and introduce yourself and then submit a resume. The search firm will not distribute the resume without consulting you first. While the search firm may not have an immediate opening suited to you, the contact can pay off down the road.

For example, Major Lindsey & Africa enters the skills and experience of potential candidates who submit resumes into a database that it uses to find matches at the outset of a search.

Lowe says that for a current search for a life sciences company GC, he found 100 matches in the database for attorneys in that field with the required 10-plus years of experience. Then he further screened those candidates to see if they have other qualities the company is seeking.

“There really is no downside for the job seeker to being in the database,” he says. “We might find them eventually anyway, but if they are already in the database, once we get a hit they will be among the first people we call.”

In this competitive job market, Lowe says, it's important to put yourself out there.

“Don't sit back and wait for a call,” he says. “You have to be proactive.”

He also warns against trying to outsmart a recruiter who cold calls you about an opening. Frequently candidates will talk to a recruiter on the phone and then call the company that is seeking to fill the position, thinking that they will be more attractive because they company won't have to pay the recruiter a fee.

But with an exclusive search contract, the company has already paid a fee and must refer the candidate back to the search firm, Lowe says.