Five years ago, the legal recruitment landscape in Germany looked very different. Around this time my then boss sent an apparently innocuous e-mail enquiring whether any of the legal recruitment consultants within our organisation spoke German. As a result I found myself establishing an office in Frankfurt in early 1999.

At that time, the concept of a dedicated legal recruitment consultancy was alien to the German market. Indeed, at a recruitment evening hosted by a major UK law firm in London shortly after we had opened in Frankfurt, a director of one of our competitors suggested that we had taken leave of our collective senses. "German lawyers just do not move," he said.

He was not entirely wrong. Historically, a German lawyer would join a firm on qualification, become an equity partner by virtue of time served and more often than not spend his entire career at the same firm. Of course, individuals did move and there had been a variety of domestic mergers, but there was nothing like the flow of partners and associates between firms that has long been part and parcel of more mature legal markets such as the US or the UK.

In addition, given the lack of lateral movement at both associate and partner level, firms tended principally to rely on hiring newly-qualified lawyers who came to them from job fairs, Bewerbertage (open days) or through experience during their referendariat (the German training period).

During the past decade, the movement of qualified lawyers at associate level was by a combination of firms running their own advertisements, direct speculative applications and recruiting partners themselves gently networking. At partner level advertising was almost unheard of and lateral movement very rare.

The rationale in 1999 for opening in Frankfurt was a combination of US and UK client demand and that we foresaw some fundamental changes taking place in Germany. What we certainly did not predict was the sheer scale of those changes, driven principally by the internationalisation of the German market.

Today there are more than 40 UK and US headquartered law firms with a presence in Germany. A significant number of these have offices in more than one city. Anglo-German mergers, US-German mergers, 'greenfield' start-ups by US and UK firms, team moves, demergers, alliances – the level of activity during the past five years in the German market has been staggering.

However, the legal recruiters have been slow to respond. Until early this year there was only one UK-style dedicated legal recruiter with a presence in the German market. Despite the internationalisation of the market, legal recruitment remains very immature in Germany.

The concept of recruitment intermediaries generally is, of course, not a new one to the wider German market.

In the past decade a number of domestic German recruiters started to take an interest in the legal sector, often gaining their first insight into it through an assignment to recruit a lawyer on behalf of a corporate or banking client. However, such recruiters could be simultaneously working on assignments to recruit marketing, finance, sales, HR and IT professionals. Consequently many simply did not have in-depth sector knowledge of the legal market.

Conversely, assorted US- and UK-based legal recruiters saw the potential of the German market and, conscious of their law firm clients' interests in the jurisdiction, sought to undertake assignments from London or the US.

Both of these approaches have enjoyed some success. But ultimately there is no substitute for combining a local presence on the ground in the jurisdiction with dedicated legal recruitment specialists. A mere presence is not enough. One needs a commanding knowledge of the local legal market and an appreciation of recent German history, economics, culture and psyche. And while employing qualified lawyers as recruitment consultants is now common in the UK market, such an approach is essential in the more conservative German market to ensure both credibility and a genuine understanding of the issues that face both candidates and clients.

However, simply imposing a UK legal recruitment model on Germany will not work.

In the UK, legal recruiters are part of the framework of the market. By contrast, in Germany both clients and candidates still require considerable education as to the role that a recruiter can play.

Candidates are a great deal more cautious in Germany than in their UK or US counterparts. The majority have never moved before and are extremely concerned about confidentiality (sometimes bordering on paranoia) as well as requiring considerable hand-holding throughout the recruitment process. Partner level candidates often struggle to formulate business plans; it is simply an exercise that many of them never thought they would have to consider.

While the global economy is ailing, Germany is in dire straits. A number of law firms that entered Germany in the past few years now find themselves saddled with high cost bases and are struggling to generate revenue. Indeed, a senior partner in one US firm recently told me that not entering Germany a couple of years ago was, in retrospect, a godsend.

Unlike in the UK and the US, lateral partner movement in Germany slowed right down in 2002. But since opening offices in Frankfurt and Munich at the beginning of February this year we have been dealing with a number of frustrated partner candidates looking to move and client firms looking to build their practices.

While the economic prognosis is a grim one for the time being in Germany, the jurisdiction has plenty to offer the legal recruiter with a genuine understanding of how it operates.

Nick Shilton runs the German legal recruitment business of Shilton Sharpe International.