As the competition for young lawyers hits a fevered pitch, plaintiffs firms have increasingly become a contender for acquiring top talent from elite law schools and Big Law alike.

Capitalizing on a heightened interest for meaningful work, leaders at several national plaintiffs firms said they not only started to apply new strategies for on-campus recruiting, but also appear to be benefiting from the highly dynamic labor market for existing associates.

"Lawyers and law students alike are thinking about what's really important," Keller Lenkner's managing partner Travis Lenkner explains. "A lot of the shift is away from structured, hierarchical Big Law environments."