Team FOCUS
Ian Dhu is the Team Leader, resident mentor and lead Consultant at FOCUS Legal Recruitment.
Ian has over 25 years of continuous hands on and engaged consulting experience in the specialist arena of legal recruitment and legal talent management including legal talent search, legal talent sourcing, legal talent retention and coaching. He has become an expert. Ian is a trusted, respected, proven and pre-eminent adviser to the legal profession.
Ian matriculated to the University of Queensland St Lucia where he was conferred Degrees in Economics and Law.
Thereafter he served 2 years as an Articled Law Clerk with what became a major national legal services firm and admitted as a Solicitor the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1991 as well as registered on the roll of practitioners for the High Court and Federal Courts of Australia.
Although enjoying practice, Ian discovered from firsthand experience there was no dedicated and committed service available to responsibly, comprehensively and confidentially manage, advise and assist with the interface between lawyers making important career decisions having invested much in achieving their qualifications and those requiring the right legal talent to deliver services to their clients.
Consequently, Ian truly understood the dynamics at play and would lament: “it takes a lawyer to know a lawyer” so he embarked on a courageous and at the time a road less travelled with a new career direction as a lawyer advising lawyers on matters relating to their career and directing them on how to receive the maximum return on their investment in their legal career in becoming qualified and the “blood sweat and tears which comes with becoming qualified” in concert with instructions he received from organisations requiring lawyers. From that moment on, Ian was immersed in analysing, assessing, advising and directing lawyers on matters relating to their career within the legal talent market along with employers of lawyers.
Ian was originally appointed to manage a foundation legal professional (lawyer roles and legal practice management roles) for a small Brisbane recruitment organisation. During his 5 years there Ian established the profile, brand and services of the business for legal professional services in Queensland.
During that time Ian was instrumental in elevating the awareness within the legal fraternity of the many benefits of a professional service for discerning lawyers seeking to make fully informed, objective and astute career moves, rather than just trying to find a job as had been the case up until Ian’s involvement. Ian’s clients requiring the best legal talent became – the private law firms who recognised or respected the key to business success for legal services was recruiting the best legal talent to act for their clients. Clients Ian was instructed by included Government (Local and State): State Government agencies: statutory authorities; Government Owned Corporations; as well as Corporations operating in the private sector including listed public companies and in-house legal, compliance and risk management requirements.
After 5 years managing a busy and progressive service for Queensland legal profession accomplishing all he could in the role, Ian was appointed by a National Recruitment, Human Resources Consulting and Executive Search company to establish a Legal Professional Division for a rapidly expanding business with planned national coverage commencing with Brisbane.
The overwhelming response from the market to the service Ian had developed led to him being responsible for the company’s national roll out. This process saw Ian promoted to a National role at what was a rapidly expanding organisation with offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. At the 5 year mark along with the imminent acquisition of the company by a London company seeking an Australian offering for an international presence coinciding at a time when Ian had become married and expecting his first child prompted Ian to take time out to assess his own career and life objectives having arrived at his own career crossroads.
Encouragement and belief from family and friends in Ian’s passion for providing a confidential, caring and committed service he had developed for the legal fraternity along with the legal talent market he oversaw and vitally – the service’s unique value proposition for delivering a genuine difference to the careers and lives of lawyers along with concurrently achieving the respective objectives of those organisations requiring legal talent led to Ian founding Focus Legal Recruitment.
The rest as they say in the classics – is history.
