Amber built her legal recruiting business on her own terms. Paraform helps her move faster.

“It’s going to be a part of my business moving forward. Always.”

Amber Amer has been recruiting for more than a decade across tech, chemical manufacturing, healthcare, and other industries. But when she moved into legal recruiting around seven years ago, she knew she had found the market she wanted to stay in.

“It just turned on a light bulb. I loved the sophistication of it, the complexity, the different practice areas. It was so expansive and there was so much to learn.”

She started in one of the most technical corners of the market: IP and patent recruiting. From there, she expanded across practice areas and built relationships with boutique, mid-sized, and AmLaw firms. She later became a co-founding business leader at a legal recruiting firm, where she personally built a client base of 70+ firms from scratch.

Over time, the traditional agency model started to feel limiting. Even in leadership roles, Amber still had to follow other people’s processes, compensation structures, and policies. And with three kids at home, she wanted work to fit her life, not the other way around.

“I want to be able to take a break when I want to take a break and I don’t want to have to be hounded or answer to anybody. This is the only way I can work at this point in my life.”

So about two years ago, Amber went fully independent.

Getting clients was not the hard part. She had been doing full-desk business development for years. She knew how to build relationships, win clients, and run searches on her own.

The harder part was time.

Legal recruiting is deeply relationship-driven. Getting a contract in place with a new firm can take weeks or months. Until that happens, even a great candidate can be stuck waiting.

That’s where Paraform came in.

More roles, faster feedback, and no blind submissions

When Paraform reached out to Amber on LinkedIn, she was skeptical of another split network. But she quickly realized Paraform was different.

“It just makes so much more sense and with all of the capabilities that it has, it's better than anything I've seen or used. Acceptable salaries, good firms. It just seemed to be a lot of good quality.”

The biggest difference was role access - and ones she actually wanted to work on.

Before Paraform, placing a candidate at a firm Amber did not already have a contract with often meant making a blind submission. She might find an open role, reach out to the firm, send over a candidate, wait to see if they were interested, and then work through contract terms before anything could move forward.

With Paraform, that work is already cleared. Amber can access roles where the contract is already in place, giving her more opportunities to bring to candidates without changing how she runs her business.

“The roles definitely keep me on Paraform. If I have more because of Paraform, that helps. It’s an excellent resource and it could help me make more placements.”

She still sources candidates, runs outreach, follows up, and manages relationships the way she would for her own clients. Paraform removes the time blocker.

“This way it’s quicker. I can get a response right away. I can get feedback in real time. It saves me that much time and it makes the candidate experience better because they’re not having to wait for answers like they normally would.”

A business staple going forward

Amber made her first placement on Paraform in just 26 days from submission to hire, which is nearly 50% faster than the market average.

And now, with nearly 200 legal roles on the platform across all types of firms, she can put more relevant opportunities in front of strong legal candidates without the wait.

But what matters most to her is how naturally Paraform fits into the business she wanted to build, with the Paraform team supporting her along the way.

“It’s not self-serving. I feel like that relationship is there to make sure that I succeed.”

For Amber, the case for Paraform is simple.

There’s so much opportunity there and so much availability. Why wouldn’t you join?