Joe founded Macrae in Palo Alto in 2001. Widely regarded as one of the leading partner recruiters and strategic advisors to law firms in the industry, he has placed hundreds of partners into the Am Law 100 and top 20 UK firms and has helped firms launch more than a dozen new offices in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and London. Joe’s practice encompasses retained and exclusive assignments for high-profile partners, group moves, new office openings, and law firm combinations. He splits his time between projects on the West Coast, East Coast and London.

In 2017, Joe worked closely with now CEO Carter Brown to enact a strategic expansion plan with the aim of creating the leading transatlantic legal recruiting firm with a laser focus on partner-level talent. Macrae has since expanded to a team of around 40 spanning San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Washington, D.C. and London – the most important legal markets in the world. Key to this growth has been the adoption of a business model that is unique in the legal recruiting space. It calls not only for the systematic and real-time sharing of intelligence across markets, but also for an inclusive culture marked by collaboration rather than competition and an unusually high degree of transparency into the firm’s operations for everyone at Macrae.

Joe began his legal industry career as a UK solicitor and transitioned to recruiting soon after. In 1991 he co-founded ZMB, now Hays Legal, and oversaw its growth from a startup to a firm of 60 that was consistently ranked as one of the top two legal recruiting firms in the U.K. for quality of service and overall reputation. Joe worked with many of the major U.S. law firms growing their European operations during the 1990s. He also oversaw a series of team moves to other international law firms and advised clients on domestic and trans-Atlantic merger negotiations.

Frequently sought out by the media and academia for his insight into current trends in the legal market, Joe has lectured in the U.S. and UK on a range of issues including law firm mergers, compensation structures, and attraction and retention of partners. He is regularly invited to speak at Harvard Law School and has also spoken at Stanford. He has been recognized by Lawdragon as one of the “Global 100 Leaders in Legal Strategy & Consulting” each year since 2019.