Ann-Marie Goodbody joined Marsden in January 2022 and as our Head of Client Development works across both the private practice and in-house sides of our business. In private practice, she works closely with US, UK and European law firms supporting their strategic growth objectives with a particular focus on the Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and German markets in addition to London. Ann-Marie also supports our international in-house practice in Europe and increasingly in the US.

Ann-Marie has a degree in French and spent a year in Paris teaching before starting her career as a qualified corporate and private equity lawyer at Travers Smith. She later became the firm’s head of business development and then worked at a variety of firms in senior business development and strategic roles, including Weil Gotshal, Reed Smith, and Slaughter and May.

By 2019 Ann-Marie felt that she had taken her law firm business development career as far as it could go.

“I also had a three-year old son and wanted a change as well as more of a work-life balance, and a contact suggested that I consider a move into legal recruitment. I’m a people person and it was an attractive prospect.” After a couple of years gaining experience at a candidate-led business, Ann-Marie wanted the chance to run her own European desk and be more entrepreneurial as well as using her extensive strategic law firm experience.

When the approach came from Marsden it was the ideal meeting of minds. Marsden’s strategic assignments team works with the world’s leading law firms to successfully negotiate and execute international law firm mergers, office launches, team moves and key strategic individual hires at all levels. The team, led by Marsden’s founder Jonathan Marsden, was looking to grow further in expanding European markets such as Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Germany, ones that Ann-Marie knew well. It was an ideal fit for Ann-Marie, who not only had recruitment experience but also a strong background in advising partners on how to sell legal services to clients, and as an ex-lawyer herself she had an intrinsic understanding of what law firms needed.

On European assignments, Marsden generally operates on a ‘fly in fly out’ model which Ann-Marie prefers and finds that generally clients and candidates make themselves available to meet with her when she is in town – one of the benefits of not being ‘on the ground’ all the time. She loves being out and about in the market and maintains that there is just no substitute for meeting people in person.

Ann-Marie loves the fact that at Marsden, the team is not micro-managed with standard “recruitment” KPIs whilst operating in a high performance environment that is collaborative and ambitious.

“It’s a very friendly and supportive business, with no-one working in silos and lots of sharing of information across the private practice, partner and in-house teams; the level of global legal sector intelligence is the best I have come across and really gives the team an edge against our competitors. I also love that you can be open and bring your ‘true self’ to work – the team is high-spirited, and we laugh every day. You also have the flexibility to manage your own schedule and work from home when you want. At Marsden, you’re treated like a grown up and can just get on with it.”