This year we’re celebrating our 30th anniversary as a company! We’re so proud to marking three whole decades of working with top global law firms, empowering candidates to find the right role, and helping legal teams to move into the future with the very best talent for their business. Although we can’t quite believe we’re already hitting such a big milestone, the years show in the progress we’ve made since we were established, and in the strong relationships and roots we’ve built.
Founded by Beverley Ryder and Ciara Reid in 1994, at a time when purely female-founded businesses were rare, Ryder Reid Legal has since grown from legal recruitment pioneer to market leader. There have been so many amazing moments along the way, including the launch of our highly-successful Document Review and Paralegal division in 2005, the two of us joining in 2006/7 and being instrumental to the win of our first Magic Circle client in 2008, before becoming Co-owners in 2018. In this time, Andrea launched and developed our Executive Search footprint – a huge personal achievement! Soon after completing an MBO, we successfully navigated the business through the pandemic in 2020. Each of these milestones has propelled us forward, raised the bar in delivering exceptional service to our clients, and embedded our core values deeper into the work we do.
We’re incredibly proud of our story, but this anniversary is not just about us. As a People-First recruitment consultancy we’ve always put people at the heart of our work, and that is as true now as it was 30 years ago. The recruitment industry has transformed immeasurably, especially in the last few years, and like most businesses we’ve adapted to shifting employment and hiring priorities, the rise of social media and tech, and evolving social standards. What hasn’t changed, though, is our dedication to listening to our clients' needs, recognising our candidates’ individual potential, and making the best possible professional match each and every time. We’re still really good at it!
We know that this approach combined with our robust six-step framework of People-First recruitment support has set us apart, and this year's celebrations are testament to the breadth and calibre of candidates and clients we’ve been privileged to work with over the years.
Gill Baxter, Director of Operations at King & Spalding says, “I have known Ryder Reid for nearly 24 of their 30 years as both candidate and client. In both relationships, they have been supportive, hardworking, and 100% honest. Never salesy or pushy, always wanting to find the right match between employer and candidate. Congratulations on the first 30 years and good luck for the next!”
Sharing our knowledge far and wide
As well as welcoming our valued clients to a special anniversary event in October, we’re inviting all hiring managers to participate in our celebrations! We’ve distilled 30 years of expertise into a free 2025 Recruitment Guide, which employers far and wide can access here. This is a carefully curated collection of hiring know-how, in which you’ll find insight into navigating the most pressing issues faced by employers, as well as actionable tips, best practice pointers, and expert soundbites from some of the faces who make our own team the trusted hub of recruitment acumen it is today.
The knowledge packed into this guide is a sum of the experience and professionalism we nurture in our team. We’re constantly impressed by their achievements and dedication to the job, and over the years we’ve seen them evolve as a collective but also in their own careers and as individuals. Promotion after promotion, milestone after milestone, they’ve continued to rise to the challenge of taking Ryder Reid into the future, innovating whilst retaining our legacy, all the while embodying our values and upholding our world-class service. We absolutely relished the opportunity to honour our team on a memorable company trip to Marbella earlier this year. As Co-owners we took that chance to stand back and reflect on their growth, and not just in numbers!
That’s not the only time we’re taking our celebrations overseas. In a timely marker of our 30th year, we’re thrilled to be sponsoring founding alumnus Ciara Reid on her upcoming trip to Cape Town, where she will join a voluntary project dedicated to building new school rooms and transforming the educational landscape for children in Africa. Ciara’s mission, which she’s embarking on in November, with African-development charity Mellon Educate, is synonymous with Ryder Reid’s long-standing dedication to empowering young people from all backgrounds with the tools and support they need to access employment – and so we jumped at the opportunity to help take that legacy to a corner of the world which really needs it. Look out on our social pages for updates from Ciara and her fellow volunteers.
A fresh vision and a People-first future
As well as providing a natural opportunity to reflect on the 30-year journey behind us, this anniversary has been a springboard for the vision the two of us projected when we became Co-owners and first mapped out where we wanted to take Ryder Reid –and how to channel our fresh energy and ideas into making it happen. Six years on, we have truly taken the business into a new era with some big-splash changes including a brand refresh under the consultancy of Working Wonder in 2021, the game-changing decision to implement our Head of Recruitment Peter Page in 2023, who has helped us create the most People-first recruitment experience imaginable, and greater investment in our Marketing and Business Support teams. We’ve grown alongside our Heads of Department, each of whom has progressed to leading their own hub of the business. Gemma Coyston, Keira Couzens and Evie Kennett have been steadfast in their passion for the job, continuously embodying our values and remaining committed to delivering a high-quality recruitment experience.
Readers of our blog will also know we’ve strengthened our dedication to our true purpose in recent years, including upping our work with Future Frontiers to galvanise social mobility in the legal sector, and exploring how we can strengthen our social impact. While this will always be a work in progress, we’ve made conscious changes and improvements, not least allocating a dedicated Responsible Business lead within the team. CJ Obi has helped us to nurture Diversity, Equality and Inclusion throughout the business and to find new ways to champion underrepresented voices. We’ve also been working hard to make our careers expertise more accessible, and so as well as channelling this into pro-bono workshops for legal placement students, we’ve been building a wide pool of free guidance on our website and social pages - which we hope will go a long way to providing even more candidates and hiring managers with the insight to move their careers and teams forward in fantastic new directions.
Continuing in this theme, our future is about fine-tuning and evolving the Ryder Reid recruitment experience to respond to what it means to be People-first. This changes all the time, as the world around us changes, as do people's needs and standards. Our roadmap involves finding new ways to ensure every single person we work with is heard, championed, and empowered to achieve their goals. To remain ready to learn from our clients and candidates. To innovate and accelerate our services to them. To support them through any and every climate. This is what we’re here to do and we’re really excited to see where the next 30 years takes us! We want to close with a big thank you to all who have been a part of our story so far, to every firm we’ve been proud to partner with, and to every candidate we’ve been privileged to support to unlock their potential. It’s been an honour!
Co-authored by Co-owners Andrea Prendergast, Director of Executive Search, and Callum Smith, Business Director. Andrea and Callum became Ryder Reid’s Co-owners in 2018, each steering the arms of the business which play to their strengths, whilst continuing to work very closely and complementing each other's accomplishments. Today, they embody a recruitment and leadership powerhouse, and, together, they are taking business into a future firmly rooted in unparalleled People-first recruitment.