Our Mission

To provide our clients with the most comprehensive, carefully researched and accurate database of attorneys available on-line, thereby enabling the recruiter to find the best candidate available for the position they are marketing.

Our Founder, Jim Davis

As founder and president of The Davis Group, Jim Davis has worked with the top recruiting firms nationwide and has retained the same client base for an average of 15 years. He is an innovator in the list business, the first person ever to provide the recruiting industry with an extensive, thoroughly researched list from which to recruit prospects.  

Being an experienced recruiter and paralegal, Jim Davis’ lists far surpass the Martindale Hubbell and other lists available because of the accuracy and up to date information that is provided.  The Davis Group is able to provide information that is not otherwise available to the recruiting industry. This is an extremely valuable service that puts you way ahead of your competitors. Mr. Davis employs a full time staff to research and develop the lists and service clients.

Our Beginnings

The Davis List originated in 1987 when Jim Davis, then a recruiter at Metrolegal, made the first list. In those days legal recruiters deconstructed the New York City volume of the Martindale Hubbell into a form of cold call list.

The earliest attempt at this was made at Eolis International and was called “reversing the Martindale Hubbell”. Then, as now, the information given in the Martindale Hubbell was outdated and incomplete and required voluminous phone calls to determine missing elements, such as practice area, as well as updating who were actually still at the firms and who were no longer there.

A second source of information was the bar directory of the state of New York which was found in The New York Lawyers Diary and Manual which was published each year and was known by recruiters as “The Red Book”. This book contained many names not found in the Martindale Hubbell and was updated internally each year and because of this, was a substantive supplement.

In 1987 Marty Richards, who was Davis’ boss at Metrolegal, suggested that the list be sold to two other recruiters in order to defray the labor costs of making it. This was done and a small business was inadvertently started. When Davis left Metrolegal in 1989, other recruiters were also sold the list and The Davis Group was formed as a separate business.

By the time of the recession of 1991 The Davis Lists were well established in New York. This proved to be a watershed event in that the recruiters who used The Davis Lists survived the recession, while those who didn’t went out of business. It is an incontrovertible fact that during that recession and in the fifteen years since then, including a second recession just concluded, the hundred or so NY legal recruiters who have folded were not Davis List customers. There has never been a NYC recruiter that used the Davis Lists who ever went out of business.