We’re hiring. We’ve been interviewing this week and we’re narrowing down the field. It’s going pretty well.

We have one candidate that bothers me. She’s an associate in another local family law firm. She’s qualified for the position.

We’ve never hired an attorney from another local family law firm. We haven’t been particularly happy when other firms have come after our associates and we’ve avoided doing it ourselves.

This prospective associate says she doesn’t really feel needed at her firm. She’s worried that they’re in an overcapacity situation. She’s worried about the long term.

She hasn’t told her firm she’s interviewing.

She’s a pretty appealing candidate, but I don’t want to make an enemy of her current employer. We’ve been dealing with that firm for years and we’ll be dealing with them for years to come.

I’m not really sure what to do. I might be doing them a favor by taking her off their hands. I might be aggravating the crap out of them by hiring her. I’m considering telling her that she’ll need to talk to the managing attorney in her firm, inform that person of what’s up and have them call us. Maybe I’ll give that person veto authority over our request.

Of course, there are other fish in the sea. We could just pick someone else.

What would you do?