Good patterns for employee search

I've been tasked with redesigning a search interface to find a lawyer.

The interface has a keyword field and a few scopes to narrow the search.

The use cases appear to be:

Find a specific lawyer "I know the name, or approximate name" or find any lawyer with a particular attribute or set of attributes (An example might be "Corporate lawyer in London"

To add: Having done a bunch of research on law firms, they ALL have an alphabet function. The alphabet function is just a list ABCDE. Like the one attached.

In most of my analysis, the alphabet has a poor dependency with the other search parameters and will usually override them, with the implied use case being "find me all lawyers beginning with A" which seems non sensical. Moreover, the alphabet sounds more like an post-search behaviour at best; and completely redundant at worst.

My question Has anyone got any good examples of an employee search that i can advise the client on? I sense it is something simple: good look-ahead single search box and then filters and sorts on the results screen including the alphabet (if this function is needed at all)