Summary: What is the best way to submit your resume to a law firm? Find out in this article.


Question: Should I submit through a recruiter, a referral, or on my own?

A: Let’s start with submitting through a referral. Submitting through a referral is, of course, better than submitting on your own. If the referral is an associate or, better yet, a partner at the firm that you’re hoping to land at, or even if the referral is simply a friend of a partner at the firm (an extra degree of separation), submitting through a referral can be advantageous because if the referral is currently at the target firm, he or she is risking his or her professional reputation by referring you as a candidate, and therefore the referral carries weight. This sort of referral is comparable to a general reference from a lawyer with a strong reputation in the legal community, because the person is known to the firm and so their word matters. Furthermore, I suspect that firms like receiving candidates through referrals who are currently associates or partners at the firm because it is likelier that the person will get along with other attorneys at the firm and will therefore fit in with the firm culture. However, if you are going to submit through a referral, be sure that the person will give it their all – as much as a recruiter would give it, in terms of a proper introduction to the Recruiting Manager or Hiring Partner of the firm, and sufficient follow-ups as well.
Submitting on your own is, of course, another possibility. Submitting directly to very small firms, for example plaintiff-side Labor & Employment firms, is actually often a good idea, because these sorts of firms often don’t use recruiters (although they sometimes do!). In the case of Big Law firms, I only suggest submitting to Big Law firms on your own if a) your recruiter does not have an established relationship with the particular firm and b) you are a top, top candidate (think, Harvard Law School, 2-6 years out of law school, federal clerkship, currently at a Big Law firm, etc.). If you are not this type of top candidate and are submitting on your own, you may find yourself taking the time to draft endless cover letters, to tweak your resume for each open position, and submitting into a black hole, never to hear back.

This article Should I Submit My Resume through a Recruiter, a Referral, or On My Own? First appeared on BCG Attorney Search also on Wordpress.

Welcome to BCG Attorney Search — a legal recruitment firm that has built its reputation on maintaining high standards across the board. BCG Attorney Search is the America's Premier Legal Placement Firm For Law Firm Attorneys.

 

Summary: Are you stuck at a firm that doesn’t encourage business development? Are you not gaining the experience you hoped for? Learn what your options are in this article.

Show Me the Money!

Q. I’m a senior litigation associate at a big firm and I don’t think I’m going to make partner. The firm and the partners that I work for don’t encourage business development, so I don’t have a book of business. And, I’m not getting the trial experience I’d hoped for. What are my options?

A. So, you spend your summer at a big (or even smaller firm) and get great experience for a Summer Associate (along with being wined and dined a little … or a lot). Based on that experience, you believe it is the right place for you to begin your journey as a lawyer. Indeed, much like Renee Zellweger in the movie Jerry Maguire, the firm “had you at hello.” Everything seems great for the first few years. You are researching and writing memos, motions, briefs, maybe even preparing outlines for depositions and preparing for trials and arbitrations. However, a few years in, you want more and realize you are going to need more to make partner.

Two of the most common complaints that recruiters hear on a regular basis are as follows:

One, you aren’t getting the hands-on litigation experience that you were hoping to get. For some, this is the whole reason they go to law school – to be a trial lawyer. But, you are working at a big firm and clients pay top dollar. Because of that, often times the clients want the big guns (partners) to do all of the heavy lifting (taking depositions, making oral arguments, chairing the trial). So, you are relegated to a seemingly permanent supporting role. Or, perhaps the partner just isn’t great at developing associate talent and enjoys being the face of the case.

Two, the partners or the firm discourage or don’t actively encourage associates to build a book of business. Perhaps the partners neglect to bring associates along on pitches, new client meetings or other key networking opportunities. Or maybe you are working too many hours and you feel you have no time to go to conferences or network. Or maybe the firm doesn’t reimburse or pay for business development. Or, perhaps you have tried to bring in business but, either the firm’s rates are too high or there are too many conflicts. Now here you are in your 7th or 8th or 9th year, with no clients and you know the firm is going to require you to have a book to promote you to partnership.

What are your alternatives?
Pay Attention Early On

Perhaps it goes without saying, but one of the best ways to ensure that you are on track in your 9th year is to pay attention and be proactive in your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years. Seek out those partners that are better at fostering associate talent and giving associates opportunities to learn on their feet. Even if it means working later hours or weekends, ask for assignments from those partners. Better yet, make them your mentor. While many firms have formal mentorship programs, where more senior attorneys are assigned to mentor more junior lawyers, informal mentors may be an even better resource. Ask a partner out to coffee or lunch so you can pick their brain a little about how they started building their own book of business.

As your rise in your class level, you should also be seeking out opportunities to get involved in industry organizations. Better yet, don’t just get involved, take a leadership role. Seek out speaking engagements, publish articles, sit on the board, become an industry expert (on something). This will not only increase your visibility to your own and other partners, but will help you develop your own skill set so that you can determine and be in charge of your own destiny.

Making a Move
The honest truth is, without a book of business, it can be harder to make a lateral move as a senior litigator (or associate). And, firms that are looking for senior litigators are often looking for associates with proven experience, including actual trial, arbitration and mediation experience. So, here are a couple of tips to making a move.

First, start early and be patient. Don’t wait until you see the writing on the wall and feel like you have to make a move. It may take some time to find the right position.
Second, specialize! While general senior litigation candidates can sometimes be harder to place, we find that senior litigators with highly sought after specialized knowledge and experience often have more opportunities than general litigators. Specializations such as certain IP litigation (computer and life sciences such as DNA, large molecule and bioinformatics are particularly hot right now), healthcare litigation, employment litigation or environmental litigation, may open more/different doors.

This article
How Can I Make Partner or Make a Move without a Book of Business? First appeared on BCG Attorney Search also on Wordpress.

Welcome to BCG Attorney Search — a legal recruitment firm that has built its reputation on maintaining high standards across the board. BCG Attorney Search is the America's Premier Legal Placement Firm For Law Firm Attorneys.

 

Most attorneys from large firms move at least once or twice during their first three to five years of practice. However, if you are looking at your third or fourth firm in your second year of practice, something is wrong. Several times a day, we see resumes of attorneys attempting to do this, and for the most part, we cannot help them. "Firm hopping" is taken into account by firms assessing your qualifications. Moving several times in a short time span can, in fact, hurt your ability to get a job because it leads law firms to question your loyalty and long-term commitment to the practice of law. In addition, moving several times in a short time span gives firms the impression that you may have moved because your work was not valued at your former firm. None of this is to say that any of the above factors may be relevant to your reasons for moving in the past. Yet, it is important to realize what firms are thinking and that their preconceived notions of an attorney that moves firms too often may negatively influence their ultimate decisions to interview you.

 
Your reasons for moving need to make sense. Part of a legal recruiter's job is to explain your actual reasons for moving in a way that firms accept. The reasons that typically make the most sense to law firms are (1) quality or type of work, (2) structural firm changes, or (3) location. While these are the best reasons for making a move, it is important to note that most attorneys who have moved several times have done so because (1) their work was not well received, (2) they were asked to leave, or (3) they were unable to get along well with others in their firms. If you mention any of these reasons to an employer, you are unlikely to get hired. It is important in any job search that you emphasize reasons for moving that are likely to not prejudice firms against you over reasons that are likely to make firms not want to hire you.

 REASONS THAT EMPLOYERS "BUY" FOR MOVING
 1. Quality or Type of Work

It is generally considered acceptable for attorneys to move due to the quality or type of work they are doing. For example, an attorney might move to bring about a transition from litigation to transactional work (or vice versa). If that is the case, such a move makes perfect sense, and employers will not be prejudiced against the attorney for moving for this reason in the present or in the past. In addition, if you want to do more sophisticated work in a certain practice area, that will also make sense. During the boom in corporate work in the late 1990s and the first part of 2000, many corporate attorneys from smaller law firms moved to larger law firms. At that time, a suitable explanation for moving was almost always something along the lines of wanting to get more "public company work" or to be staffed on larger deals. Explanations such as these were almost always considered permissible.

One of the worst reasons for leaving a firm, and employers do not like to hear this, is that your firm does not have enough work. This is, in fact, one of the most common reasons that associates move. The problem with giving this explanation is that an employer is likely to assume that you are not being given much work because (1) your work is not of good quality, (2) you are not proactive in asking for work, or (3) partners do not like you. In explaining that there is not enough work at your current firm, you need to be clear with employers that there is not enough work for any of the associates and you are not alone. You also need to express this fact in a way that does not make it sound as though you are attacking your current firm. Permissible ways to explain this are to mention that there have been key partner defections in your department, that major litigation that has occupied you for months (or years) has settled, or that the firm has recently lost several major clients. However you explain this fact, you need to do it with tact and without appearing to be attacking your current firm. In addition, you need to be cognizant while giving any explanation that the employer is wondering, "Is this attorney short on work because something is wrong with him/her?"

Moving to get higher-quality work or a different type of work shows ambition and a need for constant improvement. Most attorneys can explain the need to move in these terms. Conversely, moving because you do not have enough work needs to be explained in a way which connotes ambition.

This article Firm Hopping first appeared on BCG Attorney Search also on Wordpress.

Welcome to BCG Attorney Search — a legal recruitment firm that has built its reputation on maintaining high standards across the board. BCG Attorney Search is the America's Premier Legal Placement Firm For Law Firm Attorneys.

 
Gone are the days when a law degree meant being pursued by companies and firms and whether you would get a job was not the question that grad asked themselves but which one to choose was the dilemma they went through. That phase does not exist anymore, probably gone forever, and chances of it returning are as remote as finding a dinosaur in your backyard.

Legal recruiters in Houston say that today hiring for a vacancy or searching for one has become a convoluted maze that requires a lot of serious thinking taking many factors into consideration. It has gone far beyond the normal, send resumes, give interviews and get jobs run-of-the-mill routine.

Today there are other factors than merely a job degree that determines what a viable candidate should look like. Houston legal recruiters say that today companies are asking candidates to undergo personality test, background tests are being conducted and employers are setting their own standards of working hours, remuneration and schedules in a market that is hopelessly tilted in favor of the job providers. Given that for every advertised job there are hundreds of grads desperate to get it, the employers are spoilt for choice and in a position to dictate terms.

You may send in the best possible resume and you may really think that you are the most ideal person for the job but with fellow graduates who are thinking on the same lines and with the employers having to wade through an endless pile of resumes the chances of them going through your resume with a magnifying glass are remote. In all probability they will give it a cursory glance and unless something catches their fancy, will discard it - end of job search.

This is where the Legal recruiters in Houston come in. They have spent weeks building relationships with the persons in whose hands your future lies. They are fully aware of the demands of the job and if they know that you are a good fit, will be in a position to market your cause in a better more direct way, to put you ahead of the huge competition and separate you from the herd.

BCG Attorney Search, expert Legal recruiters in Houston who comprehend the challenging and changed dynamics of legal jobs and understand that there are not too many of them available for legal grads. They, through their experience and connections across a wide section of corporate firms, law firms and other employment areas will help grads find jobs, pertinent to their skills and help set the stage for long-term career success.
 
If you are wondering who would secure you an legal professional career in this hard economic system presently, then BCG Attorney Search Lookup is the reply. At BCG Attorney Search Legal professional Research, we do not assert we are the greatest, but we say that we are extremely good at legal professional recruiting. This is mainly because every single of our recruiters typically makes much additional placements than recruiters at competing placement companies, even if it will take functioning with significantly much less and pick out candidates.

We only want to present you a number of illustrations from the modern past. From 2003 to 2007, we averaged above just one placement every organization working day on a nationwide foundation. Again from 2008 to 2010, which was arguably one of the worst legal placement markets in record, various of our recruiters greater their efficiency from prior several years.

Considering that the year 2000, BCG Attorney Search has been able to spot hundreds of lawyers and has began and led businesses that are at the top of their discipline in servicing attorneys.

These businesses consist of organizations these as LawCrossing, Legal Authority, Legal professional Resume, and other folks. Merely set, we are among the most premier legal recruiters in the United States dedicated to legal staffing and legal professional recruiting.
BCG Attorney Search Look for is one of the leaders in the legal occupation that assists candidates get their upcoming occupation. As a prospect, it is a good idea to pick an individual who believes in reaching substantial specifications for you in your legal recruiter career. Choose us as your authorized recruiter.

Not like numerous authorized recruiting corporations, we are principled in our tactic and are a hugely reputed legal recruiter in the region. We are headquartered in Pasadena, California, with workplaces that are situated by means of the United States. Some of our achievements can be highlighted as below:

Unlike other placement agencies, most BCG Attorney Search look for recruiters have been with the company for several a long time.
· BCG Attorney Search has produced basically thousands of placements for associates and associates.
· BCG Attorney Search Legal professional also has been concerned in a number of key law agency mergers
· BCG Attorney Search Legal professional Research recruiters frequently talk at major law faculties.

They also converse at big legislation universities and to groups these as the National Affiliation of Law Placement (NALP).

With BCG Attorney Search Lookup, you are certain to locate a career. As opposed to other legal recruiting corporations, BCG Attorney Search is 1 of the ideal recruiters in the organization. As a corporation, we present you a one hundred% fulfillment assurance. Appropriately, we ensure that we will get you a task if we accept you, else you will be supplied with up to $ 5,000 in cost-free Authorized Authority providers. We are a element of Work Study Institute (ERI) as its flagship organization, which in change is just one of the world’s greatest affiliation of organizations that are committed to aiding specialists to locate work opportunities. Pay a visit to www.bcgsearch.com for more information.
 
As element of Work Analysis Institute (ERI), which is just one of the world's premier affiliation of job research corporations, BCG Attorney Look for is a reputed legal recruiting agency that is very well founded in the lawful staffing and attorney recruiting purpose in the U.S.A. Committed exclusively to helping lawyers and regulation experts discover legal work opportunities, the firm maintains places of work through the place.
 
These workplaces are staffed by fantastic lawful recruiters, who have made "Simply the Best" their mantra. The organization hires only the greatest lawful recruiters and has established the bar for their firm and their candidates extremely high. Its handpicked staff of legal recruiters is thus acclaimed to be just one of the very best in the country. This is how the corporation stays extremely true to its company eyesight and strives to sustain its large standards of excellence.

The business expects its recruiters to sustain the similar degree of perseverance and target in their operate that the very ideal lawyers do. This is the eyesight that BCG Legal professional Look for tries to achieve in its function and occupation. Therefore, it calls for the incredibly finest from its legal recruiters usually. BCG Lawyer Look for extensively understands the serious character of legal recruiting. It knows that in buy to keep existing on the market, top recruiters must demonstrate the same amount of motivation and travel that excellent lawyers display when representing their clients.

BCG Legal professional Lookup places into follow a thorough training interval for its recruiters, who are homegrown below the mentorship of the CEO and BCG Attorney Look for founder Harrison Barnes. This coaching time period lasts several months. The company's core perception is that their intense commitment exemplifies how authorized recruiting need to be done and currently being best at what they do, which sets the firm aside from its rivals.

The company also believes that teaching recruiters requires time, which demands more robust focus and enterprise acumen. With a motivation to excellence that pervades at all stages of the corporation, BCG Legal professional Search is a versatile firm that is increasing to fulfill current market needs as it proceeds to focus on its recruiters and instruction them to realize excellence in the subject.
 
If you are wondering who would safe you an attorney career in this challenging financial system presently, then BCG Attorney Research is the response. At BCG Attorney Search Look for, we do not declare we are the ideal, but we say that we are exceptionally great at legal professional recruiting. This is mainly because every of our recruiters generally makes significantly more placements than recruiters at competing placement companies, even if it takes functioning with considerably less and pick out candidates.

We only need to have to show you a number of examples from the recent past. From 2003 to 2007, we averaged more than a single placement just about every business day on a national foundation. Once again from 2008 to 2010, which was arguably one of the worst legal placement marketplaces in record, a number of of our recruiters improved their overall performance from prior yrs.

Considering that the calendar year 2000, BCG Attorney Search for has been capable to area hundreds of attorneys and has commenced and led firms that are at the top rated of their subject in servicing lawyers. These firms include firms this kind of as LawCrossing, Legal Authority, Legal professional Resume, and other folks. Simply set, we are among the most leading legal recruiters in the United States focused to lawful staffing and lawyer recruiting.

BCG Attorney Search is 1 of the leaders in the authorized profession that aids candidates get their next work. As a prospect, it is advisable to opt for another person who thinks in achieving significant specifications for you in your legal profession. Pick us as your authorized recruiter. As opposed to quite a few lawful recruiting companies, we are principled in our method and are a very reputed legal recruiter in the place. We are headquartered in Pasadena, California, with offices that are positioned through the United States. Some of our achievements can be highlighted as beneath:

  • Unlike other placement businesses, most BCG Attorney Search recruiters have been with the company for several years.
  • BCG Attorney Search has designed practically hundreds of placements for companions and associates.
  • BCG Attorney Search also has been included in several major law business mergers
  • BCG Lawyer Search recruiters often communicate at significant regulation colleges. They also communicate at major law faculties and to groups such as the Countrywide Affiliation of Law Placement (NALP).

With BCG Attorney Search for, you are guaranteed to uncover a job. Contrary to other lawful recruiting companies, BCG Attorney Search is one of the very best recruiters in the company. As a firm, we offer you a one hundred% pleasure promise. Appropriately, we assurance that we will get you a occupation if we acknowledge you, else you will be presented with up to $ five,000 in free Lawful Authority providers. We are a aspect of Employment Analysis Institute (ERI) as its flagship corporation, which in convert is one particular of the world's biggest affiliation of organizations that are devoted to assisting specialists to find jobs. Go to www.bcgsearch.com for far more information.
 
Why does everyone want to practice law in California? The California bar is notoriously difficult compared to other states and the cost of living is high. However, attorneys are enticed by the state’s year-round sunny weather, the laid-back culture of even the most prestigious law firms, and the myriad opportunities to work on interesting and compelling cases. Because the California market is more saturated than most (in an already over-saturated supply of lawyers nationwide), it is difficult for out-of-state attorneys to land jobs in the state. The larger, metro areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles can be especially difficult. For attorneys hoping to practice in Southern California, using the legal recruiters in Los Angeles can be enormously helpful.

Legal staffing in Los Angeles can be positive or negative – depending on whether you are the employer or the job-seeker. Law firms have never had so many attorneys to choose from. The number of law graduates who are able to find employment within 9 months of graduation is at about half. Unemployment rates in what was once considered a stable profession are at record highs. Only in the past few years has the number of law school applications finally begun to drop. Against this backdrop, breaking into a competitive market like Los Angeles without a legal recruiter can be challenging. Most firms are eschewing first-year hiring and going after mid-level or more experience attorneys. In this economy, firms don’t want to spend the time and money training a recent graduate to do legal work that can be done more quickly and less expensively by a more senior attorney.

The job situation can feel grim, even hopeless, for the recent graduating classes of lawyers. They lack experience, and they lack law firms willing to give them that experience. In these instances, who you know makes all the difference. Never has networking been more important than now. Using a legal recruiting can be viewed as a kind of networking. The job seeker is relying on the recruiter’s established relationship with a certain law firm. They are relying on their legal recruiter’s experience and reputation for placing qualified job candidates to make a good first impression with the hiring firm.

For attorneys who have tried applying to law firms on their own, to no success, it may be time to contact a legal recruiter. A recruiter can often get you in with law firms because of their long-standing relationships with the firm’s in-house recruiting staff. If the recruiter has made successful placements before with that firm, there is a level of trust there that speaks volumes – and can be used in favor of the new candidate. One Los Angeles legal recruiting company, BCG Attorney Search, might be able to help a candidate make headway in their job search.