“Law firm hopping” is taken into account by law firms assessing your qualifications. Having moved several times in a short timespan can, in fact, impact your ability to get a legal job because it leads law firms to question your loyalty and long-term commitment to what you do.
In addition, moving several times in a short timespan gives law firms the indication that you may have moved because:
- your work wasn’t well-received,
- you may have been asked to leave, or
- you’re unable to get along with others in a legal work environment.
None of this is to say that any of the above factors may be relevant to your reasons for moving in the past. It’s important to realize, however, what law firms are thinking, and that their thoughts (without even hearing your explanation) will have a strong influence on their decision to interview you.
Your reasons for moving need to make sense. The reasons that typically make the most sense to potential law firms are (a) quality or type of legal work, (b) structural changes with your law firm, or (c) location. While these are the best reasons for making a move, it’s important to note that attorneys who’ve moved several times have done so because (a) their work wasn’t well received, (b) they were asked to leave, or (c) they were unable to get along well with others in their legal work environment. If you mention any of these reasons to a law firm, you are unlikely to get hired. It’s important in any legal job search that you emphasize reasons for moving that aren’t likely to prejudice law firms against you.
See Related Articles:
- Job Hopping: The Death of Legal Careers
- Why an Attorney Should Never Switch Law Firm Jobs Too Often
- Is Changing Firms Twice in Four Years Considered Job Hopping?
I. REASONS THAT LAW FIRMS “BUY” FOR MOVING
A. Quality or Type of Legal Work
It’s permissible for attorneys to move due to the quality or type of work they do. For example, a lawyer might move to bring about a transition from litigation to transactional work (or vice versa). If that’s the case, such a move makes perfect sense and law firms won’t be prejudiced against the attorney for doing so. In addition, if you want to do more sophisticated legal work, that will also make sense. During the boom in corporate work in the late 1990s and the first part of 2000s, many corporate attorneys from smaller law firms moved to larger law firms. Here, a suitable explanation for moving was almost always because they wanted to get more “public company work” or be staffed on larger deals. Explanations such as these were almost always considered permissible.
One of the most perverse reasons for moving that law firms don’t like to hear is that you’re interested in moving because your legal employer doesn’t have enough work. This is, in fact, one of the most common reasons that attorneys move. The problem with giving this explanation is that a law firm is likely to think that you’re not given much work because
In explaining there isn’t enough work at your current law firm, you need to be clear with potential law firms that there isn’t enough work for anyone in your law firm, and you’re not alone. You also need to express this fact in a way that doesn’t make it sound like you’re attacking your current law firm. Permissible ways to explain this is to mention that there have been key defections in your legal department, that major work that has occupied you for months (or years) has gone away, or that the law firm has recently lost several major clients. However you explain this, you need to do it with tact and without appearing to attack your current law firm. In addition, you need to be aware that the law firm may be wondering, “Is this person short on work because something is wrong with him/her?” while giving any explanation.
Moving to get higher quality legal 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 don’t have enough work needs to be explained in a way that connotes ambition.
Many law firms go through significant structural changes that have an adverse effect on attorneys. For example, law firms merge, offices close, and key supervisors leave. When this occurs at the largest law firms, many people hear about it in the business community. Each of the reasons discussed above are permissible reasons for leaving a law firm if they’re handled the correct way.
One way that smart attorneys can often explain moves is to say that because of significant structural changes in their current law firm, they don’t believe there are opportunities to advance. The former Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison’s real estate practice in San Diego is a perfect example. In early 2000, this practice was staffed by two partners and three lower associates. One partner left in 2001, then it was staffed by one partner and three associates. In combination with a partner defection and other market forces, the amount of available work for the associates decreased quite dramatically. Because this wasn’t a large practice area in the law firm’s San Diego office, it should be obvious there were few opportunities for associates in this office to make partner unless they had a significant book of business or the partner that was left had such extreme amounts of business that he needed to elevate an associate to partner in order to further grow his practice. In this instance, explaining this particular dynamic would make sense.
When structural law firm changes do occur, law firms are also looking for various “warning signs” that may indicate you’re a potentially problematic attorney. If a key partner supervisor leaves, the law firm will often want to know why the supervisor didn’t take you with them. Similarly, if a law firm merges with another and your position is put at risk, the law firm will want to know why there was no one to protect you. After all, if you made yourself indispensable, the key person would want to take you with him or her, and important supervisors would presumably protect you during any merger. Because law firms will be thinking these things when they evaluate your candidacy, any explanations you give for your contemplated move should take these factors into account.
Law firms experience serious structural changes quite frequently. Most lower level attorneys at law firms that close or with companies where key supervisors leave are quite successful in finding alternative legal employment quickly. To me, this is a very interesting phenomena; however, I believe the reason these attorneys find new employment so quickly is related to the fact that—more so than with most other moves—the move can be explained by negative forces completely beyond the attorney’s control.
Location is often an exceptional reason given for moving. The best location-related reason for moving is that you want to move back to your home city to be near either you or your spouse’s family. Reasons that law firms don’t like to hear for relocating are (1) to get to better weather, (2) for a change of scenery, and (3) that you are moving to join a girlfriend or spouse.
Law firms are generally quite receptive to attorneys who are leaving to be closer to their family. This is especially so if you moved to a large city such as New York and are going home to a much smaller legal market. Spending your first few years of work in a major market can be explained as a product of your ambition to be exposed to the most sophisticated work possible before settling down at home. You can also explain this based on the fact that you thought this would be your only opportunity to work in a major market before settling down, and you therefore enthusiastically embraced the opportunity. If you commenced your legal career in a smaller market and are now moving to a larger one that isn’t where you grew up, the above discussion of quality of work should be used. The reason moving home to work is accepted so readily by law firms is because it connotes a desire for stability. Individuals moving home to work are likely to remain with the same law firms for a long period of time.
Law firms don’t like to hear that you’re moving to get better weather or a change of scenery. Each of these reasons for moving raises the distinct possibility in the law firm’s calculation that you’re unlikely to be stable with them. Law firms all over the country have been “burned” by lower level attorneys who moved to a certain area only to be disenchanted with where they were living and move again. If you move because of the weather, for example, this might indicate to law firms that the weather in a given city is more important to you than loyalty to your legal employer or the quality of work you’re doing. If you’re interested in moving to Los Angeles for better weather, what would you do if offered an equally paying legal job in Maui a few years later? Similarly, if you are tired of big city life and moving to a small town to work, what will happen if you decide you don’t like the extreme of a small town and want to move to a more mid-sized town? You get the idea. Moving for reasons related to weather or scenery are never good ideas.
I see attorneys each year who attempt to relocate to Colorado because they like the Mountains, Las Vegas because they like the nightlife, Paris because they like the culture, San Diego because they like the beach, Portland because they like the music scene, New Orleans because they had so much fun at Mardi Gras … and on, and on, and on. In heated economic climates when law firms were literally begging for attorneys, I often made these placements with some frequency. My candidates were more than open regarding their specific reasons for relocating with us, and the law firms hired them anyway. In a poor economic climate, though, law firms are far more prejudicial and unlikely to accept such reasons. It’s simply not in their best interest to do so. Indeed, few attorneys who relocate for reasons such as this are likely to find happiness in their next legal positions.
Since this is somewhat of a sensitive subject, I’ve saved the discussion of relocating to join a spouse or significant other for last. At the outset, I should point out that the generalizations we are about to point out do not apply to all law firms. Nevertheless, I’m repeating something that I’ve heard over and over from law firms. Law firms are not always open to you relocating to join a spouse or significant other because, in the law firm’s mind, it connotes that someone other than you is responsible for your career. If you’re relocating to join a spouse who has found a better legal job, will you move again if he or she finds a better job a few years down the road? If your significant other or spouse doesn’t like where you are currently living, will he or she like the next place you move?
At their heart, most law firms crave attorneys who can contribute to their overall stability. Law firms do not like to have to contemplate that someone close to you may potentially influence their bottom line and your legal career at some unstated time in the future. In addition, the higher paying the legal job, the more likely it is to be extremely demanding. Most attorneys practicing in large cities have a very difficult time holding together families given the demands of their legal jobs. While the demands of your legal profession are another topic altogether, law firms generally expect their attorneys to be the ones with the primary job responsibilities and their spouse or significant other to be the ones on the sidelines supporting that effort. This statement sounds extraordinarily wrong, and I’m not necessarily expressing approval for this line of thought. Nevertheless, this is how most law firms think, and it’s something you need to keep in mind when explaining your reasons for moving.
The fact that relocating to join a spouse may be viewed as a “negative” by a law firm needs to be understood as part of law firms’ overall desire for stability in the attorneys they hire. Anything that doesn’t suggest stability is viewed as a negative.
See Related Articles:
You will have a very difficult time getting hired if you tell legal employers you’re moving because
If you’ve moved several times in your employment, after your third or fourth move, most law firms will begin to presume that you’re moving due to these reasons. While you need to be honest with every employer you speak with, you should also be very careful how you explain any move that involves one of these three issues.
If you’re contemplating moving because your work hasn’t been well received, or if you’ve moved in the past due to this reason, it’s important to do a very careful self-analysis before explaining this to any legal employer.
Every law firm has different standards for their work. At many insurance defense employers, it’s quite common to turn in work riddled with typographical and other errors. At some law firms, a typographical error would be near cause for dismissal. At some law firms, there are supervisors that are notoriously difficult to work with and set such a ridiculous standard that no attorney could possibly meet it. When economic times are very rough, performance appraisals can become unnecessarily harsh to the degree that they shouldn’t be taken as seriously as they appear.
Most lower level, professional attorneys working for large law firms have their work criticized with a high degree of severity. While few lower level attorneys speak about this, even the most talented of the bunch feel a great degree of inadequacy with respect to their professional abilities in a demanding organization, especially in detail-oriented large organizations. The reason large law firms are so harsh in their performance reviews is that they’re pushing their lower level attorneys to think in different ways and have an extremely high standard for their work. While many people are detail oriented by nature before they even go to college or law school, the level of detail an attorney needs to develop with respect to their work product and thinking processes is something most people don’t learn in college or law school. Most of this is taught through formal and informal reviews of work over time. Over time, an attorney is expected to develop their skills to the point where their work doesn’t need to be severely criticized. Generally, by an attorney’s third year of work, this should no longer be the case.
If you are in your first few years of work and contemplating leaving due to harsh criticism, or you’re in a particularly demanding work environment, you should probably give yourself some time and attempt to improve to the level that is expected of you. This is something that most people do. The time that other people take to criticize your work should be something you appreciate, even if they appear somewhat hostile while doing so. As your work is further criticized, your professional abilities should improve.
If you moved or contemplated moving during your first few years due to criticisms of your work, it’s probably not a good idea to bring this up. I would estimate that a majority of the people who move during their first few years do so due to harsh criticism. Most people facing harsh criticism simply don’t speak with other people about it with a great degree of frequency due to factors such as internal competition or their own desire to keep this private and not be seen negatively by others. Sadly, many people move for this very reason during their first few years at a law firm and this movement is more related to their self-confidence and ability to take criticism than any actual problems with their development as attorneys. Since most people working for the largest and most prestigious law firms are unusually accomplished to begin with, the level of criticism they receive during their first few years of work can be emotionally devastating.
After working for a few years for a large or demanding law firm, you will be in a position to know whether the criticism of your work is justified. If this criticism is justified and you continue to make serious errors, you should probably do your best to find an environment you have reason to believe will not have as exacting of standards. This also raises issues such as whether or not you’re a good attorney, whether you’re suited for what you do, and if it makes sense for you to continue. One important factor to remember is that some legal employers are more critical than others and just because your work is not well received by one law firm, does not mean it will be poorly received by another. If this pattern continues to repeat itself after a few moves, however, then you need to be realistic that the problem may be your work and not the legal employer. If this is the case, it might be a good idea to consider whether you want to continue practicing at the same level.
It’s important to recognize that some degree of politics exists in virtually any environment, whether large or small. In fact, it exists in most office environments, including those outside your legal profession. The key to succeeding then is developing the skills to strategically navigate in these sometimes difficult situations. These skills generally develop over time with exposure to a wide variety of situations.
There are numerous different types of personalities and some attorneys are more suited for certain work environments than others. Getting along with others is among the most important aspects of work, and legal employers want to hire attorneys they believe will get along with others. Since attorneys spend countless hours with each other at work, they do not want to be around (or hire) attorneys that are likely to have personality conflicts with others. Law firms are economic engines and attorneys who are critical of the environment or other factors related to personalities in the workplace, are seen as attorneys who put the law firm in danger.
“Explaining” the political games you have encountered in your positions at past legal employers may not be a good idea when interviewing with prospective legal employers. First, it’s generally not a good idea to “badmouth” your current law firm to a potential law firm. Depending on the type of environment you are leaving, you may only call into question your ability to integrate yourself into the environment at the law firm who is interviewing you. During the interview process, legal employers are generally wary of candidates whose main complaint is some sort of personality conflict or general complaints. You should be clear that your reason for moving is not a problem with the legal environment as a whole, lest you come across as someone who works against the “system.” Legal employers primarily, and perhaps most importantly, do want attorneys who are hardworking, flexible, have the ability to deal effectively with other colleagues and with clients, and who ultimately have developed the key skills to understand and deal effectively with political situations within the workplace.
You’re encouraged to take a strong look at the factors that influenced your past departures from previous employers. If they are mainly political, you should consider making a list of the characteristics you’re looking for in your new legal employer environment. You should also consider whether your attitude and approach to problems at these previous jobs in any way contributed to your overall unhappiness and departure. Also, determine whether there’s anything you need to change in your approach. We suggest this because of what was mentioned earlier–you will encounter this in every single professional environment, whether you make a move to a big, medium, or small law firm. So it is important to learn through these experiences so you can enhance your ability to make a successful move this time.
See Also: The Importance of Attorneys Being Well-Liked in their Jobs: Why Others Must Like You for You to Get Ahead
If you were asked to leave any of your past legal employers, this is generally not a good topic to bring up as a reason for moving. You need to understand that a large percentage of attorneys have been fired at some point in their legal careers. How this is handled is the important thing.
The justification legal employers give for asking a lower level attorney to leave are generally related to the quality of the person’s work. Sometimes, this explanation is accurate and a lot of times it’s not. You may be asked to leave due to your seniority, the fact that you’re not working hard enough, or a major downturn in the law firms’s work load. In most respects, lower level attorneys are asked to leave because they don’t get along well with supervisors or others in authority. Conversely, very few legal employers actually ask lower level attorneys to leave because they perceive their work quality as poor (although this is the explanation most frequently given by law firms when they don’t like someone).
If you’ve been asked to leave a law firm, this sends all sorts of negative messages to potential employers. If you were asked to leave because the law firm you were at didn’t have enough work, you weren’t going to make partner, the law firm will be thinking to themselves that not all lower level attorneys were asked to leave, so why you, in particular? There must have been something about you or your work that motivated the legal employer to ask you to leave instead of others.
You get the idea. If you’re asked to leave a law firm, you need to de-emphasize this fact in your discussion with future legal employers. Most interviewers will not directly ask this question in interviews and if a law firm did ask you to leave, they will very rarely tell anyone who calls to check your references. It’s interesting to us that the largest law firms will often give the best recommendations to lower level attorneys they ask to leave. Smaller law firms tend to give the harshest recommendations.
While this is something that’s not often discussed, the largest law firms actually want lower level attorneys to leave after several years of work because they depend on a constant stream of hungry lower level attorneys to show up and earn them large profits for several years then depart before being promoted and taking larger income or a share of the profits. Indeed, I have very rarely seen the most prestigious New York City legal employers, for example, ever give a negative evaluation of the work done by one of their former lower level attorneys. Smaller law firms, however, have less at stake and are often not as highly leveraged and dependent upon a constant stream of lower level attorneys.
See Related Articles:
If you’ve moved too many times within a short timespan, legal employers will likely conclude that you’re likely to move again–regardless of what it’s like to work there. What’s so unusual about this discussion of “job hopping” is that most of the reasons people actually move are wholly unrelated to the reasons that are actually acceptable (in the law firm’s eyes) for moving.
While this article could have spent a considerable amount of time discussing even additional reasons to justify moves, each of the acceptable reasons can be summed up in one sentence: I am moving, but I am a stable and good attorney. Similarly, the unacceptable reasons for moving can be summed up in one sentence: I am moving because I am unstable and may not be a good attorney.
There’s nothing wrong with changing legal jobs to pursue opportunities. However, too much legal job hopping can inhibit your ability to get a job and be difficult to explain to legal employers. When law firms see a great deal of legal job hopping on your resume, it signals to them a lack of commitment; therefore, you must be careful in how you explain these job transfers in an interview. Whatever your actual reasons or motivations for moving, you must give legal employers the sense that you are a stable, dependable attorney.
- (1) your work isn’t good,
- (2) you aren’t proactive enough in asking for work, or
- (3) the people in charge of doling out work don’t like you.
In explaining there isn’t enough work at your current law firm, you need to be clear with potential law firms that there isn’t enough work for anyone in your law firm, and you’re not alone. You also need to express this fact in a way that doesn’t make it sound like you’re attacking your current law firm. Permissible ways to explain this is to mention that there have been key defections in your legal department, that major work that has occupied you for months (or years) has gone away, or that the law firm has recently lost several major clients. However you explain this, you need to do it with tact and without appearing to attack your current law firm. In addition, you need to be aware that the law firm may be wondering, “Is this person short on work because something is wrong with him/her?” while giving any explanation.
Moving to get higher quality legal 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 don’t have enough work needs to be explained in a way that connotes ambition.
B. Structural Changes with the Law Firm
Many law firms go through significant structural changes that have an adverse effect on attorneys. For example, law firms merge, offices close, and key supervisors leave. When this occurs at the largest law firms, many people hear about it in the business community. Each of the reasons discussed above are permissible reasons for leaving a law firm if they’re handled the correct way.
One way that smart attorneys can often explain moves is to say that because of significant structural changes in their current law firm, they don’t believe there are opportunities to advance. The former Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison’s real estate practice in San Diego is a perfect example. In early 2000, this practice was staffed by two partners and three lower associates. One partner left in 2001, then it was staffed by one partner and three associates. In combination with a partner defection and other market forces, the amount of available work for the associates decreased quite dramatically. Because this wasn’t a large practice area in the law firm’s San Diego office, it should be obvious there were few opportunities for associates in this office to make partner unless they had a significant book of business or the partner that was left had such extreme amounts of business that he needed to elevate an associate to partner in order to further grow his practice. In this instance, explaining this particular dynamic would make sense.
When structural law firm changes do occur, law firms are also looking for various “warning signs” that may indicate you’re a potentially problematic attorney. If a key partner supervisor leaves, the law firm will often want to know why the supervisor didn’t take you with them. Similarly, if a law firm merges with another and your position is put at risk, the law firm will want to know why there was no one to protect you. After all, if you made yourself indispensable, the key person would want to take you with him or her, and important supervisors would presumably protect you during any merger. Because law firms will be thinking these things when they evaluate your candidacy, any explanations you give for your contemplated move should take these factors into account.
Law firms experience serious structural changes quite frequently. Most lower level attorneys at law firms that close or with companies where key supervisors leave are quite successful in finding alternative legal employment quickly. To me, this is a very interesting phenomena; however, I believe the reason these attorneys find new employment so quickly is related to the fact that—more so than with most other moves—the move can be explained by negative forces completely beyond the attorney’s control.
C. Location
Location is often an exceptional reason given for moving. The best location-related reason for moving is that you want to move back to your home city to be near either you or your spouse’s family. Reasons that law firms don’t like to hear for relocating are (1) to get to better weather, (2) for a change of scenery, and (3) that you are moving to join a girlfriend or spouse.
Law firms are generally quite receptive to attorneys who are leaving to be closer to their family. This is especially so if you moved to a large city such as New York and are going home to a much smaller legal market. Spending your first few years of work in a major market can be explained as a product of your ambition to be exposed to the most sophisticated work possible before settling down at home. You can also explain this based on the fact that you thought this would be your only opportunity to work in a major market before settling down, and you therefore enthusiastically embraced the opportunity. If you commenced your legal career in a smaller market and are now moving to a larger one that isn’t where you grew up, the above discussion of quality of work should be used. The reason moving home to work is accepted so readily by law firms is because it connotes a desire for stability. Individuals moving home to work are likely to remain with the same law firms for a long period of time.
Law firms don’t like to hear that you’re moving to get better weather or a change of scenery. Each of these reasons for moving raises the distinct possibility in the law firm’s calculation that you’re unlikely to be stable with them. Law firms all over the country have been “burned” by lower level attorneys who moved to a certain area only to be disenchanted with where they were living and move again. If you move because of the weather, for example, this might indicate to law firms that the weather in a given city is more important to you than loyalty to your legal employer or the quality of work you’re doing. If you’re interested in moving to Los Angeles for better weather, what would you do if offered an equally paying legal job in Maui a few years later? Similarly, if you are tired of big city life and moving to a small town to work, what will happen if you decide you don’t like the extreme of a small town and want to move to a more mid-sized town? You get the idea. Moving for reasons related to weather or scenery are never good ideas.
I see attorneys each year who attempt to relocate to Colorado because they like the Mountains, Las Vegas because they like the nightlife, Paris because they like the culture, San Diego because they like the beach, Portland because they like the music scene, New Orleans because they had so much fun at Mardi Gras … and on, and on, and on. In heated economic climates when law firms were literally begging for attorneys, I often made these placements with some frequency. My candidates were more than open regarding their specific reasons for relocating with us, and the law firms hired them anyway. In a poor economic climate, though, law firms are far more prejudicial and unlikely to accept such reasons. It’s simply not in their best interest to do so. Indeed, few attorneys who relocate for reasons such as this are likely to find happiness in their next legal positions.
Since this is somewhat of a sensitive subject, I’ve saved the discussion of relocating to join a spouse or significant other for last. At the outset, I should point out that the generalizations we are about to point out do not apply to all law firms. Nevertheless, I’m repeating something that I’ve heard over and over from law firms. Law firms are not always open to you relocating to join a spouse or significant other because, in the law firm’s mind, it connotes that someone other than you is responsible for your career. If you’re relocating to join a spouse who has found a better legal job, will you move again if he or she finds a better job a few years down the road? If your significant other or spouse doesn’t like where you are currently living, will he or she like the next place you move?
At their heart, most law firms crave attorneys who can contribute to their overall stability. Law firms do not like to have to contemplate that someone close to you may potentially influence their bottom line and your legal career at some unstated time in the future. In addition, the higher paying the legal job, the more likely it is to be extremely demanding. Most attorneys practicing in large cities have a very difficult time holding together families given the demands of their legal jobs. While the demands of your legal profession are another topic altogether, law firms generally expect their attorneys to be the ones with the primary job responsibilities and their spouse or significant other to be the ones on the sidelines supporting that effort. This statement sounds extraordinarily wrong, and I’m not necessarily expressing approval for this line of thought. Nevertheless, this is how most law firms think, and it’s something you need to keep in mind when explaining your reasons for moving.
The fact that relocating to join a spouse may be viewed as a “negative” by a law firm needs to be understood as part of law firms’ overall desire for stability in the attorneys they hire. Anything that doesn’t suggest stability is viewed as a negative.
See Related Articles:
- How Do Law Firms Treat “Gaps” in Your Resume?
- 23 Types of Attorneys Prestigious Law Firms Avoid Hiring
- Why Relocating to a Different Market Is the Greatest (But Little Known) Way for a Law Firm Attorney to Get Ahead in the Legal Profession
II. YOU SHOULD DO YOUR BEST TO AVOID SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME HIGHLIGHTING TO LEGAL EMPLOYERS THE REASONS YOU HAVE FOR MOVING
You will have a very difficult time getting hired if you tell legal employers you’re moving because
- (A) your work was not well received,
- (B) you were unable to get along with others, or
- (C) you were asked to leave.
If you’ve moved several times in your employment, after your third or fourth move, most law firms will begin to presume that you’re moving due to these reasons. While you need to be honest with every employer you speak with, you should also be very careful how you explain any move that involves one of these three issues.
A. Your Work Was Not Well Received
If you’re contemplating moving because your work hasn’t been well received, or if you’ve moved in the past due to this reason, it’s important to do a very careful self-analysis before explaining this to any legal employer.
Every law firm has different standards for their work. At many insurance defense employers, it’s quite common to turn in work riddled with typographical and other errors. At some law firms, a typographical error would be near cause for dismissal. At some law firms, there are supervisors that are notoriously difficult to work with and set such a ridiculous standard that no attorney could possibly meet it. When economic times are very rough, performance appraisals can become unnecessarily harsh to the degree that they shouldn’t be taken as seriously as they appear.
Most lower level, professional attorneys working for large law firms have their work criticized with a high degree of severity. While few lower level attorneys speak about this, even the most talented of the bunch feel a great degree of inadequacy with respect to their professional abilities in a demanding organization, especially in detail-oriented large organizations. The reason large law firms are so harsh in their performance reviews is that they’re pushing their lower level attorneys to think in different ways and have an extremely high standard for their work. While many people are detail oriented by nature before they even go to college or law school, the level of detail an attorney needs to develop with respect to their work product and thinking processes is something most people don’t learn in college or law school. Most of this is taught through formal and informal reviews of work over time. Over time, an attorney is expected to develop their skills to the point where their work doesn’t need to be severely criticized. Generally, by an attorney’s third year of work, this should no longer be the case.
If you are in your first few years of work and contemplating leaving due to harsh criticism, or you’re in a particularly demanding work environment, you should probably give yourself some time and attempt to improve to the level that is expected of you. This is something that most people do. The time that other people take to criticize your work should be something you appreciate, even if they appear somewhat hostile while doing so. As your work is further criticized, your professional abilities should improve.
If you moved or contemplated moving during your first few years due to criticisms of your work, it’s probably not a good idea to bring this up. I would estimate that a majority of the people who move during their first few years do so due to harsh criticism. Most people facing harsh criticism simply don’t speak with other people about it with a great degree of frequency due to factors such as internal competition or their own desire to keep this private and not be seen negatively by others. Sadly, many people move for this very reason during their first few years at a law firm and this movement is more related to their self-confidence and ability to take criticism than any actual problems with their development as attorneys. Since most people working for the largest and most prestigious law firms are unusually accomplished to begin with, the level of criticism they receive during their first few years of work can be emotionally devastating.
After working for a few years for a large or demanding law firm, you will be in a position to know whether the criticism of your work is justified. If this criticism is justified and you continue to make serious errors, you should probably do your best to find an environment you have reason to believe will not have as exacting of standards. This also raises issues such as whether or not you’re a good attorney, whether you’re suited for what you do, and if it makes sense for you to continue. One important factor to remember is that some legal employers are more critical than others and just because your work is not well received by one law firm, does not mean it will be poorly received by another. If this pattern continues to repeat itself after a few moves, however, then you need to be realistic that the problem may be your work and not the legal employer. If this is the case, it might be a good idea to consider whether you want to continue practicing at the same level.
B. You Were Unable to Get Along with Others
It’s important to recognize that some degree of politics exists in virtually any environment, whether large or small. In fact, it exists in most office environments, including those outside your legal profession. The key to succeeding then is developing the skills to strategically navigate in these sometimes difficult situations. These skills generally develop over time with exposure to a wide variety of situations.
There are numerous different types of personalities and some attorneys are more suited for certain work environments than others. Getting along with others is among the most important aspects of work, and legal employers want to hire attorneys they believe will get along with others. Since attorneys spend countless hours with each other at work, they do not want to be around (or hire) attorneys that are likely to have personality conflicts with others. Law firms are economic engines and attorneys who are critical of the environment or other factors related to personalities in the workplace, are seen as attorneys who put the law firm in danger.
“Explaining” the political games you have encountered in your positions at past legal employers may not be a good idea when interviewing with prospective legal employers. First, it’s generally not a good idea to “badmouth” your current law firm to a potential law firm. Depending on the type of environment you are leaving, you may only call into question your ability to integrate yourself into the environment at the law firm who is interviewing you. During the interview process, legal employers are generally wary of candidates whose main complaint is some sort of personality conflict or general complaints. You should be clear that your reason for moving is not a problem with the legal environment as a whole, lest you come across as someone who works against the “system.” Legal employers primarily, and perhaps most importantly, do want attorneys who are hardworking, flexible, have the ability to deal effectively with other colleagues and with clients, and who ultimately have developed the key skills to understand and deal effectively with political situations within the workplace.
You’re encouraged to take a strong look at the factors that influenced your past departures from previous employers. If they are mainly political, you should consider making a list of the characteristics you’re looking for in your new legal employer environment. You should also consider whether your attitude and approach to problems at these previous jobs in any way contributed to your overall unhappiness and departure. Also, determine whether there’s anything you need to change in your approach. We suggest this because of what was mentioned earlier–you will encounter this in every single professional environment, whether you make a move to a big, medium, or small law firm. So it is important to learn through these experiences so you can enhance your ability to make a successful move this time.
See Also: The Importance of Attorneys Being Well-Liked in their Jobs: Why Others Must Like You for You to Get Ahead
C. You Were Asked to Leave
If you were asked to leave any of your past legal employers, this is generally not a good topic to bring up as a reason for moving. You need to understand that a large percentage of attorneys have been fired at some point in their legal careers. How this is handled is the important thing.
The justification legal employers give for asking a lower level attorney to leave are generally related to the quality of the person’s work. Sometimes, this explanation is accurate and a lot of times it’s not. You may be asked to leave due to your seniority, the fact that you’re not working hard enough, or a major downturn in the law firms’s work load. In most respects, lower level attorneys are asked to leave because they don’t get along well with supervisors or others in authority. Conversely, very few legal employers actually ask lower level attorneys to leave because they perceive their work quality as poor (although this is the explanation most frequently given by law firms when they don’t like someone).
If you’ve been asked to leave a law firm, this sends all sorts of negative messages to potential employers. If you were asked to leave because the law firm you were at didn’t have enough work, you weren’t going to make partner, the law firm will be thinking to themselves that not all lower level attorneys were asked to leave, so why you, in particular? There must have been something about you or your work that motivated the legal employer to ask you to leave instead of others.
You get the idea. If you’re asked to leave a law firm, you need to de-emphasize this fact in your discussion with future legal employers. Most interviewers will not directly ask this question in interviews and if a law firm did ask you to leave, they will very rarely tell anyone who calls to check your references. It’s interesting to us that the largest law firms will often give the best recommendations to lower level attorneys they ask to leave. Smaller law firms tend to give the harshest recommendations.
While this is something that’s not often discussed, the largest law firms actually want lower level attorneys to leave after several years of work because they depend on a constant stream of hungry lower level attorneys to show up and earn them large profits for several years then depart before being promoted and taking larger income or a share of the profits. Indeed, I have very rarely seen the most prestigious New York City legal employers, for example, ever give a negative evaluation of the work done by one of their former lower level attorneys. Smaller law firms, however, have less at stake and are often not as highly leveraged and dependent upon a constant stream of lower level attorneys.
See Related Articles:
- Your Narrative: Explaining Your Lateral Moves
- Don't Make a Lateral Move Too Soon
- Switching Law Firms as a Career Strategy for Attorneys: When You Should and Should Not Leave Your Law Firm to Get Ahead
- The Right and Wrong Reasons for Attorneys to Switch Law Firms: Should You Look for, or Accept a New Law Firm Job?
Conclusion
If you’ve moved too many times within a short timespan, legal employers will likely conclude that you’re likely to move again–regardless of what it’s like to work there. What’s so unusual about this discussion of “job hopping” is that most of the reasons people actually move are wholly unrelated to the reasons that are actually acceptable (in the law firm’s eyes) for moving.
While this article could have spent a considerable amount of time discussing even additional reasons to justify moves, each of the acceptable reasons can be summed up in one sentence: I am moving, but I am a stable and good attorney. Similarly, the unacceptable reasons for moving can be summed up in one sentence: I am moving because I am unstable and may not be a good attorney.
The Lesson
There’s nothing wrong with changing legal jobs to pursue opportunities. However, too much legal job hopping can inhibit your ability to get a job and be difficult to explain to legal employers. When law firms see a great deal of legal job hopping on your resume, it signals to them a lack of commitment; therefore, you must be careful in how you explain these job transfers in an interview. Whatever your actual reasons or motivations for moving, you must give legal employers the sense that you are a stable, dependable attorney.
