Career Success Requires Sacrifice: The Hidden Cost of Getting Ahead in Law and Life

Introduction

Welcome to this webinar. I'll just say right at the beginning I think this is just an incredible topic and if you understand what I'm gonna talk about today, which I'm sure you will, it could really make a fundamental change in the course of your life, in both your career, your personal.

Pretty much everything. It's a topic that when I was younger when I was even 18 I learned about this topic and became schooled and understood what it meant. I did it and I can tell you how I did it and I will throughout the course of this, but it was, it's a topic that honestly can maybe one of the more important topics you ever hear, you may not realize.


You may realize what I'm gonna be talking about. But at the same time it's just a great topic and very important and it underlies everything in terms of the success that people have in their careers and their lives. It's really one of the most important topics, and it's something that very few people actually embrace the way they could.

One, the top 1% of people that are very successful in both their personal lives and their marriages, friendships. Getting along with people, success as an attorney. All of these things come down to this particular topic. So this is a a live webinar. And so I will give the presentation and then after the presentation I'll take a quick break just for a minute or two, and then when we come back, I'll do questions.

The questions don't have to be about this webinar, or they can be, or you can certainly you ask questions, you know about the webinar too, if you like. To start, I wanted to there's this kind of poem that I've always liked, and it's in this book, Think and Grow Rich. And let me just share this real quickly with you.

 

The Price of Success

Mr. Palm. So the poem says I bargained with life for a penny, and life would pay no more. However, I begged it evening when I counted my Scanny store. For life is just an employer. It gives you what you ask. But once you set the wages, why you must bear the task. I work for aminos Higher only to learn dismay that any way, any wage that I asked of life would've willingly paid.

What that poem means, and what I take it to mean is that you're the one in charge of what happens in your life. If you set big goals then that's good because you have something very good to go towards. But you're gonna have to, if you set big goals, you're gonna have to actually do what the price of that is.

Every goal has a price and people don't get most people. It's, people do, but most people do not get lucky and reach incredible heights of success. Without doing something that is going to make them successful, whether it's athletes, whether it's people in relationships, or whether it's practicing law.
 

Examples of People Who Paid the Price

Famous athletes like, Michael Jordan, for example, one of the best basketball players at all time. Very well known. Practiced harder than anyone, took more shots, did more things, worked very hard, became obviously a very good basketball player and stayed a good basketball player.

Other people. I remember when I was at Quin Emanuel, there was a guy that had been come over from Prova and had taken and worked in in Quinn. And he'd been there for maybe three years and he was 12 or 13 years out of law school. And it came around one year. The firm would elect people to be partners, and this is a well-known kind of famous story.

The firm would elect people partners once a year, and when they elected partners they wouldn't do it until the following year.

This guy didn't make partner and he'd been working very hard, maybe worked 2,800 hours a year or something for the past couple years. And when he didn't make partner. The reaction of a lot of people when that happened would be to get depressed or angry and resentful.

He was like, okay, no problem. what he did was absolutely incredible. He for the next three months he worked at least 400 hours a month or more every waking hour that he could be at the office. He worked and he did this for four months straight. And eventually the partners in the firm were like, this is crazy.

We have to make this guy partner. So he is someone that bared the price and he did whatever it took to get to where where he wanted to be. And it was, I was out for dinner with a friend of mine that used to be a partner at Quinn as well. And that story about this guy is just, always been a, a very kind of well-known story about someone that just did whatever it took, just didn't give up, and was able to get into a, a very good position. And, but what I was gonna say about my friend is that he was telling me that this guy, even though he is never brought into business or anything his, he lives, got houses in Malibu and the beach and all these different places and it was worth, 50 million plus, dollars and things, but put in a huge effort and gave whatever it took.

This is something that people do that becomes successful. They all do it. People put in efforts in marriages and relationships so they can stay married. They do whatever the price is. They don't get distracted many times. They have goals. And you need to put yourself in a position where you realize that whatever goal you set for yourself.

You can achieve how many people wanna be the greatest corporate attorney to live, ever live? Or you have become partners in huge firms and all these different things and you have to set goals obviously that are, that you're capable of achieving. But at the same time very few people out there have goals.
 

Goals and the Power of Direction

Very few people know where they're going or what they wanna do. There's a famous study, it was done in maybe, I don't know, 1960 or something, and they asked all the graduates of Yale College, what they wanted to do in in the next what they wanted to do as a career what they saw themselves doing.

It was some very small percentage of people, maybe 5% of the people knew what they were gonna do or had very clear goals. And after 30 years, they went. To those people and that 5% of people had higher, more net worth than the other 95% together. So meaning those 5%, if they were worth $10 million, the other 95% were worth nine, which is, it's just interesting to see what goals do and what paying the price and all this sort of stuff.

Paying the price for you could be a bunch of different things, and we'll talk about that today. But very few people are willing to bear the cost to do something that what the, in order to be successful they don't, first of all, they don't set big goals. And even if they do set big goals, they don't follow through and they don't commit.

Commitment and the ability to know what you want and the ability to come up with these goals to begin with because very few people do this. Very few people do exercises where they visualize things. Very few people write down goals. Very few people. Are willing to do whatever it takes, meaning more hours, more commitment more networking more of this, and more of that.

Instead of living the life and having the career you're capable of, you're probably not even getting, you're probably not even scratching the surface. Most people aren't. Now you're different because you're here learning about these things. And that's something that's gonna make a huge difference for you.
 

How Goal Setting Changed My Life

Just learning what I'm gonna talk about today could profoundly change what happens to you. And it did for me. So I learned about this stuff that I'm talking about today. Literally when I was when I was maybe 16 or something like that. And when I learned about what I'm talking about today, I turned from a mid, average student to a really good student and someone that was literally like a, c student to an a student, someone that would, would've been lucky to go to college, to someone who was able to get into great colleges, to someone.

That didn't have a business to support themselves to someone that started a successful business when I was like 18. And someone that went to a really good college and did really well there. Same thing, law school, jobs and but all because of setting goals. It's nothing nothing but setting goals.

That was the, that was what made me able to reach the levels of success that I'm at right now. And it's the same thing with starting BCG, and the same thing with with everything but, oh, I apologize. I just, this. But anyway, so this is this is one of the most important things you can learn.

Setting goals, believing in yourself, believing what's possible and then doing the work that's required to do it. And Second. I never do this in webinars.

It's just kids' school. So that's what I'm gonna talk about today. And I, and this, by the way, this topic, I hope you absorb what I'm talking about. I'm gonna tell some stories about things. I'm gonna really go deep into this because once you understand that you have to really bear the price and you have to do whatever it takes to be successful, whatever it takes to reach your goals.
 

Early Lessons from Delivering Newspapers

When I was around nine years old I was very motivated. I don't know why but I wanted to start earning money and it just became very important to me. When I was nine, I remember the, there were two different newspapers in Detroit. There was a Detroit Free Press and Detroit News.

In order to deliver the Detroit News, which was in the afternoon, you had to be 11 and the Detroit Free Press, you had to be 13. And so when I was nine, I filled out an application. I lied about my age, and and I was able to get a job delivering the afternoon newspaper for the Detroit News.

It was my first real work experience. And I kept expanding what I did. First of all, they give you like a smaller paper route. I means a fewer number of half homes to deliver to. Then I started getting larger and larger deliveries. So maybe I started with 50 papers and within a couple years I was at like 200.

I also started delivering the morning newspapers, Detroit Free Press, lied about my age there too. And then I just kept taking, getting more and more streets and things in order to, increase the number of papers. And within a few years I was delivering hundreds of papers each day and just pushing myself to, to do to do whatever I could to deliver all these papers.

The papers, there were so many papers that when I would put them on my bike bicycles would break, like handlebars would snap off. The, I couldn't push. So there's a rear rack where you put these stacks of papers the tire, like the wheels wouldn't turn because of the weight on the back.

I would carry them on my back and, push the bike. It was just a massive. Undertaking to do all this. And then one bike I remember I purchased from Sears, literally broke in half. So I was pushing myself very hard to do well. I would go out on rainy days and, where other kids help from their parents, driving them, the ones that had paper routes most didn't.

My situation was different. I lived with a single mother. She was either working or sleeping when I deliver papers and just no condition to help me. And so I didn't have any help. And so I handled the paper route just all on my own. And I worked through difficult, these difficult conditions.

I was inspired to a lot of independence and persistence. And then some Sundays when I would be stay with my father, he would. Help me and drive me around. But most of the time I was the only one responsible. And then even I had when the morning deliveries, I had customers that wanted the paper by six 30 'cause they wanted to take it with them to work.

I needed to get up often around five to do that. And it was just, it was a lot of work trying to meet their expectations too. So I would come home around six 30, then I would go to sleep, get up, ride my bike three miles to school, and then and then just then ride my bike to pick up papers after school.

Just all of this through, there's Michigan, there's snow slash storms. It's just not a, it's a difficult thing to do, deliver papers on a bike. Despite all this it, I actually got, it was actually a good thing for me. I lived it's not that relevant, but my mother was a pretty serious alcoholic.

Having access to money to go to the store and buy things and had a kind of independence. I guess it gave me purpose when I had a difficult home life. But it by, from, by the time I was like, 11 and so forth, I started buying motorized motor scooters.

You needed to be 15 to have a license to drive those. And but I bought them and drove, rode them anyway. I would buy expensive bikes to jump, ramps and things, video games just had a lot of nice things. Sony Walkman's tapes I created. I had a exotic fish collection. I bought myself a bird.

I joined. Record and tape clubs where I'd get the, different things, tennis rackets basketball, soccer balls, baseball mitts, all sorts of stuff. And not only that, but I rode my moped to school, which was very funny because at the age of 12, riding a moped in schools, like showing up to high school and like a Ferrari, and but it was that was the kind of what I was, how I was living.
 

When Success Attracts Attention

At the same time because I had all these things and because I was showing off my mopeds and things people, there were a lot of people that were jealous. And eventually the school contacted my mother about this. And I would not drive and they were concerned about the moped.

I rode the moped. I would would ride the moped part of the way to school, then I would park it in an apartment building that was maybe a, 200 yards from the school. And I walked to school and I just had a lot of independence. And but the interesting thing that happened is when I started doing all this and just being very driven so I could have this kind of independent life with a, with a very bad home situation and money to buy things people started stealing from me.

Most of the kids were my age. Their parents would buy them things, but certainly. Nowhere near the level of things that I could buy. 'cause I was making a lot of money each month. I had an ongoing supply of lots of money and and it drew attention.

Instead of these kids earning things, going out and working and things they chose another path. They decided to take what I had. What happened was people would break into my locker. People would steal my bikes people, bikes stolen from my house. I remember they'd steal my bike.

I had people that would that happened several times. I had what else stolen? I actually had a moped stolen once, but I got that back. I had Walkman stolen. I had pretty much most things that I bought. Were stolen. First things, small things, calculator, watch tapes and things.

Then larger items like I told you, bikes and tennis rackets and Sony Walkman's. And they were valuable at the time. And back then Sony Walkman was maybe 275 or $300. There's probably 700 or 1,000 today. I don't know. But when the reported the Walkman stolen the, it was stolen from school, I remember the school called the Police.

A detective came to investigate what was going on. They, they took it very seriously. And the detective asked me why I was being targeted. He recognized me 'cause he'd seen me out in the morning in these paper routes. And he suggested to me that I should keep my valuables at home and bringing them to school and becoming a target.

if I showed other people what I was doing then success would attract attention and not necessarily good intention. And what was interesting too is that the detective managed to recover almost everything that was stolen from me. He, the school told him the kids that they suspected, then he interrogated them and things, and then went and got my stuff and almost everything's returned.

I started being more careful. And but I noticed that when I was succeeding that people were resentful. There were certain people that wouldn't be my friend. And people I stuck out because I was doing things on my own without other people's support. And it became a very early lesson.

That how other people will respond to your achievement. So I could have done two things. I could have stopped trying and stopped trying to succeed and stop having this goal for myself to be independent, my mother and everything, or I could continue doing what I'm doing. And you should understand that anytime you try to do something different than other people, if you try to if anytime you try to do something positive, many times it's and you're trying to succeed you're going to upset people and you're going to come up against resistance.

Your success may threaten your parents. Your success may threaten your significant other. You may not want your success may threaten your friendships. All these sorts of things. Can threaten, sometimes people are part of groups of people that like to go out and drink.

If you decide you don't wanna drink anymore, are those people always gonna still be your friends? But I had this mindset and I developed it early on that there were endless opportunities and resources available, meaning I did not see limits in terms of money. I did not see limits in terms of what I could achieve.
 

Abundance vs. Protecting What You Have

I was less concerned about protecting things and not, and things getting stolen than it was. I realized that if I tried to protect everything that wasn't a good effort. And if I focused on protecting the things I had, that's all I would ever have. So many people are very conservative.

They don't wanna go outside of the shell. They wanna protect their job. They don't wanna try to do something better. They don't wanna try to become, move to a larger city so they can work or move to a larger law firm or do whatever they can to be, to get ahead. They don't wanna start their own.

They don't wanna start their own law firm. They, whatever. They don't wanna all these things that people need to do. So there's so many people out there, and you may be one of them. You could be in a job. I've seen attorneys that are making $60,000 a year and have been in the same job for 10 years.

They never step outside of that. They never try something else. They just wanna make sure they're protecting their income and things. And so a lot of people are very defensive, or they don't give every they just wanna protect what they have. And they don't try to move beyond something else.

They don't try to grow. And so what I did when I was confronted with this and. As I focused on working and producing more, and I believe that this effort and growth would always create new opportunities. And that's the mindset I had. Now, I will be completely honest with you. I may not have been in that situation had I been in a good, had all my needs been taken care of at home.

I needed to develop some sort of alternative identity for myself. And so I did that because of the issues that I had when I was younger. So I, I had no choice but to do what I did. And so that's one of the things that also motivated me, there's an interesting story and it's about I don't remember the war, but it's about when there was a war and these ships went, several ships went to sail to fight this war, and.
 

Burn the Ships

Against this group of people. And so they had 600 soldiers and they were gonna be fighting I don't know, 5,000 soldiers or some random, maybe it was 3000, but even thousands more, several times more soldiers than them. And so when they got to the shore and landed before getting ready to go fight these people the captain or the leader of the the army burned all the ships and he burned all the ships.

Everyone was astonished. And he said, if I don't burn the, if I don't burn the ships, everyone's gonna retreat, but if I burn the ships, you're gonna have to win. And so of course they went into the war and they won. So a lot of times if you cut off you have to cut off all sort forms of retreat. If you're trying to do something, most people retreat.

Most people give up. Don't follow through on goals because following through on a goal is gonna mean lots of rejection. It could be getting fired, it could be all these problems and things that happen. It could be resent people, resenting you, people stealing from you. All these sorts of things that happened to me.

The mindset I had really worked. Now what I was doing in my paper, just so you understand how this, how table route works, may, I don't even know if they have them anymore, but I was bringing in back then maybe a thousand dollars a month, which is pretty good. It's probably, two or $3,000 a month now that we're talking about 47 years ago.

Anyway, so I was bringing around a thousand dollars a month, and then what would happen is then you would have to pay for the papers. So you would go out and you would knock on people's door and they would give you money, and then you would have to figure out, then you would have to pay for the papers.

You'd have a manager and you'd have to pay the manager for the papers. And what I did is I kept the money in a very simple way. I just had a drawer in my room and my manager would come by, knock on my door and ask me for the money, for the papers I owed him, and then the rest of the the rest of the money.

I would just keep around in this drawer, and I just had an endless supply of money. It was filled with, as many twenties as you can see, and there was more, always more coming in and just this huge abundance. Imagine a 10-year-old, 12-year-old having all this money. And so I just had all of this money constantly piling up.
 

The Cost of Shortcuts

One day I had some kids over. I don't, I was a group of kids. I didn't know them all to play video games. And that was also another good thing of having these paper routes as people wanted to come over to your house because you had all the latest games. And some of these kids were not people that I knew very well.

One day I went in to take some money out the store, whatever, and I noticed something. Just alarming. There was a lot of the $20 bills that were in there were missing maybe 30-plus, or $600. And I realized that this money was gone. I needed the money to pay for the papers.

Then my manager, of course, came by short while later, I didn't have enough money to pay him. And so the next morning he came back and spoke with my mother and then my mother had to step in and actually pay him. And so I later paid her back, but it taught me some rules.

I never found out who took it, but what it taught me and what I was learning very very quickly as I was being surrounded even at a young age in this lesson of people not willing to pay the price for what they want, people would steal from me. People would. Always try to get things from me that that they couldn't necessarily get on their own.

People weren't even young, kids weren't willing to pay the price, they weren't willing to work. They were doing they were looking for shortcuts and easier ways to do things. And so while I was out there working and committing other people were doing the exact opposite and looking for shortcuts and trying to get ahead without without doing what was needed.

people choose shortcuts. They choose stealing. They choose not applying themselves. They choose not improving themselves when they can. They choose avoiding effort. All these sorts of things. People choose instead of doing and committing and doing what's necessary. Some people choose to work for success.

Other people choose the shortcut. But the guy I mentioned earlier that may partner quite Emanuel, and now it's worth $50 million a bus, and it's got these people, they fly around and like they get these net jets cards and fly around in jets to different places. And but they, a lot of people choose shortcuts.

This guy didn't he doubled down when things got when things got tough. A lot of people in the situation I've seen when they don't become a partner in a law firm. They give up and they quit. But other people don't. And so this was just a, very good lesson for me. It taught me that there's always a price to pay.

Not everyone is willing to pay the price. For me, the price was working four hours a day and rain and shine was putting myself out there and doing something that other people, kids my age were un willing to do. So I meet people all the time. I try to associate with people that don't do this, but I do meet people all the time that are unwilling to pay the price to advance their careers.
 

What Paying the Price Means in Law

I'm not really sure you have to think about this. Are you willing to pay the price and why aren't you? Because if you wanna get ahead in most law firms now that's assuming you have goals. Like your goal, you may have other goals, like your goal may not to be a very successful attorney.

If your goal's not to be a very successful attorney, then I just want you to be clear to understand what that means. That means probably that you'll be working for someone else and they will decide what happens to you. And you'll have to constantly worry about keeping jobs and things if that's not, if that's your goal.

If not to be successful training. There's a lot of people that think that way. I would say probably 50% of the people. Coming out of law school. Think that way. And just keep in mind that if that's your goal, then you're gonna be dependent on other people for income. You're gonna be dependent on the job market.

You're gonna be dependent on all these things. What, where the opposite is the choice to be exceptional. And it doesn't matter by the way, where you went to law school, it doesn't even matter where you're at right now. You could start a career as a attorney at the age of 50 and still 60. I just got off the phone with a guy that was in his mid seventies and he has his own firm, this huge firm that does these represents people suing companies, suing for insurance coverage issues.

Just tell him he spends four months a year in Hawaii and amazed people do, can do very wellness in this profession. It doesn't matter. What you, who you are. Most people, a lot of people aren't willing to put in the hours they want. They wanna know the hours requirements of a job, but the hours requirements are a job should be, you need to work the hours that's going to take, in order for you to make a become a partner, or if you're a partner, you need to be willing to work the hours it takes to do and do the work and the groundwork to bring in clients.

People are unwilling to put in the hours. People are unwilling to commit. They're not committed. Their foot's half out the door. They're not, they don't put their, they don't commit and say, this is everything to me. This is what I want. A lot of people are unwilling to commit and go to school.

Think about all the people you know that dropped out of high school. They just, they aren't willing to do that. So they set themselves up for lives of mediocrity and to, for working in restaurants, the servers and things. And they don't do that. They drop out of school. Other people are unwilling to go to college.

Staying in college, they're unwilling to. Do tough work really hard in college so they can get into a good medical school or a good law school or a good business school. Other people are unwilling to. Go to law school and do that. Other people are unwilling to stay in law school. Other people aren't willing to work hard in law school.

All this stuff requires sacrifices. It also requires learning how to control your emotions and stay focused. And a lot of people don't succeed because they're not well networked, and so they don't go out and meet people and other people people are quitting many times and other people are willing, unwilling to keep going.

Every law firm people are always dropping out and saying, oh, there's something wrong with this law firm. It could be the law firm could be a hundred plus years old and people are criticizing and saying, there's something wrong with this law firm. The law firm's probably be there another a hundred years.

People don't succeed because 'cause they quit. They don't succeed because they don't commit, they don't succeed because they don't have goals. And I'm not saying that that there's anything. Wrong with you for not being in the situation, but for being in the situation potentially. But I am telling you that you can literally control what happens to your life, to your career, to your personal life when you decide that you need to pay the price.

In order to do this, you need to pay the price in order to make a certain amount of money, in order to have a certain title, in order to have a certain level of happiness. Have a certain level of happiness. Could be your social network, it could be all these different things, but you need to pay the price.

There's a price for everything. And so many people out there are looking for shortcuts. They want, they wanna get good results without working hard. They wanna make as much money as possible for as little hours as possible. They wanna hopefully get ahead without doing the things that are required.

They want all these things for their lives. They don't happen. A lot of people, a great number of people are take shortcuts and and because they take shortcuts you take people that become criminals that they, that embezzle and rob places and do things like that. That's an example of shortcuts.

Society punishes shortcuts that that hurt it that, hurt people. But because shortcuts that, that hurt, people are bad, but shortcuts all have a cost. And so there's this mindset where people wanna take shortcuts. And so people that are looking for shortcut. Maybe if they don't, if they're getting some re resistance of their current employer, if things aren't going as well as they think they should, then those people will say, oh, maybe I should look for another job.

Or if people are cha, a lot of people become challenged, like the firm starts demanding more of them, whether it's hours or the quality of work, the work's criticized. So instead of improving they look for new jobs where they're not gonna be they're not gonna be criticized. They go to an employer and they never commit and they never stay there and provide long-term value and develop their networks and the brand equity at the firm.

They do all these things, or they take, they try to make money as fast as possible, and they limit their long-term success. And so in order to be successful, you need to have patience. And you need to have put in the effort and you need to be consistent with creating value and.

That's what people do. There's really no shortcuts to doing well and to the kind of achievement that you may be wanting. There, there are none. So everything that you're doing requires commitment. I remember I don't know why I thought of this, but I didn't even plan, I wasn't given any plan of giving this presentation on this day.
 

A High School Lesson About Work

I thought of it when I was when I was when I, yesterday for some other reason. But I remember I was in high school and there was this group of kids that I was friends with, and they were they had a lot of fun. They, one of them had a BM BMW convertible back then with really nice cars.

I talking to the, 80, the late eighties. And they, so they would, we were all driving around and it was like it was like, maybe a week before final exams or something and having fun. I remember, they're like, why aren't you coming out with us? And I'm like I have to work.

Like we have tests coming up and things. And I was like, and I was like, that's what you need to do. And I said something like that. And they said no, was like, no, it's not. And so they went out and had fun. And of course, those stories, they didn't get the best grades and things, and didn't get little bit colleges.

I'm not saying that I'm judging these people for this, but that's an attitude that you don't have to work hard for things to happen. And I'm sure you can look at, all around you. You can see people you knew from the high school and people you knew from college and law school, everything, where people were looking for shortcuts and and they didn't work as hard and things things didn't work out for them.
 

The Massage Therapist Example

There was one time, not too long ago, I met an interesting woman. I've been trying to get her attention for a while. I heard about her, Susan was a massage therapist. I heard about her through. Other people that recommended her. And finally was able to meet. And then she was supposed to meet me, you seven or something.

She arrived right on time, and she was very professional, strong and did really good work and was a massage therapist. And most massage therapists are, if you call them, they always most of the time they have, time they're not incredibly busy.

This woman it was very difficult to get an appointment with her time. And so I started asking her why she was doing so well. All these people were recommending her in this and and so her mindset really said something to me. She said that she gives massages for at least 12 hours a day, and she has this schedule where she's doing this.

I don't know how someone could do it, but almost every day of the week she. Some days even works harder and she's pushed, she pushes her limits. So she does things like she'll, she told me stories about, for example a producer that likes to edit films late at night and then finishes around 3:00 AM and then and then she'd give them a massage.

Then just different people want, wanna massage before they drive to work. So she shows up at six. She's just doing everything she possibly can to commit to this job and just beyond anything you can imagine. And it was interesting too, because it was in her twenties. But then she told me she also exercises every day.

That it supports the quality of her work. So she likes doing that. And then likes to do these boot camp style workouts and that are, very difficult. And so everything that she does is about commitment and discipline and being the best at what she does and keeping her body in shape to do it.

so it was just very interesting people the way she was doing it and she was willing to work any time for people and willing and just completely committed. And think about people like that particular type of job. You wouldn't think that someone would be so committed to.

They they, she's, they would, you would think it's not that important or but she's very successful doing this. And back then, I think she might've charged a 20 this a long time ago, but $120 an hour, some of her services but I, working, if she figured she's working 10 hours a day, that's $1,200 a day, then that's $7,200 a week.

It it's a lot of money. It's 12 times seven would be 84. 84 times four would be. 16 eight. So 32, 30 $5,000 a month cash tax free, which is like making 700 in California. She lived in a nice home that, she rented, I'm pretty sure, but she just was doing very well.

She's someone that only went to college for two years moved across the country without a clear plan. And then got here and just looked for opportunities. And then found a job. She started working for a chiropractor, giving massages, paid him $25 an hour and not paid all the time. So she would sit in this chiropractor's office and then if he had someone to, needed a massage, she would do it, but not everybody did.

She'd just be sitting there all day. And she built something much larger and she was very grateful for what she had. And she just became unbelievably committed and just doing the best she possibly could for every single person. And, doing the best qua quality work, doing what everybody wanted, showing up when they wanted.

Then people saw that and they started recommending people to her. So she getting all these referrals doesn't have to advertise. And so when she was working for the chiropractor people would ask her to work for them outside the office and refer people to her. And then she just became very successful and created value and just being consistent over time, willing to pay the price, do whatever it takes, being in shape, willing to do massages and people want them just being very committed to what she's doing.

All of this created massive rewards. She's she's, again, someone that's in their twenties. And I think I did the math for you. I don't know how much it is, but we said 30, 36 $35,000 a month, times 10 with the three 50, so it's 420,000 thousand dollars a year. Maybe it's 400, I don't know.

A lot of money that she's making take, keep in mind it's probably tax free. And so she's making all this money and and then to get $400,000 a year in California and you get that tax free, that's like making 800. So it's a lot of money. So people will can succeed in anything that it doesn't matter if you're massage therapist, it doesn't matter if you're an attorney.
 

Success in Any Field

It doesn't matter what you do. People can see concede at anything if they're driven. They have goals and they are willing to do what's necessary and they're willing to do what other people don't. Attorneys that develop books of business, they. They will go out and meet people as much as they can, spend time doing that and make that a priority.

The must, they'll often, they'll become experts in something and be very enthusiastic about it. They'll meet people they'll ask for referrals. They'll do all these things that people that don't become successful don't. And most people aren't giving a hundred percent effort to whatever they do. Imagine what would happen to you if you decided you were gonna be the absolute best at whatever you're doing and whatever employer you're at, and you set goals to be incredibly successful at your new firm or to move into some other firm or some other, something else with your own practice, whatever it is.

Then you just doubled down and became incredibly enthusiastic about what you did. You wanted to do everything you possibly could. Think about if you I like to bring up this example quite often, but it's a good example. So if you were had some fatal disease. And you, or something that you thought was fatal and you needed to find a doctor or some fatal cancer or something, you would find the absolute best person you could.

The one you found would be often the one that had the most papers. It was the most enthusiastic that that had the most focus. Same thing if you were accused of some horrible crime you didn't commit. You would want an attorney that was enthusiastic, that did nothing but that was just, that just completely would work as hard as they could to get you off on all those things.

You would want that from an attorney. And that level of commitment is the same thing that people need to have really, and anything. And most people out there are not willing to go beyond what. To do something exceptional and to pay the price. And paying the price, it could mean working more hours.

It could mean going, working in a bigger city. It could be opening your own law firm. It could be all these different things that to pay the price to to commit when other people are leaving to to just be the absolute best you can be to living closer to the office. Whatever that is you need to commit.

If you commit, then great things can happen. And most people don't do that. Most people are giving, in any typical law firm you'll have a small percentage of people that are doing whatever they possibly can to be as exceptional as possible in paying the price. And those are the ones that succeed.

Most people rarely reach what they're capable of. You can because that, you're learning about. What it takes to do well. And most people aren't they're not using their time and their energy in the right way, and they're not reaching higher level of success.

I see all the time in my business, people that will come in and they want they want certain titles and money and things without actually doing the work that might be required to get that. And they prioritize that before they show value. And the people that commit and show value are, like, I've had I've had people that have worked in my company for 25 years, and those people are always, every day coming in and putting everything they got and showing value.

Their income has been increasing dramatically, three, four times over the course of the time. And so they, this is what people do that wanna be successful. You can do it in an organization working for someone else, or you can do it. And you can do it on your own or you can do your business, whatever it is.

Most, it's important to understand that the most successful people are always willing to do more, and they're willing to do things that other people ignore and they're willing to do what others will not. They're just willing to do whatever it takes. That's their they're their heads down and they're they're doing every possible thing.
 

Big Goals and Pigheaded Discipline

My my mentor is a guy named Chet Holmes, and he used to have this phrase called, it was B-H-A-G-B-A-G. And he said that the most successful people out there have big area audacious goals, which is what that stands for. He is there's nothing else that he'd seen. And he was a very well known.

I wrote a book called The Sales Machine or something and I'm actually quoted on the cover, but the, on the inside flat. But the, that's, this is what people do. They have big goals and they're willing to pay the price. And he also had another phrase he said called pigheaded discipline.

Pigheaded discipline means you just, you're doing whatever it takes. You're putting your head down. You're not getting, allowing others to to distract you. You're just investing whatever you got into something. And this success requires everything has a cost and money peace of mind that those have costs.

The success has costs. Your relationships, if you make those work or not have cost. There's really no exceptions. And in order to have the sort of life and career you, you want, you have to pay the price and you have to be willing to do and invest what is required and what other people don't.

Think about what could happen to you over the next three or four years if you decided to. Just give everything that you've got to to your job, to your career, to whatever it is you're trying to do. And you realized you set a goal for yourself. You looked at something, a person that you could be in the future, someone that you admired and wanted to be, and you decided you wanted to commit and be that kind of person.

Everything would change for you. You might not notice it right away, but everything would change. People would notice you. People would give you work when they don't give others. People would appreciate your commitment. People would notice your commitment. They would talk about it. They would notice you're trying harder than others.

They would notice that you're not part of the group of people that's talking negatively about the bosses or the firm. They would notice that you're, obviously, you're available and you're enthusiastic about the work. People would notice this, and then when people notice it. They would think highly of you, they would think highly of you in 20 years.

If you're working in another firm and they remember you, they would think highly of you. So you wanna be thought highly of, and and you want people to see you level of commitment because that's what helps people get ahead. And that's what changes people's lives. And that's what everyone does that's successful in the profession.

They don't just decide they're gonna be successful and that's what's gonna happen. They have to do something. They have to do what other people are not willing to do. Let me just look for something here real quick. They have to be willing to do what other people aren't willing to do.
 

Think and Grow Rich: Burning Desire and Persistence

Paying the price, like what that means is. You can't, any type of achievement you wanna have, you have to give something in return.

You can't you, if you e if you don't pay the price for whatever that achievement is, it could be learning more. It could be working harder, it could be moving. It could be whatever is required to achieve what you want. You either pay the price or you don't. And if you don't pay the price then you're probably not gonna ever reach you know what you want.

There's this I, why this is what Pouring pill, but this is if you read this book, Think and Grow Rich is very interesting book about achievement. These are the things that people do that are successful. And one thing I'll just tell you real briefly about this book and why I recommend reading it and it could change the course of your career in your life, is that I'll just remember, another one of Tony Robbins once said that he knows people that have read the book a couple times when they're successful. He knows people that read it twice a year and they're even more successful and people that read it three times a year and even more successful. I don't know if that's true.

Maybe that's what he says, but but the idea is that you have to learn these sort of success principles. And when you when you are excited about doing something you have a burning desire. You're willing to take your first mean you really wanna do this. It's not just some you have to wait.

You have to work yourself up and say, this is why I want this goal, this is why I want it. And you have to actually believe, and you have to put but you have to put emotion behind and believe that you can become this sort of person. You can do these sorts of things. And then you have to define the goal and you have to say what are you gonna do in order to reach it?

What is it gonna require? Is it gonna require that you. Get up at six in the morning and do something every day, or it gonna require that you work a certain number of hours or require that you network with a certain number of people and then you have to persist because one of the most interesting things that ever happens is persistence is this kind of thing that means that anytime you, it's, I don't know why the world works this way, but most people that are successful, like they come up against these just horrible obstacles along the way.

Things like they get fired, for example, as an attorney, or they fail to borrow two or three times and think everything's over. Maybe they failed four times. They they don't get hired for a year. They they they whatever horrible things can happen to people. They get divorces, people die, they.

Just all these things happen to people, and what happens to a lot of people is when bad things happen, they they withdraw, they quit, they get depressed. They maybe they start using substances to cope, which is pretty normal that all these sorts of things happen when people don't reach their goals as they give up.

The people that are successful, like they, they get defeated like over and over again, but they still keep going because most people quit when there's a defeat. In the book, Think and Grow Rich, there's a story about this guy named Darby, and he goes out and he starts searching for gold in this place.

He he decides that there's this place where he can search for gold. And so he goes out and he starts drilling for gold and it, when he starts drilling, it actually looks very good. Things are gonna, there's a lot of gold there. So he goes and he gets all this money together and brows money from family and different people.

He comes out with all this equipment ready to to start drilling for gold. And he and he starts drilling and everything looks okay, and then everything just stops. Like he, he all the gold is no longer there. So he tries to join a little bit more. And then he realizes that he thinks it's just everything's over.

He a junk guy comes out and he sells him. His equipment is like scrap and metal, for example. And then the junk guy says, maybe I'll hire an expert, like a geologist to come out and just see if there's any if there is some goal here. And so the geologist came out and then found that there was actually a huge deposit of gold that they thought was gonna be there, but it wasn't.

It was like two feet from where the guy stopped drilling. So the idea of that story was that he, if he had been persistent he would've succeeded. Instead, he gave up. And then the lesson from that also was interesting is that then that guy, that Darby, that lost all this money from the gold became a life insurance salesman, became one of the most successful ones in the country because he learned to never give up.

Anytime someone said no, he would just keep going and keep trying. He would keep he would keep trying to make everything work. And so every business requires persistence. This what I'm in requires persistence. It's always changing. The, everything requires persistence. And most people give up.

Most people allow others to define their happiness and their level of success. And they don't realize that it does. If you come out of law school and you pass the bar, like there is literally almost nothing you can do now. It doesn't mean you're gonna, you everyone can get a job in the largest law firms in the world.

It does mean that financially, spiritually, you're doing something you like you can put your foot down and you can do well if you want. And you're persistent. 'cause most people give up. You take a class at most large law firms and you might have some of them, you might have a hundred people start class.

Then at the end of 10 years, maybe five are still there. People give up or they do other things or they don't give up and they lose their jobs. And then you have to act, when you decide you want something you need to do you need to act. And so you need to there's nothing, there's never something for nothing.

There's a mental price, meaning you have to be able to think about it and be focused, but there's an emotional investment and you have to be excited about what you wanna do. And then you have to really go forward and do whatever you possibly can to. To achieve it.

That again, this is something that most people don't do. Most people don't get themselves excited about being something. And you by the way, like you don't have to work in a law firm. You can do anything. You could start a business that has nothing to do with a law or you could start your own law firm or you could work in another practice setting.

There are people that have a burning desire to work in the civil rights division of the U.S. Justice Department. It doesn't and then they do it. Or people that have a burning desire to be a US attorney, and that's all they think about them. They went to law school to do it, and then they do it.

People like, if they see you are really excited about doing something. Like you meet people that are employers or you meet people that are potential clients and they see that like you have this burning desire, meaning you've worked yourself up into a very serious you're very excited about doing something and you're very excited about.

You wanna do it. And people see that. People see people that are enthusiastic and wanna do something. And that's the kind of person you wanna be. Now, I will tell you that you can work yourself up into this kind of desire with anything. It could be working in a law firm. It could be having your own business.

It could be having an ice cream parlors or a chain of them. Who knows? But you have to have that. 'cause when the world sees people that are, have this sort of desire the world rewards it and very few people have definitive of purpose. Very few people are able to be persistent.

Most people give up. And most people, give up. You may have given up. And if you've given up that's okay because you can go back and you can continue trying to do well, and you can continue giving, and you can be persistent the next time. And so many people do that.

There is one thing I did wanna say about burning. What I wanted to say about burning desire is that, that Bernie you should be doing something that you like and that you enjoy. Because if you like and enjoy it, then you're gonna do better at it, and you're gonna be able to have fun doing as opposed to not liking it.

Now jobs are always difficult when you start being an attorney, a young attorney, where you're doing work that many other people don't wanna do. That's not as interesting is not always the easiest. But having that desire to really wanna do something is incredibly important. And but you, if you believe in what you're doing and you're excited about the subject matter, then then that's good.

That's good. Religious figures whether they're leading a congregation, they wanna be the best, their desire to tell people about God. People have that desire. Are successful. And you need to figure out how to give yourself that type of desire. And you need to figure out how to get behind behind something.

This is important. Understand the most successful people. It's not because they're lucky, most of the time it's not because of their talent background. It's because they're willing to do what others won't do and they continue doing it. And you have to understand that every level of success requires sacrifice, requires discipline and it requires persistence and not looking for shortcuts and and understanding that you have to pay that price to succeed.

you have to bring that kind of value. You have to be committed. When things are difficult. Everybody people just. Awful things happen to people. People are fired. People get horrible diseases and cancer and heart attacks and all these sorts of things happen. And but you need to we even when negative things happen in your life, you need to continually push yourself and do what other people are unwilling to do.

that's what you need to do if you wanna be successful. And it's a hard it's a hard lesson to hear. It's a hard, these are hard things to, to listen to many times, but you have to look at what makes people succeed. And it's really it's that persistence and it's that desire to wanna do something.
 

Goal Setting, Vision Boards, and Results

You can set goals for yourself today. You can write down what you wanna do and what you see yourself doing, and then you can say, this is where I wanna be in five or 10 years. And then you can be there. I remember, I, I had something just absolutely incredible happen. So I, when I left my first job at Quin Emanuel, I went to another law firm and I took a week off.

During that week, I decided I was gonna listen to some goal-setting tapes, and it happened to be Tony Robbins goal-setting tapes. So I listened to these tapes, and then I broke down some goals and I had a goal to make a million dollars a year within five years. And at the time, that seemed just fantastic because how could that possibly be happening in five years when I was making back then the stuff, the, a hundred thousand dollars whatever I was in a law firm and possible you couldn't make.

That was my goal. And so I set that goal and then I ended up and I kept referring to it. And I ended up not continuing to practice law. I decided I was gonna do what I'm doing now and within five years. I was incredibly, bringing in more money than that. And but this goal just seemed fantastic.

It was always in the back of my head. I was always referring to it ended up happening and, so that's what happens to people that are able to set big goals for themselves. They re they don't know how they get there, but then they happen somehow they happen. I'll tell you one other story and then I'll go, we'll take a quick break and go to questions.

I used to keep what's called a vision board. And a vision board is when you cut out pictures and things that you like, and then you put words together about the person you wanna be in a certain number of years or whatever that is. And then you put it on this piece of cardboard and then you post it on a wall or something.

This is something that a lot of successful people do, but in that. A vision board. There was a picture of a house that I cut out of some magazine. And I put that up there saying I'd love to live in a house like that a certain number of years. And I may have told this story last week because I know I told this recently, but I picture of this house and it, but it was a picture of the house from from a certain angle and and at the house there was like a path down to the beach.

I took a picture of I, I had this thing in the vision board and then a year or two later I moved into a new house and it was a great house and and Malibu and I was and I'd been there for a couple months. And then one day I was walking up the path from the beach and and I saw this house from that angle for the first time.

It was literally the picture, it was a picture the picture that I put up on this board was the house I was living in. I couldn't even, but I didn't know it. Then because it was from the certain angle which to me is just fantastic. Like how could that possibly happen that someone is suddenly living in the house.

That was at one point that they didn't even, that they moved, ended up moving, living there when that was their goal. And, but the house somehow energetically or something that's what happened. I bought this house of, hundreds of thousands of houses all over la. Somehow I wound up at that house and that was on this vision board.

This is the kind of stuff that can happen when you have goals too. It's just absolutely fantastic. What you can achieve. So we'll take a quick break just for a minute or two and then when we come back I'll take live questions. And again, you can ask questions about.

This presentation or any questions you have about your career and anything really. And it doesn't matter if you're stuck, it doesn't, whatever questions you have, I'm happy to answer them. What I like about what I do in these webinars is that I've been doing this for for, I've been in the legal industry for 30 years, but I've been doing what I do now for over, for 26 years.

I've seen every day I'd see attorneys and I talk to them and I see resumes. And imagine doing this, 10 hours a day for six days a week for. As long as I've been. So I do have able to see patterns and often help people with questions and, just like mindset shifts like you learned about today, just what it takes. Yeah. So with a quick break and then when I come back I will take questions. Thanks.
 

Career Resources and Market Insights

There's one thing before I take questions that I wanted to tell everyone about real quick. So if you like these presentations, I do have a Substack with where I share a different insights into the legal market and stuff every week. You can subscribe as a free free subscriber, or there's a, like a short paid version the paid version.

I will one thing that I, that's cool there is I will release every day the jobs that are at top U.S. law firms like the 5,000 largest firms. Many that are exclusive to us as a recruiting firm. So people you can learn about jobs that you normally wouldn't find in the market.

Those are actually released uploads the spreadsheet every day, which is cool. And then there's, there's some other things that you get transcripts of the, these webinars and some other stuff if you like it, but just the one that's free does have there's really some pretty cool market intelligence stuff that I share in there.

Every Questions here, But if you're yeah, if you're interested in learning about getting positions and stuff, that can be pretty helpful. Oh, and then one other thing. In terms of physicians there's and I don't know how familiar you may be of different websites and things that lemme just see here that we run, that I run as a company.

One one that I do run that I think is that could help you if you're not necessarily if you haven't. I've been a member of it before, is and it's keeps getting better all the time, is Law Crossing. What Law Crossing does is it will tell you, you can go there and you can find positions that you're just never gonna see on LinkedIn or Indeed.

Most jobs are not on those sites because most employers will post the jobs on their law firm websites. And so we'll post it on their law firm websites, or the companies will post it on their company websites or public interest organizations, government organizations and so forth. We'll post things that way.

This is, we look at over 20,000 law firm sites, company sites, 10,000. There's all these just different people 50,000 sources that we're looking at each day. So this can is a really good way to find positions that aren't necessarily advertised. And people that use the site you should be getting have much better luck.

Much higher ratio of getting. Positions compared to and getting interviews compared to other sites because the employers aren't receiving as many applicants and stuff as they normally would. Also, I wanted to tell you two other quick things before the questions. There's all these kind of reports on law crossing which are fun.

You have different, we have legal salary calculators where you can figure out, what your salary might be in different different markets and different markets in the country. You have, there's all these different reports. You have you said compensation, you have compensation reports, you have different reports about practice areas what practice areas largest in different in-house companies and different different industries and then also on and so these reports I think are can be a lot of fun for people to we review these reports and find out different things. So it's just a bunch of them. Law firm insights looking at alternative careers, like a lot of times people this is a very popular topic alternative legal careers. So we have that on Law crossing and all that stuff's free to look at.

Then same thing on BCG. There's all these legal different reports you can look at. So there's compensation there's job market more stuff about alternative legal careers. There's just all these different reports. So these reports take a lot of time, obviously to put together.

They're I think that they can be they can help you. In terms of different questions and things you might have about your career. I recommend checking those out both on law crossing and BCG and then also with BCG. Sometimes you would like everything in terms of working with BCG, it just has to do with the legal market at one point in time and what your experience is.

You can always, if you resubmit your resume if the company doesn't work with you initially. If you resubmit your resume a lot of times a good percentage of the time, like if if the, you might, you the company will work with you and send you positions. Again, and one thing we do at BCG that's a little different than most recruiting firms is we actually we try to, we find what's a hidden job market.

Other recruiting firms are generally looking at just the largest law firms that have openings on their website, and all the recruiters are trying to find people for them. But the positions that we find are typically much smaller. Firms not not, they're also large firms, but they're at places where people might not actually most people would not know about the job.

It opens your, it gives you the ability to look at places that you normally wouldn't. So it's a, it's something I've been obviously working on for a long time, very proud of. And I think it can if you look at those, it can help you a lot. But I definitely recommend spending some time looking at those reports on BCG and also Law Crossing.

Then also I do, I would encourage you to in terms of law crossing, I would encourage you to. To keep your eye on the market. So even if you're not looking for a position something like Law Crossing is a very good idea because it's always gonna show your marketability. If your firm is at risk, your employer is at risk it's gonna show you different places you could potentially work.

Someone that's like a stock trader, they'll use Bloomberg or they'll read the Wall Street Journal every day because they wanna know the value of things and what's going up and what's going down. It's no different with you as an attorney because you're a product and you have sellers.

There's different sellers that are, there's different buyers and you wanna know where the most opportunities are. And, just a quick, another quick story about where the opportunities are. I when I was and this is should help you hopefully in your career. I did a clerkship outside of Detroit for a federal judge.

When that clerkship ended, which is when I was fired after one year instead two, pretty close to being fired I I needed to find a job. And back then there were only, there were five large law firms of more than decent, the paid, decent amounts. In Detroit there were only five.

I applied and I interviewed with three of them maybe. And then out of those three I was close to getting one offer. And but at the same time, I decided I was gonna look in Los Angeles with the same resume, same, same everything. And so I applied to firms there.

I just sent my resume and got tons of interviews. There's just larger market more, I don't know whatever. It was just, a lot of much better reception firms. The firm paid more was like, you got to live in Southern California as opposed to Detroit. Just all these great things. Many times the the market you're in and all this stuff can be helpful.
 

Q&A: Compensation and Bonus Structures

The way compensation works is the more a law firm pays, the more people are gonna wanna work there. It's as simple as that. So if you are in, if you own a law firm, or, if you're working in a law firm the more you pay someone, the more people are gonna wanna work there.

People will go to work at your firm because the hours are low or the, there's work-life balance or they can work remotely, but ultimately you're gonna attract people and keep them if you pay the highest compensation. Bonus structures the way to answer, in terms of bonuses higher bonuses work as well.

Most law firms that I talk to unless it's like a major US law firm smaller to midsize law firms will all make bonuses like discretionary. They'll call 'em discretionary and and they won't give people certainty. And I think that attorneys, when they're looking for a position are most interested in having some sort of certainty.

If I bill this many hours, look at this sort of bonus, this is what will happen if I do that. But most law firms don't do, a lot of law firms don't do that because they don't do that. It becomes much more difficult for them to attract people. And if they don't pay a good bonus and people work hard, then they're gonna feel then the people will feel will be upset.

The more you pay and the bigger the bonus is the better retention. I don't understand too, if I was a law firm. I would partners in law firms, I wanna make a certain amount of money and things, but if I was a law firm and I had good people working for me I would wanna, and I wanted to attract more people to work there.

It's amazing. You increase the compensation and you let the market know what that is and all of a sudden everybody wants to work for you. It just seems that's what I would do if I was in, if I was a law firm. Because any profit that you're that you're spending on an associate or whatever, I mean is gonna be outweighed by how hard they work, by by the stability, by your ability to track more people if they leave.
 

Q&A: Alternative Career Paths with a JD

BCG search and law process. You should be able to to find several of them. But these are some of the people that do people become legal technology consultants. That's one. Consultants, advisors what else? Recruiters, that's another one. Sometimes people like that. That's a kind of a unique job.

You have to have good people skills and some other things, but you can do that. You can be all these, there's all sorts of positions inside of the government and companies for people to do it to do alternative legal careers. There are there are numerous things that people can do besides practicing law.

A GD basically the way I would think about getting a legal degree. And the, and this is, the, I think the best analogy that I can give is most people out in the world do not work as hard as people do to become attorneys to go to law school and to pass the bar. So most people do not have that level of motivation.

Most people also do not learn to think the way an attorney does with how to parse arguments and what, how to, what's true versus not true. They don't, or, what makes sense versus doesn't make sense. So most people don't learn those things. And because most people don't learn those things.

Most people are not as, as good as a, as effective as a, an attorney. So attorneys just do fabulous very well. When they go into other fields. It doesn't have to be practicing a lot, literally. It could be any, could be a real estate agent, it could be selling cars. You can actually do very well selling cars, believe it.

If you sell it's good selling cars. It can be just so many different things that attorneys can do. I think that's a, anything that you're interested in you can do. I remember there was a guy that I knew that had started this legal site that became very popular years ago.

It was like, it was the, it was a prerequisite to or something that came before. The website it came before above the law. And even things like vault com was, it was before that. And but it was a place where people went to gossip about law firms and things.

This guy, he'd started out as a associate at CAD Waller. He'd gotten fired from that. The reason he got fired was a funny story. He had been he had decided there were, there, he figured out that there was a way for people to log into someone else's voicemail system and leave a message.

so he he left this message on this very important partner's message that was out of town. He recorded a message saying he was doing something, and he wasn't gonna be available. I don't know if it had to do with. Something to do with sex or something.

It was very funny. And anyway, so they caught him doing that. And but he had this website doing the do doing the, that he developed this greedy associates board. And then he ended up selling that to Westlaw. And then after he sold it to Westlaw, he he what did he do after that?

He yeah, and then he went and opened a bike store, but then he had a chain of bike stores and became very successful doing that. So there's always different things you can do. It doesn't need to be practicing law. It's basically whatever makes you happy and sent things that make you happy. If you commit to them you can do very well.

Now you can look up all these articles on BCG about alternative career paths and there are a lot of alternative career paths. This is a very popular question that people have. Lemme just see alternative legal career. Because, I think so many people are interested in alternative careers.

The other thing too I would, I should say about alternative legal careers, like other things you can do without, with that, if you don't have a a jd, if you have a JD and you don't wanna practice law or you're practicing law, you don't think you should.

The thing is if you don't really like what you're doing and you can't ever see yourself liking it, then you shouldn't be doing it. If you, if wherever you go, like people are running circles around you and better at what you're doing than than you, and you don't think you're ever gonna get to that level and never be good, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it.

There's nothing wrong. If I went to medical school, I would get blown out of the water. I went, going to business school I would not, I don't think that way. It's just there's nothing wrong with not being an attorney if you don't like it. Or you don't think you're, if you just, whatever, it doesn't do it for you.

You should do something else. And there's all these different things that you can do. There's non, all these different things, artistic pursuits what else? Consulting, finance all these different types of things. And, why do attorneys do it? They do it because they.

In most cases they're unhappy. But the real reason to do it is not just because you're unhappy, but it's because you can succeed more doing something else or your health. You want, you wanna have a different level of health or a different, whatever. Whatever your goal is you should be doing whatever you can to to to try to become successful.

You're gonna be successful when you do what you like and where you have skills and a motivation that other people don't have. And I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with someone going to law school and not being an attorney. If you try it or you decide you don't wanna do it, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Why? What's the problem with that? If you don't like it, then you'd rather do something else, then that's what you should do. But if you do like it and you feel motivated to do it, then then you should, I do wanna, and then I'll move on to the next question. I do wanna say one other thing about this topic that that I.

I think that's probably the best thing. But there's different practice areas you can do. It doesn't need to always be it doesn't need to be litigation.

It doesn't need to be corporate. So you can think about doing that. You can think about just different places that you could work. But you always should be doing something that supports that you're interested in. And most people at some point in their lives are interested in something.

They're, there's something that you, everybody has it. Everybody I did this exercise once and I wrote down like 50 people that I knew and I was able to identify for each of them something that they were really passionate about. And that passion is really what you need in order to be successful in anything you need to you need to, you need to figure it out.

Sometimes you just fall into things like I fell into what I'm doing. I just. I quit my job at this law firm. And when I quit it was the strangest thing. No one said anything to me. I quit like on a Monday. And so my last day is, not this next Friday, but the next Friday. And everyone just continued to give me assignments and things as if like nothing.

I hadn't done anything. And then on a Thursday before the Friday I was gonna leave the head of the office I was in who was out from New York, came into my office and he's you can't just leave the S firm. If you do, people are gonna think you lost your job, so you should go and spend the next month or two looking for another job.

then when you find that other job let me know. And then that's the smartest, smarter move for you. So I took his advice and I talked to recruiters and I couldn't believe how I didn't think that they had a high level of success. I didn't think they.

Knew what they were doing. I was astonished. And because back then law firms, there's just a bunch of things that they were doing wrong. But so when I saw that, I became very enthusiastic about doing you know what I'm doing now.
 

Q&A: How Much Balance You Give Up in Law School

You're probably gonna need to have the best grades.

Even if you go to Yale Law School or Harvard Law School or whatever, the top law school or Stanford if you wanna be in the very, very best firms, they're gonna expect a certain level of academic performance. And so the farther down you move in the chain in terms of law rankings of law schools.

The more academic performance you're gonna need to have. So if you, that's your goal is to work in the best legal, like law firm possible, then you need to pretty much do whatever you can to get the best grades that kind of at all costs. That's the most important thing for you is to have the absolute best grades.
 

Q&A: Mentorship and Training

Mentorship and training are something that that people look for and that they. That they often want, when they go to a law firm or when they go to work in reality most law firms will some will offer it, some won't.
But, but the way to figure out if there's mentorship and training is really to figure out when you go into a law firm, are the personalities of this law firm? Is the culture of the law firm, do I feel comfortable around the other associates? I'm meeting the staff people. Do I feel comfortable around the partners interviewing me?

Can I see myself even? We're not for this employment situation. Can I see myself being friends with them, with these type of people I'm comfortable with? So if you interview with five law firms, you're gonna have five different impressions of that. So the way real training happens in mentorship is when you get close to people and they become.

Your friends or they identify with you as the same type of person. And if they do that, then if they people identify with you as the same type of person, then they're more likely to share information with you that you might not otherwise have access to. Meaning things you could do to improve.

They're gonna have your back. They're gonna tell you things, that maybe take you aside and tell you what you need to do, but to improve at something then because that's where the real mentorship and training happens. You can't have mentorship and training. Mentorship and training is in reality.

Something that's not that, law firms will say that they have, but in, in general you have to learn most of the stuff on your own on the job. And you can't, and you have to look out for yourself. In reality, no one most people are not going to. Help you.

What does training means? Training. There may be training some law firms and there may be mentorship, but in reality your goal needs to be to look out for yourself. And law firms want law firms want to be able to give people something to do, and the partners do, and they want them to get it done without a lot of questions.

They wanna make it easy for you wanna make it easy on them. They wanna not have to give you, have you, they're not, don't wanna have to review multiple versions of something that you give. They wanna get the best product, right away. So that's that's how it works. So if you feel like you need people to hold your hand, it can to some extent work against you.
You need to be careful.
 

Q&A: Networking for Law Students

The best way to develop a relationship with practicing attorneys, if you're a law student, is, I would say that, first of all, as a law student your goal should be to get the best grades possible.

That's really, at that point one of the most important things. Now, networking is also important. But the most important thing for a law student often is if you wanna work someplace if you wanna work in a law firm after the summer, you should try to get, after you graduate, you should definitely try to get a job at a law firm in your first summer and a law firm in your second summer, even if it means working for free.

If you're paying a hundred thousand dollars a year to go to law school. And instead of getting paid, you get three months of experience in a law firm. And that's that's extremely valuable because it shows that you wanna work in a law firm. And most law firms, not all of them, but the better ones, you start taking middle-sized law firms and stuff, they expect attorneys to have work there in the summer.

If you work for the some sort of public interest organization for two summers and then you wanna work in a law firm, people are gonna assume that's what you wanna do is public interest. You're not gonna get hired, you're gonna hire people to work in law firms. So that's what I would recommend.

Best, most effective networking is just doing the best job you can in whatever law firm you get a job for. Even if it means working for free. There are so many places you can find jobs. It's just it's incredible. So you wanna do whatever you can to to get a job with a, in a law firm.

Then those are the people that you wanna network with.
 

Q&A: Class Year and Seniority for Laterals

Law firms will typically determine that based on your graduation date.

If you graduated in say 2030, you graduated in 2030, and then you're trying to get a job in 2035 you'll typically be considered a fifth year attorney and paid as a fifth year. Now they can sometimes cut your class year back. So say they don't think you have enough experience in whatever your practice area is.

Then instead of hiring you as a fifth year, they might hire you as a fourth year. As a third year. So law firms will. Typically do that. Law firms also have different systems for making partners. So if you're hired as a 10th year associate instead of considering for partner one year, they may want to consider you for partnership and they'll often say in three years.
I hope that kind of answers your question about how that works.
 

Q&A: Stability vs. Prestige

To some extent, yeah. So if large law firms do have up-or-out policies large law firms are gonna be more competitive, meaning you're gonna be reviewed, your quality of work's gonna be expected to be higher.
Also the higher paying firms are more sensitive sometimes to economic things happening that are negative. But so yeah, some, to some extent that's true. You do need to sacrifice some job stability, but if you're trying to work in the higher paying and more strategic firms once you get that experience, it also makes you marketable to smaller middle market firms.

Even though it looks like you may not have as much job stability in some large firms at the same time that actually isn't a bad thing because because you may because those positions may you may be able to you can use, you can get into other firms maybe a little more easily than you would without that.
 

Q&A: Affinity Groups

I love your thoughts on affinity groups. Have you found them good ways to build relationship and visibility within a firm? If so, how do you make the most of them in a genuine way?

Yes. So everybody, if it's possible, should try to get involved in groups outside of work. Affinity groups are a great one. Whether it's based on your religion, race who knows but your sexual orientation, I mean anything. Yes, those are a very good way to build relationships inside of a firm.

Also they're a good way to build relationships outside of, inside the firm. So yes, affinity groups are good. So people are tribal animals. They relate often best with people that are similar to them. So people from similar religions, like people. I've had law, I've had, I remember a friend of mine was on the hiring committee of a law firm and he literally told me that he liked this candidate, but everybody in this firm is of a certain religion.

He, and which is also a cultural kind of religion, he didn't think this person would fit in. So the, there's lots of affinity groups and people that are similar tend to be more comfortable around each other. It's just because they have shared interests. They think about the world in a certain way.

Yeah, being, it's a really smart thing if you can be involved in affinity groups. Not, that doesn't mean the Affinity group has to oppose other groups, but you should be involved in affinity groups. It's a good way to get business. It's a good way to, to meet people. It's a good way to be part of a legal community, it's just, it's so many good things.

Other thing too about affinity groups or any group that you're part of outside of work, you really need to be to the extent you can, you need to have other interests outside of work you need. Even though I'm talking about how you have to commit and all these things having interest in other types of groups, whether it's, church or softball league or whatever, or affinity groups or different things. Having those outside interests is very important. And it's also important too 'cause you need to have some sort of other social other than work. And then and yeah, it's just, it's important. It's a good question.
 

Q&A: Better Work Assignments and Visibility

the best way to get better work assignments and increase your visibility is usually to just do first, to do very good work for the people. They give you work. So anytime someone gives you an assignment, you should treat it as the most important thing in the world.

You should do the absolute best you can. You should double check your work. You should look at how they do work. Even though you can look up, you should make sure your work is as good a quality as possible, that you've thought through all the issues. You should do whatever you can to do the best work you can for people.

If you do very good work for people, then they will give you repeat work and you'll also tell other people that you did good work. And so this is how assignments happen in law firms. They, people give work to people that do a good job when they give them work. And then they give them repeat work.

Every partner, every other attorney associate that gives you work, whoever gives you work you should treat them like a client. And you do the absolute best work you can for a client. And by doing that you're gonna get repeat work. And then having the reputation of doing the best work will get you a lot more assignments.
 

Closing

I think that's it. Thank you for being on this webinar. I hope it was helpful today about the, just making sure that whatever you're doing you're paying the price and you're doing things that other people aren't because that's what most people are doing.

They're not giving everything they have because they're not they're not nearly as successful as they could be. And I'm hoping that, certainly you can reach and be very successful in what you're trying to do. Thanks to everyone and I will talk be next week. Thank you.

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About Harrison Barnes

The Architect of the Hidden Legal Job Market

For most lawyers, an attorney job search begins with public job postings, law firm websites, and job boards. Harrison Barnes knows that the best opportunities are often found elsewhere—in the hidden legal job market, where confidential firm needs, quiet practice expansions, and customized roles are never publicly advertised.

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Harrison’s insight into law firm recruiting comes from firsthand legal experience. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, a former federal law clerk, and a former associate at Quinn Emanuel. Early in his career, he saw that traditional legal recruiting was often reactive and overly dependent on posted openings.

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The Most Trusted Career Advisor for Attorneys

Harrison's legal career insights are the most widely followed in the profession.

• His articles on BCG Search alone are read by over 150,000 attorneys per month, making his guidance the most sought-after in the legal field. Read his latest insights here.
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A Legal Recruiter Who Changes Lives

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Harrison's reach, experience, and proven results make him the best legal recruiter in the industry. Don't settle for an average recruiter-work with the one who has changed the careers of thousands of attorneys and can do the same for you.

About BCG Attorney Search

BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive, while achieving results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com.