What steps should a new attorney take in today's legal employment climate?

Transcript

"I'm an attorney in North Carolina with 30 years of experience in private practice and completely happy at my firm, and I'm desperately looking for help for my son. He has graduated from Campbell University Law School this spring and having a difficult time finding employment. The job market is very weak for new attorneys. I've been following your website and post for some time. Can you recommend steps a new attorney should take in today's legal employment climate?"

What I would recommend doing if I was a new attorney, the first thing to remember, and I think a lot of people don't always think about this, but your career is a long one. You start off practicing anywhere from 24 to 27 or so, and there are attorneys practicing 50 years later. Regardless of where you start your career, you're gonna end up somewhere else. It's not that important to necessarily start in the biggest firms. I think sometimes upward mobility is a much more preferable way to start your career because you appreciate where you are later. But at the same time, if your son is trying to find a new job, I always recommend searching for all the firms in different geographic locations.

I don't know where you are in North Carolina, but I would search for all the attorneys and places in that geographical location and see if you can help. If you can send resume in an unsolicited fashion to those places, in addition to applying to law firms and other places. You can also apply to government offices, and there are always government openings. That could be helpful, but that would be basically how I would recommend doing it. Anytime I've seen an attorney do a search where they are applying to a lot of different places in unsolicited fashion, and they're doing that in areas of the country where they want to work, it works. There's always going to be someone that's going to have a business need. It's important to do a search in that way.