Discover effective strategies to secure law firm offers even when there are no advertised openings. This video from BCG Attorney Search provides insider tips on networking, crafting compelling applications, and leveraging your unique skills to stand out in a competitive market. Learn how to navigate the legal hiring landscape and land your dream job faster than you thought possible. Watch now to unlock your potential and accelerate your legal career!
Good morning or afternoon, depending on where you are. And this is actually one of my favorite topics. Yeah. We had a meeting yesterday at BCG and and I make a lot of placements personally I make I don't know, probably, three about, on average, about three placements a week which is a lot.
And I, we calculated the results of all the placements that I've made at Albert critters of Maine. And in my case 95% of the placements that I've made so far this year have been at firms without openings. And our best recruiters were all between 80 and 90%. And the recruiters that were doing the worst were below 50%.
The point is that, the, and I just want to make this very early on in the presentation before I get into it, that if you're not looking at firms that don't have openings in your job search you're killing yourself because I literally have made I make probably more placements in my position than anyone in this industry and probably anyone in history and the big secret.
And there's not really too much of a secret is that most of this is at firms without openings. The other thing I'll say that's very, very interest. And I want to bring to your attention is because the market is so large out there. Many times the candidates that I work with don't even get positions in Intel or start getting interviews until they've started approving firms had done it several times and often that means on the third and the 10th round, even, so they're, they might approve four firms.
One's two firms, the other and the 10th round is when a lot of times they start getting really good results. So there's I'm really teaching you some important stuff today. And this is if there's anything you ever learned about job search, this is probably the most important presentation you'll ever watch.
And after I do the presentation today, I will talk to you or answer questions, but this is what I'm teaching today is something that has, is honestly saved countless careers of people that I worked with has helped countless people advance as in, is really gonna be a game changer.
If you understand it, most people don't. And I don't mean that in a negative way But this advice is so contrary to what people believe and so forth that that they don't. So I just want you to think about that. If I've made, 40 placements so far this year if 95% of those have been with firms that have openings versus I would only make 5% of those placements, which would have been two placements, which would have been a decent year for a recruiter.
And that's how most of them are. I want you to under, so I hope you understand this and I will get started. Several years ago there was a third year attorney working in the us attorney's office in Hawaii. And he contacted me looking for a position and he'd gone to Harvard law school.
He'd done very well there. And he wanted to come back to California and he went and like many attorneys he had submitted this resume to 15 of the best law firms in Los Angeles but had not received a single interview after all those interviews. And he was very depressed. He couldn't understand.
You know why he couldn't get an interview? He applied to, the big firms have people from Harvard that did well there would apply to, and he was depressed and and thought that, maybe he'd made the wrong choice. I don't think he'd worked in a law firm ever just going to the us attorney's office right out of law school.
And he didn't work as a us attorney. I think he worked for a program in the us attorney and and he said, I thought it was smarter for me to apply to firms on my own. And and he just believed that he understood things and and didn't need a recruiter and he could do everything on his own.
And so I got involved with the search and within two weeks he had interviews at 10 of those 15 firms that he'd applied to. And it might even have been it was about, it might even have been a few more. He got interviews on almost every one of 'em just saying 10 out of 15, but almost every single one and he couldn't believe it.
And then firms were so interested that, some of them, I was playing phone tag with them and one of them, I played phone tag with, I don't know, six or seven times to schedule the interviews. And he also got several offers and then. And then he wrote me, which I should have saved.
And I don't know why I didn't. I maybe I don't know, but I, yeah, he wrote me a long thank you letter and told me how grateful he was and long kind of two-page, so I should post it online and and I never did. And then I unfortunately didn't save it, but then you said I'm grateful as family was for all the work I'd done.
And so you ask yourself, what did I do that made all this happen? If he sent the same, if he applied to the exact same firms, Why was I able to get him an interview? And what did I do that he couldn't do himself because honestly there's nothing magical about what I do.
I understand something, but there's nothing magical. And why was I able to get him interviews at firms? He couldn't get on his own. And that's what I'm going to talk to you about in this presentation today. And I'm going to tell you what I did that got him so many offers and really what it comes down to is understanding how the game works and everything's a game getting a job's a game your career's a game everything's a game.
And and and what I did is I made him seem desirable and and I made him seem desirable now. And like he was desirable in the past, but I'm going to talk about it more in this presentation. And the thing I would say is most attorneys never get a lot of offers. Most of them don't get a lot of offers when they're interviewing for their first job, unless they're at the very top of their class at a great law school and maybe get several offers for be a summer associate.
Most attorneys don't get a lot of offers when they're interviewing laterally, unless the economy is really good. And most people get, one offer that was really how it works. Some get two and a few more, but most don't get a lot of offers. And the reason is because many times they don't understand the importance of how to market themselves to make themselves seem desirable.
And everybody's desirable by the way, if you market yourself properly and there are exceptions, but people that get a lot of offers, but most don't. And some of the attorneys that do get a lot of offers and I meet them. Occasionally not that often, but they can often do so without trying very hard at all.
And and meanwhile a lot of attorneys are bouncing all over the map trying to get interviews and feeling like no one wants them and getting depressed and worrying about not having gotten a job as a summer associate or being unemployed. And many of them give up and they stop trying because it's easier to it's easier to give up than it is to continually face rejection.
And and that's a shame because anybody can get a job. IOC can get anyone a job. It doesn't matter who the person is. Bye push harder. I can give them a job as an attorney somewhere and and probably better than, much better than they could get on their own. And that's not to brag.
It's just because I, it's not that I have, again, I don't have any special persuasive skills. I don't have any I just understand the rules of the game that I'm going to talk to you about. And honestly, my persuasive skills are not, I've never, I don't try to talk people into taking offers. I don't I don't it's there's just rules and you get people offers and jobs based on following them.
So I want to take an example of. There's just rules for everything. There's rules for getting married, some women for example, will get multiple marriage proposals from very desirable men and others. We'll never get one. The women who get a lot of proposals are often the ones that even are interested in getting proposals.
And and the same thing goes for the attorneys that get a lot of offers that they often aren't even that interested in getting all these offers and that is an issue. And then. And then let me just see here. And and so you had asked yourself, what are these women and what are these attorneys doing differently and what are what is it that they're able to do that other people are not?
And and she, and that's something that you need to think about. So a year ago I was talking to to this camera here, but so your guys, sorry, I was talking to a hiring partner of a large firm. And, he said to me, what is the most in demand practice area? What do you have that no one else is going to be able to find me.
And the answer was very easy. I told it was, I told them real estate. I said that real estate is very strong and no one can get real estate attorneys. And I said, I have a very good real estate attorney a few buildings over from you. And I said, if you want, I'm sure he would be interested in speaking with you.