[00:00:00] Good morning or afternoon, depending on where you guys are. It was interesting. I saw an article in the wall street journal this morning. I was just talking about how people are from at law school and like the. Not with a lot of debt and it's difficult to make money or enough to pay your debts.
And most people aren't paying back their loans. And I, something like two thirds or more than that, I think are paying back loans within starting to pay back the most in the couple of years. And and I listened to that stuff about we're where people are. I there's two parts.
One of them feels very badly about it for the people that are experiencing this stuff. But the other part of me actually, because I've been hearing these kinds of statements for years it feels badly that more people aren't taking part in webinars and things like this to learn about how to find a job, because honestly where I set in terms of in this recruiting firm, I, we, we make more placements of people that didn't go to good law schools and and aren't working in big firms and we make of the opposite.
There's so much [00:01:00] opportunity out there. Almost every attorney that I work with is marketable. Now that doesn't mean that everyone can get the high six figure jobs and so forth. But honestly there's a lot of opportunities out there and a lot of markets and and a lot of the reason for people not experiencing success is because.
They're not really listening to stuff like this. So learning how to do a job search. And and I feel badly about that. I feel badly that people may come out with knowledge, but they don't know how to use that knowledge to get positions as to to really improve their career prospects.
So this is a good webinar for you guys to listen to all these webinars are helpful that I'm doing. Cause I, I just feel that there's literally so many, so much opportunity out there that people don't see. And the only way to see it as to listen to people like me, and I'm certainly not the only person that understands us, but this is all I do.
And all I think about. And I work with all types of attorneys getting jobs and frankly, even in our company, there's tons of opportunities. I remember hiring lots of people to do recruiting [00:02:00] related roles whether it's talking to new people or talking to law firms or doing research.
And I we have probably, 30 to 40 jobs here at any given time. So there's a lot of opportunities in this industry and there's a lot of opportunities for anybody that's gone to law school. That's willing to apply themselves and learn this stuff. And I can tell you if you're smart enough to pass a bar exam, you're definitely smart enough to to do extremely well in this profession regardless of where you end up.
So this particular presentation today is about relocating in different parts of the country. And this is one of the things that just blows my mind, that people don't do more of. I'll just tell you a quick story. When I clerked for a judge in Michigan and after my clerkship, there were five big law.
Mince chicken. And at the time
now, but five or six that were paying, if you went, if you wanted to work at the time I got out of law school, very close. [00:03:00] If you want to know from one of them was next to impossible. It wasn't a possible, but they just didn't have a lot of jobs. They would hire, each of them would hire a few people, every printed by all these great law schools, including the university of Michigan, which is, more than half of the people are from the Detroit area that go there.
It's, it was a very competitive market. And and so looking at other markets was a very smart thing for me to do even coming out of the federal clerkship and having gone to a good law school and done well there, it still made it a very difficult market. I think that one of the most effective things that anyone can do instead of complaining about the state of the market is just apply to other parts of jobs in other parts of the country.
You build that really big attached to working in New York city, or you may feel really attached to working in wherever market where your parents live or where you grew up. But unfortunately that, that is a very many times backward strategy that is going to have to profound harm to your brand prospects.
And frankly, different people are different. That I would flight [00:04:00] the very conservative Detroit mark. I would not have enjoyed working there or working in Virginia in rural Virginia in a very conservative market there, or even Washington DC when you have to work in markets and places that have people that the chair, your value systems and waste, and you can often do like different markets.
And it's a very important thing. And and if you're relocating, the majority, you're going to have a lot better options many times than than if you stay in the market you're in. So an example be if you're. And then Tony, you try to Tony, or when you're trying to work at two or three of those really tough firms there, and you don't get a good reception, you may think there's something wrong with you.
Unfortunately that's a very myopic, there's thousands of law firms around the country that are just as three in different markets. And so if you're suddenly looking at Dallas, it's an Austin Houston and Phoenix and Los Angeles and all these different markets, you're going to have a lot [00:05:00] better chance of getting the job.
And so many people have deflated expectations of what they're capable of because of getting a good reception in a single market. And to me, that is absolutely insane. I don't get it. One of the problems of locating trying to find a job in your own market is law firms will often conclude wrongly that you're looking for a job because you're doing something wrong at your current firm or your
so I'm looking at them. Hello, can you with a fresh set of eyes and they're not thinking of you in terms of a cast from some editor firms they're thinking of you as someone that's a vocal. One of the things that's interesting is every year I see people that are relocating locally to affirm firms, see their resume locally, and they'll get a job with that firm.
And and then someone locally will say something negative about them at another firm like, oh, we were glad that we got rid of that person and you got them.
The battery reputation will look bad in the other firms ties that they're [00:06:00] dealing with every day. So relocate into a dub. Another market can be helpful just because once you're a bad reputation takes a long time to earn. So having a couple of bad experiences as a junior attorney, no one's going to hold against you even with one to two years of experience, but if you're an out a long time, then certainly things come to you in a negative way.
I think that from my personal standpoint, relocate to different markets is one of the smartest things you can do. And and it's really a very good thing to do in your job search. Law firms are much more you're much more likely to get jobs when you look at them malt support markets.
I don't get it. Most people when they're looking for jobs will only look at that one market very seriously. And if you're sending Cleveland and golden looking at the Cleveland market and you're not looking at the markets, if you're like a patent attorney for. And you're looking for a job in Cleveland.
There might be four or five jobs of tops. If you decide to expand beyond those that [00:07:00] Cleveland and look at all the markets in Ohio and the Midwest, and and maybe 10 other states, you're suddenly looking at hundreds of jobs. Why wouldn't you want to increase your odds by hundreds of times, I just don't get it.
It's it doesn't make any sense to me. Why most attorneys don't look at more markets. It's the fact of possible to get a job can people that are complaining that they're not making enough money, that's to take a job with a government that they had to take a job with a public interest often are just not searching.
In enough markets. I'm looking at enough places in cold calling. I would listen to may not an application enough law firms. This. Due to be successful. And if you're not doing this, you're told in your back, this would be a company. Imagine if Coca-Cola opened up in Austin, Texas, and and was just trying to sell a Coca Cola in Austin, Texas.
It never tried to sell itself in multiple markets and said, wow, this is a really hard job because no one's buying us. Or maybe let's not even take Austin, Texas. Let's pick an area where it's really cold, Fairbanks, Alaska. [00:08:00] They were trying to sell Coca-Cola in Fairbanks, Alaska, this chilled beverage.
And and no one was buying it in Fairbanks, Alaska, and they thought, oh, we're just a real failure. We're not we're not a desirable market, different people. Aren't desirable product. Different people will appeal to different markets in different ways. So you need to be looking at multiple markets when you're looking for a job.
If you're not doing this, you're just holding yourself back. You're limiting yourself. You're only seeing a portion of the opportunities at one time per ton, to legal markets in the United States. Some are large or the. But if you're looking for more, they're going to create your odds reviews and more offers.
And when you're a young attorney, meaning you're out of law school and you're trying to get a foothold and climb your way up, the most important thing you can do is experience. You don't need to worry necessarily about the prestige of your law firm, but you want to get the best job you possibly can in the best training you possibly can.
And the only way to get us training is to really look at as many markets as you possibly can and make sure you get [00:09:00] into the best firm you possibly can. I was so fortunate that I decided to apply to markets then when I was entering my clerkship and just work in Detroit or go back to a firm in New York, I was going to work with where it woulda been a corporate attorney.
First, when you start looking at more legal markets, I've seen an attorneys that I've been looking for jobs for months or years in some cases, markets like Detroit or a Lando or Minneapolis. And and then they come to work with me and I talked them into working in, looking at Palo Alto in Chicago or Dallas and all of a sudden they're, working for a major law firm in Palo Alto working on cutting edge deals for the, we're working with small companies in Kansas city.
It's just the odds of if a recruiter gets involved in and can see your strengths or the company that you know is sending your jobs to approve and can help you in your applying to other our company or however you're getting jobs, and you're applying to other places you're going to take your career to the next level.[00:10:00]
I've seen attorneys not understand that their prospects don't expand when they look at the number of markets, it, it just goes to show that I, that, what you think is in demand and your market is never going to necessarily be the same in other markets. So I've seen people that are.
I'm blackballed in the market. I've seen people blackballed in blackballed in San Francisco. I've seen the markets all over the country and and for whatever reason they have a bad reputation or they're not getting jobs, or maybe it's just their resume doesn't appeal to employers there.
All of a sudden they look at other markets got 10, 15 job arts. It's just, it's insane that people will allow themselves to be subjected to him. So one market, when there's so many opportunities and other goods, typically markets will go through recessions. They'll go through booms and they'll go through bust.
So what will happen a lot of times is at a market like New York city corporate will become overly saturated with corporate attorneys and the won't be enough opportunities. And corporate attorneys [00:11:00] will refuse to. New York because of whatever the Halla up to them. They think they need to work in New York and and they won't be able to get jobs and they'll sit there doing nothing, playing video games and watching Netflix for years.
At the same time their peers will go look at other markets. And the last recession on New York was hit very hard, but Texas kept going. It was a great market. California was gone for longer than the New York. It's still a good market for awhile. But Texas was going almost all through the recession because there was a lot of oil demand.
So people that were smart enough to apply to jobs in Texas did well and and worked in major firms. You just don't know what's out there until you start looking markets like you just, you don't know sometimes it's even overseas but there's just, it's very simple. Mathematical reasons, many times for.
Certain practice areas, tray, trademark, or risks, benefits, taxed, antitrust, healthcare, patent prosecution, project finance another's that [00:12:00] often have limited opportunities. I've seen instances where project finance is one example where there weren't any jobs in hardly any jobs in the United States or the few jobs with their work were extremely competitive.
And then all of a sudden I've taken project finance attorneys and not in them jobs and Hong Kong Shanghai. And I would die
when they may have been unemployed for months or years. Same thing with employee benefits. I've had, I had one candidate who's credibly her part. The partner she was working for was shot killed by her boyfriend. 4, 1, 1 was unemployed for two years and I'm in Chicago and and couldn't get a job.
And I got involved in, got her a job at a firm taking over the risks of practice within a couple of weeks. And I think it was in Texas. And she'd never even been to Texas. So the point is like there's tons of jobs out there. Sometimes in New York studio, there's no tax openings.
But it was all over the country. And if you ain't jobs and practice area, the only [00:13:00] thing you can possibly do is open your job, search to different areas. You have to do that. You have to be smart. Your career is too important. Not to look at other practice other areas where there's likely to be opportunities.
It's just like I told you earlier about the project finance attorneys each week for whatever reason managed to drill into the head of our recruiters that work here and everybody that works here, that and patent attorneys, and in particular that you need to look at firms all over night.
They did the patent bar is like a national certification. Once you get into the patent party, you can practice patent law in any state. So patent attorneys typically will get jobs all over the country. I placed patent attorneys that are retired, that have been retired for 10 and 15 years in places because of their experience where they don't have those people.
I placed patent attorneys. I once place to listen to this, I once place a patent attorney who wanted to go to he, he was from Texas. He'd never been out of Texas, but decided he liked hiking with his wife on the weekends and [00:14:00] thought it would be fun to move to Seattle. I sent him to a firm in Seattle, but unfortunately they're hiring for the Seattle was done out of pencil was done out of forms of data.
It was done out of I don't know, Philadelphia or something like that. So this guy got on a plane and flew to Pittsburgh and got hired in Pittsburgh, never even benign. Access. And he was making something like, $50,000 a year. This was years ago and a small firm in Texas and got an offer for $180,000 a year, working in Pittsburgh and and moved here.
And the first thing he did was buy a suburban and and then he got kicked out of his apartment because he was raising chickens on the porch. I'm not kidding with his family. So this is, th there are so many opportunities and he was a smart guy when he got in like a PhD or like a graduate degree or something in bio something and got this job and that he'd never even been out of the state.
So you just have to remember that that there's so many opportunities for you, if you start looking at other markets and and I don't understand why people don't do it, if you want to work in a big law [00:15:00] firm, your goal is to work in one of the super high pain law firms and you don't think you have the qualifications, you probably do.
If you want to work in a branch office in the middle of nowhere I've had people hired by, in markets, you wouldn't even states. I don't even remember that are so small. I don't know, not in brassica and Kansas is a small state, but places that you don't typically think of Ida, I've had a lot of people hire an Idaho cause there's big firms there.
And many times, if you decide to look at one of those areas, those firms are going to be interested in you. They will understand a new, if you don't even fit, like the typical criteria will a big firm attorneys should look like because they don't.
Broad search because not a lot of have ongoing trademark practices. Benefits are another one. And the more narrow your practice area the more likely you are to be able to to get a job, more markets, one example would be another example is like vacation attorneys. There are there's practice areas where people do new, but education and there's firms that do nothing but education, law, and most [00:16:00] education attorneys will there's in most markets.
There's a few firms that do it. When you expand your reach and you look all over the country, education law attorneys are extremely marketable, so there's tons of opportunities. And most people in most professions will look at opportunities in multiple markets. And if you're in a slow market, And there are a lot of slow markets out there.
You can't afford to look at more, not look at more markets here in Chicago, and it's slow. You can't afford to look at more markets if you're in Florida and it's slow, you can't, you just can't do it. You, this, your career is too important and your job is too important not to do it.
And you need to keep getting experienced. Anytime someone has a gap on their resume and there's making, and is under, under employed or not doing what they can. It sends a bad signal because it shows you're not really going out and getting the results from your job search and the research that you should be doing.
How would you feel if your client was you and you were looking in your client needed a job, would you be a newer, their [00:17:00] attorney and you were paid hundreds of dollars an hour stew that would you tell that client to only let's just keep praying and hope that some patent openings come along here in Akron, Ohio, let's we'll just do what we can.
And but we'll just keep watching the market. Is that a good attorney or would a good attorney come to you and say, listen, you need to look at every market in Ohio and every law firm in Ohio, you need to look at other markets around the Midwest and you need to understand who does the exact type of patent law you do, and every firm in the country.
So you can get a job there if people are telling you to pray and hope. And that's ridiculous that's just absolute asinine. Hey, because this is the way the market is, and this is what law schools teaching you to do sometimes, and I'm not mad at the law schools. I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong, but you need to understand the, you need to look at every possible market.
You can and you would be out of your mind not to It very low and Texas gets slow. And it doesn't really matter. When the financial markets slow down, the Bayer, it gets slow. It's just, [00:18:00] all this stuff is nothing you can fix or need. They need to understand what you do need to understand is you need to look at other markets and you need to always look at other markets.
And it just happens consistently. There's often fierce competition to get jobs in other markets. But when the market slows down, there's going to be regions that are not slow. Would you believe that I saw a literal of fee during the fracking boom, which is years ago, but there was a boom anybody that wanted to, could March into a law firm and get a job in North Dakota.
I wouldn't think that he would think that was that impressive, but I was getting people interviews in North Dakota several times a week. Now you don't even think about North Dakota, but there was so much demand there that it was. So not that everybody wants to go to North Dakota, but the point is that the jobs paid very well.
There was more demand. And meanwhile, you've got attorneys sitting on their thumbs complaining about the job market and reading, these periodic or, online magazines or whatever blogs talking about how bad the market is and how sad people are. It's [00:19:00] ridiculous.
There are so many fricking jobs out there. And you need to relocate if there's not jobs and you need to find those jobs during economic downturns our recruiters have always done well. That have looked at other markets. Now, some attorneys, some recruiters like job seekers are on the smile.
The few that the only jobs are in a certain market. And they get they get focused on this idea that I only make placements at big firms in New York. I only do this. And but the ones that are able to get out of that mindset and say, okay if things aren't going well in New York city, what about the suburbs?
What about upstate New York? What about what about smaller firms? And what about this and this? Because the work is always somewhere work, just doesn't disappear. There's always people that are busy. There's always things going on. You just need to know how to find it. And there's always firms that are under marketing their jobs, and aren't able to find people.
So you need to do a broad enough search. And if you're in a market where you see no future you just can't afford to not look at more markets. I People. In these very I dunno they get boxed in and they think I have to stay in this [00:20:00] relationship. I have to stay in this job.
I have to stay in the city. I have to stay in this house. I have to stay close to my wife's parents. I have to stay close to my husband's parents. I have to stay close to my parents. My kids can't switch schools. I can't whatever, none of that does any good. If you're depressed and you don't have a job and you cannot control what's happening in your legal market, if a factory closes, that's not your problem.
That's not something that you caused. And if that factory has all the legal jobs and this is supporting the market and the hospitals and all your potential clients, then you need to move. It's as simple as that's what people do all the time. And and, and it's just how it works.
And many attorneys need to move and and you will be well-served many times by relocating and and it can be limiting working in small markets. It can be eliminating working in large markets. It can be limiting, working in the largest markets. I think many times. People want to move out of small markets sometimes because granted if you're working for smaller clients, other work is going to be limited and the work is not going to be as [00:21:00] sophisticated and the income that you can make, isn't going to be as large.
And and you may not get as much respect from larger clients who may be harder to bring in larger clients. All that is true. And so you may want to leave because of those reasons and go to a larger market. And if you're very aggressive and want to do as well as you can, on the other hand, if you work in a major market, you may conclude it's going to be impossible for you to ever be a partner in that market.
And some firms, if you want to do that in a major law firm in New York city, none of this stuff is impossible by the way. I've met people that have come to me and have been students of the stuff I've written and and then have taken what I've taught them and learn from other people as well, and have risen the ranks to become partners in the biggest firms in the country.
And you can do that as well. Impossible. You can become a partner anywhere you want, but you have to learn it. And it's not impossible. None of this is impossible. If you provide more value than you're taking the law, firm's always going to make you a partner. You just have to figure out how to do that.
But the point is that if you believe from [00:22:00] whatever, you're not willing to pay the price or that it takes to become a partner in most law firms, which all it is providing more value, way more. Yeah. Then you're taking then you can relocate, you can go to, a major city, you can do whatever the heck you want or a smaller city.
And I relocate people to small markets all the time because they want a different lifestyle or they want a guarantee. They want more guarantees about advancement. That's it. Or you may feel limited by the culture. In the city, I relocate a lot of people away from, small Southern cities in South Carolina and things like that where we're, it's not incest to us, but everyone that works together knows each other and knows their family and and does everything together and socialize together.
It's just, there's certain markets that are like that. And and if you don't want to be part of that then you can relocate. So people can be limited by culture. You can be in markets. That could be and I'm not trying to be rude here, but you could be in markets where you feel are very limiting.
The people are too conservative or they're they're not, open-minded enough about people from different backgrounds or religions [00:23:00] or orientations or races, or who knows or you could, you could feel that certain markets are too liberal for you. I don't care. I'm not involved, but the point is whatever you want.
You should be in a market where you're comfortable and And if the market is doing well somewhere else, you can't afford not to look at more markets. One of the things that I grew up in the in a town while in Detroit, where the, everyone talked about the auto industry all the time, and the big thing with auto salesman, an auto sales person will always try to work in the best possible firm at the, from where the most cars are mean.
So they don't want to work in a, in a sorry, I'm just fixing stuff in here. They don't want to work in a, in a. For if they don't want to sell cars that no one's buying, they want to sell cars that are easy to sell. So they'll always move to the, the, to the firms where they can make the most money and sell cars most easily.
It's considered a good job to be an auto salesman in a Porsche dealership, it used to be a Honda dealership Toyota dealership. And so the better the product the, the more business there is, and the more people want to buy [00:24:00] this stuff the better off you'll be.
The point that I'm making is that you really need to work where there's opportunity and where people are buying your services and where there's demand. Why would you need, why would you want to work in a market where no one wants you? Or there's not enough need for you.
You're just going to feel badly about yourself. And it has nothing to do with you. It doesn't matter by the way, Where you went to law school or how well you did there, or even your past experience, if you go somewhere and you put your head down and you work hard and you provide a lot more value than you take, you will do well, that's all there is to it and you need to commit to and and that's it.
So it's not it's not really, none of us is brain surgery. Recently I placed two attorneys from a small firms in Indiana and two major firms in the bay area. I placed attorneys from, all around the Midwest, just fix this problem, into major firms all the time.
And people move from Detroit to New York city. They moved from all sorts of they move from all sorts of markets to to, to other places [00:25:00] all the time. And this can not only change an attorney's income. It gives the attorney more credibility. When you can move to a bigger market, if you want to do that and sometimes better career prospects.
If you're in a market that's slow and you don't feel like you're doing well, or you're going through the motions, then you can move to another market. If you want to if you have skills that are common in one market and demand elsewhere, you often can't afford to look at. Other markets. So an example again is New York city, like New York city.
There's a lot of corporate attorneys there. If you want to look at other markets, then there may be a lot of opportunity and a lot of demand for you. And there's other markets where there's none in New York city. And there are times when certain practice areas are very active in some markets and not others.
So it's just, these are things to think about when you're looking for a job and a. The patent has always been very popular and there's been a lot of patent attorneys and IP litigators in the bay area, not as many elsewhere litigation. There's so many litigators in Washington, DC, so many very skilled and very good litigators in Washington, DC.
And but they're less [00:26:00] common with those kinds of qualifications elsewhere. Same thing with. The odds are regardless of your practice area. The odds are pretty good that it's going to be in demand and another markets around the world, a country, you just you have to think about the market is is a is a fluid type of thing where your skills are going to be in demand one place and not necessarily others.
And, sometimes w when you get, 5, 6, 7, 8 years of experience you would be considered senior. And it can be very difficult in very competitive markets when you have a lot of experience to find jobs in law firms, because these law firms need to have work to support the higher billing rates.
They need to have place, they need to have the need to value your skills. And and they need to have enough work that they can make your partner or advance you without you having business. And these are challenges that you know that you face. And so one of the only ways for attorneys in that position to be able to get new opportunities by looking at new markets.
And and I just, I can't really overemphasize this enough. I place attorneys, but no business and firms [00:27:00] all over the country. I've had so many instances and they have. Several times a month where there's an attorney without any business or any work. And and by relocating them to another market where they were, unmarketable where they couldn't find a job where they were.
They didn't even have contacts where there was a demand for them. I'm able to get them a job. I told you about the attorney? It was actually Indiana, not Chicago place in Texas immigration attorney on markable Texas place in Seattle bankruptcy attorney on markable Detroit place in New York city, senior tax attorney unmarketable in Los Angeles place in upstate New York, senior patent attorney on market on south Florida placed in Washington DC.
And so most of these attorneys. Wouldn't be getting jobs if they didn't relocate. So if you're sitting around depressed about the fact that there's not enough work in your current employer, but there's not enough opportunities or you can't get a job or you're graduating from law school and you're worried about the market and whatever market you're trying to work with, you need to think about the fact that the United States is a huge area of, couple thousand miles long.
It's just, [00:28:00] you have to be like, th there's so many fricking opportunities out there's tens of thousands of law firms. I don't know how much clear I can possibly be. That how many opportunities there are. If you're in a major market and you're not getting love from top law firms.
And they don't like the fact that you didn't go to a top law school and do great there, and you're not working at a great firm. And you think you need to work in a big firm, then why wouldn't you look at other markets? If you're trying to work in a major market like Los Angeles or New York or Chicago or San Francisco, do you know how many people are also trying to do the same thing as you?
You would have to like you, if you're a major law firm with an opening in one of these markets, they're going to get. More than enough applications and they will choose the best. They don't care where it comes from. They don't care if it's from a recruiter, they don't care. If it's someone that walks in off the street, they've got the money, they've got the, they've got the work.
They will take the best person they can get. And if you don't think you're the best person for most jobs then you've got a problem. And and if you're in a major [00:29:00] market, then you are probably not going to be the best person for most jobs. And it doesn't matter if you have connections. If you know someone they're going to hire the best person, wherever the fricking person comes from, that's what they do.
That's what their self interest is. That's what you would do if you were in their situation too. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're applying to places that don't have openings and you're the only person, that's a very smart thing to do. If you're applying to firms that that and other markets that aren't getting a lot of applications, then you look like the best person.
That's a very good thing. But there is so much competition. I don't need to tell you how much competition there is because you know it, and if you're only looking at the jobs that are coming through, whatever type of search you're doing, and you're not looking at more jobs, you're making a mistake.
I don't care who you are. If you're afraid of rejection in this business, that's a real problem too, because attorneys, by the way, this is what we do. We get rejected. We get rejected by top law schools. When [00:30:00] we apply, we get rejected by law firms. When we apply, we get rejected by courts. Most of us, half the time, some less than half the time, some more than half the time.
When we're litigating, we get the bad end of contracts. We get fired. We get all sorts of things happened to attorneys. That's what you do. You have to be used to rejection. No one cares. If you got rejected 5,000 times or a hundred times all they care about is the results that you ultimately get. So you need to go out there and apply to more places and get rejected.
An attorney, can often get a job in another market. If they apply to firms and more cities, that's just as simple. The simplest thing I can tell you, you need to apply to as many fricking cities as you possibly can. You can't sit around and be depressed about the state of the market and.
Worry about all this stuff. I see patent attorneys all the time when able to get positions. I see and make placements. I make placements like that. Monthly. I see corporate bankruptcy and real estate people, that, that are unable to get positioned in major markets. [00:31:00] Because the markets aren't doing well there, and then they get positions in other markets.
That's just how it works. You have to be able to look at other markets when you're doing your. And if you've exhausted all the firms and you're sitting and have no else to apply, which is often by the way, not the truth. If you could try to look, if you really researched the market and say, you're a corporate attorney and you want to get a corporate job in your market, have you really researched the market?
Have you really gone in, and if you want to work in New York city, I've you really found the 7,000 firms that do corporate work in in New York city and attorneys, have you really applied to all those 7,000 firms? I don't know if the number is 7,000, but it's something like that. There are 7,000 places or something like that to do that work.
And in New York city. And have you done the same with the, 6,000 places in LA, if you really done that, or if you only applied to the 20 places that you know about that are listed and pay all this money to be in now, this is insane. This is what people do, and then they get depressed and then they think that they've done something [00:32:00] wrong.
What you've done wrong is you haven't been a good attorney and researched all the fricking firms out there and use Google and used every resource you can possibly think of define who's doing the work you do so you can do it. And in many people. Demand that they want to work in top law firms. They think that their self-esteem demands that they work in these very high pain law firms.
So they want to work on the highest pain law firms possible. And so then they decide that if they don't get a job in their city, there's something wrong with them and they can't pay back their student loans and they go wine to the wall street journal. This is crazy. I've been in this business for years and I can tell.
That if you expand your search to other markets, you're going to get much better results. And if you're looking at just a few markets and you can find places where there's opportunities and you can find places where you can get opportunities. And if your search is time sensitive and you have a family to support and you need to get a job because you're on employee and that looks bad on your resume, then you should look at every fricking market.
There is, you have to be proactive and if you're not being proactive, there's only one reason. I one thing I can say to you, [00:33:00] you don't want a job. So that's the Freudian explanation. If you're not being proactive you just probably do not want a job. There's no other explanation because the people that really want something, get it.
If you have a bad reputation, you may have done something wrong. I don't care what it is. You may have been sued for sexual harassment. You may have. And I'm not saying this as a good thing. You may have gotten a DUI. I know one attorney that got his dream job and then went out to celebrate a couple of weeks later and got a DUI.
He was on the front page of the paper. Jesus. I, if you've gotten fired for doing something wrong, if you lied, if you made a mistake, then you need to fix yourself. But after you fix yourself, you need to figure out what you're going to do to get a job in another market.
I knew one attorney that was working at a law firm and And a smaller market outside of a major city that got inspired as a partner because he had a rip in his jeans in the crotch and didn't know about it. And someone complained cause they saw his underwear and he lost a fricking job he'd been at for 20 years and got blackballed.
[00:34:00] I don't know, what you did or what happened. But if you did something wrong, you need to look at other markets and I'm not saying this person did something right. Or wrong. I don't really have any judgment about it, but the point is you have to be careful and you have to, be very careful.
I recently represented a senior attorney that sued his prior firm for sexual harassment. And he actually I don't want to get into it, but everybody in the the city knew about it and he believed that his PA past prevent him from ever getting into interviews and offers, he expanded the search to other markets and he ended up getting a ton of interviews and offers, and no one knew anything about those lawsuits.
I know another attorney that that was the managing partner of a major law firm and went into a meeting drunk. And and I don't know why he was drunk and it could, and the problem was, it was in the morning, I think he'd been flying. He flew to another city for the meeting and Hudson drinks on the plane on the way there, and showed up drunk and was abusive or something to the client or to the another attorney and lost his job.
And he [00:35:00] cleaned himself up. He, whatever whatever he needed to do, he went to AA or whatever. And and now he's a better person. And he was very honest about what happened to him. And now he's the managing partner of another big firm after. Not working for a year and I was able to get him a job.
So the point is like you, you look at other markets and he worked on, he got a job in a market. He never expected to be working. I think, I don't even know what it was. It was Nebraska or something, but a big firm, a big national firm. So the point is you can get jobs. If you make mistakes, you can get jobs.
If you don't have the qualifications that you think you need to get a job, you need to look at other markets. You can also you're when you're relocating, you often dramatically increase your odds because the firm we'll presume that you're a much better attorney have a fewer issues.
So when you're relocating the best reasons for relocating, by the way, things like, you want to be closer to your family. You want to be you went to school somewhere. Your significant other wife, her husband is from there your brothers and sisters moved to [00:36:00] this area.
You have good memories of this era. Cause you went to school there, whatever w whatever, the reason if you have reasons for relocating units, Let these fricking firms know about it. They they need to understand the reasons that you're interested in these areas and if they understand that, then they think that you're coming home and you're going to stay.
They're going to want to keep you at that law firm forever. And and these are reasons that are very acceptable to law firms. People don't really care about that so much in places like New York and. The bay area where they just assume that everybody should want to live in New York and everybody should want to live in the bay area.
Why what's the big deal about that? Work in the bay area, but for the most part if you have reasons for wanting to live in a market people will assume that you're likely to put down roots there and be a good employee and make the money for a long time and that's what they want.
And and if you're from a smaller market or you have connections in a smaller to midsize market and the firm has a, a strong enough need and doesn't have a lot of local talent locally, the firm's going to be very likely to hire people from outside of the area. [00:37:00] So let's just presume. So when I clerked for a federal judge in bay city, Michigan, which is also near Midland, which is where Dow chemical is and so forth.
I can tell you that today. If I had decided after four or five years of practice, that I wanted to go back and work in one of those firms in this area of Michigan which is, basically, an hour outside Detroit, an hour and a half, that pretty much all the firms there.
And if I said, I really had great meetings or a great experience living in this area, which you know, whatever then the firms, they would be interested in me because there's not a lot of people that want to work in bay city, Michigan, or Midland, Michigan, or Flint, Michigan for that matter which is not too far away.
So the point is any market that you have a connection with, you can always get jobs there. I see people going back to work and where I went to law school, Charlottesville all the time. I love living in Charlottesville. And they get jobs, after having worked in other markets around the country.
Great. So do you a connection to market and you want it back there? It's, that's a real plus law firms like hiring people that have connections to markets, [00:38:00] especially smaller to mid sized ones. These should always be on your interest list when you're applying to.
And this is the guy I can add it was, maybe it was 250,000. Wow. I thought it was like 180. But this is the story about the guy in Texas that I told you about earlier. And I had Yeah. And there seeing you had to get rid of the chickens and Lee. So it was a very funny story and it's a true story sky.
It's really funny actually. I He's in west Texas, I thought he was making less than 85, 85. Yeah. And then he got $250,000. Wow. And anyway funny story and and now he's a partner in a large law firm there and and that never would've happened if he stayed in west Texas, which is like Midland and that kind of thing.
Law firms have like cancer relocating, and one of the reasons is they tend to be more sympathetic. So you can often apply to firms when you're relocating. And just say, I really want to be part of this market, or I want to work here and they understand that they have one shot to get you.
And they liked that. They also respect him when candidates are interested in relocating. And they believe that this is a strong enough [00:39:00] force that makes them in their best interest to hire the person. Because people that want to be somewhere are much better than people that just want a job.
If someone's moving somewhere and committing to that employer and the employer is hiring them, that's a real kind of connection and so forth. The odds are that the person, if they're picking up and moving somewhere, that they're going to stay and try to make things work. And they also believe that the people are going to be motivated to settle down and work hard and be less likely to leave.
There's all sorts of reasons. But the other thing that's really very important. The person doesn't look disloyal. They just look like someone who actually is loyal that wants to be, closer to friends or family and and they're there. And they want to be in a, whatever the reason is.
And they may want to be in a larger market where there's, better work and that may be trying to improve, or they just may want to be in, in a market where they're closer to family and so forth. So it's just not raising alarms when they're trying to do that. And when an attorney relocates, it also doesn't raise questions regarding if the person's having issues at their current firm, when a person starts applying, if you're [00:40:00] working for example, in Chicago and you start applying to other firms in Chicago, while you're working in Chicago the firms in Chicago, even though you may have a great background are going to be a little bit suspicious, even, especially if you're coming from a good firm, that's been around a hundred years and it's going to still be around after a long after your dad, probably too.
So they're going to wonder, they're going to try to understand why is this personally, even this firm, are they having problems is something wrong with their performance that we don't know about? Other political issues? What's going on most of the time when I hire people, for example, from other.
Recruiting firms to work in our company. Despite my best efforts there, those people are usually ended up being problematic when I hire them. They don't represent, they don't make as many placements or whatever it is they represented. They sometimes they have hidden substance abuse problems.
Other times they may have, which is fine. If you clear these things up other times, they may have issues being with attendance. They may be people that are have issues with attendance and all sorts of things, more [00:41:00] likely than not if they're applying. So the, typically the people I like to hire people that haven't worked in recruiting firms or have, if they've worked in a recruiting firm, they'd been there for 15 years and have a good track record and are still trainable, but all these things are difficult to come up.
So people law firms want to hire people that are doing well in their existing firms. And if you're relocating within a market, the law firm will wonder why would this person be relocating? What are they doing? What's going on, like, why are they coming to our firm when they're just across town?
Are they having a hard time getting along? Are they, what's the problem there? And they ask those questions because based on their experience, there's usually going to be some problems with someone that they hire locally. But if you come from another market and you say I'm moving home because my mother and my sister and everybody lives here and I just want to be home.
And I had a great experience working at this law firm in Los Angeles, but I really needed to come home to Memphis and be close to my family firms are going to open up and they're [00:42:00] not going to be thinking that you're having problems. And that's what they're concerned about. Law firms do not want to hire someone else's problem.
And when you're looking at firms locally, many times, they're worried about that. And and those are valid concerns. And I'm telling you in my experience that it's been a valid concern that I have. It's often not always the case, but most firms are going to reach the conclusion that, if you moved from another firm, you may have been able to win political games.
You don't have any chance of advancement. And there's things that are happening or you have personality problems and things that are wrong. If you're moving locally. And then though it's not always the truth, but they're going to be suspicious. And they're going to look at you a lot harder than they would someone that's trying to relocate most of my placements, by the way that we make our people relooking in other markets.
It's just because that level of suspicion doesn't exist. So even though I may have an opening for a certain type of attorney to work in orange county, as a litigator, the people that they're more likely to hire our [00:43:00] people many times that are coming from other markets in California, they grew up in orange county, not the other attorney in orange county, currently working in a competitive firm, because like I told you, at the beginning of this presentation, the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a law firm is for someone to make a snide remark at another firm, to them about a law firm, a person that they've hired that didn't work out at their firm saying I'm glad I hope they work out at your firm and try hard.
And they tried with us and things like that. That's just what happens sometimes when you apply locally, now it doesn't, if you do, if you're doing a good job, but the second a law firm here, something like that, they're very embarrassed. And they and they don't like it. And they're afraid of hearing that because law firms and attorneys just like you are with your peers, Are competitive with each other and they don't want to make a mistake.
And they, they feel that if they make a mistake, it's much more likely to get back to them if they do it locally. You're going to hear something. If, when you're interviewing laterally in, in your own market you need to say things negatively about your own firm many times.
So instead of saying, I want to move home [00:44:00] or I want to move to this market, or my spouse's from here, you need to say things like, it's not a good cultural fit. And the law firms going to question, why did you take your job in the first place? And what kind of culture are you expecting? And then when you start giving results or reasons they may not like that.
And they'll think he's going to have, or she's going to have the same problems with us. The law firm will just assume you're not going to fit in with them either. Not a good cultural fit, basically the code region for people don't like you. And often they're not going to like you because they don't like the quality of work or you're not nice to them, or they don't, you don't get along.
You're not social enough. You're too unusual, too arrogant, too different and so forth. I don't know what the reasons are. Or could have something to do with the quality of work. Your work's not improving. They've given you a lot of feedback, but your work's not improving. And they don't like that.
So that's not a cultural fit. Another one people say, when they're looking locally, There's not enough work. And that's a reasonable explanation, but the problem is most law firms that have been around for a long time have worked. And if you not if you're saying there's not enough [00:45:00] work you're often talking about law firms that may have revenues of hundreds of millions in some cases, over a billion dollars in revenue and had been around over a hundred years.
So they always have work. The question is, they're not giving you the work. And so if there's not enough work, why aren't they giving you the work? And good attorneys who do good work are always given work. When I. I had the benefit again, of doing a clerkship before I started my job and and being trained by a very detailed oriented and judge, it did an exceptional job, like helping me learn things, the requirements.
And so when I would turn in assignments, they were perfect. So I started getting our most perfect, as they could be given my LinkedIn experience. I, now I look back on the things, I'm sure there could have been 10 times better, but they were better than my peers that may have been prepared to do.
So people gave me a lot of work and I had more work than I can handle when other people didn't have work. So the point is, if you do good work, you're going to get a lot of work at most firms there. Everyone's going to want to work with you because they're going to want you to do good work for their [00:46:00] clients.
And they will give you work across practice areas. They will give you research. They will fight to keep you on if you do good work. And and then once you get beyond five years of experience and you say, there's no work, then you're going to be highlighting your inability to generate work on your own.
All law firms go through ups and downs but the law firms all realize that the second things get slow with them. If you're going to complain about work, you're going to get up and leave. So talking about no work is sometimes not the smartest thing to do. It's just showing that you're hopeless and you can't generate clients when you can't people aren't giving you work because they're not maybe enthusiastic about.
You're turning your net. This is your career. You need you to the best fricking job you can with the assignments you're turning in other people to say things like an important partner with business, just laugh. And they're finding a job. If that was a partner with the whistles, first of all, the work, why didn't he take you with him or she'd take you with him.
It was your work, not up to stuff because what basically happens is when law firms are interviewing hiring laterally, especially when you're from a city there, they're trying to find your [00:47:00] weaknesses. And they're going to find your weaknesses by probing your political choices your alliances whether or not people in the firm wanted to give you work and more.
And the law firm is going to be interested in whether or not you're likely to leave at that drop of the hat as well. So that's another thing. That's difficult when you're looking locally cause important partners are going to leave the firm all the time. They're going to leave their flaw farm.
That's just how the business works, partners leave and they come and they go and. You know enough a law firm. If you tell a law firm an important partner just left, they're going to know what's going to happen with you as well. Sometimes people say things like I would like to do more sophisticated work.
That's a great reason. I'm I actually liked that one and that's one of my favorite ones. But if you say you want to do more sophisticated work and they ask you what type of work you're doing the type of answers you get. And I gave this reason when I was looking as a junior associate things like, a first year or second year associates saying, I want to do trials, or I want to do more depositions and hearings.
And that basically what you're saying is I'm a diva and I'm difficult to manage. And and and and and that's [00:48:00] not good. You're trying to corporate churn. You want to work on the cage. Larger litigations and things that aren't necessarily consumer facing and sting, that's probably a good thing, but a law firm doesn't need divas.
If they have a small litigation matter, they're paying you a salary, they need people to work on it. And and so if you're interviewing with the firm and you say things like that they're not gonna like that. They're going to say this person's out of the running talking about the sophistication of the work you want is really going to separate you from the crowd in a way that makes you someone that shows you're difficult to manage.
And if the firm knows that it's, unless they give you a continuous flow of great work, you're going to be interviewing with our competitors across town and complaining about them. They're not going to like that. The firms asking themselves, what about teamwork? What about personal relationships?
These are all things by the way that law firms ask when you're interviewing locally, this is the problem. They don't ask these questions as much. When you're looking across time, when you're looking across the state or you're looking at another market, they're more concerned about, asking more pleasant [00:49:00] questions and you don't have to ask these type of questions when you're looking locally.
When you're looking not, when you're looking, when you're, moving markets so another thing that people will say is there's not enough opportunity. That's another huge minefield. It means basically one thing to the firms interviewing you. You're not good enough to advance and the, from your end, they you're not making the cut there that.
You're not rising fast enough. And there may be multiple reasons. You're not enough business. Can't work hard enough for some other reason, but the fact is if you're good enough and you're providing more value, way more value than the law firm can possibly find in the market or anywhere else then then you're going to do well.
Anybody can be a partner at any law firm. There is no law firm is completely close to partners. If you're smart enough, if you're hard working enough, if you bring in enough business where whatever it takes every law firm has a you can be part of you can, anybody can be an Olympic athlete that works hard enough and has the abilities.
Anybody can, you can do anything. If you, [00:50:00] if your goal is to be a billionaire, you can probably do that too. I met a guy that wanted to be a billionaire once and a. And I didn't think he was smart enough and he became one. It's just, it's it. Anything you want you, if you apply yourself and you want to do something you can do it.
So opportunity is a good one. And certainly certain opportunities are difficult, but, if you start talking about that, there's no opportunity at your firm. And, but you think there's going to be opportunity elsewhere and that's going to come across as something that doesn't look good.
You need to be on the right side of people. You need to look indispensable and everything. So when you talk about a lack of opportunity, what you're saying is that you expect to be made a partner, paid a certain amount of money and started advanced a certain way you're going to leave.
And that may mean you don't have the commitment and so forth. And then another thing people will say some times is I'm evaluating my options and feels a good time to look around. And that's also a very common kind of open statement. And this means very little and is often a sign that something else is wrong.
Before [00:51:00] you start talking about evaluating your options you have to realize that what you're saying is you may have been asked to leave.
You're not doing well. And and you could conceivably evaluate your options so you can see what time your next firm law firms don't like that. So you need to be very careful. Another big one that people talk about is morale is low. This is less common, but it's something that I hear a lot of times I hear that about it at firms that have been around a hundred plus years are the most prestigious firms in the country at the largest firms in the country.
And all this means is when you see morale as low as you're just not on the right side of management. And instead you're someone that kind of follows group think within the law firm and will not support the law firm through thick and thin. Really instead of making when this happens
And if they hire you, dads are going to be your Zack sort of person. That's also going to be problematical with them as well and not part of their team. Another thing that people talk about a lot is that the commute is difficult. And that's a fair thing.
Or now they're talking about the fact that the firm's not letting them work at home. But the point is that when you take a job your job needs to take precedence and if you say the commute is too difficult, people are going to [00:52:00] ask why did you move someplace where the commute was difficult?
Or why aren't you relocating to be closer to the office? Shouldn't your job come first. And employers expect you to put your self first. So when you put them first, so if we talk about your community, you're going to raise a Pandora's box of all these criticisms. And each of these are valid reasons for relocating by the way.
But they're often, not as useful in your current market and they're going to, they're going to penalize you because then when you're looking in one market and not others, and only looking at your existing market, Law firms are looking for reasons that you could be trouble.
And these are all reasons that they see because in their experience and their, and they have every right to think this, and I'm telling you this because it's true. In most cases, when they hire an attorney from their existing market that attorney will end up having some sort of hidden problems.
And they're buying someone else's problems because people will not leave. Unless they're having issues with their current farm or many times, if they're moving to a much more [00:53:00] prestigious firm that gives the firms a good reason to hire them. But many times they leave for the wrong reasons. And they're just a problem that happens with the next firm and law firms are just trying to run a business.
They're trying to get through life just like you are and run good businesses and be successful and do all the things you are. So they have to protect themselves and you have to look at things from their point. So just in conclusion, and then what I'll do is I'll take a quick break and answer some questions.
But as a legal recruiter and, in this place in business one of the things that makes me very sad, that I see are attorneys that remain tied to a market when there's no opportunities in that market or there's very few opportunities in that market, or they're going to go on interviews and not get every job today they interviewed for, because they give the wrong answers to questions and they just don't look like a good person to the firms.
And so you really do need to, to broaden your horizons by applying to more firms. Again, I don't care where you went to law school. I don't care where you know, what your background is. In closing, I'll tell you one quick [00:54:00] story that, that is funny. I used to run this business and I don't know why I'm not running anymore because it was such a helpful business, but but it was called legal authority and and the website's still up, but.
Not really offering the service anymore because there's a bunch of reasons. But but the point is that what this business would do is people would contact it and we would send out letters and redo the person's resume and then send out letters to all the firms in a given city that someone wanted to work at.
And all of these law schools around the country, people started using it to find jobs. They would use it. And and I'm not offering the service now, so I'm not trying to sell it, but basically what the firm would do is if you said, I want to be an entertainment attorney in LA, the law firm, the service would research and it would send you letters and mail out to the 500 law firms in Los Angeles that do entertainment law.
And and you would do that. Or, and then it would send to the best firms or the smallest firms or the biggest firms or whatever kind of search you wanted to do. And and the thing is I got all these people would do this. And they would get jobs and it was crazy. [00:55:00] You'd