How Do I Overcome The Negatives
[00:00:00] How do I overcome the negatives?
You mentioned as a candidate being a senior attorney, various firms, former of solo practitioner?
My resume is my resume and it's not like I can erase 16 years of my career.
A lot of the things that I've talked about here are things that law firms that are experienced in hiring will pick up on, reject you for. So, one of the ways that I recommend that all attorneys try to get jobs is to find newer firms that are being started to find people that aren't as experienced in running firms.
Firms that are fast-growing can't hire people fast enough and may not have the ability to pay as much or may not have the brand yet. So what happens is law firms have been around for a longer period.
They will come up and they'll realize that it's not a good idea for them to hire senior attorneys because they have problems. So, realize that it's not a good idea for them to hire people that have been at various firms because they've had problems. But people like that in the past. And they'll realize that it's not a good idea to hire solo practitioners because they've had problems.
[00:01:00] Those are experienced firms, like firms that have had a lot of bad experiences hiring, and more often than not when a law firm hires people like that, they do have experience. But the thing is young firms do not understand this or people that don't necessarily do not have a lot of leadership experience do not understand this so many times, what will happen is when firms are trying to open a new city, it's very common to hire people from other firms in a lot of times, they'll hire people, even that have been solo practitioners.
I remember when Hogan Lovells came to Los Angeles, which is a long time ago in the 1990s. They hired a solo practitioner to start the office for them. He knew me as healthcare to healthcare backgrounds, some other things, but the point being that law firms when they're new in a market or they're newer, or they don't have as much of a brand they will take a lot of chances that they normally wouldn't.
So your objective is to find firms that will take chances on you. And, in that, it goes for new attorneys too, like it's often much easier for new attorneys to get if you don't have this good of an experience to get jobs in newer firms that may be made up of attorneys with very good qualifications compared to the ones that you may get a job in normally.
[00:02:00]Established firms learn these lessons and then unestablished firms typically don't. So, that's one of the main things do not know about these lessons yet. The larger the firm and the more experienced the firm, the more impossible time you would have got into it with these things.
Like a great from like Gibson, Don, or something like that. It's going to be almost impossible to break into. A smaller firm, that's a startup or a firm that's not as established or a firm that's trying to break into a new type of market. This is another one that could be helpful for you.