01.18 - Why You Should Never Use a Legal Recruiter - Do Not Use a Legal Recruiter Until You Read This
[00:00:00] All right. So we'll get started with today's webinar. This webinar is about recruiters which frankly, I it's not gonna really be a sales webinar. It's going to be more I'm not trying to sell you anything or really cause it's it's about the topic of it, which I think everyone in the legal profession is concerned about, but at the same time what I do want to talk about today is I will talk about some of the ways you can improve your job search by doing the things that very good recruiters doing.
Also very good people that do legal placement and like what they do very well. And then after I talk about that, I will take a short break and then take some questions about this topic. Just to get started and how I got interested in this topic and the profession that I'm in is, when I was in college, I worked very hard and did the same thing and law school most people on this call and or webinar.
And then I got out of law school and did a photo clerkship and got jobs through confirms. And then, it came down to, when I was switching firms, I started reaching out to talking to legal [00:01:00] recruiters. And my thought was that I would be encountering people that were had, worked at a high level and the practice of law or similarly motivated professional did good work, had a sense of commitment and so forth because I guess, to make a long story short, I was looking for people that could mentor me and tell me what I should do.
If you're at affirm and you're unhappy, then you know, you need to understand, what the alternatives are with different firms or and so forth. What's most appropriate for me what kind of things I need to do with my career and all those sorts of questions that you may be having about yourself right now if you're watching this and and I was wrong the people that I was encountering when I started making all these phone calls, we're often not attorneys, but most of them didn't even understand what I did for a living or very much about the legal market and at the time they also had access to very few jobs.
And also didn't know about all the jobs that were out there, or really much about most of the firms or the firms that would be [00:02:00] appropriate or any of that information. Any of the stuff that I believe could have helped me in my career and because of that, I was discouraged.
I was discouraged because I felt like there was no one out there that could show me let me just get this working on this mouse here. We keep having this problem every week. But there was no one out there that could really show me what I should be doing. One second. Okay, here we go.
And that was problem. It was a problem for me. And the other thing that I didn't like was when I would receive an interview, it just became a real sell job. Like you need to take this interview. And and then, the same thing with offers and so forth. And and I realized that the industry at the time was more made up of salespeople than anything.
And I was disappointed and disillusioned and and I wondered, how could this type of person be responsible for my career at the time? Which is, 20 plus years ago the people that were recruiters typically were people that had issues practicing law.
They weren't they they quit because they didn't like it, or they they couldn't pass [00:03:00] the bar or they got fired or, those sorts of things that were attorneys, but a lot of people weren't attorneys. And and I really was realizing that there was no one in the legal field that could provide guidance to attorneys that were looking for new positions and really tell them what to do.
And then I started going out on interviews and I started seeing I got very curious and I started seeing the work product of recruiters, which had a lot of misspellings problems with formatting. And a lot of it appear to be cut and pasted from other documents. When you would call the recruiters, most of your stuff will go to voicemail.
And the recruiter, often would call back one or two days later so you can never really get through to people. And and I felt, and this was the way the entire industry was, and it still is to a great extent. I was angry and and I felt that attorneys really deserved something better and more substantial when they were looking for positions.
And I felt that they deserved almost the same sort of quality, if not better than than, lawyers, the good lawyers would do for their clients. And I felt like, how could you come so [00:04:00] far and do so much in your career when, and then you get to this level and you rely on people to try to help you and give you information that don't necessarily know what they're doing.
And and it made me angry. And and so I was looking for legal jobs and and it was getting offers and I actually became much more interested in this problem of what was going on in the legal profession than than anything else. That was the most important became the most important thing to me because I believe that, if anybody's gone very far in their life, those are the case with lots of attorneys.
In my case, I, grew up in outside Detroit and not the greatest circumstances and and it was a big deal to me becoming an attorney. And and I really. Wanted to work with people that you give me a lot of options and could show me the way to make better decisions or understand me and so forth.
And even to this day, that's a point that, that motivates me greatly. If you can see on our side of the articles, we've gone in the, or I've done in the, in these videos like I'm doing right now. And and other [00:05:00] things, it's a real passion and candidates that work with us.
We provide them a lot of options because we want them to understand that we've got their back and are really trying to help them. And the idea is, you're, you matter your career matters finding positions for you matter and your future matters, all this stuff is extremely important.
Yeah. And it's something that you know, that I've dedicated my life to. And so that's what I've learned and and so I've been, in this role of managing legal job sites companies that get attorneys business and and and, managing I've hired probably hundreds of recruiters to work with us and our and train them.
And but there's a big difference between what a legal recruiter is an illegal placement professional. And and it's important for you to understand because this is really what we do at BCG. We're a legal placement firm, not a recruiting firm. And and it's a much different type of profession.
And so there is a role for recruiters. Recruiters are awesome. The right [00:06:00] recruiter can make a huge difference in your career and your life but sorry, legal placement, people like us. And it's important to understand what the difference is a recruiter isn't necessarily required to have a lot of depth to the work that they do or to understand them particularly well, if they would work, they get a job assignment or put a certain type of candidate and a placement is a little bit different and this is what I'm going to discuss, and I'm going to discuss how we work as a legal placement firm and and how that whole process works.
And so you can have a better understanding of everything and and it's just, there's a huge difference when you start looking for a job and you're, we're working with people in terms of how you can get a job. And so that's what I want to talk to you about but the main thing for you to understand is that almost everyone that you're understanding or that you're seeing in the legal community, that is holding themselves out with legal jobs, as a recruiter and not a legal place for professional.
And then understanding that difference. Able to make the distinction is [00:07:00] really what this is about today and and your career and your life what the happiness you find and everything can often be determined by whether or not you're using a legal place for professional or a recruiter to help you in your job search.
And I've seen one of the reasons I take this so seriously is I've seen a lot of people have fail and in their careers got nowhere because they've made a decision at the wrong time to work with the wrong person or company, or when they're searching for a job.
And there's a huge difference which I'll talk to you about today. So the first thing is, what happens when you work with a recruiter? Most recruiters are difficult to reach and that's not because they're bad people. It's just because that's the way that most, recruiting firms work, they will work with a limited number of candidates.
They'll have a limited number of jobs. And and they'll often you'll call them and they'll they may have a couple of, certain contacts and they'll submit you to those contacts and and if something happens great, if it doesn't, but if you're relying on [00:08:00] that method to get a job, it's often can be very frustrating unless you're an outstanding candidate that, it was the best fit for any job you're applying to.
So a lot of people when they contact recruiting firms, they don't get a response or a, the response they get from the recruiting firm is very negative. And and they're made to feel like they're not important, or they're not sent a lot of positions or the person they're talking to wants to get off the phone.
That can give you the, kind of the impression that, there's something wrong with you. And and often you may feel like you're not getting traction and with a recruiter and a lot of people will only search for a job through a recruiter. And and so if the recruiter can't get them anything they get very frustrated and they feel like they're doing something wrong and that maybe even they should give up on being attorneys.
And and it is unfortunate, as I say, been witnessed to, lots of people being very frustrated in the past not getting jobs. And of course, that's just part of the business and it depends many cases in here working with, I've seen very talented attorneys from big [00:09:00] firms and big schools and the best schools giving up practicing law and doing things like working in home Depot or as bar tenders teachers and junior high schools and other things because they couldn't get a job and they contacted a recruiter, they may be in a big city in a certain practice area and they contacted a recruiter and the recruiter said, I don't have anything for you, or tried a few openings for them.
And that's all the recruiter had. And then the person gave up practicing law, which is absolutely insane, which I'll talk about in a few minutes. And that's what can happen when you use recruiters? I even saw a, not too long ago, a former associate from a major, from become a long haul truck driver, then none of this is to say that.
It's the fault of the recruiter or the fault with the candidate. And certainly people have different preferences for the kind of work that they do. And people can have psychological issues and so forth. But the problem many times with recruiters is recruiters. Unless it's a decent sized company and our company, for example, has president over 200 employees that are [00:10:00] researching, hoping it's and so forth, and unless is a decent size opening or decent size firm like that, the odds are, they're not going to have a lot of openings and they're not going to have a lot of places they can send you.
So what happens is, if you're working with someone without a lot of contacts or resources to market you to a lot of places and so forth, you may conclude that there's nothing out there. And and then, and then go in house or quit the practice, Alara take some other direction in your career and I'm telling you th the market now is very good, but the market always isn't cut.
And when the market's not good, this happens to a lot of people they give up and they say, oh, I'm a recovering attorney and everything, when really what the case is that they couldn't they had a very difficult time finding a position. And it's very important that you understand that that, 10, depending on who you work with is going to determine how effective your job search is.
Attorneys. If you work with a recruiter you know that you may leave the practice law. You may develop some serious self esteem issues. You [00:11:00] you may remain a positions. You don't like email may fail to discover opportunities that could benefit you. And lots of other things.
I've been in this business for so long, but I can tell you that, it used to be, for example, that, if you wanted to buy a house in the city, you had to go see a real estate agent and you had to rely on the real estate agent to tell you about the openings. And you would go to one real estate agent and one real Istation might have, give you three openings.
You might go to another and they might give you 20. But if you went to the one that had three or maybe one open and you might conclude, there was nothing good for sale. And so it's kinda like that with with recruiters, like some recruiters may only have a few openings and some of them, may have a lot, but there's no there's no central clearinghouse of positions or anything.
And that's something that we've developed at our company at lacrosse and BCG, but there's no, for the most part, depending on who you go to, if you go to a large firm or a small firm or a placement firm, as opposed to recruiting firm, you may conclude that there's not a lot of openings for you out there.
[00:12:00] And there's openings for people to have different types of cloth, different types of backgrounds. If you're a consumer facing type of attorney, meaning you'd might do consumer bankruptcy, for example there's going to be lots of firms for you, but some recruiters may only work with people from major firms and, so you get a, it's hard to get a sense of.
What your marketability is when you talk to people there's different geographic areas all over the country. There's certain markets like Wisconsin's and OBS are very good market, but there's probably, less than a very few recruiters that work there. So it just depends on what you're the recruiter you have, working with has the regions they work with the number of firms that work with their research, their mindset and more, and that can make a big difference if you work with a recruiter.
If you're in Los Angeles, for example, or a major city, there's literally thousands of firms that our company has thousands in major cities and most states there's several hundred firms. And but the problem is what, the way the recruiting market works [00:13:00] is recruiters may only work with a few firms at one time.
So they may work with 10 firms. They may work with 20 firms. And so that'll give you a limited sense of what's going on unless you're doing, working with the placement. So an example is I, recently smoked, spoke with a term. That was in Sacramento and he lived in San Diego and he was coming in each weekend because he didn't believe that there were any jobs in San Diego because he'd been working with recruiters there.
I told him there were no jobs. So he literally had been spending, a good portion, for. His child's life, commuting back and forth within one month of talking to me, find a new firm. And so the problem is, lot of the knowledge gap, like not understanding what you don't know, not understanding the opportunities that are out there.
And and it can happen many times when you're not open, when you're not actually actively out there seeking information and trying to find more openings and or firms that will hire you, even if they don't have openings. So it's important to understand, I think what recruiting is and what recruiters do.
And there again, I have nothing.[00:14:00] I think it's a great profession. I don't have anything against it. I'm not, this is not to be critical and attack cutters. Cause I I think there's definitely a, there's nothing wrong with the business, but what's wrong with that is when you approach recruiters relying on them to get you positions when many times that's not appropriate, it is when you approach a placement firm, for example, but to rely on them, but not necessarily recruiting.
Because the recruiter does something different. And historically, they've recruited for a few jobs. Generally it's for the big firms because the big firms all use recruiters and and they're typically jobs that most people know about. And the recruiter doesn't need to understand the market.
They don't need to understand the difference between, whatever it is you do. There's all sorts of commercial lists and so forth where they can get access to the jobs of the top 50 firms and things. And and and all they need to do is understand what your practice area is and and how to, target people and tell them about that job.
And there's not really much else they [00:15:00] need to understand. You don't need to be an attorney to be a recruiter. You don't need to have any special skills really. You need to be able to send emails and call people, but but you just need to be able to find people that match the job you're recruiting for.
And there's nothing, again, that's a role in the firms needed. And and if you're targeted and it's a better job for you, there's nothing wrong with a recruiter helping you with that. It's not and they may be the one that gets you off the fence to apply. So there's nothing they're serving a purpose and I don't have any thing critical to say about recruiter, critters, but what they are doing is they're recruiting.
When you get a phone call or when you get an email from a recruiter about a specific job, they typically know about that job and they'll know something about it. And and their job is to try to attract applicants. And so they're just doing their job and there's nothing, again, nothing wrong with that.
And then you can send the recruiter, your resume, and what they'll do is they'll do the best to get you in front of the firm they may call up the firm and chat with them. They may just send the resume, they may write a letter, there's all sorts of different [00:16:00] things. So this is pretty much how recruiting has worked forever.
I would say when I say forever, I've known I've been at this business long enough that I've met pretty much the. Legal recruiters in the United States and spent a lot of time with them and and learned, and it's it's having the ability to contact people and so forth and tell them about the job.
So it's not necessarily meaning it's a good way for you to get a job all the time, but it's recurrent, it's recruiting and again, there's nothing it all wrong with it. And it's just what it is. And the problem with that is though, is that because you're being sold something meaning you're being, someone's going to try to tell you about a job The recruiter has no there's no, they're not really equipped to advise you it's, it's your job to make a decision.
If that's the best for you, it's your job to make the decision. If there's other options for you, it's your option to, your job to learn more about the firm of what's going on. They may, the recruiter may have some good talking points, but in most cases the recruiter doesn't know what they're doing, nor do they have to, it's [00:17:00] not necessarily a requirement for recruiting.
There are basically your, your job, their job is to try to, get you, out of your seat and into an interview and prepare you for the interview, hopefully and get you the job that they're recruiting for. And in the old days, a lot of recruiters would send people's resumes to every firm in the city.
I long ago, over 20 years ago, I met a recruiter that, had every top 50 law firm program to automatically send a resume through a fact could be used to some things to their faxes in the city. Now that's not something that happens anymore. Of course.
And the profession definitely has cleaned up, but if you aren't careful recruiter, may try to, send your resume to a lot of places that that they shouldn't be. And and then without your authorization mean, of course it'd BCG.
Like everyone has to authorize the firms and so forth online and with us in our database. But so this is how a lot of recruiting firm or work, a lot of them work. They still, a lot of them still work that way. Most recruiters don't do that, [00:18:00] but it can happen.
When you trust your career to someone who's trying to sell, as opposed to finding the right the right firms. And and this is not, again, this is, you could say the same statement about car salesman. You could say it about real estate agents. So I'm not, again, trying to, any type of sales position generally.
You could make the statement, but a lot of people in the industry can be a manipulative dishonest, and really looking out mainly for themselves and their motivation can be at odds with your career. And and so I've seen a lot of different types of people in the industry.
I haven't hired them, but I, of course I run across and I've been doing this a long time. There's people that are, minimum wage type people that are used to make phone calls. There's a car and appliance salesman there's attorneys with, or without good pedigrees. But it doesn't really matter.
What matters is that the person his skill that get in your resume and hopefully can fill jobs and. And and and that's the skill and the majority of them even when [00:19:00] there's people aren't working at home have always worked at home.
And a lot of them really do enjoy having a lot of flexibility, meaning they're not accountable to people for their time. Some of them don't have a lot of interest in what they're doing. And and a lot of them are attorneys that may have gone to good law schools and worked in big firms.
And believe that they're entitled to respect based on that not necessarily the recruiting skill and and they will, tell you about their past all the time and so forth, and that's fine. There's people have a right to be proud of the things that they've done.
But the point is that, the job is really more, in my opinion about advancing careers and a lot of attorneys are people that are, we're not necessarily good at practicing. And only pursued it because it looked like an easier job or it might've given them more flexibility and titled them to be respected based on their backgrounds and things that they've done in the past and hopefully make made a good income.
And that's one of the problems. And my [00:20:00] opinion with the industry is that a lot of people that are doing the work are people that can't do they always say that people that can't do teach people like, I don't know, but it's a lot of people that do it are aimless and and looking for something that offers the alert, easy money free time respect for the past achievements and so forth.
And again, there's nothing wrong with any of that. There's definitely, everyone needs to find a profession that, that matches their interests, but these aren't necessarily people that have not succeeded at something isn't always the best path to put your career.
And it's just something to be careful about a lot of them are that don't mean, Kind of line of basically the placement and most of them it's a sales type position. So they're interested in commissions and that's the most important thing.
And and a lot of times what happens in this industry is, we go through ups and downs. And when I personally our company always does well because of the kind of work that we do. But at the same time, a lot of [00:21:00] placement firms or recruiting firms will basically go out of business when the economy slows down and then they'll start up when it does, and recruiters will start doing other things when the economy slows down and then they'll start, they'll go back when it does.
And it's a sales job and and there's nothing wrong with that again. And th the typical model for almost all recruiters in the country is they target attorneys based on the largest law firms with the best pedigrees and and then call and try to find resumes and network with those people, and then apply them to positions.
That the, pretty much, most people know about it, large law firms and and they can make placements very well. There's tricks and things you can use to get people to go on interviews there's tricks, that I've heard about for other things.
And that's and some recruiters have big personalities and, push people that don't have big nurse now is in and doing things. I don't see it that often, but I've heard about line and so forth. And and I've, I, it can be a dirty world and it's a dirty world because[00:22:00] in, in a market where where people are, we're individuals are, not making a lot of placements and where they have to rely on their sales abilities and ability to manipulate people and so forth.
It can be and there's still a lot of money often at stake. It can turn into kind of a nasty thing. I remember working with a candidate not too long ago. That had gotten an offer at affirm in Seattle through another recruiter, not myself. And and I just got into an interview at his dream for him in a, in Chicago.
The firm in Chicago was going to bring them back for a second interview. And and then but he was senior and heading the business and he was a little nervous cause he thinks we go out of the way, but he had grown up in Chicago. His wife worked there and he had three children, but he was unemployed and had been for months and he really needed a position and he called me in a panic and he said, his recruiter told him that the firm in Seattle was going to draw his offer.
We didn't accept it that day. And the recruiter was upset and he didn't accept it immediately. And what should you do? And so my advice to him, given the uncertainty of it was that he [00:23:00] should accept it. And and I told him that he should confirm it with a firm that he actually didn't need to respond by 5:00 PM.
And just explain that he might have a little bit more time just to discuss the situation with his wife and told the recruiter he was going to call to confirm things with the critter, urge him not to instead everyone was on pins and needles and they didn't accept right away and told them they didn't have any time for any more interviews and the form needed to start right away, or that firm will make an offer to another candidate.
So he accepted the offer. A few weeks later he was living in Seattle and he was a loner unhappy at the firm. His family moved out several months later and it wasn't a good situation. And he found out weeks of within weeks of. Average starting there that the firm never had a deadline and he'd been manipulated and you accepted the offer.
So he's things happen. It's not I, we don't play those games at our company, but certainly I've seen a lot of things like that. And I hear about things like that all the time. And and I, again, I don't know, he would have gotten the job history and job in Chicago.
The firms certainly watching him in a rush to re-interview him, but,[00:24:00] he might have, and and I see things like this a lot. And so you just have to be careful because w the recruiter is like they have an incentive to try to get you to accept jobs and and legal recruiters, tend to be very focused on job borders, the way it works as a affirm, there's lists that come out that are emailed out from services of large law firm jobs to recruiters, and then, but they basically are getting the jobs from the law firm websites and and from the largest law firms.
And then the number critters will in, in big cities, like if you're in a big city, you'll probably get several calls about the same job. And so that recruiters recruit on job orders. And once I have a job where they just start calling and doing whatever they can to attract resumes and And that's just kinda how it works.
And most recruiters, it's not, they're not placement firms, they're recruiters. And so they're recruiting for specific jobs and and they're not they're pretty much uninterested in people calling them on the phone or attorneys emailing them a resume it's out of the blue.
[00:25:00] They their mind, whole mindset is about job orders and specific jobs. And which is fine. That's just how the business works. Let's see here. And and then law firms typically think that recruiters are very pushy. They a lot of times that recruiters can call the firms and they can be very aggressive.
They law firms get annoyed by recruiters. They the whole role of recruiting coordinator, it's funny, but the reason that role is there is that the recruiters used to be talking to the hiring partners in the law firms and so forth. And the hiring partners didn't like that.
They didn't like it for a lot of reasons because took a lot of time and so forth away from billable work. But also what the firms noticed is that the hiring partners would always get recruited away by the murders. So they so they stopped that process and and firms can be often manipulated by recruiters as well.
And many times the resumes, they just receive resumes. There's no information and and so forth. So they, they don't provide a lot of information and it's more of a salesperson job and and that's finding a product, presenting it and and not a lot of interest [00:26:00] it's again when you're like a auto salesman, like what happens in the auto sales world is, salespeople typically move around between the models that are selling the best.
When again, I'm from Detroit. When when Japanese cars started getting very popular, all the people that were selling Chevrolets went over to try it on Honda. And, it was just kinda like that way. But salespeople will move around and recruiters will, most of them, some of them do, most of them do not specialize.
So just going after what is hot and trying to get commissions and that's just how the business works and and and again, it's not really, it's just something to understand. It's how it works. It's a it's a difficult profession and and and then this, for candidates in a lot of cases and and a lot of people do not like working in recruiting firms and.
Recruiters often have non-compete agreements and, expected to increase quotas and do all sorts of things to stay hungry and under the firm's control. And it's just I don't know how much talk about it, but it's a very competitive industry and and other recruiters are always trying to [00:27:00] destroy the credibility of other recruiters and recruiting firms.
And and if you are a candidate and you're working with one recruiting firm and you tell them about another Curting firm that you're working with they always have ways to say negative things. And and there's a lot of movement in the, the industry. There tends not to be a lot of loyalty to recruiting firms.
The reason is because for recruiters, they they're basically, trying to get the highest commissions and and so forth and where, they can get them the most candidates and so forth. And so they, we'll leave very often and and there's just a lot of dirt and so forth and history, and it's not there's a lot of unpleasant things about it and.
And that's one recent, a lot of times recruiters have a bad reputation and in many cases, not in all, it depends on, what you're looking for, if you are looking for at a specific job than a recruiter with that job and information about that job with a good relationship with a firm can often be a very good thing to use.
But it often can be [00:28:00] very dangerous if you're doing a full on job search through a recruiter. And because of the fact that one of the things is that the recruiters often only know about a few jobs without a lot. A recruiter can get an attorney's resume. It often your experience may be very similar to this.
The recruiter will send your resume to a few firms. We'll never follow up. You'll never hear from them again. And and that happens all the time. It's very common in the industry for for people to get a call from a recruiter or talk to a recruiter and then never hear from the recruiter again.
And this is just, for your information why it happens many times just the recruiter, if you don't get interviews right away, The recruiter may assume that you're not marketable. And and they don't have a a very good to understand the legal market or how to migrant attorneys.
I will tell you and and again I learn new stuff in this the every day, but every attorney out there pretty much is marketable to some extent if you're, been disbarred and some other things, or you can't decide on a practice [00:29:00] area and you have, then you're probably not going to be marketable if you have some issues like that, but most attorneys are marketable.
And and, but the problem with most recruiters is they're following a line of like only this person's marketable. Like they have to have a top school, or they have to have a top firm, or they have to be one to some, so many years. And so they have this kind of formula they follow. And anytime you find someone following a formula like that, it's assigned that they probably don't know what they're doing.
If you have access to the jobs and the research and the market, then and you look at a kind of the way I do it's then in our people, in our company do, then you. Then there's an incredible amount of opportunity out there. And when I say incredible, I'm talking about, there are tens of thousands of law firms in the United States.
And out of that information, there's so much you can learn about, hiring and needs and things. If you really put your head down. And and so that's one of the things, but I'll talk more about that a little bit. But a lot of recruiters again, they're salespeople and and it's, again, there's salespeople in every industry, if the recruiter thinks that you're not [00:30:00] marketable or that a couple of firms are not interested in you, then they may, reach a conclusion.
No, one's interested in you. So again if I look at a candidate, like I see in a market like Los Angeles, at least 5,000 potential opportunities, most recruiters, and I'm not saying this in a bad way, but if they only work with, 50 firms and there's only three openings may only see 3000 opportunities.
So there's always going to be a lot of way, different ways of looking at your candidacy. And and a lot of times recruiters will believe that that they, if they submit you and you don't get any interest and they may not even want to tell you that so they may be embarrassed and not respond to you or and they may not realize that there's a lot of places that could be interested in you.
I had a anyway it's very interesting. The other thing is that a lot of times recruiters are more focused on job orders, not candidates. There's, they may be from centric and just focused on jobs, or they may be candidate centric and focused on candidates, but a lot of recruiters will jump from job board of a job order and yeah.
And so they only want to work on job [00:31:00] orders that look like the best. And and they will the, and they'll put their their efforts and the things that are going to rely on the fastest commissions, which is how any market works and that's fine. But they will view candidate calls, job inquiries, and so forth, the things that are going to distract them from working on job orders.
So it's not necessarily you, it's just the way the market works and and and so the average recruiter may not understand, what to do with certain candidates are outside their kind of universe. And the other thing is recruiters tend to have a bad reputation and just like salespeople do doing a lot of industries because th they're just doing what they can to make placements.
And they may tell law firms and candidates, whatever they think will advance the ball. They may not say certain things. They can play all sorts of tricks to get what they want. They may, again try to manipulate you into taking offers. They may give you the impression before they submit your resume that The firm is definitely going to interview and and they learn these tricks and it's just because [00:32:00] they're trying to survive, but at the same time there's not a lot of substance, so there's there's more flash than substance.
And so they're perfecting these tricks and sales pitches where they could actually, if they put their time into research in the market and so forth would often be much better off recruiters, are often about is about, getting a job order.
And then finding people that the law firm could interview many times, if you get a job ordering a recruiting firm, you're expected to contact 50 to a hundred people for each job order. And. And a lot of times they'll break up the firms now in a given city.
So certain people are responsible, certain firms and and then what'll happen is if you contact that recruiting firm about a job, the only jobs that recruiting firm will tell you about are ones that the firms they personally represented, maybe not other people in their office, which can make it difficult.
You might only be made aware of 10 firms in a given city or something. And so again, none of this is bad. It's only bad if you're relying on the recruiter to get you a job and and having a laser [00:33:00] focus on certain jobs is good for law firms.
And it's good. For law firms, to have, of course it is to have people that are trying to get people in there that they need to work. And that can be to your advantage if you're only interested in a certain farm or certain jobs but in my opinion, and this is how I operate I do believe that as a in terms of what I do it's important to allow people to know about the folks that, of the market and their marketability, so you can make the best decisions.
It's many times what happens is it's like going out on one date and getting married. It doesn't make sense. You should know what the market's like out there. And and many times hiring the average recruiters, like hiring a contingency litigator taking down a contingency case and hoping to settle it with a phone call, demanding money from the other side without ever filing a lawsuit, writing a letter or doing the work necessary.
So that comes into it again when a quick settlement but at sound likely. Most cases, they need to file a lawsuit litigate and stick it out, go to trial and nothing's easy. And [00:34:00] and neither is getting most attorneys the sorts of jobs that they want. To do this business, right?
If you're looking for a position it's actually a lot of work and and you should be exposed to, in my opinion the, all the potential opportunities there are for you in the market. And that means places that have jobs now have probably had jobs in the past. If they like to interview people like you, it means understanding the firms that are the best in your end, in your practice area.
It means understanding your strengths and research and and a lot of different types of work because understanding your marketability and and so forth is important. I I've had, different experiences, but it's I was talking to this it's funny.
I was at a reunion not too long ago, and I was talking to this guy that grew up in the in the same, a smaller town I did, in Michigan and. And he was telling me that there, that that he was depressed because he was saying, he's not it was very difficult for him to meet girls after getting divorced and everything.
And I was like, this is just absolutely [00:35:00] crazy because he's a very wealthy developer, a good looking guy all sorts of stuff. And and if you were in a bigger market he wouldn't have that problem. Or he would be more aware of what's going on. And he is, of course never tried dating sites and all that sort of stuff.
If you're marketing yourself to a larger group of people you're going to know your marketability and it's going to change your life and your career. I've gotten many people jobs it's taken years to get certain people jobs just by checking in with them, week after week.
And and in, in the, in this business can take a long time to get someone at the right job for them. And you may need to look at a lot of people and then you may need to look at people again, there's this, or look at firms again, there's a concept called the movement breaks.
What that is, at any point in time, the trades in one place. And I could approach a law firm on a a Tuesday and ask them about a candidate and they may say no, thanks. And then I could approach them the following Tuesday. And they could say, you know what I thought about it?
Yes. Or I could approach it three months later. I thought about it. Yes. And the other thing that happens that we [00:36:00] have at our company too, is that all the time a law firm will say, no, we're not interested in someone and then weeks or months later because we keep making them aware that the person's interested they'll come back and they'll say yes.
So there's a lot to this business. And it's exciting. So now I'm going to talk about my favorite topic, which is legal placement as soon as from legal recruiting. And I did not enjoy the recruiting part of the webinar just because I don't like saying there's no sense really talking negatively about a profession.
But there are some negative things about about it. Legal placement is much different and that's what we do at BCG. It's a much different mindset and it's a legal placement, a company like ours does with mixed placements of people and suitable positions. And we're not necessarily recruiting for job orders.
I use the, at our company, we use the entire market as a guide, as opposed to individual opening or cluster. And it opens up firms, we use data science, we use over 20 years of openings, we use openings the [00:37:00] history of openings to understand which firms have needs. Where there's openings.
That's gonna suit someone's interests. The firms that are most likely to hire someone and a place for professional art is going to ask, which firms have ongoing needs. And and what and is interested in this type of attorney. Whereas the recruiter is going to ask, whose resume do I need to get to, to send to a certain firm for a job.
And that's a big difference. It's not and again they're both find ways of getting, filling openings, but they're different ways. One is more candidate centric and the other is more law firm centric and the placement attorney position, the placement professional really needs to look at it.
Lots of markets. I have people that approached me and they might be in a very niche practice area. They might be very senior, they might be very junior and and in order to place them. I will look at all sorts of markets. I can, I, some of my biggest success stories most of my biggest success stories involve.
And when I say biggest success stories, people that just seem [00:38:00] completely unmarketable involve a lot of times multiple markets different size firms all sorts of things. And outside the box, thinking that you normally wouldn't get from a recruiting firm. That means, I can move very senior people from one market to another.
If they have the right skills, I can move very junior people that, big gaps in there. All sorts of things can happen. When you start looking at and multiple markets and it's harder and it takes a lot more work, so it's a lot of work, and but it's different.
And and it requires a lot of commitment. It requires sticking with someone for a long period of time. It requires, constantly we do, if you're a candidate of ours you constantly sending new jobs and new firms and and readjusting and increasing the size of mark, proud of you to look at more markets proud in you, to, be more specific in terms of your practice area.
All sorts of things that are a lot of fun and and it's fun getting people positions that normally would be very [00:39:00] limited in the market. From my standpoint, the placement professional is very committed to the people with whom they work.
Once I accept a candidate, you're part of our, Canada and you're a client, which means the client means someone that's under the care and protection of another. And and our job really is to get the person what do, whatever it takes to find the person a position that they're they're happy with.
And and it's not about one-off jobs. It's about finding a good home for the candidate. If you can believe it. And I probably shouldn't say this, but I will each week I made several placements a week last year. And and out of all the placements I didn't call and try to talk one person that accepted the job.
Typically the people that are getting offers through us every week lots of them are making decisions on their own about what they want to do. Once they get an offer it's not a sales job here. We work for you and it's just different. And and continually we're always sending people, jobs, firms and working with them [00:40:00] until we find businesses that suit them.
I have people. In major markets New York, so forth and and in small markets and, mid-size markets that I work with and some people have been going out on interviews every couple of weeks for a couple of years. And for whatever reason may have not gotten the offers that they want because they need to work on the interviewing skills or sometimes there just wasn't a good match.
And so we're happy to work with people over a long period of time and not drop people because they're not instantly taking the job and and and I in our company, we communicate with our candidates every week. We a big push of what we do is making sure that we're on top of every single job in the market.
So we have a lot of resources that go into that. Actually I have over 200 people supporting me my efforts but but that's finding people, in the right place. And most of the people that I work with are actually actively seeking a new position and not always, sometimes they're what are called passive job seekers, but when people are [00:41:00] working with us, we're always sending them jobs are obviously going to him firms and and realizing that, you're a human being, but needs, wants, and goals.
And and that you need someone that's going to stick with you and help you find what you're looking for. And that's often easier said than done, but that's you know what it's about it's about making sure that, you get exposed to what you want. And th the other thing I just wanted to bring up too, No.
The typical understanding of a recruiter is someone that only works for the best candidates. And that's, again, we work with lots of very good candidates, but at the same time that the market is it's a huge market. Everyone out there deserves to be able to find a position.
And and to the extent, your, your experience in the practice area and you have good background, we can definitely help almost everyone. A legal professional also tends to have a lot of experience in the legal industry and is also attracted to this business for the right reasons.
And it's important because when you're working with people you want. To be able to make your case to law firms. So they need to be able to, be [00:42:00] interested in you and and also understand, about you personally. So they, they want to understand your identity.
They want to understand what makes you tick. And we do things to BCG. Like for example, we give all of our candidates disc tasks to highlight their strengths. We ask a lot of questions and require them. We write in depth letters and do all sorts of things because we we want to make sure that law firms are able to see you as a person when you apply to them, as opposed to just a resume, which is how most things work.
And and that means, having many conversations, it's preparing you for interviews and you have them, it means understanding what it's like to have been in your shoes. And understanding kind of your insecurities and your also your strengths and understanding many times when it makes sense for you to stay at a firm or when it makes sense for you to leave a firm.
And and it's not a sales job. At our company, we make enough placements that it's not. For us, the bigger picture is actually much more important. It's, trying to talk someone into ever taking a job or[00:43:00] an interview and it's not a, it's not a a sales job and in a placement professional the, to really do this job correctly and you, you need to have access to the whole market and understand the whole market.
There's well over 25,000 law firms in the United States, the numbers multiples of that. But these are law firms of a decent size that have positions on an ongoing basis and so forth. And that could be good for you at any time. And and you have to be to understand this business and the candidates you'd have to understand those firms.
You have to know, you have to be getting those aren't firm openings all the time. You have to be keeping track of all these openings. You have to Yeah, no about every single job that's out there. And and this can be make a huge difference between having the ability to get you a job and not, there's so many firms out there with boggle your mind, and there's different types of people that you get jobs from in firms.
So some firms have legal recruiting firms legal recruiting coordinators, other firms have hiring partners, others have COO's others have human resources directors. There's a whole [00:44:00] huge list of people that need to be contacted and monitored and where you can't get that, that, that sort of information normally.
And then you'd have to be able to classify that information. You have to use data science in the background to get that in, to understand that information and and we're very good at it. We started lock crossing.com I believe in 2003. So that's over 20 years ago.
And that's big site for getting legal jobs in the market and a huge source of resources. And and we're able to find a lot of jobs for candidates all the time. And and attorneys are often, daily RMH, because of the number of positions that we have, and it's it's not a job where it's centered a position.
It's more of a a position that we do where we're out there doing research and so forth. And and this can make a big difference for you. So if you're looking for a position. And again, this is something you don't need. No one, you can do a lot of the work that we do on our own, or if you go into a city, but what you need to do is you need to research every from of the markets that you're [00:45:00] interested in and then you need to, see contact them if you can, and you need to understand their practice areas and who's strong and, review various lists and so forth to see who's the strongest and it can make.
And then if you were able to take all that information and see. Candidates that are like you, that have gotten interviews, that those from the past and so forth, it can make a major difference in your career and what happens. And then the other thing about legal placement professionals, they typically will have access to lots of geographic markets.
This means that they will know if you're a candidate at one market, you're probably going to be marketable in different markets. And we'll try to get you to look at multiple markets in your search. And it's very important that the placement professionals you're working with have access to the entire market.
California, for example, it's a huge market. There's tens of thousands of law firms and up and down the, the whole coast and so it's important to know about all the firms there, but it's also important for a recruiter to know about different markets and places you might be interested in leaving a living because[00:46:00] that can make a huge difference.
And and knowing about the openings and the past openings and the firms that are strong and the ones that have interviewed people bike you can be helpful as well. And yeah, so th this stuff can be very helpful and understanding kind of the nuances of what's going on.
And then the technology aspect of the work that we do is also very important. Being able to track down jobs alert you about new jobs. Making matches about with different opportunities and so forth. This is very important. And and then having an historical a list of all those positions and and again, if a recruiter is working from home, they're not going to have that information.
They're not going to have the work th the ability to do the amount of work that is required. I will tell you that the very sophisticated people that you'd chop studied this. And a lot of times when they're in big firms will well look at, sometimes hundreds of firms in their search.
And and they might look at hundreds of firms out of a universe, so they could be looking at a thousands of firms, but they'll often look at hundreds of firms and the ideas [00:47:00] that they want to be able to get the best options for themselves. And and technology is very important. We have a whole team of programmers.
We always had a whole team of programmers. And and so it's important to make sure that your placement firm is getting you out to firms very quickly as well. The reason for that is once a firm has a scheduled interviews for a few candidates they typically will not pay a lot of attention to the resumes that come later also.
Humans are humans, so they will often bond where the first people that walk in the door and then they'll ignore that people that come later. So it's very important when regardless of how you're finding a job that you're always, that you apply early. And because law firms will bond with the people that apply first.
And then the other thing that we do with technology I think is being able to track who's most viable for a given position is a very important thing. So we, all of our positions for the past 20 plus years, we have we keep track of, and and we can see patterns and we know, [00:48:00] certain law firms will hire, litigators in the fall or other firms will, hire, fourth or fifth year corporate attorneys every two years when you just, they just, everything kind of runs in cycles and you can see that.
And again, there's certain firms that will have a set attorneys every two years or and I've done that for a decade. And so we can actually predict the future many times and it works. And what happens in good economies versus bad economies. It's fun. So we have data scientists and stuff that we work with that give us that information.
And then that can help you when you're searching for a position find positions that no one else would know about. And we only really learn about using machine learning and and increasingly artificial intelligence, which is much harder to, understand many times.
And I don't want to explain it, but if a firm is likely to be interested in someone, it gives us a huge competitive advantage, and it gives you a huge, competitive advantage. It means you're going to walk into a place where they need you and and where we know they need you and they may move when we know they need to, before they know they need you, or they've identified it.
[00:49:00] And you can walk into farms and be the only applicant and that can make a huge advantage. And and that's something that, if you're working in this job working with a recruiter isn't necessarily seen, they may know about these kinds of patterns that a few firms, but it's very difficult to do.
Without large scale machine learning and data science. And and also you may often be competing with people with better qualifications and so forth when there is an opening. And so it can be more difficult to get jobs when there's job openings. So these are the stuff that we do and allowing us to understand firms better and give us a lot of insights into the different practice areas and and so forth.
And then this is just a few more quick things then I'll take a quick break and we'll do questions. But one of the things that we do is we try to get an understanding of the market and there are candidates in order to communicate effectively to law firms good work product.
And so we try to prevent the same sort of work product that goes out to, that will go out to that a law firm would produce. We also try to provide a lot of information about people personality profiles and [00:50:00] other things are important to us because it can help get you in the door.
And we try to be very professional with our work product. And we have people in the company that proofread things and so forth and for your resume and look at, make everything look good. And and then constantly we're doing our best to make connections with law firms and and providing them that sort of information as well.
And and not just pitching resumes, but really trying to understand what their needs are. And then again it's about every law firm, so there's a lot, the market out there is huge. And that's one of the biggest things I can leave you with is there's always a lot of people out there and a lot of recruiters will rate the same firms and then do nothing with the others.
But in our position where, or really not rating firms, we're just working with people that are, for certain positions in the market and helping them find positions. And that's what we're doing. And most of our recruiters are very busy.
Simply based on people that have approached [00:51:00] us and in which keeps us occupied with very good attorneys and and and it's not it's not how we operate. One of the ways I like to describe it as it's the difference that you made an attorney and a business cards to people charged with petty crimes and being a partner in analog, big law firm that comes in one of them is going to have different skills than the other.
So the one on the street is not going to be able to provide you the same level of service in most cases. And the partner law firm, who's comfortable and has a lot of people working for them at their disposal and so forth. And most recruiters are more like the person handing out the cards and it's not something you would understand and or should understand, but that's how things work a lot of times.
And. And without rating firms, it gives us the time to look at the more cerebral aspects of the position and then build relationships and so forth. The other thing is that there's, there has to be a lot of interest in the subject matter and you have to love it and not simply be there to make money.
It's it's a lot of recruiters are, when you talk to them, they'll say they liked it because of the money or the. The lifestyle [00:52:00] and so forth, but it's it's the placement it's different. It's almost, it's more, it's a serious, my opinion is practicing law, if not more serious, cause it's people, your candidates, wives that are helping other people.
And you have to spend a lot of time, I think writing articles, studying the market understanding the dynamics. And it's not simply about making placements. It's a profession. And and it's and as a placement professional, I believe the people that work for us should always be working on getting better.
It's not about going to sales seminars and so forth. It's about learning about markets, firms trends and how to find the best opportunities. Our recruiters are very close to the train and our company we call them placement professionals. And everything we do is measured in critique very aggressively and and, and and looked at posts.
And and the goal of this is at a corporate level, we do an incredible job of it with the candidates, but it's making sure that people are accountable to their candidates and the professionals, the whole, and and this is extremely important because you [00:53:00] want, we want to do whatever we can to keep the standards very.
For our candidates and and and it can be it's quite a bit of work and it requires a lot of dedication and and the alignment of goals so forth. It's often I'll just say it, it's very difficult for most recruiters to handle the kind of work that we do.
It's a very demanding and and something we take very seriously. Almost every person we hire No, there's one of hundreds of applicants that we get. And and and we're very concerned about their ability to service people and to come to us. And and it doesn't really, they, most of them are from very good law firms and so forth, but it's very rare that someone comes into our company as well.
That's an experienced recruiter because they've learned that habits. We typically train people. This is about, all I have to say about this. But, and I don't, need to really say much more, but I think that this is a a business that often doesn't have a lot of substance and can [00:54:00] attract the wrong sort of people.
Legal placement is a different type of business. It's more like practicing law. It's more, data-driven about very small details. And and working with people for the long run and it's a long-term view of the business and people and and really trying to get you people the right type of positions as opposed to a different way of looking at it's about research, data, technology, and training.
And and this is what we do. That's really all I have to say about it. I don't know. I was surprised at this webinar came up today. This was based on more of a just an online marketing piece, but I was happy to do it when I saw what it was going to be today.
But one of the things I just would say is a piece of advice when you're looking for a position and is that just really to realize the massive potential that you have. Everything that I've said today is just about, how I think about placement as opposed to recruiting, but the idea is to realize the massive potential you have and not to be discouraged.
If you talk to a recruiter and the recruiter makes you [00:55:00] feel like you don't have a, there's not a lot they can do for you because many times they don't understand. And as a matter of fact, most people almost everyone and the, the recruiting business they understand sections of it, but they don't understand the big picture.
And the big picture is that everyone is needed by a farm somewhere. And and most of the time, the smaller the market, you look at the more opportunities you will have and the more you will be in demand and the larger the market often them, if you have very good qualifications, also the, the more demand you will be, but you have to really realize just how exceptional you are and how exceptional everybody is because You just, can't be in a position where you're not understanding all of the opportunities out there.
And I think probably what motivated me originally to do this piece is just the whole idea that I've seen. So many people get discouraged about their market ability or their, they're trying to go from a small firm to a large firm or they're trying to[00:56:00] do something or another and their in their career.
And and they get discouraged because they talked to the wrong person. And and just realizing that the recruiting is often a sales position where people are just working leads and the leads that they believe are the best and they're often wrong. And and that is not something that you should take personally if people are just following models.
And the more you understand that, the more you'll realize that, you can do a much better many times when you really research any market you go into and get a lot of positions I'm yet to find an attorney. That isn't marketable. Every single attorney I've ever encountered is marketable to a great extent.
Now there's reasons you might not be marketable and reasons you probably should be doing something else, but everyone is marketable. So just don't get use kind of the framework that I'm talking about illegal placement, which means, researching the market and a lot of depth looking at multiple markets highlighting your strengths trying to make a connection with the employer and your whole career.
And the opportunity you have in change is I'll take a quick [00:57:00] break just for two minutes. And then when I come back I'll answer as many questions as everyone has. We do these questions live every week and it's it's a fun par
