Description
How Hiring Through Reasons of Convenience Dampen Chances of Foreign Qualified Attorneys Seeking Work in the US
[00:00:00] Can you speak to looking at different legal markets from an international perspective? i.e. Foreign qualified common law lawyer who wants to work in the US.
A lot of people that are foreign qualified attorneys get on these calls every week. I think that's good to learn about this stuff. But, one thing I'll say is, firms will hire people that are most convenient. What does that mean? That means, that if there are people that do not require visas and sponsorships, in the US legal system, and, have connections, are likely to be hired, first.
Put yourself in the situation. Just put yourself in. Now, this doesn't mean that this isn't always the truth, like right now, for example, a lot of practice areas like corporate are very much in demand and some cases, there's not enough us attorneys to do the work. So, they are hiring people from Australia and Canada and different places.
But, the point is that, if you're a US law firm and someone's applying from a foreign country that requires sponsorship and all this sort of stuff, and there's plenty of talent available in the [00:01:00] U S market, then you're almost always going to be likely to hire the U S attorney, first.
There's no reason for them to hire foreign people. You'd have to put yourself in the shoes of a U S employer. There's so many attorneys in the U S that are under employed, which is part of this talk today that it doesn't make sense for a law firm to hire people that are from a foreign country that needs a visa sponsor. Potentially, couldn't get sponsored longer than it takes to make partner and we'll need to get citizenship. Why would anybody involve them in that unless they didn't have enough applicants or why would any law firm want to get involved? So, you have to offer a hell of a lot more benefits and someone that firm could find on their own, someone else.
Now ,there are certain types of people that do offer more benefits. That could be, you will stay not leave. You have specialized training that a law firm cannot sign elsewhere.
But, generally it's not going to be enough. Can you speak a foreign language? It needs to be something special.[00:02:00]
These are just some things that I should think about when you're looking for candidates or when you're looking at. If you're from a foreign country, you need to be applied for something to US legal employers. And, before you do that, you need to understand what that is.
If you have capital markets experience, helping companies in the UK access US capital markets, and you're in the UK, and want to work in the US. And, the US capital markets, attorneys that can work with its British clients. That's something that could be helpful that they could use, but it needs to be something special.
It's not enough to say, to be from, like, there are a lot of people, Nigeria and China and other places that want to come to the US. It's not enough to be from a foreign country and just got an LLM or something. You have to have very specialized experience the law firms are not going to find.
I remember when I started practicing, my firm would hire a couple LLMs from Harvard Law School every year, at work and it's firm. But, interestingly enough, I think at that time, [00:03:00] there were like a hundred LLMs that were coming out of the program for international attorneys from Harvard law school every year.
And, they would take two from each country. And, the two people that had gotten a job with my law firm were the only people that had been hired out of the entire class by a US law firm. So, that means eight people had come out to get this LLM from Harvard and only two who had gotten jobs in the U S.
What does that mean? It's just not easy. It's not just enough to get an LLM. It's not enough. You have to have very specialized training and people spend an awful lot of money getting these LLMs each year.
It's up to you, if it's worth it, but before you get to know and before you become foreign qualify and try to work in the US, you need to realize that the US is extremely competitive or US attorneys, less educated attorneys to get position.
