Description
Reasons Why People Get Good Jobs While Others Don't
Speaker 1:[00:00:00] Maybe this appears as sour grapes, but looking at who large law firm have hire from my school, I cannot believe how ridiculous their hiring is. Maybe this is the effect of who looks most in demand. I see people who get offers at better firms who I know have no intention of staying in a law firm or the extremely radical political belief about why "corporations are evil" and other types of nonsense. But these people seem to have played the game better than I did regardless. What am I missing here?
Wow. Yeah. I think a lot of times you're right. People will get hired, they have no intention to stay in the firm and they're just playing a game. But you have to remember that a lot of times people say they have no intention to stand at a firm, even if they do. They say that because they're worried about rejection and getting pushed out. So they want to have something to fall back on. They're trying to act like when they fail, they're not committed, because everyone knows how difficult it is.
I know that's not what you may want to hear, but that is one of the way it works. People can have beliefs about why corporations are evil and everyone's entitled to their own beliefs. And certainly there are some evil corporations, but not all corporations are evil. And depends on how you define evil. They're just trying to make money, but they don't always do so in the right [00:01:00] way. It is a game. Many times when law firms are hiring people from law school typically, they're looking at grades, they're looking at undergraduate. Those are the big things, but grades, that's the number one thing.
They're also looking very heavily these days at diversity because law firms usually haven't had a lot of diversity and they're getting a lot of pressure to have diversity. So they want diversity. And diversity can mean lots of different things, but they want that. They're also are going to look undergrad history of achievement, how many times your work history.
I don't know what law school you go to, but grades are typically the number one thing. And then also on geography. An example would be like in LA, if you go to some of these local law schools, like Loyola is a local law school, a very good school, but if you're like in the, top 5% in there the odds are very good you'll get hired by a top firm in LA, maybe not in Chicago or New York, but you'll definitely get hired by a top firm in LA.
Some law firms automatically hire a certain number of people out of local law schools. So that's how it works. So that's just [00:02:00] something to remember. It's nothing really to worry about.
People want people that, that are rare. So grades, there's obviously the better the rare. For this, that's not necessarily rare, but there's only a certain number of local law students. And diversity is by its nature, there's a sense, not dominant. I don't know, that might work. But, diversity is rare in many firms.
If you went to a top 5 or top 10 school, there's not a lot of those people for undergraduates. A work history if you were like say you worked in the president's office, rare work history makes you good. A very impressive former career. And then you also have things like athletics. People might've been college athletes, Olympics, things like that. And then may have some other things like tall, very tall. I don't know if that can help. Very tall, very attractive, whatever. Just attractive, very well-spoken, exceptional. So anything that's rare makes you stick out is going to help.
So that's how people are evaluating people. They're evaluating [00:03:00] them on rare type qualities. And so the more rare your qualities are, the more unique you are, the more demand you can see. So am always amazed when I represent people that have been former athletes what good job they get. People that have the best grades that are at the top of their class at law schools almost always get good grades. People that are diverse, can definitely help.
Having gone to Yales and places like that as an undergraduate can definitely help. Having had a distinguished career before you go to law school can help. Military can help. There are certain firms that really like military people. Being an engineer, massive leader, other important jobs. Those can help. People love athletes. I'm always amazed at how many athletes get hired. I've had like bidding wars practically for athletes.
And then many times just being attractive or very well-spoken and just very enthusiastic. Anything that makes you stick out, good. So people are just hiring for rareness. And so most people, if you look at how things work and why big firms hire, most people don't have the best [00:04:00] grades. Most people are not diversed. Most people do not go to top colleges. Most people did not have a great work history before law school. Most people were not college athletes. Most people are not very tall, very attractive, the well-spoken are exceptional. And most people are not very enthusiastic of all form.
So if you do any of those things, many times you can get a much better job than you otherwise would get. So I'm just trying to give you some of the explanations of why people get good jobs that I've seen in my history and that may be some of the stuff you're missing there. But that can all help. And then sometimes people just turn it on and that's enthusiasm. There are certain people that just go in and they turn it on and they connect and just, get it done. They show up and they're on and they want it. And I think a lot of it just comes down to desire.
And what I was saying earlier is that the people that may be getting these jobs that you don't think should be getting the jobs may actually really want it but may be acting like they don't, in private to other attorneys, or other people in your school. I don't know.
