What is the BCG Ranking System for Candidates and Firms and How Does it Work
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What is the BCG Ranking System for Candidates and Firms and How Does it Work
[00:00:00] Is it very hard to get a placement if I'm not currently working in a top law firm? If so, how is the market for an experienced trying to get an entry-level, position in a top law firm?
So this is just to understand what we do at BCG.
I can place anyone, any attorney in the country. Anybody can be placed by a good placement agency. Unless you have a criminal record. If you have experience in a law firm, even if you don't, you can be placeable.
But the problem is a top law firm and so there are just different types of people and different people can get different experiences. The way the placement market works, just so you guys can understand, is, we rank candidates at BCG and firms between, 1 to 5 and for firms and candidates and it's based on how Harvard reviews people when they're applying. But, it doesn't matter if this one equals consumer-facing. Meaning, clients are without a lot of money.
The first type of job that people work in would be--
Working for a consumer-facing firm.
So that would be, things like bankruptcy, [00:01:00] personal injury for a small firm, immigration law, things along those lines where they get a bill for $5,000, it's going to be a big deal. Then, attorneys are going to have to chase money. It's not easy. So these types of consumer-facing firms, we make placements in. It costs very little to hire our attorneys, meaning under a thousand dollars. And in most cases, if they pay us monthly or something, that's very inexpensive.
But we place people in consumer-facing firms. Consumer-facing firms do not have a lot of money because their clients don't have a lot of money to spend. The second one would be--
Higher-end consumers with business. It could be like, family law, but maybe a little bit more money at stake. It might be immigration for the company. Integration for companies might have more money it might be some trust in the states for wealthy people, things along those lines.
So these types of clients are budget sensitive. If you send these clients to bill for more than $20,000 a month at a two firm then they're going to probably balk, but you could probably keep the bills here, under a few thousand dollars a month. For your ones, for your twos. They're going to be more [00:02:00] budget sensitive.
You have less access to money. These firms can not afford to pay high salaries, the one-twos, but we place people in them all the time. Why wouldn't we, there's a demand.
When you start getting into 3's, these are typically firms with smaller budgets. So this would be an example, if you have a firm in, Tulsa, Oklahoma, that's working for local businesses.
That's fine. And then they may have people that were ordered the coy at university of Oklahoma law school and everything, and they're good attorneys. These clients typically will have outside counsel. They watch the budgets. If something's under $20,000 a month for our client to probably look at it, but generally it will get paid.
So these clients are sensitive, but not that sensitive. To get a job in one firm, you can go to any law school in the country and get a job there. To get a job in a two firm, they may have a little bit more s sensitivity for the type of firm, but that's fine to get a job in a 3 firm, which would be smart corporations and so forth. They're gonna look at your background to some extent. Once outside counsel starts looking at things, the client's going to be sensitive about the budget.
When you get into 4, clients are [00:03:00] not that sensitive. They can send bills for 50 to 100,000.
These are good-sized clients. 4 firms represent giant companies. They may be in cities all over the country. It doesn't matter. But they're going to start having lots of concerns about your law schools.
So the majority of your AmLaw 100 law firms and analysts, a hundred law firms are going to be your 3's and 4's. A lot of concern about law schools.
Your 5 firms are your very best firms. These are your top New York and LA firms.
These are your firms where people can succeed and are lucky to have represented them.
A couple of examples, so if you want to go to Boies Schiller for litigation they will say, we're not going to have anything to do with you unless you're going to spend over $500,000. They may not even say that, but that would be what they would say internally, something like that to do anything. If you need to ask a firm like Sullivan in a combo, what they used to do, they used to send a bill and it would just make a statement for services rendered. And that month, it might say, 645,000 and there would be no hours or anything [00:04:00] attached. You could ask for that and they would give it to you.
These are your kind of your 5 firms.
So this is, apple, whoever gets a bill, it's got billions of dollars in the bank. They're not gonna care what this firm says.
So your ability as an attorney, if you want to start working in a prestigious firm, what you're basically what this is all about, which is fun, is access to waterfalls of money. Meaning access to money.
The waterfall falls of money and the money spigot. What it means essentially is, if you go to a crappy law school and you don't have good experience and so forth, when you come out of school or, a few years, you do not qualify to get access to this major spigot of money.
These are the firms that can pay the highest salaries, the fours and fives, and even the threes to some extent, and the further you move along this chain, the more access you get to the money. So if you go to, a top law school and you do well, there, you come out of school and you're right there. If you start at a 4 firm when you develop a book of business [00:05:00] or you do really good work and you're in the right place at the right time, you get access to the five.
If you come out and you do work for a 2 firm and you do very good work and you work hard, you might be able to get into a 3 firm, and then maybe from there a 4 firm. So the ideas like, what you're trying to do in the legal market. And I just like putting things this way for people, because I want them to understand what placements aare bout. I can place anybody in a consumer firm if they have the experience. It doesn't matter. The recruiter can work. If the recruiter I good, which most of them aren't, most of them only know how to do fours and fives. But if a recruiter is good, they can place you in a one firm. They can place you in a two firm that can do all this stuff because there's a market there, of course.
But your objective, if you want to get placed in the largest firms is to position yourself to get access to the largest waterfalls and money possible. And what's interesting is if you come out from a great law school and you get into one of these firms, but you're only there six months and you go to another one of these firms generally, or a year, and you have a gap in your resume. Suddenly, you might drop down to [00:06:00] a three. No one's going to give you access to that much money because there are things bad about your background. Or you could start at a 3 firm and suddenly develop this huge book of business, and get access to larger and larger waterfalls and money by getting your clients and getting to pay high billing rates and suddenly move into a five firm.
I've seen people, by the way, start in 2 firms and ended up in 5 firms by developing books of business and making all the right moves. It doesn't matter where you went to law school, for some firms, it does. But you can get into a 5 firm by starting at a 2 or 3 firm, even a 1 firm, to some extent, if you make the right moves. But the more access to waterwaterfamore as money you get. The better off you are.
Everyone's placeable. It just depends on how you position yourself. And I think it's very interesting this whole ranking system that we developed. Law firms have rankings, candidates have met ranking. So if I were to look at your resume, what I would do is I would rank you and then I would send you firms that match your ranking, and I would send you a few or 4 from, and I'll send you 5 firms, but I would also send you 3 firms.
If you're a 1 firm, I would also send you 2 firms. So that's kinda how it [00:07:00] works when you start getting jobs and firms and stuff. If you're a BCG candidate, and if you're a law firm listening to this, that's how we determine who we're going to send to you as well.
