Description
- Concerns Addressed: Worries about potential blackballing or difficulty finding a new job after losing a position in a small market with many boutique firms.
- Essential Advice: Don't dwell on concerns; apply to every possible firm in the market. Emphasizes the importance of not assuming everyone talks negatively about each other.
- Perspective on Relationships: Highlights the reality that not everyone in the market will have the same opinion about you. Estimates that about 33% will like you, 33% won't care, and 33% won't like you.
- Professional Reputation: Discusses a crucial understanding in the legal market where attorneys generally avoid talking negatively about former colleagues. Positive outcomes for those who leave a firm reflect well on the firm's quality.
- Story Illustration: Shares a story of an attorney with a challenging past but received positive references from a prestigious firm. Emphasizes that the best law firms won't speak negatively about individuals, even in challenging situations.
- Addressing Job Loss Reasons: Encourages honesty about the reasons for job loss, as smaller markets may appreciate transparency. Advises framing the departure as due to issues or lack of work rather than solely blaming the previous firm.
- Positive Outlook: Recommends focusing on self-improvement after job loss, learning from the experience, and becoming a better attorney for the next opportunity.
- Final Advice: Urges not to worry too much, apply widely, and use the job loss as an opportunity for personal and professional growth. Emphasizes that firms speaking negatively about a candidate reflect poorly on the firms themselves.
Transcript:
Okay, I work in a small market with a lot of boutiques in the same practice area where everyone seems to know each other. I lost my position in searching for a new one, but i'm worried that I will either be blackballed or the fact that one firm in the market laid me off will preclude other firms from hiring me.
I asked a few prior questions in the same webinar. My apologies in advance for any redundancy. Okay, so the answer to that is No, you can't worry about it. You cannot worry about it and you just need to go and apply to every single one of those firms. So apply everywhere. That's it. I don't know what the market is, but you apply everywhere.
Don't worry about it. The point of the matter is, as I said this earlier, 30 percent of the people that know you, 30 percent of people will like you, I'm sorry, like you. 30 percent don't care. That's actually. 1 3rd. So there's 33, whatever. 33 percent don't care there. And then 33 percent will like you, right?
It will not like you percent will not like it. So it's the same thing with attorneys. 33 percent of the people in that market may like the attorney you work for 33 percent won't like them. 33 percent won't care. It's ridiculous. And it's not true to think that everyone talks to each other. So if you were in a class at school and you graduated with 40 people, you wouldn't be, you wouldn't.
33 percent that you probably dislike, 30 percent all these sorts of things. So you don't want to assume that all those people will talk to each other. The other thing is there's, and this is actually very important to understand. So this is something for any attorney that's ever worried about being blackballed, for any attorney that is fearful about the stuff, there's a, there's actually a, it's very important to understand.
Very important. Most attorneys, there's a, there's an understanding in the legal market that, that has followed. More by large law firms and smaller markets. But it's very important to understand it's there is that attorneys do not talk negatively about people that have worked for them or that's it.
So they do not talk negatively about people that have worked. So they just don't, if they do that, then it makes the attorney. That's talking about the person negatively, look bad. You want the good firms, the best firms, people leave there and good things happen to them. It's a statement of the quality of the firm.
If good things are happening to the people that leave. It's a, it's not a good statement of the quality of the firm. If the firm just says how bad people are and hates them, because why would anybody, that's not good. In larger markets, in larger firms, in the more prestigious firms, this is less pronounced.
But this also happens in a lot of even smaller markets. I just want to tell you a quick story about something that I thought was, really showed me this. Attorneys that I know are very careful about saying negative things about other attorneys when they lose their jobs. So that's one thing to understand.
The other thing I just want to tell you a quick story. There was a woman once that I was working with, and I said, what at your firm? And I think she had been at Simpson Thatcher or something, very prestigious firm, I'm not seeing with Simpson Thatcher, but it might've been, but it was something anyway, so I said, what happened at your previous firm?
And she said something like, I had a psychotic break and I was. Acting crazy. I took off my clothes and ran through the halls. It wasn't that bad, but it was something along those lines. And the firm is very understanding. I went to a psychiatric hospital for three weeks, and then I came back and I was medicated and I thought everything was under control, but then I had another psychotic break and I threw a pot of coffee in a partner's face or something.
Literally something that was like that bad. I couldn't believe it. And she said, but I have good references. And I said, Oh, great. And so I called these references at this very prestigious New York firm. And they were like, Oh, she was great. We loved her. She's nothing negative to say about her. I think she's going to make a fine attorney.
And wow, this is, but I knew something completely different. So what does that mean? That means that the best law firms, the best places to work. We'll never say something negative about the people that leave or they have problems with, even in the, almost the most dire circumstances, because lawyers are expected to have other lawyers backs.
And that's just how it works. People that don't do that, it's problematical. Everyone does not know each other and whatever market you're in. And many times that the fact that a firm laid you off is a bad sign to them. You can say they didn't have the work or there wasn't enough work or it wasn't, there was some issue or whatever, but you can, most of the time, if it's a small market, people will be happy to hear that there were issues at the other firm.
So I would really be honest with, I wouldn't worry about it. And I would think that, and any firm that's going to talk negatively about you. It's actually making themselves look worse and it's actually bad on them. So I just, I personally, if that was me, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I would just apply to a lot of places.
And then the nice thing is when you lose a job, everyone's talking about losing jobs today. When you lose a job, you can just go back to your next job and learn with all those lessons, just be 10 times better attorney. So you learn. What's important and what you can't do wrong. And then instead of having sour grapes, that's what you should do.
So that's my opinion.
