Description
- Job Interview Strategy: Addressing slow work at a previous law firm during an interview.
- Harrison's Advice: Acknowledges that slow work is okay but emphasizes caution.
- Critical Insight: Law firms retain top talent during slowdowns, letting go of associates lacking value or with a poor attitude.
- Cautionary Note: Young associates often bear the brunt during slow periods due to a lack of training and perceived worth.
- Optimal Approach: Focus on positive aspects, highlighting wanting to join the new firm for specific reasons such as career growth and aligned work.
- Long-term Perspective: Emphasizes portraying oneself as an asset and strategically presenting reasons for the job change.
- Warning: Mentioning slow work may raise concerns about loyalty and value to a potential employer.
- Overall Message: While discussing slow work is acceptable, framing the narrative positively yields better results in securing a new job.
Transcript:
Okay, if you're leaving the firm because it's slow, is it okay to say so in your next interview? Yeah, it is actually. If a law firm is slow and doesn't have enough work, you can talk about how they've lost people in this practice area, that things are slow, that you wanted you wouldn't be concerned normally, but this is some of the biggest clients or whatever.
And so you can say that, but I want to be very clear about a couple of things that are important. The best people during most recessions, not in slowdowns and work. So there's a slowdown right now in real estate. There's a slowdown in corporate. Most people that are very talented and are able, that are.
I don't know what the word is, but the best people in most law firms, when it gets slow, the law firm will hold on to them because they know the person is good and they know they can, they've made money from them in the past and they can continue to make money. They don't have to train someone to get them up to speed.
The person is nice and gets along well, people, and why would they get rid of them? So that's how law firms think. So if a law firm is letting you go, many times the people that will let go when things slow down are young associates because they haven't been trained. So there's not a lot of worth to them yet.
They'll let young associates go or they'll let. They'll let senior associates that don't have whatever, that they don't want to keep around, or they'll let people go that have a bad attitude. So that's one of the reasons I talk about attitude and things. Or people that aren't working hard, so they'll keep the most valuable people around.
If you are able to Staying firms through slow periods, typically the law firm will reassure you, they'll tell you things you, you should have relationships with partners and you can use, you should have a network, but if it's too, if it's slow, people are getting laid off, there's nothing you can do, that it doesn't matter.
And you're the firm slow, then you should basically, you can talk about that, be better off talking about how you want to go to the firm for other reasons, because it's not going to make it look like you'll do the same thing to them because every firm gets slow. So you need to figure out the best way to approach that.
So my. The feeling is you can say the work is slow if you want in the next interview. But if you say that, the firm you're interviewing with is going to say things get slow here too. So what's this person going to do if things get slow? So often you're better off of trying to portray things and you're trying to move up, you're trying to, the firm does more of the type of work that you want, all those sorts of things.
So if you can do that effectively, you're going to be much better off. In in the long run, okay, this is a good in terms of getting a job. So always try to present yourself as someone that's awesome. And you're moving to this firm because they're even more awesome. And you're, you, they do exactly what you want to do.
Based on and you weren't doing that before that's a much better answer than saying it's slow and I might lose my job because you're basically if you say that you're showing that you could be disloyal when work slows down there and you're also showing that you're not getting work you're not valued and so you need to really be careful about that and that's how I would say so yes you can say it's okay to say it but it's better off to do something else.
