The Law Recruiters

Lateral Partner Glop

2012-03-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

By Rich Janney

Lawyers are very good at dealing with slimy gray glop.

I should probably clarify.

What I mean, what I meant to say, is that attorneys, metaphorically speaking, are good at dealing with vague, amorphous situations—slimy gray glop. That’s kind of what they get paid to do. Attorneys are given a vague set of facts, try to plug those facts into a set of ambiguous laws, devote a vast amount of time and resources to the problem, and distill this gray glop down into clear answers for their clients. These clear answers can be in the form of a persuasive brief for the court, a memo clarifying the regulatory requirements on a particular deal, or explaining a way to die without having to give all your money to the IRS. What have you. You turn slimy glop into a delicious candy bar (or something like that—you can choose your own metaphor, but I have chosen a candy bar as mine).

But as you know, this is not an easy process. Your clients bring you barrels and barrels of this slimy oozy glop (if you’re lucky) because, well, they can’t make any sense out of it. Can you help? Of course you can. You are smart and resourceful. You are experienced. After you get over a wave of cold sweats, a nauseous stomach, and the feeling that this is an insurmountable problem with which you have very little time to solve it, you get to work. You roll the barrels of glop into the staging area of your firm, hit the big red button on the wall, and back up. The claxon sounds, the red light flashes, and hordes of legal oompa loompas are released from their cages and start ripping the lids off these barrels like chimpanzees high on PCP. Per your directives—which you are giving from atop a chair with a megaphone—the oompa loompas scoop the glop out into buckets which are then passed, hand over hand, down a line and fed into a machine that runs continuously for days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, until finally you and your team have distilled the glop into something understandable and useful—a metaphorical box of Willie Wonka Candy Bars which you send back to your client (with an invoice). The next day it starts all over again (if you’re lucky) when your very pleased client sends you even more barrels to process.

Point being that you, as an attorney, are a master of the barrel of slimy gray slop.

And yet, paradoxically, attorneys are almost paralyzed by fear of the slimy gray glop when it comes to managing their own careers. You don’t like ambiguity here, in the career department. But gray glop seeps in eventually. You have spent your career working diligently on problems for an ever growing roster of clients. One day you realize that you have actually built up a rather impressive book of business. However, over time you have come to realize that his book of business, these clients, might be better served at another firm. You may need to find a firm whose rates have not ballooned sky high, or a firm that has the geographic reach to help serve your national or international clients, or a firm that has a deeper bench in the relevant practice areas sought by your clients. But how do you actually MOVE your clients from one firm to another?

Here’s where the gray glop comes into play because it’s a process riddled with ambiguities. Are those people you do work for truly YOUR clients? I mean, do they consider YOU their attorney? Would they MOVE their business to ANOTHER FIRM solely because you moved to that firm? HOW MUCH money would that business be worth, if it actually did move with you? Why do I keep writing in ALL CAPS? And since, due to your fiduciary obligations to your partners, you are not allowed to ask these questions point blank to your clients, it makes it very difficult to make any tangible claims about what you could bring to a new firm. How can you solidify all this mess so that you can have intelligent discussions with your potential future partners?

Kinda makes you want to just forget about the whole thing, doesn’t it?

But you can’t forget about it. This is your career, your future. You may be at a firm where every step of building up this book of business has been a blood thirsty Machiavellian snake pit with a competitive atmosphere so toxic that your clients are suffering as a result. You may be at a firm that has built up an infrastructure that you don’t need (like an office on Pitcairn Island) which is causing your rates to skyrocket. Maybe your clients need an office on Pitcairn Island, but your current firm doesn’t have one. Whatever the reason, you gotta go somewhere else. For you. For the clients. For the oompa loompas.

So let us help you make sense of this glop.

What you need to put together is a business plan, a strategic plan. A what? What does he mean, “A business plan?” What do you mean, “What does he mean?” I mean you need to draft a document that tells people what you do, who you do it for, how much it is worth, why you think clients would follow you to a new firm, and how you plan to continue to develop new business wherever you end up. This plan is the mechanism that will help you and your target firms clarify all this nasty gray glop to make the process as clear and tangible as possible. This, your business plan, is your oompa loompa-candy-bar-making machine. In it, you need to articulate what kind of platform you’ll need to continue to do work for you clients. You’ll need to state what kind of billing rate you need to retain these clients (knowing that this might price you out of some places). You’ll need to spell out for the reader who your contacts are and how you think you could get them to give you business. It’ll probably end up being about 3-5 pages. Maybe more. Maybe less.

Sounds easy, right? It is and it isn’t. In theory it’s easy, but once you actually sit down to try and write this thing, you may think that it would be preferable to lick the public toilets at Union Station. But trust me; this will be easier than licking a toilet. Follow me.

First, Tell Them Who You Are

Seriously. Tell them a little about yourself. I mean, what’s your expertise? How long have you been doing it? What’s your professional background? You can even title this section, “Professional Background” if you like. Here you can also list your representative matters to give them a flavor of the depth of your experience.

Second, Tell Them Who Your Clients Are, How They Became Your Clients, And How Long You’ve Been Doing Work For Them

Sounds simple enough, and it is. Not only can you spell out who the clients are, but you can and should use this section to explain the relationships you have at each client. “Skip Buffpanel was a partner of mine before he went in-house to become the General Counsel at Mordecai’s House of Peanuts. When the company made the decision to initiate an IPO (Initial Peanut Offering), Skip requested that I lead the legal team during the process.” Or, highlight your marketing successes that led to a new client. Stuff like that.

Next, Tell Them How Much You Have Collected Annually From Your Clients

They love this part.

Then, Tell Them Why You Need To Find A New Firm

This is, as you would expect, a very important component of your business plan. This is where you let them know that your billing rate has increased too much. This is where you tell them that you have a client that needs a legal expertise that your firm just doesn’t have. This is where you tell them that your client needs a firm with an office on Pitcairn Island (if it needs one)(I finally Googled Pitcairn Island—it’s in the South Pacific and apparently its bees produce very good honey). These details will be crucial for your target firms to decide at the outset if it makes any sense for you to have a conversation with them.

Now Tell Them Why You Think Your Clients Will Come With You

This is really tough. Because of your fiduciary duties to your current partners, you cannot just tell your clients that you are thinking of leaving and then ask if they would come with you to a new firm. Of course, if they bring it up first then you’re golden. If that were to happen, then you can say that “Skip Buffpanel told me that, although he is very pleased with the legal work I provide, his CEO has indicated that $1500/hr is too much to pay in legal fees and the company will be forced to find new representation if a better rate cannot be established. Mr. Buffpanel encouraged me to find a firm with better rates so that he can continue to work with me.” But if you are not lucky enough to have that clear commitment, you can still articulate why you think they would come. “I have been given very strong indications that The International Glitter Mitten Company is not pleased with the firm they use for their real estate deals. At the last client meeting, the CEO, Ellen Boozelpumper, said that she would very much like it if I were at a firm with a strong real estate presence since she is already very happy with the corporate work I provide for her company.”

Tell Them How You Plan to Market Clients In The Future

I find that this section is almost the hardest. Partly because I think it feels so intuitively weird to some people. It’s weird because you really have to spell out who you know, how you know them, and how you would be able to get work from them. I guess it’s weird because it forces you to de-mystify yourself. You may have to explain that you are the nephew of a prominent hedge fund owner and you see Uncle Bugnuts every year at the family re-u. At past reunions, he has said he is paying “close attention to my legal career” and that he “is thinking about giving me some fund formation work.”

And, beyond explaining why you think Uncle Bugnuts will give you work, you need to also explain how you intend to market yourself, how you’ll network, and then articulate some concrete marketing steps you plan to take in the next 6 to 12 months. Tell them events you plan to attend, contacts you will try to make, and meetings you will try to achieve.

Finally, Tell Them How Much All This Is Worth

Let’s face it; this is the thing that will get the most attention. You now have to articulate how much revenue your various clients will generate, if they come with you. It’s fairly easy to estimate how much your existing clients will be worth in the future since you can cite to a history of collections. It’s trickier to do so with a client or piece of work that isn’t yet yours. But you still must break down the hours and rates to come up with estimates for the new work. If I had one piece of advice on this subject, it is to be conservative with this number. I know you’ll get far more meetings if you say you have a million in business, but if you fall short of the mark in your first year of work, things aren’t going to be so great. Now, I’m all for optimism and “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” mentality, just not here. Don’t aim low, by any means, but don’t get crazy either.

Hopefully, this will help shed some light on how to make sense of this amorphous chapter in your career. Nothing is ever easy, but the business plan will at least help you solidify some of the concepts and ideas that might be swimming around in your head. And that is pretty much all I have to say about the gray glop of moving your business from one firm to another. Therefore, I’m going to go draw an oompa loompa for the top of the article now. Unless I decide it’s too hard to draw, in which case I am going to draw a barrel of gray glop. At this point you know more than I do which way I decided.

Genius

2012-02-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

By Rich Janney

Today, at this computer, I sat down and set out to write an article about useful interviewing tips. Not because there aren’t enough articles on the subject. There are. But the ones that are circulated throughout the year tend to suck. They tell you the importance of preparing for the interview and in particular they list a series of very obvious things you should not do or say. They have titillating titles like, “10 Things You Should NEVER Do at An Interview!” Stuff like that.

Like a sucker, I always click on them hunting for that hidden gem of a tip. But it’s always the same. They tell you a list of garbage that is as obvious as the “Grizzly Man” is dead. And somehow sensing the insult you perceive to your intelligence, they preempt your objections by saying something like, “You would be surprised at how many people actually DO these things!” To be fair, I’m sure people really do come to interviews wearing bib overalls, or chewing gum, or answer their cell phones during the meeting. But those people are idiots. Rare. Outliers. Those are not the kinds of people who are going to read an article about interview tips, anyway. They are freaks. So there’s no point in writing an article like that to help them out.

And yet the articles keep on coming. Why?

I was pondering the answer to this question the other day while I was doing bikram yoga in the dryer. And I had a thought: maybe there’s some psychological value to presenting people with a list of things they already know. Maybe it’s been proven that when you tell someone advice that they already know to be true, their self-confidence improves. And when you’re more self-confident, you are more likely to perform well in an interview. Right? So, maybe those articles are genius after all.

And if they’re genius, then why am I fighting this? Who am I to blow against the wind? I want to write genius articles too. I want to improve people’s self-confidence by telling them stuff they already know.

So, here goes:

1. Don’t release a bat during your meeting.

2. Leave your Hulk fists at home.

3. Do not take out a slide whistle and play a sad, downward tone when they reveal the salary range for the position.

4. Make sure you wear your bra under your shirt.

5. Don’t draw on their furniture.

6. Do not swallow a whistle just before your interview like the police officer from the “Frosty the Snowman” cartoon.

7. Don’t wear a turtle neck and suspenders.

8. Don’t waggle your eyebrows when there is a plausible double entendre made (e.g., “In this position you will have four paralegals under you” [waggle waggle]).

9. Don’t lift up your shirt and do the ‘dancing pecs’ thing.

10. Don’t wear elbow-length white ballroom gloves.

11. Don’t snatch things out of the interviewer’s hands.

12. Make sure your shirt is tucked into your pants, and make sure your pants aren’t made out of white denim.

13. Don’t carry an urn of ashes into the meeting.

14. Don’t offer your interviewers any ointments or pills.

15. No sexting.

16. Just be yourself, unless you happen to be an a$&hole.

Feel better? More confident? Then my job is done here. Go into that interview and knock them dead!

You’re welcome.

Frog Thermometer

2012-01-30T12:32:00.000-08:00

By Rich Janney

We all know the expression, “it’s easier to get a job when you have a job.” Less well known is the expression, “it’s hard to make good career decisions when your hatred for your job is making you clinically bonkers.” Careers in the law are stressful. Sometimes we grin and bear it and think, “Just one more year, then I’ll make a move,” or, “Once I get my law school loans paid off, I’ll quit this job and go somewhere less stressful.” We hold on. We hold out.

But during that holding-out period, the hatred for our job grows and the ability to tolerate yet another 14-hour day in the office becomes even harder. And that hatred grows slowly, each day. So slowly that we might not even realize how bad it’s really become. At this point, I was going to make a ‘boiled frog’ analogy, but I think that image is becoming a cliché so I won’t even bother. You all know it. If not, Google it. Incidentally, why is it always a frog that gets boiled alive? Has anyone tried boiling other animals alive but they won’t put up with it? Or are frogs just the target of an inordinate amount of torture?

It’s not easy being green, I guess.

What I’m trying to say by all this is, don’t let yourself get to the breaking point with your workplace unhappiness. If you get to the breaking point—or even if you start to get close to it—you will be under so much stress that you’ll be at risk for suffering a nervous breakdown. When you get to that point, you’ll be thinking, “I don’t care if I’m sweeping up elephant dung at the circus, I just want out.” Bad decisions happen here. Who knows, you may actually end up being the elephant poo collector at Ringling Bros. Or worse—Circus Vargus.

But here’s the hard part: if you’ve started to go down that gradual path of job-loathing, how would you know? How does the frog know he’s in a hot tub that’s pushing 200 degrees? Well, I’ve put together a list of warning signs to help you out. Consider this your frog thermometer:

1. On your way to the office, you kind of wish the train would derail so you would have a valid excuse to not go in.

Okay. Maybe you’re not so twisted that a public transportation disaster is appealing to you. Maybe it’s more subtle than that. When I was practicing law, I knew a guy who had shattered his leg and needed to have extensive emergency surgery. But, he told me, it was better than having to go to court and deal with opposing counsel. He wasn’t kidding.

If it would be preferable to get painful surgery rather than going to work, your frog water is getting too hot.

2. When the alarm goes off in the morning, you cry.

I think this is pretty self-explanatory.

3. When you watch a law-related show, you get loose stools.

In 2002, I watched a movie starring Ben Affleck called “Changing Lanes.” At some point, Ben’s character, a lawyer, shows up to court and realizes that he’s forgotten a really, REALLY important document. I actually became very anxious watching Ben fumbling through his leather brief case searching for this missing document. I should have been anxious that I’d paid money to watch a Ben Affleck movie.

4. All you can think about is pounding nails into the head of “that one partner.”

It’s the man or woman in your life that makes you walk down a different hall so you won’t get noticed. When this person is scheduled to be out of the office for vacation, there is much rejoicing in your soul.

You bought a hammer. And a lot of nails.

5. You buy enough lottery tickets to have a ticker tape parade with them.

That little piece of paper is going to make it all better. Come Wednesday night, the lady with the microphone and hideous finger nails is going to draw all your numbers on television!

No she’s not. The lottery is going to be won by an ex-convict from Michigan who is going to wear a snake skin suit to the press conference. He will have a pony tail.

If you’re experiencing any of these warning signs, your frog is getting warm. It’s best to act while the water is cool enough so you can conduct a rational and deliberative job search for the next logical career opportunity. That is, of course, unless you really like elephants.

2010-2011 In-house Counsel Salary Survey

2012-01-06T14:06:00.000-08:00

McCormack Schreiber recently completed a salary survey for in-house counsel (primarily in the Chicago area). The data for the study was gathered from self-reported salary information given by attorneys, representing a variety of industries, practice areas, and seniority levels. Below is a summary of some of our findings.

The strongest correlation we found was between years of experience and total compensation.
Rankings of the law school attended by an attorney did not seem to have a direct effect on salary at these in-house positions.
Consistent with other more widespread national salary statistics, we found a very strong inequality in the salaries of men versus women, even in those with equal or comparable levels of experience.
Job titles did not have a particular impact on compensation in this study, as titles meant very different things in different companies in terms of seniority, responsibility, and salary
As illustrated in the graph below, we saw an expansion of the standard deviation of salaries as years since graduation increased

To find out more about the results of our study, please contact us.

Trends in the Legal Marketplace, Episode 1

2011-12-20T08:02:00.001-08:00

Welcome!

2011-10-27T14:34:00.001-07:00

Welcome to The Law Recruiters' blog. This blog will be an informational portal about new trends and news in the legal recruiting and hiring fields.