By Eden Mandrell & Courtney Goldstein
Regional Practice Managers
Associate Practice Group

Recruiters can be an invaluable partner from your first days as an attorney and through all the
various stages of your career.

 
Most attorneys don’t think about calling a recruiter until they want a new job. That’s like not calling a doctor until you have pneumonia, or not going to the dentist until you need a root canal. It is much better, in both your professional and personal life, to be proactive. Line up the experts you need on your team before you actually need them; call on them for preventive maintenance and check-ups well before an emergency strikes, so they can get to know you and your unique
needs.
 
The First Step
 
Developing a strong relationship with a recruiter should ideally begin while you are still in law school. Recruiters can advise you where you should summer and where you should begin your practice in order to maximize your future opportunities. Depending on where you’re from, where your law school is geographically located, and where you intend to practice and establish roots, recruiters in your chosen markets can assist and counsel you on how firms in those locales are ranked – in terms of practice area, work/life balance, clientele, path to partnership, and providing a viable platform for in-house opportunities. 
 
As recruiters, we have our fingers on the pulse of the legal industry. This includes understanding all the ins and outs of our respective markets, including which schools firms like to hire from and what types of activities and/or experiences are essential to differentiate yourself from other law students. It is not enough to just familiarize yourself with the top 200 firms. There are also tremendous local and regional boutiques with top-ranked partners specializing in niche and “hot” practice areas that may not be on a national or international radar, but that enable young lawyers to grow professionally and catapult their skills to the next level. Developing a recruiter
relationship early in your career will enable you to be more informed and market-savvy.  
 
Part 2 will appear on Monday, November 29 - Plotting Your Path to Partnership 
 

When working with a legal recruiter, a legal professional needs to know that there are certain rules of etiquette that must be followed at all times.
1.    Always maintain strict confidentiality and proper professional boundaries when working with a legal recruiter.  Legal professionals should remember that legal recruiters are in the business of "valuable information."  What this means is that if a legal professional is given information about a legal job opportunity, the legal professional should not contact the employer directly, nor should they share that information with family and friends so that others can contact the employer directly.
2.    Honesty is the best policy; therefore a legal professional should never lie on their resume or leave out critical information about their background.  For example, if a legal professional was fired from their last job, they should let the legal recruiter know this "before" the legal recruiter submits the resume to a legal job opportunity.  An experienced legal professional can coach a legal professional on how to manage negatives such as this in a job interview.
3.    Keep the legal recruiter up-to-date on any changes in your status.  This includes changes in your law practice areas, legal career goals or the addition of new legal skills and experience.  This type of information can greatly increase the legal recruiter's ability to market a legal professional resume.
Lastly, it is very important to remember that legal recruiters have specialized knowledge about the legal job market.  So, when he/she gives you tips on how to change you resume or present yourself to increase your marketability, take those suggestions seriously.

As an attorney recruiter in Chicago for nearly 15 years, I did not think that the legal market could ever surprise me, but 2008 will go down as a year that surprised us all - not necessarily in the measures taken by firms to address shrinking profits and in some cases financial survival - but certainly in degree.  Associate and even partner layoffs have happened before.  Firms have failed before.  But 2008’s troubles have been much more dramatic than any we have experienced during my career.  Despite the magnitude of these market difficulties, those seeking new opportunities should not stray from the tried and true fundamentals of job search.
In hindsight (and irrespective of the current national financial crisis), much of what we are seeing in layoffs, shrinking summer classes, and deflated bonuses should not necessarily surprise us.  Starting associate salaries in Chicago more than doubled in less than ten years.  A $79,000 annual salary for a new law grad at a top firm in 1998 is now $160,000.  Of course, billing rates, billable hours and profits per partner have also substantially increased, allowing law firms to rationalize these numbers.  But at the end of the day, this formula was not conducive to maintaining professional loyalty in a recession.  This is business – plain and simple.    
     The questions we now face as recruiters and the attorney candidates we serve are:   what exactly is this new game and how do we play?  How do we plan our careers and movement while the new playbook is written?  It may be time to dust off some classic strategies.
1)    Warm-Up
Have a working resume and update it regularly.  Keep your eyes and ears open about any threats to your current position, as well as new opportunities.  Keep your network contacts fresh.  
 2)   Try-Out
When presented with interesting new opportunities, do not put them off.  Many associates spend their days planning career moves based upon a pre-determined path.  We often hear attorneys lament that they can’t move until a certain year, partnership, or some other elusive goal.  In this new and far less certain legal climate, attorneys should not hesitate to explore new opportunities when they arise.
3)   Practice
At the end of the day, keep practicing law.  If you are currently employed, do all that you can to maintain that status.  Even if your long term goal is to move to another position, this may require some time and patience.  It is easy to make a mental departure from your current position that might affect your performance and jeopardize your job, but this is not the time to allow that to happen.  The legal job market is going to pick up, and you will be far better positioned to take advantage of the more active

market if you maintain your excellent standing in your current firm.  For those of you currently in the job market, it may take some extra work and patience, but you will land on your feet.  Be diligent in your search and cover every base.  

When a legal professional begins working with a legal recruiter it is very important to get organized in order to maximize the benefits of using a legal recruiter.  Let's discover a few simple steps a legal professional can take to stay organized throughout the entire process of working with a legal recruiter.
1.    Maintain accurate records when working with more than one legal recruiter.  Keep track of who sent your resume to what legal job etc. Remember to maintain confidentiality, don't disclose information about legal job opportunities to other recruiters you may be working with.
2.    Keep accurate records, keeping track of which legal recruiter gave you a legal opportunity and when they gave it you.
3.    Keep careful records of where you have submitted your legal resume, to what law firms and when your legal resume was submitted.
4.    Avoid sending out duplicate resumes to the same law firm within six months of each other.  Duplicate legal resumes can give a bad impression to potential employers. To insure that this doesn't happen, make sure your legal recruiter is kept up-to-date regarding where you have sent resume and when.
5.    Find out what additional assistance the legal recruiter offers, such as help with resumes, proofreading legal writing samples, help with legal job transitioning and job interview preparedness. Make sure you take advantage of these extra benefits.

Despite continued international economic volatility and uncertainty, recent associate hires have had pockets of strength. 

In a scan of the 622 top law firms tracked in The Leopard List during the 3^rd Quarter, 2008: 

+ Skadden has hired / appointed 172 associates (+15.4%)

+ Weil, Gotshal, Manges: 155 associates (+20.2%)  

+ Goodwin Procter LLP: 102 associates (+19.3%)

+ Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP: 96 associates (+20.5%)

+ Winston & Strawn: 76 associates (+14.5%) 

+ Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP: 73 associates (+15.5%)

+ Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton: 63 associates. (+12.1%)

Since many established law firms have traditionally managed risk and credit exposure well, how might they view recently hired associates with lower compensation/billable hourly-rate ratios?   Despite ever-present consolidation risk and cost-cutting measures in the current economic environment, associates remain favorable investments.

Logically, then, these associates can be well positioned to have the longevity to develop their niches during the starting years of their practice.  At the same time, the landscape may be right for these favorably priced attorneys to develop a career path through lateral moves earlier in one's career than usual.  This can be especially important when an associate's caseload does not reflect strategically advantageous legal experiences.  Some longer-term trends present potential areas of practice that are compatible with the rapidly shifting macro-economic environment:

+ There is an international clarion call for oversight, regulation, and litigation in the financial markets that is creating demand for third-party and in-house multi-national representation. 

+ President-Elect Obama has already gotten involved on the federal and state levels in promoting regional environmental inspection and has addressed additional federal regulation. Nation-states, corporations and international organizations continue to receive significant cultural and political pressure.  Additionally, alternative energy sources, and their corresponding risks, create the need for complex legal representation. 

+ Non-governmental organizations are increasingly seeking a roll in national and corporate credit structuring (IMF, WTO, The World Bank).  

+ Multi-national mergers and acquisitions have taken on increased breadth and complexity (InBev – Anheuser Busch, SouthEast Asian and Middle Eastern Sovereign Wealth fund investments).

+ Intellectual Properties face increased multi-national competition. Regulation and oversight increase accordingly, as equally developed regional companies pursue similar global market segments.

In all, whether these associates belong to firms with more exposure to merger or credit risk or those firms that possess the aforementioned opportunities, associates should be prepared to identify career paths further out than the current fiscal quarter.  In this light, establishing longer-term relationships with well-connected recruiters in multiple markets is not ‘pant-leg tugging,’ it is a hallmark of the agile legal professional.  Visit the Leopard Solutions Legal Recruiter Directory

If you're an attorney with at least one year of legal work experience, you will probably eventually be looking to make move to a larger firm or looking for more promising job opportunities. But, searching for legal work is not like any other job hunt.  There are scores of other attorneys searching for the next "hot" job.  The competition is fierce.  That's where a top-drawer legal recruiter can help you bring your "A" game to stand apart from other attorneys vying for the most coveted positions in the legal industry.   Before you choose a legal recruiter, there are a few necessary steps to ensure that you find the right match and make a good first impression. 

1. Define your legal career goals.
2. Make a list of the qualities you would like your ideal legal job to have.
3. Take that "dream legal job" list and separate it into "must haves" and "wants."
4. Update your resume, customizing it for the types of legal positions you are seeking.
5. Get a copy of your law school transcript, the last year only.
6. Get your references together immediately.  Ask your references to provide written letters with their phone number, so they can be called by potential employers or legal recruiters.
7. Pick your strongest legal writing sample.  Make sure the legal writing sample is free of errors.

  Put your package of information together so that it is presented professionally, and be prepared to impress the legal recruiter of your choice.