I’ll never forget the most miserable hour of my day when I first started in the business.  It was ‘plan time.’  This dreaded hour was spent hand-writing names and numbers of those people who I was going to call, and if I didn’t call them, then I’d have to spend an entire hour the next day hand-writing the same numbers and names over and over again.  This was before computer databases existed and it was a miserable experience, so I did what any fun-focused recruiter would do:  I blew it off.  And my production reflected my lack of planning.
 
But a few years later, when databases became main-stream, I found that I didn’t have to hand-write the names and numbers over and over again. All I had to do was print out the names and numbers of who I was going to call.  I didn’t really have much focus of when I was going to call them and I was supposed to develop some sort of a plan, but I figured that I’d just randomly follow the call list and I did what any over-confident technology-savvy recruiter would do with planning:  I blew it off.  And my production reflected my lack of planning.

Finally, I made a decision to hit the next level in production.  I was tired of almost achieving my goals and knew that I had to get just a little bit sharper on my desk.  The only way I could get better with my placements was to get better with where I spent my time, which is the whole objective of planning.
 
Follow these seven secrets of planning and see how much more you can bill in the next 90 days:

1.    First, start each day with a specific focus:  “What are the two or three things I need to accomplish today to be considered successful?”  Write those goals down everyday and think about them throughout the day.

2.    Review your activity sheet.  Identify those four or five searches that need to be ‘touched’ in the day.  Do you have to extend an offer for search assignment A?  Do you have to prep and debrief interviews for search assignment B?  Do you have to qualify candidates who you recruited yesterday for search assignment C?  Do you have to find candidates for search assignment D?  Do you have to source names for search assignment E?  Review your activity sheet and make notes each day on what action items need to happen to keep the rhythm of the searches moving forward.  Ask yourself this question when you look at each search on your desk: “What is the most important thing that needs to happen with this search, right now?”

3.    Carve out specific blocks of your time for each of those four or five action items.  Thirty minutes of sourcing can give you thirty names if you do it right.  (8 – 8:30) Three hours of recruiting can give you coverage of fifteen candidates if you hustle and stay on the phone and keep your initial recruit calls to six minutes or less. (8:30 – 11:30)  Two or three hours of prepping, debriefing and qualifying can help you bring your candidates forward in the process and give you more information on those who you wish to present to your clients.  (1 – 3) An hour blocked out for your client and candidate who are getting ready to bring closure to your deal is enough to close it, but be flexible on this because this type of call is the most significant of your day and takes priority over all other conversations. (3 – 4). And wrap up those calls at the end of the day that are still important (4 – 4:30) and leave at least thirty minutes to an hour at the end of the day to strategically plan where you are going to spend your time tomorrow ( 4:30 – 5 or 5:30).  Each day is different, but this gives you an idea of how you can keep your desk balanced.  You can also shake it up by scheduling business development calls with warm prospects and other business-generating activities a few times a week.


Seven Secrets of Good Planning Continued.....

A judicial clerkship is one of the most rewarding (and prestigious) employment opportunities that a recent law school graduate could experience. They usually last one to two years and serve as an excellent bridge from law school to the actual practice of law.  Working as a judicial clerk will give a recent law school graduate access to knowledge and connections that will make them a very attractive candidate for even the most prestigious law firms.  To apply for a judicial clerkship:

1.    You must be a U.S. citizen to become a federal judicial clerk.  Those who are non-citizens may be able to work for the federal judiciary in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and the Virgin Islands. Both non-citizens and citizens can apply for a judicial clerkship at the state judiciary.

2.    You must have completed your J.D. degree.  Although there are no specific requirements, the most competitive clerkships which are the federal clerkships usually prefer students in the top 25% of their class.  However, each judge has his/her own criteria for picking judicial clerks, so don’t allow grades to stop you from applying.

3.    Applicants must send a cover letter, resume, writing sample, official law school transcript and 3 - 4 letters of recommendation to the judge.  The application materials cannot be sent separately, everything must be sent at one time in one enveloped marked "Judicial Clerkship Application."

To learn more about hiring criteria of federal judges visit https://lawclerks.ao.uscourts.gov.

When it comes to the issue of a job candidate's references many recruiters are failing to get the full mileage out of them.  Not only can candidate references be used to help a job candidate win out over others and secure a position, they can also be used by recruiters up front to secure an interview for the candidate.  Here's how…

Encourage the candidate to provide references at the beginning of the recruitment process and ask them questions about how they added value to their former employer.  For example, a recruiter might ask, "What was your proudest accomplishment at XYZ firm?"  Request that they provide specifics.  So instead of a job candidate saying, "I was really great at multitasking and worked well under stress," he might say, "I worked on 20 cases a month and once saved the company $20,000 when an irate client threatened to take us off their case. I resolved the client's issue quickly and they eventually became a repeat client."

Once the recruiter secures the "value added" statement from the job candidate, he/she should confirm the statement with the candidate's references.  Once they have confirmed the accuracy of the candidate's statement they should submit to their client, the candidate's "value added" statement along with their resume, cover letter and a note saying that the statement was confirmed by the former employer.  Verified "value added" statements are almost guaranteed to go a long way in winning the confidence of clients and by extension a face-to-face interview for your job candidate. 
 

Writing effective job ads is an important aspect of every recruiter's responsibilities. Poorly written job ads get poor results, low quality applicants and can create more work for recruiters who need to weed through all those inappropriate job candidates. If you want to attract the best job candidates, then write a job ad that will appeal to them.  Here are few tips:

1.    Understand your target job candidate.  What types of jobs do quality job candidates want?  Do they want a high salary?  Room to grow? Great location? Do they want to work for a prestigious company?  Do they value working independently or working on challenging projects?

2.    As you finish answering the questions above, ask yourself, "Why should the best candidates work for our client and not the competition?"  What advantages does your client have?

3.    When you write your job ad, be specific, never vague.  Make sure you list the exact salary or salary range if possible. Offer details on job responsibilities, workplace culture and what training and rewards the job candidate can expect if they choose to work for your client. For example, you ad might say "XYZ firm prides itself in a fast paced environment that rewards employee productivity with substantial yearly bonuses."

4.    If there are features about your client's job that you know will be selling point, then emphasize them.  For example, if a firm offers an official mentor program that may be something you want to point out in the job ad.

5.    Finally make sure your job ad is written in a dynamic, specific conversational tone (yet professional) and utilize active verbs.  For example, you might say, "XYZ firm invests in their attorneys by offering continuing education funding starting in the first year of employment," instead of saying "XYZ firm offers educational assistance."

Many recruiters and employers requesting resumes via email are often cautious about attachments.  Some employers and recruiters may even ask a job candidate to send their resume in the body of the email to avoid the possibility of viruses.  But doing so can leave a job candidate with a formatting mess.  Here are some instructions on how you can create a readable and attractive text resume that can be inserted into the body of your email.

1.    Open your resume and rename it using the .txt extension. Most programs will allow you to do this by going to "Save as…" and saving the document as ASCII text. If you don't see the ASCII option then select "text only with line breaks."

2.    Remove any graphics, including lines, photos and logos.

3.    Replace bullets with asterisks or dashes.

4.    Use the spacebar to line up text the way you want. Do not use tabs or any macros.

5.    You are limited to 80 characters per line.

6.    You can also use Microsoft NotePad or any other text program to make the changes above or any other changes to you text resume.

7.    Once you're done you can save it again.  Make sure you select "Save as…" "ASCII" because most word processing programs will revert to their own extensions (i.e. Microsoft Word .doc).

8.    Once you have completed your text resume, you can copy and paste it into the body of the email.

Traditionally, well-positioned law firm partners see an uptick in calls from recruiters for a number of reasons tied to their professional success.

Contacts can become more frequent, for instance, if a partner's star is on the rise, maybe because they've recently won a major piece of litigation or concluded a big deal that has generated buzz and perhaps a bit of press coverage. Or perhaps their practice area has become especially hot, like securities litigation, bankruptcy or financial services regulatory work.

While attorneys enjoying these successes will always be in demand, such achievements don't account for the record number of cold calls that many are currently fielding. Some might suggest an additional reason is the very challenging year many law firms had in 2008 -- and continue to suffer well into 2009 -- with workforce reductions striking even the most iconic firms, and a number of once-venerable partnerships dissolving in a matter of months. However, recruiters have traditionally targeted firms with significant drops in profits-per-partner, so we must look elsewhere.

In fact, the primary reason for the especially aggressive courting of partners is that legal recruiters who had been doing associate placement work now have little or nothing to do. Faced with the choice of starving or turning to the one market that remains fluid, associate recruiters have chosen the latter, even though the vast majority of associate recruiters have no experience placing attorneys with substantial books of business or extensive -- and sometimes complicated -- client relationships.

An attorney friend of mine believes that in Dante's "circles of hell," legal recruiters occupy a level somewhere between music industry executives and car dealers. That is a harsh judgment, but not without some truth. Our industry does have its share of what "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace used to refer to as scoundrels and scallywags. When you add to this the legion of inexperienced recruiters with low track records at placing more-senior partners or even counsel, there is more reason than ever for partners to be wary about which recruiter they work with.

When speaking with partner candidates I am often amazed at how many will allow someone to "submit" their credentials to a law firm without really knowing much about the person making that presentation. This is dangerous but never more so than in the current climate.

Consider: would your clients ever entrust a "bet the company" matter to you without having a good idea of your professional background and actual experience in similar situations? Of course not. Think of your decision about whether to remain at your current firm or to make a move to a new home as a "bet the company" matter in the overall scheme of your career. Viewed that way, you are likely to want representation only by recruiters with a stellar track record of integrity and placing partners with at least your level of achievement. In other words, if you are a securities litigator with $10 million in portable business, you want someone who has worked with partners with sizeable books of business.

The good news is that it is relatively easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here are a few must-ask questions to pose to any recruiter seeking to represent you.

1. What firm are you calling on behalf of?

The best recruiters are calling on behalf of a specific client -- as opposed to those simply dialing partners trolling for bait, who after finding interested partners on the phone line, run to the Am Law 100 list and send the partner to multiple firms, claiming that Partner 'X' is interested in speaking with them.

2. Who do you work with at the firm?

One partner I know always gives cold-calling recruiters a reality check by asking about a fictitious partner at the named law firm. "Oh, you're working with the 'XYZ' firm, you must know Fred Goldsmith". Any affirmative response ends the conversation.

As a general rule you want to hear that the person calling you is working with either the firm-wide chair, managing partner, head of a particular practice group, head of lateral recruiting and/or the managing partner of the firm's office in your city. The closer the relationship between firm and headhunter the more valuable that recruiter can be to you.

Note To Partners, Continued......