June 1, 2018 In blog, Career Change

Did Law School Make You a Coward?

Lawyers are trained in law school to look at every angle, to find all of the potential problems, to identify the risks. They will spend hours, even days, conducting exhaustive research. They want to know everything there is to know about an issue. Then the lawyers pass on their findings and explain all the options to their clients, whether senior corporate executives or criminal defendants. They may even make recommendations. But the clients decide … the lawyers just recommend.

Lawyers know if they make a decision and it turns out to be a mistake, they can be censured, suspended, even disbarred. They certainly can be fired. So risk avoidance is ingrained in them from their first day in law school. They are taught that lawyers do research, spot issues, present options, and advocate their clients’ positions. But that’s it. When you make a decision, you might be right or you might be wrong. Being wrong means potentially losing your client or ending your career.

It saddens me that too many lawyers who dread going to work each day, who hate their quality of life, billable hours and constant battling, will nonetheless choose to remain miserable because they lack the courage to make — and implement — a decision to find something better.

Lawyers are trained to play it safe, and not to take risks. That includes not taking risks about their careers.

Business executives who play it safe are thrown out of their jobs. Companies that play it safe are doomed to die. Taking risks is the lifeblood of a business. Investing in new products, services, technologies, and markets is essential if a business is to survive, let alone to prosper.

A good executive must make critical decisions based on the best information available at the time – even when the i’s are not dotted, the t’s are not all crossed and not all of the evidence is in. Delay or equivocation can mean missing an opportunity or being too late to market. It can mean losing to a competitor. It can mean failure.

For lawyers, making decisions can lead to failure. For executives, NOT making decisions can lead to failure.

In my 26 years of counseling lawyers on alternative careers, I have interviewed more than 25,000 attorneys. I almost always ask, “Would you rather be a ‘decider’ or a ‘recommender’ – the King or an adviser to the King?” The answer is almost always to be an adviser. “They shoot at the king,” one respondent told me … but the underlying message is that there’s less risk to being the adviser.

Risk aversion is one of the key reasons so many lawyers are unhappy, but don’t do anything about it. They see all the problems, all of the risks, all of the things that can go wrong if they try to change careers to find happiness and fulfillment.

They think they might have to start back at the bottom of the ladder in an entry-level job. They think they can’t make as much money as they are making now. They think their skills as litigators or compliance specialists or defense attorneys aren’t transferrable to another discipline. They think they might not be as good at something else as they are at practicing law. All of these thoughts are wrong. All of them. We have 26 years of proof.

Lawyers don’t generally complain about how miserable they are … but their actions prove it. According to a Johns Hopkins study, lawyers are Number 1 on the list of professions whose practitioners have major depressive disorders. According to an American Bar Association study, 28% of lawyers suffer from depression, 19% from anxiety and 23% from stress. Yet another study shows that 52% of lawyers have some form of alcohol problem.

And yet these well-educated professionals refuse to do anything about it. They are cowards. They see so many risks in trying to make a change that they can’t motivate themselves or generate enough self-confidence to try to improve their situations. Out of fear, they can’t decide to move forward, so they abrogate the responsibility for their own lives. They don’t realize that not making a decision is, in fact, a decision.

I applaud the several thousand attorneys who have faced their fears, worked with us, didn’t chicken out during the middle of their programs, and ended up re-igniting their careers and loving their jobs. I have only recently started to appreciate the guts these men and women have had.

For more than two decades, I have preached my belief that a law school education is never wasted. Law school, I have often said, gives you analytical skills and a perspective that you don’t get in business school. However, I missed an important point. Business school teaches you that you have to have faith in your judgment, and have the courage to make decisions. Law school teaches you to recognize problems and leave the decision-making to someone else. No wonder so many lawyers are unhappy in their careers; they simply lack to courage to decide to change.

April 22, 2013 In Career Change

Relying on Classifieds, Recruiters and Networking? You Lose.

Most  people want to find new jobs as quickly as possible, but they rely on the slowest and least productive job search methods — classifieds, recruiters and old-fashioned networking. These traditional methods are all most people know about, and are resulting in job searches taking months and months longer than they need to.

 

According to a just-released study by the highly respected Career Thought Leaders Consortium, 55%  of  executive and professional searches are taking 6 months or more, and a whopping 41% are taking from 11 to 24+ months! This is for a group where 89% of respondents were in very senior or C-level positions, and 90% were professionals age 40 and up.

 

There is no reason for campaigns to take this long. A career coach can help shorten your search by helping you find companies and by helping companies find you. We can speed up your campaign by providing you with new resources based on internet and database technologies. At Career Strategies, we spend hours and hours each month researching new on-line resume distribution tools and company information resources.

 

If you want to shorten your job search, call us TODAY.  914-437-9230

July 23, 2012 In Career Change

Hard job search facts of life learned by Dewey associates

Even if you are from a top law school and global law firm, winning in today’s marketplace takes more than just good credentials – it takes good marketing.

That lesson has become painfully clear to the many Associates and Of Counsel at Dewey LeBoeuf who have still not landed jobs following the collapse of that once-great law firm earlier this year.  The powers-who-once-were at Dewey sponsored a job search seminar for their former colleagues in New York City last week.  I was among a few career professionals who were asked to be panelists.

Differentiating yourself from other attorneys with similar experience, and getting past the obvious job search method of going online, hitting “apply” and praying, were the focus of my remarks at that panel.  I addressed these topics, and more, during a formal presentation, and then spent several hours leading two different workshop groups and answering questions.

I shared the dais with Margarett Williams, an Assistant Dean of Touro Law School; Katie Calabrese of Paul Weiss’ HR Dept.; and Sheryl Odentz, an experienced law firm outplacement consultant. All are former attorneys who ultimately transitioned to the legal career counseling and human resource side. Each panelist brought a unique perspective to the presentation,  and we all basically agreed with each other about how a proper job search should be done.

Showing potential employers why they should hire you vs. another attorney with similar experience, and being creative in your approach to job search by not relying on online postings and recruiters, are concepts that are valuable, if not critical, for all job seekers, young and old alike.

In a competitive market where the supply of qualified attorneys is greater than the demand for them – both in-house and in law firms – competing successfully requires a competitive edge, and breaking away from the clutter of the hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes that are received for jobs posted on the internet.

Even for cream-of-the-crop candidates like those from a great firm like Dewey LeBoeuf, applying the same old job search methods that everyone else is using is just not enough anymore.

I was pleased to be able to share my expertise with these young (and some not so young) attorneys, and would welcome the opportunity of doing so for you.  Please feel free to give me a call so that we can talk about your career situation and how I may be able to help you.

 

May 7, 2012 In Career Change, Interview Questions, On The Wire, Tips

Think recruiters can help you? Think again!

This is the toughest job market in 75 years, yet (allegedly) intelligent attorneys are being just plain stupid when it comes to their job search strategies.

If they want to remain ignorant fools, that’s their business – they can stay miserable in their jobs or watch themselves sink slowly into insolvency because they can’t find other work. Hopefully you are not like these poor schnooks — if you are smart enough to be reading this, then perhaps you really do want to make a positive change in your career.

I am a legal recruiter and job search coach who has talked with about 1,000 lawyers a year for the last 20+ years. Most of these attorneys are clueless about what recruiters can do for them. They don’t have faintest idea about what constitutes a “recruitable” candidate.

What I am about to tell you does not apply to executive recruiters, but most certainly does apply to legal recruiters. Go to Lawjobs.com or any other job site for lawyers, spend five minutes reading the postings, and you will see that what I am telling you is true.

In my practice, we started as career counselors, and eventually added recruiting to our services. As with any legal recruiters, we get 20-30% of a candidate’s first year salary as our fee. If you are in the $125,000 range and we place you, we will receive from $25,000 to $37,500. If we were to work with you on career testing and assessment to identify your career options, we would receive from $1,300 to $2,900 for the testing and evaluation, depending upon how many hours were involved in your testing program.

I am not stupid. Don’t you think I would rather make $25,000 for putting in the 20 to 30 hours so hours it would take me to find, screen and submit a candidate, than to make less than $3,000 for spending 12-14 hours on a career counseling case? Hello?

However, most of the people who call us are not recruitable candidates. We are able to help the few who are, and they make it economically possible for us to continue as counselors for those who are not. Truth be known, we actually prefer the counseling side so we are happy with this arrangement.

Here are the realities of the legal recruiting profession.

1. Legal recruiters are used by firms and companies to find candidates who exactly match the specifications of an open job, and who have the requisite practice area skills and experience. Recruiters will not submit, for example, a plaintiff’s personal injury attorney for a commercial litigation position.

2. The prime market for legal recruiters is young lawyers with from 1 to 6 years of experience. Once you have crossed the 7th or 8th year mark, you are no longer considered “recruitable.”

3. Notwithstanding the foregoing, if you are beyond your 7th or 8th year, you can be recruitable IF you have a verifiable book of portable business. Depending upon where you live, this typically means $175,000 to $1 million.

4. The term “top academics” will appear in many recruiter ads. This means 1) top 10% or 15% of your law school class and  2) Top 10, 15 or 20 law school. If you were in the very top of your class – I mean, first, second or third — at a lesser ranked law school, you may also be considered.

5. Age matters in legal recruiting. Discrimination is, in fact, legal. A recruiter friend of mine who wanted my help in finding a candidate told me they wanted someone from the class of 2006, 2007 or 2009. “What about 2008”, I asked. “Oh no, no 2008s. They don’t have any slots for an ’08,” I was told.

6. Recruiters do not handle many in-house jobs. Two recent studies have shown that only 5% of in-house positions are filled by recruiters. Companies do not want to spend money on recruiters unless they have to. Nearly all law firm lawyers would prefer to go in-house. There is an oversupply of willing candidates that a company can attract without spending tens of thousands of dollars on recruiting fees.

7. When recruiters do get in–house assignments, it is almost always for an attorney with very specific skill sets in a particular discipline: SEC ’34 and ’36 Act, ERISA, pharmaceutical patents, FCC regulations and so on. They seldom use recruiters to find generalists.

8. Most often when a legal recruiter does get an in-house assignment, the hiring company wants a candidate with prior in-house experience. I think this is stupid, quite frankly, but it is what it is. As a career counselor, I once helped a law firm attorney land a position as a corporate general counsel. He then hired me as a recruiter to help staff his legal department. Like so many others, he only wanted attorneys with in-house experience. “But Bill,” I said, “you didn’t have any in-house experience when they hired you.” “Yes,” he replied, “but that was different.”  OK, sure.

9. Recruiters are salespeople who are only interested in getting a fee. They do not care about your best interests, they care about their bank accounts. There is nothing wrong with this! They are paid to find people to fill positions. If you match one of their open positions, recruiters will try to get you to accept a job that you don’t really want so they can earn a commission. You are just a fee to them.

10. If you are at a career crossroads and are not sure what you want to do next professionally, recruiters cannot help you. Recruiters are not career counselors. They are not schooled in career assessment. They are not marketing professionals or trained resume writers. Most legal recruiters – in fact, every legal recruiter I have ever met – are former attorneys. They are deal-makers who try to find candidates who match an employer’s job specification.

Like many lawyers, you probably want to see “what else is out there” for you that is not another law firm job, that  frees you from the nastiness of litigation and billable hours requirements, and that provides a more collegial atmosphere, better quality of life, and a consistent income. If you expect to achieve this through a legal recruiter, then good luck! I wish you all possible success. Stranger things have happened and you might get lucky – but probably not.

As an attorney, you are smart enough not to take on cases outside of your area of legal expertise; you refer the case to other lawyers who are more qualified in that area than you. Don’t expect legal recruiters  to give you good counsel and assistance on issues that are not within their practice areas and which are outside their expertise.

November 8, 2011 In Career Change, Interview Questions

Bruce Blackwell invited to be panelist

Bruce Blackwell, founder and Managing Partner of Career Strategies, has been invited to be one of three presenters at a Bar Association seminar on career planning for attorneys.

The seminar, entitled “Starting Early: Your Career Plan,” is being sponsored by the New York City Bar Association. According to a panel organizer, Carol Welch of Pace University School of Law and a member of the Career Transition committee for the Bar Association, “The goal of the program is to instruct the audience on the importance of creating, maintaining and revisiting a career plan from the earliest days of their legal careers.”

The program, to be held December 7, 2011 in New York City, is the first in series of three that the Bar Association will be presenting in 2011-12 on the theme of “Starting Early.” The other two sessions will be on “Business Development” (Dec. 19) and “Building Your Brand” (Jan. 19, 2012).

“I think it is wonderful that the Bar Association has recognized the need for younger attorneys to start planning their careers, building personal brands and learning the ins- and- outs of rainmaking,” said Blackwell, who has counseled several thousand attorneys on career transitions.

“So often,” he noted, “lawyers don’t really have career plans except to hope for the best and try to grow within their firms. Many of my clients have been totally at sea when they suddenly find themselves having to compete for jobs against other lawyers with similar credentials and experience. They have no ‘brand identity,’ no way to stand out from the pack. “Even more shocking to many, especially when they become partners, is that they are no longer given work — they have to go out and generate work! They are often totally unprepared to be rainmakers. Young men and women don’t go to law school because they want to be salespersons … but succeeding in the legal profession means you also have to succeed in the sales profession.”

Career Strategies has traditionally focused on the career needs of attorneys in mid-life, but increasingly over the last few years has been assisting much younger lawyers on career development issues. Bruce Blackwell, founder and Managing Partner of Career Strategies, has been invited to be one of three presenters at a Bar Association seminar on career planning for attorneys.

The seminar, entitled “Starting Early: Your Career Plan,” is being sponsored by the New York City Bar Association. According to a panel organizer, Carol Welch of Pace University School of Law and a member of the Career Transition committee for the Bar Association, “The goal of the program is to instruct the audience on the importance of creating, maintaining and revisiting a career plan from the earliest days of their legal careers.”

The program, to be held December 7, 2011 in New York City, is the first in series of three that the Bar Association will be presenting in 2011-12 on the theme of “Starting Early.” The other two sessions will be on “Business Development” (Dec. 19) and “Building Your Brand” (Jan. 19, 2012).

“I think it is wonderful that the Bar Association has recognized the need for younger attorneys to start planning their careers, building personal brands and learning the ins- and- outs of rainmaking,” said Blackwell, who has counseled several thousand attorneys on career transitions.

“So often,” he noted, “lawyers don’t really have career plans except to hope for the best and try to grow within their firms. Many of my clients have been totally at sea when they suddenly find themselves having to compete for jobs against other lawyers with similar credentials and experience. They have no ‘brand identity,’ no way to stand out from the pack. “Even more shocking to many, especially when they become partners, is that they are no longer given work — they have to go out and generate work! They are often totally unprepared to be rainmakers. Young men and women don’t go to law school because they want to be salespersons … but succeeding in the legal profession means you also have to succeed in the sales profession.”

Career Strategies has traditionally focused on the career needs of attorneys in mid-life, but increasingly over the last few years has been assisting much younger lawyers on career development issues.

Bruce Blackwell, founder and Managing Partner of Career Strategies, has been invited to be one of three presenters at a Bar Association seminar on career planning for attorneys.

The seminar, entitled “Starting Early: Your Career Plan,” is being sponsored by the New York City Bar Association. According to a panel organizer, Carol Welch of Pace University School of Law and a member of the Career Transition committee for the Bar Association, “The goal of the program is to instruct the audience on the importance of creating, maintaining and revisiting a career plan from the earliest days of their legal careers.”

The program, to be held December 7, 2011 in New York City, is the first in series of three that the Bar Association will be presenting in 2011-12 on the theme of “Starting Early.” The other two sessions will be on “Business Development” (Dec. 19) and “Building Your Brand” (Jan. 19, 2012).

“I think it is wonderful that the Bar Association has recognized the need for younger attorneys to start planning their careers, building personal brands and learning the ins- and- outs of rainmaking,” said Blackwell, who has counseled several thousand attorneys on career transitions.

“So often,” he noted, “lawyers don’t really have career plans except to hope for the best and try to grow within their firms. Many of my clients have been totally at sea when they suddenly find themselves having to compete for jobs against other lawyers with similar credentials and experience. They have no ‘brand identity,’ no way to stand out from the pack. “Even more shocking to many, especially when they become partners, is that they are no longer given work — they have to go out and generate work! They are often totally unprepared to be rainmakers. Young men and women don’t go to law school because they want to be salespersons … but succeeding in the legal profession means you also have to succeed in the sales profession.”

Career Strategies has traditionally focused on the career needs of attorneys in mid-life, but increasingly over the last few years has been assisting much younger lawyers on career development issues.

May 19, 2011 In Career Change

BASIC TENETS

We have studied the job market, career change, and job search over the years, and observed certain fundamentals about the process — “truisms” for developing and mounting a successful job search. We’ve formalized these observations into eleven Basic Tenets. Some of these points are simple, some are obvious, some need to be reflected upon … but if applied, each will help you achieve job search and career success.

Over the next week we are going to be adding additional tenets.

BASIC TENETS

1. Knowledge Is Power — The more you know about the search process, about self-marketing, and about prospective employers, the more efficient and productive the campaign you can mount. The information you need in order to win is out there … all you have to do is go after it and use it.

2. You Have Control — You don’t need to feel powerless over your career or job search. You can take control of the process and guide your own destiny…if you choose to.

3. Look For Unfulfilled Wants And Needs — You can create a job where none exists if you understand a targeted employer’s wants and needs … even if the employer isn’t aware of them!

4. All Change Creates Opportunity — Change is constant, and affects every organization everyday. Whenever a circumstance changes — the competitive environment, a political or regulatory change, a technological development, a market shift — that change must be addressed. Watch for changes in a company or industry, identify the opportunities those changes may create, and use them to your advantage.

5. Pitch The Benefits — Focus on what you can do for your next employer, and on how you can help them   achieve their goals and objectives. People don’t buy facts, they buy benefits. Keep this in mind always.

6. Picture Your Desired Outcome — A positive attitude and envisioning success helps bring about success. If you think like a loser, you’ll be a loser. You must picture yourself being successful in something as you begin that process, then go for it!

7. Don’t React. Act! — Never wait for a company to call you. Call them! You can’t just send out a resume and expect a call. And you can’t simply react to opportunities that are presented to you … you must be pro-active and make opportunities happen.

8. Persevere — It takes time, patience and continued effort to be successful in a job search, or in any endeavor. Quitters don’t win … and winners don’t quit. Develop a plan, work the plan, and stay with it.

9. It Takes Just As Much Effort to Get a Job You Don’t Like As It Does to Get One You Do Like — You will spend most of your waking hours at work, and you have one life to live. Don’t waste it! Go for what you really want.

10. The Best Man Doesn’t Always Win — You’re competing against people who are every bit as qualified for the job as you, maybe even more so. The key to beating the competition is truly understanding the employer’s needs, effectively communicating your relevant strengths, and demonstrating how you, more than anyone else, can fulfill the mission of that job. The best man doesn’t always win; the man who is best prepared wins.

11. Don’t Assume That Just Because There Are No Vacancies, There Are No Jobs — If you learn about an organization, identify its unfulfilled wants and needs, show the benefits you can bring to it, persist in your efforts and picture yourself succeeding, you can literally create a job where none existed.
These are 11 simple concepts that work. They’ll give you control over your job search and enable you to achieve things you never before thought possible.
—- Bruce Blackwell

April 11, 2011 In Career Change

7 Questions to Ask about Your Job Search

If  you are an attorney looking for an in-house position, the competition is ferocious. It always has been. The quality of the people who are competing for in-house jobs is also extremely high.

In order to prevail over the competition, you need to be doing several things. Here is a quick check list of questions to ask yourself about your job search campaign.

1) Have you identified your Unique Selling Proposition? What makes you a better candidate than someone with like kind and quality of experience? If you do not have a clear “brand strategy,” your search will take much longer. You will miss out on interviews for jobs you could have won.

2) Do you have a well-defined Marketing Plan? Have you identified your target market, the people who can hire you, the companies where you best fit, and the information sources you need to stay current about changes affecting your potential employers? Have you established a specific methodology for your campaign? If you have not, you are trusting to luck.

3) Are you being creative in your approach to the job market? If you are merely posting your resume on job boards, responding to advertised positions on the internet, talking with recruiters and doing some networking, you are taking necessary steps. But, you are also doing what everyone else is doing! Even worse, you are missing out on literally 80% of the available positions, since that is the percentage of jobs filled each year that are not posted on the internet or listed with recruiters.

4) Do you have a strategy for reaching the Hidden Job Market? Since most of the available positions are not advertised or listed with recruiters, you will need more than old-fashioned networking to reach into this “hidden” market. There are many job search tools available if you look for them and know how to use them. (Part 1 of our “Innovative vs. Traditional Job Search webinar” lists 8-10 lead sources. How many can you name?) Knowledge is power. How knowledgeable are you about job search?

5) Does your resume show your accomplishments, or simply your practice areas? Your competitors have had essentially the same duties and experiences that you have had. What makes you more attractive than they are? If your resume isn’t showing results you have produced, you are under-representing yourself.

6) Do you have a compelling telephone introduction when calling the people who can hire you? If your plan for calling the hiring executives is simply to ask if they have seen your resume and would they like to meet you, your chances of arranging an interview are minimal.

7) Do you have a plan for reaching companies that are passively seeking candidates? Many organizations are thinking about adding to staff or replacing an out-of-favor attorney, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet on that process. Reaching organizations when new jobs are in the formative stage is a great way to pre-empt your competitors.

If you have (honestly) answered “yes” to these seven questions, then we applaud you and you probably don’t need us. But if you have answered “no” to even one or two of these questions, then you are likely to be spending a lot longer on your job search than you need to or want to.

We have guided about 2,000 senior lawyers through successful job search campaigns. Perhaps we can do the same for you.

September 28, 2010 In Career Change

The Seven Steps to a Successful In-House Job Search

One day not long ago I spoke with the General Counsels of six publicly held companies with capitalizations of $500 million to $1.5 billion. They each were looking to be GCs somewhere else.

These were very talented attorneys. Each had experience in compliance, SEC rules and corporate governance. They each had managed outside counsel in complex nationwide litigation. They each were experienced in negotiating domestic and international transactions, including licensing deals. They each had administrative management roles beyond just the legal department … they were integral members of their companies’ senior management teams.

These were six very smart and successful General Counsels, each of whom felt they were special and uniquely credentialed.

But the reality is that each one was the same as the other. Competitively, they were at parity. There was no way an employer could tell the difference between them. None of these six people had a clear “brand strategy” to differential themselves from their competitors.

READ MORE

September 28, 2010 In Career Change

The Top 10 Reasons Why Lawyers Seek Alternative Careers – Part 1 of 2

10. Lack of appreciation — if you win, you were supposed to, so you don’t get thanked. If you lose, it was because you did something wrong. If you are looking for a profession where you can receive positive reinforcement and gratitude for your hard work, law is not the one..

9. Loneliness/Isolation — whether working for a large firm or as a solo, most of the work is done alone, behind closed doors. Moreover, a lawyer is always an outsider and never really a member of a team working together and sharing ideas to solve a problem.

8. Lack of control over work process and outcome — a client once told us that the legal profession is
the only one where you can do everything right and still lose. Unreasonable deadlines and unreasonable
clients, not to mention unreasonable partners and judges, are also problems.

READ MORE

May 7, 2010 In Career Change

Harvard JD joins Career Strategies Team

We are pleased to announce that attorney Holly Gilmore Moetell has joined our consulting team. She comes to us after having had a career in law firms and as an in-house counsel. Holly began her career as an Associate in the Washington, D.C. law offices of Shaw Pittman, where she represented real estate developers and lenders. After five years, she left to join
Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, where she handled real estate issues and Resolution Trust Corporation matters.  Later in her career, she was an Assistant General Counsel at Clark Enterprises, Inc., a large real estate development company.  As an GC, she supervised outside counsel with respect to partnerships, loans, leases and other commercial transactions.  Holly has relocated from Washington, D.C. to New York with her husband, a tax partner at a national law firm.  In addition to her work here, she is the co-founder and Vice President of a non-profit organization, the Women in Real Estate Foundation.  Holly has a B.A. in Economics, with Distinction, from the University of Virginia, where she was a Jefferson Scholar. She is also a graduate ofHarvard Law School.  Holly’s primary role will be will be as a spearhead for our Recruiting and Outplacement functions. She will also be developing our relationships in the Philadelphia / metro Washington, D.C. markets, and will providing career counseling to our clients nationwide.