Here are the top 4 mistakes most legal job seekers make:
- Not Giving Themselves Enough Options and Doing All the Work at Once—
In most cities, there are so many law firms and corporations it boggles the mind. The belief that the right employer for you might simply be the one who posted a job on a job site is insane.
If there are 1,000 law firms in a given county, at any point in time, the following is the case:
- 20-30 of these law firms are looking and may have posted their jobs on one of numerous job boards or newspapers. If you do not go to a job consolidation/aggregation website, you will probably have to visit 30+ different places to find all these jobs.
- 25-100 of these firms are already interviewing people informally (sent through other associates in the firm, for example) and are not advertising for new employees.
- 100-300 of these firms have unarticulated needs that they would hire for if the right person came along. Nevertheless, because the firm is busy, no one has got around to posting an ad or trying to do any recruiting for this position.
- Approximately 5-20 of these firms may have told legal recruiters about various positions and are using them to assist in hiring someone. They may have been looking for someone for months.
- Probably 100-200 of these firms have one or more attorneys they would like to “phase out” if they hired someone better in the future. The problem is these firms are not actively recruiting; however, if the right candidate came along they might hire.
Depending upon how you look at these statistics, somewhere around 25% to 50% of law firms and hiring organizations are hiring at one time. However, due to the fact that you could only find out about 2-5% of these positions if you really did your homework, there is a problem.
The result of contacting all of the employers for whom you want to work in a given city is ridiculously profound. Other job search methods simply pale in comparison to Legal Authority because the market out there is huge. In addition, the number of people employing a service like Legal Authority is miniscule compared to the number of positions available in the market. Even the National Association of Law Placement has confirmed that our methods work. According to NALP: The most common way attorneys get jobs is through unsolicited contact with prospective employers.
This is where Legal Authority comes in. We give attorneys access to this other large percentage of the market. This market is huge. The majority of clients of Legal Authority who use our service are amazed at the results they get when they tap into this hidden market—and you may be too. Let Legal Authority get you in touch with this market today—your life may never be the same. - Not Taking the Time to Prepare Professional Application Materials—
Many attorneys seeking a job (which could pay $100,000 or more) may simply email a resume to an employer with a few short words that they want to be considered. This is hard to believe. You are not applying for a normal job when you approach an organization for an attorney position; you are applying to be an attorney.
When an employer is evaluating your application, they are judging how attentive you are to detail and how well you write. They are examining the formatting of your resume, how you use language and how many words you use to say one thing or another. Notwithstanding, many attorneys simply approach this in a lackadaisical manner. Incredible. You are being hired by any organization because of your ability to craft words and pay excruciating attention to small details.
When candidates email an application to an employer, they are a pixel on the employer's computer screen. Everyone emails their resumes these days. Emailing resumes is a very easy way to get your resume deleted from an in box, and it's also very impersonal. In contrast, people love to get mail. How excited are you to open your mail each day? Mail that is customized for a particular person, personally signed and stamped, and is all carefully assembled makes a far, far different impression than an email.
At Legal Authority, we have prepared thousands and thousands of attorney and law student resumes. The people who work for us are professionals and were all trained by high-level attorneys who did things like went to top-10 law schools, were on law review, worked for federal judges and practiced at major American law firms. The result is people who approach you resume and cover letter with a high degree of precision.
There is more, as well. The people creating your resume and cover letter also know what to say and how to portray you. This makes a huge difference in your marketability as an attorney—no matter what level you are. The difference with this is huge and is like night and day for our applicants. - Not Conducting Precision Marketing Based on Understanding and Experience—
When you sign up for Legal Authority, you will be speaking with an attorney (we call them Employment Advocates) about your job search. The Employment Advocate you are speaking with has personal experience looking for a position and also has been trained in how to assist attorneys in marketing themselves. The one-hour phone conversation you have with your Employment Advocate will assist you more than you may ever know.
The reason this conversation will be so productive is that most attorneys do not have any idea about how to strategically market themselves. For example, many attorneys come out of school with a desire to practice law in a certain practice area, and often this practice area is something that is simply not in demand at the time. Many recent examples come to mind, such as Entertainment Law in Los Angeles and Sports Law in Miami. If you are putting all your eggs in one basket like this, you may run into trouble. Similarly, in a bad economy, you may be seeking a position doing corporate law in a major city when there is no demand. Oftentimes people with no scientific background have a strong interest in pursuing intellectual property law in cities and areas where they are not likely to have a lot of luck.
Based on all of the people we speak with and our understanding of what types of positions you are most likely to get, we can help you apply for “dream jobs” and “slam dunks” and position your set of application materials in such a way that you are positioning yourself and your candidacy in the perfect way. This is not an easy thing to do and something one can only do with a lot of experience. In fact, we believe we are better at this than anyone.
From a business standpoint, we depend on positive word of mouth and need you to get multiple interviews and the very best position possible when you work with us. This is exceptionally important to us, not only from an ethical point of view but because well over 60% of our clients are people who are using us after having successfully used us in the past. People come back to us because what we does works, and we depend on you coming back—and we predict you will if you are ever looking again after using Legal Authority. - Fear—
When you are applying for positions, you are making yourself vulnerable. You are vulnerable to rejection. Many attorneys who have been practicing are especially afraid of being rejected. They believe they cannot apply to an organization that is going to reject them. Accordingly, they only try working with a few organizations by maybe approaching a few people they know. They may settle for the best they can get (most attorneys and law students do), or they may simply stay employed in a position they do not enjoy. This process and cycle repeats itself all over the United States each day. What a waste.
When you let go of fear and make yourself vulnerable, great things begin to happen. There are so many potential places you can work it is nothing short of amazing. Yes, no matter who you are, some of these organizations are going to reject you. No doubt about that. By making yourself vulnerable, though, you are going to open yourself up to a whole world of opportunity that never before was accessible. You may find the perfect environment and people you are comfortable with, you may find a higher paying position, you may find a position in your dream practice area, you may find a position that gives you the opportunity to run a company, you may find a position that allows you to travel and see the world, and you may move from an associate to a partner position.
The fact is that so much is possible with Legal Authority. Every single day we get testimonials from clients whose lives we have changed. Every single day tons of attorneys have life-changing experiences through our site that we know we'll never hear about. Great things happen to so many of our clients.
Many attorneys and others are nervous about the cost of our service. Legal Authority was started by a law professor as a nonprofit organization and actually used to be free (you had to bring your own paper) and was a cooperative where students and attorneys built the database and the professor edited their resumes and cover letters. As this organization and word spread, we had to charge money to continue to provide this service. No institution can survive on passion and good intentions alone.
Our service does cost money. It is a remarkable bargain for the breadth of the service we do, however. You work directly with an attorney to identify your marketing strategy; your resume and cover letter are rewritten; we do exhaustive research (we have a huge staff maintaining our database) to maintain and update our database daily (unlike many ‘mom and pop' companies in our business, we stand behind our data and are a division of a company with 200+ employees with a massive research staff that operates only in this field); we print your materials and make sure they are perfectly formatted and printed error-free; and then we ship the materials to you. We then proceed to follow up to insure you are pleased with our service. We also guarantee our service.
