Andrew Harrison Barnes, founder and CEO of LawCrossing, was born on February 7, 1970, in Detroit, Michigan. One of the most recognized names in the legal job market, Harrison studied at the University of Chicago, where he received his bachelor's in political studies and graduated from the University of Virginia Law School.
An ardent believer in community service, Harrison is well known for his contribution to the legal world; he has been instrumental in helping people secure their dream jobs. His company, LawCrossing, is responsible for the career transition of tens of thousands of students and attorneys.
Launched in July 2003, LawCrossing has more than 140,000 legal jobs online and is growing; this site is the world's most comprehensive legal job board. In 2007, Inc. magazine voted LawCrossing as the 72nd fastest-growing company in the US, owing mostly to the clear vision, sharp foresight, and extensive legal experience of Harrison Barnes.
LawCrossing is a parent company to EmploymentScape, Harrison's brainchild, which today has 14 offices and spans across three continents—North America, Asia, and Europe. EmploymentScape encompasses more than 100 job-search websites (including LawCrossing), employment services, and student loan companies.
A mentor, counselor, motivator, trainer, and writer, Harrison has been featured in the bestselling book by Chet Holmes, The Ultimate Sales Machine. He has also been featured in a chapter in the book The Art and Science of Legal Recruiting published by Aspatore, Inc., the leading publisher on C-level executives.
A Painful, Yet Defiant, Career Start
This is more than likely where Harrison made up his mind to help people find the right career. His early days began like those of many other students; not knowing where to go.
Harrison had little money in his pocket and with a couple of unsatisfying attempts at other ventures, Harrison decided to initiate a business of building people's driveways and parking lots by spreading asphalt sealant over cracks and holes.
With the help of two employees, Harrison would fill up five-gallon pails from barrels on his trailers and walk the sealant over to an area of the asphalt he wanted to seal. He would then spread it around on the asphalt with either squeegees or a large brush.
This was an excruciatingly difficult job; the sealant would get onto his skin and burn. It would often take layers of his skin off when he removed the sealant. Harrison had to use gasoline and a steel wool-like material to remove the sealant.
Unmoved by the painful process, Harrison continued this venture and helped people (even some who could not pay) to build their driveways. At the end of the job he was satisfied, got appreciation from his clients, and was motivated to get the next job.
Harrison's Work Is His Passion
Harrison did everything within his power to get work and was always able to find the next job. He worked seven days a week, and worked his employees just as hard; so hard that some of his employees would quit the job from exhaustion after only a few days. There were people who lasted at this, however.
While doing this work, Harrison had a profound respect for the people he was working for. He was incredibly serious and loved his job. His business started to prosper. As this business grew, he was able to get better and better equipment for it.
"Having work is a privilege and the most important thing you can have"—Harrison's belief that has empowered him while building LawCrossing. He says that work deserves to be cherished and held in the highest possible esteem. According to Harrison, work is something that is your lifeblood; without work, everything stops.
Harrison's passion for work created LawCrossing, which today is a maverick job board for legal professionals and the best source for legal jobs in the US.
Harrison developed an early liking for perfection and this is what took him to perfect whatever he tried next in his career.
An Avid Lawyer
Having earned his law degree, Harrison represented a broad range of clients including the US government and several South American governments in countless cases involving a variety of issues including trademark infringement, breach of contract, personal injury, intellectual property, Internet law, and tax and employment matters.
Harrison has worked for the United States Department of Justice, a federal district judge, and the law firms of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges and Dewey Ballantine. His experience as a lawyer gave Harrison an insight into the legal career of attorneys and proved a great help later in his career when he created the best legal job site, LawCrossing.
Strong Believer in Continuous Improvement
Every business aims at lowering its costs and increasing profits in a process of continuous improvement.
Harrison says, "This means that your employer is always looking for ways to eliminate your job."
According to him, every job is a threat to the company and its profits, and companies are always looking for ways to eliminate costs. Harrison believes that the best way to survive or rather grow is by continuously increasing your efficiency.
Harrison says that you always need to be on the side of efficiency and increasing the output of the company at the lowest cost possible. If you stand in the way of efficiency, you will be seen as an enemy of the company and its growth.
The Great Idea Which Bore LawCrossing
In 1999 Harrison ventured into the Internet business. Computer programmers in those days were like gods to companies. Commanding six-figure salaries, programmers jumped around between companies at an alarming rate. Everyone believed that the next great frontier was the Internet and were willing to pay programmers whatever was necessary for their work.
For his small company, Harrison practically needed to beg programmers to work. In some cases he had to pay them as much as $100 an hour to do the work. To Harrison's amazement, often they would stop working after four or five hours because they thought the work was boring. Due to the massive difficulty with this, Harrison started to build an office in India.
People in India were enthusiastic about doing work and threw their hearts into it; this was working for Harrison. Soon after, the dot-com bubble burst and there was simply no work for US programmers. Now programmers were desperately looking for jobs they had treated so lightly in the past. Applications flooded Harrison's office. However, by that time, he had already found a large cadre of programmers in his company in India.
According to Harrison, if your employers can do your job cheaper elsewhere, then they will. The cheaper they can produce a product or service, the more they will sell. The more the product or service is sold, the more the company will grow and expand.
Harrison noticed that more and more people were spending their time and money searching for jobs in every possible way. It was then that Harrison hit upon the billion-dollar idea. The best thing his company could do at that time was to help these people find their jobs. He did just that.
The Take Off of EmploymentScape and Its Companies
Having worked as a lawyer for three years, Harrison founded Juriscape (today known as EmploymentScape) in 2000. Under its banner he started a collection of legal industry-specific job-search websites (including LawCrossing) that revolutionized the way job seekers access employment postings from around the world.
EmploymentScape began its operations with the launch of BCG Attorney Search in 2000, which catapulted the company to the forefront of the US legal recruitment industry.
The success of BCG Attorney Search encouraged Harrison to launch another affiliate: Legal Authority. Started in September 2002, this company utilizes innovative and targeted direct-mailing strategies to help attorneys and law students apply for and find jobs across the United States.
Harrison realized that there was need for comprehensive information about national and international legal job openings. Keeping this in mind, in July 2003, he launched LawCrossing.
The Red Carpet Launch of LawCrossing
The launch of LawCrossing was done with much hullaballoo. LawCrossing soon started attracting thousands of law students, lawyers, and legal staff, who visited the website every day to browse for jobs and exciting law-related career news and articles.
Harrison has constructed LawCrossing in such a way that it can monitor and analyze the recruiting and hiring needs of more than 250,000 legal employers. These employers belong to virtually every law firm, corporation, government office, and public interest organization in the United States, and LawCrossing helps them in getting the right job candidates. This website soon became the world's most comprehensive legal job board.
During the past six years, LawCrossing and Harrison Barnes have altered the course of lives of millions of legal professionals. Harrison's extremely focused vision of finding each and every job and listing it on the site has given the legal community a shoulder to always rely on in their legal careers. LawCrossing has come a long way and has created a new benchmark in the world of niche job boards.
This unique, niche job board paved ways for numerous other competitor sites to follow suit, but LawCrossing remained the most consistent in offering what it promised—the most legal jobs on the earth.
The Uniqueness of Harrison's Companies
A unique idea from Harrison made more people get jobs quickly and effectively. Harrison's companies, including LawCrossing, do not charge the employers to post their job openings (like most other job sites do); LawCrossing employees aggressively contact and investigate thousands of employers each day to learn of new positions. Job seekers become members of the sites and gain access to the huge number of open positions that are constantly updated at research facilities across its many offices.
EmploymentScape's Massive Expansion Plans Touch Many Lives
Motivated by the superb response he received from LawCrossing, Harrison wanted to move ahead and help those students who could not afford the hefty fees imposed by law schools. He wanted to assist law students with consolidating their law school debt and so launched Law School Loans in January 2005.
Soon after, JD2B was born in May 2005, in response to the growing demand for legal information online. JD2B's website is fun-filled and interactive and presents news, resources, blogs, and several other features for law school applicants, law students, and recent law school graduates.
Harrison launched Attorney Resume in November 2005. A highly specialized company, Attorney Resume concentrates on writing professional resumes and cover letters for attorneys and law students.
In January 2006, Law Firm Staff was initiated. Law Firm Staff is a recruiting company tailored to meet the growing job-search needs of legal staff professionals.
Harrison started two more affiliates in March 2006: EdFed and Judged. EdFed is an educational financing company that offers a variety of loan consolidation services to all types of students. This was one of his first ventures to cater to people outside of the legal community, and it has been a major success.
In addition, when Judged was launched in 2006, it became a must-see website for those who wished to venture behind the scenes of top law firms and law schools across the United States to see what is really taking place.
During this time, the CEO and management of EmploymentScape saw how much they were able to financially help law students and their thoughts turned toward helping all students—not just future attorneys—in other ways.
Harrison Diversifies outside the Legal Industry
In keeping with his rapid-expansion plans and looking at a broader market segment, Harrison launched two more services: SellingCrossing and Graduate School Loans in 2006.
A sister website of LawCrossing, SellingCrossing is a sales job board containing the most diverse collection of active sales jobs in the world. Furthermore, it is a uniquely searchable and regularly updated website offering great sales information to job seekers in the United States.
Graduate School Loans is dedicated to helping graduates with loan and consolidation options featuring competitive rates.
For Harrison, the year 2007 was a year of mega expansion. EmploymentScape launched a large number of websites.
In the first quarter of 2007, Harrison started Hound.com. Using technology that took two years to develop, Hound is able to pull job listings from company sites throughout the world giving its members the best opportunities to find and apply to jobs before they are advertised to the full market.
During the same period Harrison started another website: Medical School Loans. This site provides customized financial services to medical students and doctors seeking student loans for medical education, consolidation, and other benefits and services.
Successful in every venture he started, Harrison expanded its resume- and cover letter-writing services to all professionals in all career industries with the birth of ResumeApple.
During the same year he formed EmploymentCrossing, the main hub for a groundbreaking and expansive group of industry-specific job boards inspired by LawCrossing and SellingCrossing. Within a few months, EmploymentScape launched more than thirty individual job boards under EmploymentCrossing including:
Today EmploymentCrossing has more than 100 companies under its banner covering almost every area and every possible job opportunity in the market. EmploymentScape has several hundred employees in 14 offices throughout the United States, Asia, and Europe.
Harrison Barnes: Trainer, Motivator, and Orator
Harrison runs one of the largest career companies in America; yet Harrison makes time for a limited number of speaking, coaching, and workshop engagements, where he works to transform the lives of individuals on a daily basis. Harrison aims at rapidly transforming people into proactive job seekers who know exactly what it takes to get a job and reach their full potential.
Harrison's career coaching includes resume revision, a life assessment, and testing to determine an individual's natural strengths. Harrison caters to individuals, to corporate entities, and organizational engagements.
A superb orator and motivator, Harrison, through his blog, shares his experiences and thoughts through his career.
Kundalini Yoga: Harrison's Secret to Keeping Fit
Kundalini yoga is one of Harrison's favorite disciplines. According to Harrison, the practice is not just about relaxing, Kundalini yoga forces one's mind and body to their absolute limits. Harrison says that when you push your mind you also push your body, and when you go through the various exercises you become a completely different person.
Kundalini yoga has helped Harrison go past what he thought he was capable of. A Kundalini exercise, for example, might involve holding your arms outstretched and flapping them up and down six inches. Continuing this exercise for seven minutes or so seems impossible after the first easy minute. Your arms shoulders start hurting tremendously. At some point, however, the pain stops. Harrison says that you need to condition your mind to give it your all.
Harrison says, "trying your hardest is about coming up against your limits and pushing through and doing this time and again."
When you break through the pain you are able to live your life on the other side. Kundalini yoga is very effective because it can teach people how to give life their all.
Harrison Barnes, who resides in Malibu, California, is a sought-after motivational speaker and writes articles relating to the legal community. An Area Chair for the University of Chicago Admissions Office, Harrison also publishes an annual book on the top 50 law schools in the country.
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