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Combat the Insecurity of Others: Tips to Avoid Becoming a Victim

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published March 08, 2023

BCG Attorney Search is the nation's largest and most geographically diverse recruiting firm specializing exclusively in permanent attorney placements. They currently have more attorney openings, in more practice areas and locations, than any other legal recruiting firm.
 
Summary

Insecurity is an emotion common to every human. It can manifest itself in different ways and bring a variety of negative feelings. Unfortunately, many people are victims of the insecurity of others. When this occurs, it can take a toll on one's self-esteem and create a sense of discomfort. This article discusses how to recognize signs of insecurity in others, how to cope with it, and how to protect yourself from the insecurity of those around you.

In order to recognize insecurity in others, it is important to pay attention to their behavior. Signs of insecurity may include making negative comments about other people, constantly needing approval, trouble trusting others, extreme reactivity to criticism, and/or seeking constant reassurance. In order to cope with the insecurity of others, it is important to maintain distance. Set boundaries for yourself and don't let the insecurity of others dictate your interactions with them. Additionally, understand that you cannot change someone's underlying emotions, so it is important to manage your own reactions appropriately.

Finally, it is important to protect yourself from the insecurity of those around you. This can be done by focusing on yourself and your own interests, recognizing and avoiding triggers that may cause insecurity in others, and remaining true to yourself and your values. Additionally, it may be helpful to talk to a mental health professional if you are struggling to cope with the insecurity of those around you.

Insecurity is an emotion that can cause great distress, both for those experiencing it and those affected by it. By recognizing signs of insecurity and understanding how to protect yourself, you can ensure that the insecurity of others does not negatively impact your own wellbeing.
 

The Insecurity of Others Can Impact Your Career

When it comes to success in the legal profession or any profession, it pays to remember that the insecurity of others can have a great impact on your career. It's not just your own insecurities and personal flaws that can affect your career advancement, but also the anxieties and biases of those around you.
 

Adopting the Right Attitude for Professional Success

If you are looking to succeed in the legal field, it is important to adopt a positive, proactive attitude. Be aware of the biases that other people may hold and try to be an example of the right attitude and behavior. Demonstrate professionalism, demonstrate your experience and qualifications, and show your willingness to learn. At the same time, do not bow to the anxieties and insecurities of others by allowing yourself to be overshadowed by them.
 

The Impact of Unfavorable Assessments

The insecurity of others can manifest itself in unfavorable assessments of your ability or accomplishments. If you are given a performance evaluation that you feel is unfair or inaccurate, try not to let it discourage you. Remember that other people's insecurities and anxieties can often be reflected in the evaluations that they make of your work.
 

Controlling Your Own Professional Destiny

Even when confronted with the insecurity of others, it is important to maintain a sense of control over your own professional destiny. Do not let the doubts of others stop you from reaching your goals, and do your best to demonstrate that you are trustworthy, competent, and reliable. Don't be a victim of the insecurity of others - always strive for professional success.

Attorneys work extremely hard in large law firms to achieve partner status. Even when they do become partners, there remain different lines of authority between partners which make some feel important and others quite insecure. When an associate is dealing with a partner, he or she is dealing with someone who is in a position to feel insecure because there are almost certainly going to be more important partners above him or her. The best thing you can do in the law firm environment is cater to a partner's need to feel important. Conversely, one of the worst things you can do in a law firm environment is do things to make a partner feel insecure. When you make a partner feel insecure, the response of the partner is generally to stop giving you work or lobby for you to be fired or replaced.

This article discusses two steps that generally occur in an associate's relationship with partners that can make a partner feel insecure. First, the relationship will generally start out well but will progress to the point where an associate may take for granted a partner's affections for him or her. Second, the associate may publicly outshine a partner he or she is working for. It is the latter mistake that is most often fatal to an associate's career. Despite a consistently excellent work product, the associate will quickly find himself out of a job despite being a very good practitioner. Finally, this article concludes with some advice as to how to avoid inspiring insecurity in partners.
 
A. Do Not Take for Granted a Partner's Affections for You
All working situations require a distance between people. When you are hired by a law firm, it may be to work for a particular partner who may have hired you because he or she felt comfortable with you and had shared interests. Never mistake these shared interests of perceived affection for anything more than a professional relationship.

In the law firm environment, partners may share with you all sorts of details about their personal lives. You may get to know about a partner's family, may discuss personal issues at lunch during business trips, and you may even go out and get drunk with a partner or group of partners on occasion. Because your superiors are people too, you may begin to feel that the partners you are working for are your friends. As the relationship develops and the level of familiarity increases, you may even be under the impression that mistakes in work can be handled as friends, as well. None of this could be further from the truth.

It is a very typical pattern inside a law firm for an associate to begin doing work for a given partner and when the associate performs well, the partner increasingly gives the associate more and more work. At first, the partner is very unfamiliar to the associate and the associate is doing everything within their power to produce outstanding work product and impress the partner. In addition, the associate will be extremely dedicated and will do whatever he can to make the partner look good. He will ensure that the work he is doing for the partner and the advice he gives the partner is of the highest quality.

Over time, whether it is six months or a year, the associate will begin to understand the partner's social and intellectual strengths and weaknesses. At first, the associate will not act on this and will continue to work as he always has for the partner: as a dedicated servant.

Napoleon once said, "If I am seen too much at the theater, people will cease to recognize me." Those in authority with a good sense of social intelligence realize that they should never become too familiar with their subordinates. Because partners are also not the most socially intelligent, as you work for them more, many will make overtures to form a personal bond. This may be a couple of beers after work or it may be several client meeting trips you go on where the two of you necessarily end up spending a lot of time socializing together. As you spend more and more time with a given partner, he or she will become familiar to you. You will begin to notice faults and see the partner for what he is: another human being.

What most associates do not realize is that partners become familiar with them and give them a great deal of work because they believe a given associate makes them look good. With the increasing levels of familiarity with the partner, there often comes a turning point: something breaks down and the associate begins to take the partner's affection for him for granted. Finally, the associate begins to actively be aware of his strengths vis a vis the partner's.

What the associate often does not realize is that his presence and the dedication he has shown to the partner in the past is something that was very comforting to the partner. In addition, the associate's presence made the partner feel important and more secure in the work environment knowing someone was looking out for him. As the relationship between the partner and associate develops, it is common for some associates to suddenly believe they need to show others (either subtly or not) that they are smarter, more capable and better attorneys than the partners they are working for.
 
B. Do Not Outshine the Partners You Are Working For
Once an associate has become quite familiar with a partner socially and has begun to understand the partner's intellectual ability at work and the partner's particular strengths and weaknesses, he may be under the impression that he is "set." The belief is that because the partner loves the associate so much, the associate has suddenly reached a different plane than other associates and can begin behaving in a manner different from other subordinates in the firm.

United States
This process of taking the partner for granted will proceed gradually. At first it may be answering client questions that the associate would normally refer to the partner. Over time, as the associate gains increasing confidence, the behavior may begin to escalate to the point where the associate begins disagreeing with the partner about issues in public, telling others in the presence of the partner that the partner is wrong about various things and taking credit for most of the work-both at the firm level and in the presence of clients. When the associate starts doing this, he is outshining the partner.

One of the more common mistakes associates make in law firms is becoming "too big for their britches" as their understanding of legal issues, the intelligence of various partners and the political landscape of the law firm unfolds to them. In the law firm environment, there are necessarily a certain number of associates who "get it" fairly early on. These associates, eager to impress, become competitive in demonstrating to everyone in the firm just how smart they are. In fact, many of these associates may be quite surprised when they discover they know more and are more intelligent than many of the partners they are working for. Empowered by this new revelation, they may be under the impression that partnership and even "running the firm" is not too far off.

Socially intelligent associates are careful not to let others become aware of just how smart they are. The reason the socially intelligent associates do this is because they know that if they flaunt their superior intelligence in front of partners, they will inspire fear and insecurity in these partners.

After a year or two, when associates figure out what is going on with regards to the intellectual aspects of practicing law, many quickly begin to learn that they are smarter than many of the partners they are working with. They may comprehend issues much more quickly, they may see a "broader picture" than partners, they may understand aspects of the issues that will solve the firm's clients dilemmas more effectively. Finally, because they are still quite new to the game of practicing law, such associates are often eager to demonstrate how strong they are by showing the partners they are working for, law firm clients and other associates just how smart and motivated they are. In their seemingly profound understanding of the issues they are dealing with, such associates may believe they are impressing partners and those around them a great deal.

At first, the partners around the associate who is behaving like this may pretend to appreciate the associate's superior intellect and insight. However, partners (like all of us) want to feel secure in their knowledge and superior to those around them in intelligence. This is especially so with clients of the partner. It is a massive career mistake to believe that by displaying your superior intelligence you will be impressing the partner and winning further affection from them. Instead, you will stir up insecurity and a wide variety of negative emotions in the partner. Due to this, the partner will not want you around. People want to spend time with those that make them feel good about themselves.

Finally, I should add that in addition to inspiring insecurity in a partner by publicly demonstrating your intelligence, you can also do this in the social milieu, as well. For example, if you are working for a partner who is very awkward socially and you are a social butterfly and able to mingle with a wide variety of people at parties and make others laugh and so forth this is likely to make a socially opposite partner you work for feel insecure. You need to be extremely careful about social aspects like this because they can be fatal to careers because they inspire insecurity. Even talking about your social expertise can upset partners who are not similarly situated.

I know a female associate who once worked for another female partner inside a law firm in a very small practice group. For the most part, the department was comprised of just the associate, one other associate and the partner. The woman partner was not that attractive and even spent office time asking the associate to assist her with writing ads to advertise the partner's availability on an online dating site and to review classified ads for her. The partner became very friendly with the associate, went out drinking with her frequently and even called the associate late at night to talk about her life. The partner frequently spent a lot of time telling the associate how unfair the world was because there were no suitable men out there and men were not interested in women over 40. Additionally, the partner would frequently update the associate on how long it had been since her last date.

One day, the associate came into the partner's office and at a certain time in the conversation showed her a picture of an attractive man she was involved with. The associate told the partner how much she liked the man and that she had spent the weekend with him. After that, the associate noticed a rapid change in the quality of her relationship with the partner. The partner stopped socializing with her completely. The partner also stopped giving the associate work. Within two months, the associate was asked to find another job by the management committee of the firm and told she had three months to find a job. What had formerly been an ideal relationship suddenly turned south. This sort of thing is all too common: A former favorite falls out of favor by daring to show strong personal attributes.

In conclusion, never, never assume for one moment that you can or should be better than the partners you are working for, either intellectually or socially. The egos of the partners you are working for are apt to be very fragile and you disturb them at your own risk.
 
C. How to Avoid Creating Insecurity in the Partners You Work For
If you are smarter than a partner you are working for and you have ideas that logically and legally are obviously better than his or hers, ascribe these ideas to the partner. In fact, you should make an effort to ascribe these ideas as publicly as possible. Do this with clients. Tell other partners how good the ideas of the partner you are working for are. Be clear that what you are saying is merely an echo of the ideas of the partner you are working for.

In my position as a legal recruiter, I have the opportunity to meet some of the smartest attorneys out there. When I meet them, I am looking for several things. Though I already have their backgrounds in front of me, I am fleshing them out with a personal meeting. Because the substantial majority of these attorneys have sought me out for my expertise, they generally are there to listen to my advice as to what they should do. This goes for partners as well as associates.

Something I have noticed over and over again is that the attorneys who have had the very best careers (be they partners or associates) with the best academic backgrounds are also the ones likely to act the most naïve when I am offering advice. The socially and academically smartest attorneys looking for help will never try to make me feel as if they are more intelligent than me. Instead, they will act naïve and make it seem as if they need the advice. They will also even ask questions that I know are obvious to them so that I can give an answer.

What is going on with this particular dynamic is important to understand. It is something that many successful students do with their professors and something that successful attorneys do with their superiors. When you are dealing with partners, it is always important to make them feel as if you need their advice. Partners wants to bestow upon you their experience and feel wanted. In addition, making partners feel wanted and seeking their advice also serves to help them feel superior. You need to make the partners working for you feel superior. Asking for insight into various ideas and so forth (as long as you do not do it too frequently) will make a partner feel needed, intelligent and secure. If a partner is in a position where he cannot bestow his experience on you and feel superior, he may instead feel ill will. If you do not need him, he may conclude he does not need you either.
 
D. Conclusions
In order to succeed in your interpersonal relationships with partners and become a partner yourself, you need to sublimate your strengths of intellect and your social strengths to the partner you are working for. This is essential.

While this advice may seem like you are being asked to be a "drone" this could not be further from the truth. You need to learn to become socially intelligent. These same skills will one day work with clients if you make it that far. By making the partners around you feel important, secure and good about themselves, you put yourself in the position to get more work and gain favor and eventual election to being a partner.

Finally, by playing this game and making others look better than you, the control for your future rests with you and you will let others' insecurity work for you. If you play the opposite game and decide to shine, you risk the strong possibility that others' insecurity will end the game far too early for you.

About Harrison Barnes

No legal recruiter in the United States has placed more attorneys at top law firms across every practice area than Harrison Barnes. His unmatched expertise, industry connections, and proven placement strategies have made him the most influential legal career advisor for attorneys seeking success in Big Law, elite boutiques, mid-sized firms, small firms, firms in the largest and smallest markets, and in over 350 separate practice areas.

A Reach Unlike Any Other Legal Recruiter

Most legal recruiters focus only on placing attorneys in large markets or specific practice areas, but Harrison places attorneys at all levels, in all practice areas, and in all locations—from the most prestigious firms in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., to small and mid-sized firms in rural markets. Every week, he successfully places attorneys not only in high-demand practice areas like corporate and litigation but also in niche and less commonly recruited areas such as:

  • Immigration law
  • Workers’ compensation
  • Insurance defense
  • Family law
  • Trusts & estates
  • Municipal law
  • And many more...

This breadth of placements is unheard of in the legal recruiting industry and is a testament to his extraordinary ability to connect attorneys with the right firms, regardless of market size or practice area.

Proven Success at All Levels

With over 25 years of experience, Harrison has successfully placed attorneys at over 1,000 law firms, including:

  • Top Am Law 100 firms such including Sullivan and Cromwell, and almost every AmLaw 100 and AmLaw 200 law firm.
  • Elite boutique firms with specialized practices
  • Mid-sized firms looking to expand their practice areas
  • Growing firms in small and rural markets

He has also placed hundreds of law firm partners and has worked on firm and practice area mergers, helping law firms strategically grow their teams.

Unmatched Commitment to Attorney Success – The Story of BCG Attorney Search

Harrison Barnes is not just the most effective legal recruiter in the country, he is also the founder of BCG Attorney Search, a recruiting powerhouse that has helped thousands of attorneys transform their careers. His vision for BCG goes beyond just job placement; it is built on a mission to provide attorneys with opportunities they would never have access to otherwise. Unlike traditional recruiting firms, BCG Attorney Search operates as a career partner, not just a placement service. The firm’s unparalleled resources, including a team of over 150 employees, enable it to offer customized job searches, direct outreach to firms, and market intelligence that no other legal recruiting service provides. Attorneys working with Harrison and BCG gain access to hidden opportunities, real-time insights on firm hiring trends, and guidance from a team that truly understands the legal market. You can read more about how BCG Attorney Search revolutionizes legal recruiting here: The Story of BCG Attorney Search and What We Do for You.

The Most Trusted Career Advisor for Attorneys

Harrison’s legal career insights are the most widely followed in the profession.

Submit Your Resume to Work with Harrison Barnes

If you are serious about advancing your legal career and want access to the most sought-after law firm opportunities, Harrison Barnes is the most powerful recruiter to have on your side.

Submit your resume today to start working with him: Submit Resume Here.

With an unmatched track record of success, a vast team of over 150 dedicated employees, and a reach into every market and practice area, Harrison Barnes is the recruiter who makes career transformations happen and has the talent and resources behind him to make this happen.

A Relentless Commitment to Attorney Success

Unlike most recruiters who work with only a narrow subset of attorneys, Harrison Barnes works with lawyers at all stages of their careers, from junior associates to senior partners, in every practice area imaginable. His placements are not limited to only those with "elite" credentials—he has helped thousands of attorneys, including those who thought it was impossible to move firms, find their next great opportunity.

Harrison’s work is backed by a team of over 150 professionals who work around the clock to uncover hidden job opportunities at law firms across the country. His team:

  • Finds and creates job openings that aren’t publicly listed, giving attorneys access to exclusive opportunities.
  • Works closely with candidates to ensure their resumes and applications stand out.
  • Provides ongoing guidance and career coaching to help attorneys navigate interviews, negotiations, and transitions successfully.

This level of dedicated support is unmatched in the legal recruiting industry.

A Legal Recruiter Who Changes Lives

Harrison believes that every attorney—no matter their background, law school, or previous experience—has the potential to find success in the right law firm environment. Many attorneys come to him feeling stuck in their careers, underpaid, or unsure of their next steps. Through his unique ability to identify the right opportunities, he helps attorneys transform their careers in ways they never thought possible.

He has worked with:

  • Attorneys making below-market salaries who went on to double or triple their earnings at new firms.
  • Senior attorneys who believed they were “too experienced” to make a move and found better roles with firms eager for their expertise.
  • Attorneys in small or remote markets who assumed they had no options—only to be placed at strong firms they never knew existed.
  • Partners looking for a better platform or more autonomy who successfully transitioned to firms where they could grow their practice.

For attorneys who think their options are limited, Harrison Barnes has proven time and time again that opportunities exist—often in places they never expected.

Submit Your Resume Today – Start Your Career Transformation

If you want to explore new career opportunities, Harrison Barnes and BCG Attorney Search are your best resources. Whether you are looking for a BigLaw position, a boutique firm, or a move to a better work environment, Harrison’s expertise will help you take control of your future.

? Submit Your Resume Here to get started with Harrison Barnes today.

Alternative Summary

Harrison is the founder of BCG Attorney Search and several companies in the legal employment space that collectively gets thousands of attorneys jobs each year. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placement attract millions of reads each year. Harrison is widely considered the most successful recruiter in the United States and personally places multiple attorneys most weeks. His articles on legal search and placement are read by attorneys, law students and others millions of times per year.

More about Harrison

About LawCrossing

LawCrossing has received tens of thousands of attorneys jobs and has been the leading legal job board in the United States for almost two decades. LawCrossing helps attorneys dramatically improve their careers by locating every legal job opening in the market. Unlike other job sites, LawCrossing consolidates every job in the legal market and posts jobs regardless of whether or not an employer is paying. LawCrossing takes your legal career seriously and understands the legal profession. For more information, please visit www.LawCrossing.com.
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