Research Your Legal Employer Thoroughly

As you may have gathered by now, finding a job involves a lot more effort than merely showing up for an interview on time. There is considerable behind-the-scenes homework involved. Taking shortcuts will only leave you with less control of the situation and fewer good possibilities to pursue. Researching the employer is one area where students may be tempted to take shortcuts. Resist this temptation. A key to successful job hunting is learning enough about prospective employers to be able to demonstrate why they need you. To accomplish this objective you must do your homework.

Much employer research is tedious, but your three years at law school deserve a planned and thorough effort to find the best employer and working situation possible. Applying to employers at random or going into an interview cold is as sensible as buying an expensive pair of shoes without trying them on. Your job will be a major part of your life for the next several years, perhaps as many as 40. It may make the difference in the level of happiness you attain in life.


When researching an employer, find out as much about the organization as possible. Remember these two questions:
 

1. What type of person and skills do they need?
2. How do your skills meet this need?

Some of the specific information you need to discover about each employer includes:
 

• What is the employer's philosophy of law practice management?
• What is the work environment like?
• What are the backgrounds, ages, accomplishments, and interests of members of the firm or organization?
• Who are the clients? What services do they perform?
• How do they obtain clients?
• What is the size of the organization in terms of employees and volume of work?

The following program requires work. If you break down your efforts into small, manageable segments, however, it can be handled with much greater ease. For example, writing a hundred personalized letters at one sitting is a Herculean task, but writing five letters a week can be managed.

Many information resources are too expensive and bulky for you to purchase and keep for ready reference, although you will find them in your placement office or law school library. Materials not in the law school might be found in a university or public library.

Some law schools also offer computer databases for their students' use. Those living in a small town or attending a smaller law school may be able to use sources in law offices, banks, and similar institutions.

A file box of 3 by 5 inch index cards or laptop computer can be transported easily to the libraries and other places where resources are maintained. Information can be recorded and carried away with you for later retrieval. The index card is a convenient form for notations about job applications as well as information about employers. If you use a computer, you can record this information in a database or spread sheet program.

What information should you record? First, you will want the name, address, and telephone number of each prospective employer you wish to contact. Since legal directories do not give the name of the person responsible for hiring within a particular firm, you may need to select the senior partner, a partner whose bar affiliations indicate a strong practice interest in the area of specialization to which you are drawn, an alumnus of your law school, or another person you believe should receive employment inquiries.

In a corporation, government law department, or similar organization, the general counsel usually assumes the same role as senior partner in a law firm, and frequently has direct hiring responsibility.

If there are other individuals listed to whom your inquiry more logically might be directed, however, note the name and the reason for selection. For almost any employer, a phone call can provide the appropriate name to which your letter should be addressed.

Since your job search should not be restricted to advertised openings alone you should seek to find potential openings using other sources. You can utilize legal directories and telephone books from cities across the country. You can contact various placement organizations that provide legal job search assistance. Finally, if you want to know which firms and corporations have shown an interest in graduates of your law school, thumb through the resumes of employers who interview at your school.
Many unconventional and exciting ideas for researching and approaching employers can be gleamed from Richard Bolles' What Color is Your Parachute? The book has step-by-step instructions for job seekers, covering a variety of topics including the art of conducting information interviews and gathering facts. This manual may be especially helpful for students who feel overwhelmed by the job search and need some extra encouragement and motivation.

Deciphering Employer Resumes

The employer resume can anyone discern meaning among the platitudes? The resumes sent by employers to your school soliciting applications can be slick professional productions or simply two- to four-page summaries on company, agency, or firm letterhead.

Regardless of form, these marketing pieces may tend to obscure rather than to clarify the picture of employers for you. It is possible, however, to find meaningful information if you know where to look and how to systematize your findings. Keep a sheet or 3 X 5 cards on each employer with a list of questions for which you would like answers. As you read the resume, fill in the answers to your questions.

The unanswered questions may give you ammunition for the interview. In addition, when you review the answers, you may discover other questions to ask. The whole interview process should be aimed at collecting and utilizing information to make sound decisions.

Some of the information commonly incorporated in resumes includes the following:
 

• History and background of the firm, agency, or corporation;
• Organization, structure, and practice of the office;
• Clients and major areas of practice;
• Hiring standards or requirements;
• Hiring needs for the upcoming year;
• Description of summer clerkship program, if any;
• Starting salary, benefits, and salary potential;
• Special advantages which would attract candidates, such as provision for pro bono or public service activities;
• Training and opportunities for professional development;
• Advantages of living in the city or community where the employer is located;
• Other factors which make this employer different from others you may be considering; and
• Biographical information about lawyers working for the employer.

A good resume will reflect the employer's philosophy of practicing law and hiring and help answer many of your questions. A bad resume can make your job much more difficult.

Many legal employers who participate in full on campus interviews complete a standardized NALP form. Not only is it much easier to compare one organization to another using the NALP form than a firm resume, it is easier to track changes in an organization from year to year.

The NALP forms contain a wealth of information from areas of practice, to hiring patterns, to salary structure. Recently the NALP forms traditionally published in a Directory of Legal Employers have become available on Westlaw under the name NALP line.

If you are interested in small firms or other organizations that do not recruit on a regular basis, there may not be either NALP forms or firm resumes to guide you. Even for entities that have resumes and NALP forms, many of your questions may still remain unanswered. Where can you find out about working conditions, reputation, and attitudes toward new lawyers? For the answers to these questions you may have to ask other students and contacts or read between the lines.

Directories

Classes have started, and you are busy! Nevertheless, you have to spend hours in your placement office and the library researching potential employers with whom you may or may not have an opportunity to interview. Is there an easier way to get through fall interviews? Perhaps. If you learn how to use the Martindale-Hubhell Law Directory, the state legal directories, Standard and Poor s Register of Corporations, the U.S. Government Manual, and other resources available in the placement office or library, you can find out what you really need to know about legal employers and what they want you to know.

Martindale-Hubbell

The 22-volume Martindale-Huhbell Legal Directory is arranged in alphabetical order by state. In each of the first seventeen volumes there are three main sections. The first lists all licensed attorneys in the states included in that volume. The information here is abbreviated and coded according to a key found on the inside cover of each volume. In this section you can discover when an attorney was born, his or her date of bar admittance, firm and status within the firm, undergraduate and law degree, and the firm's competence and ethics rating (e.g., av). No telephone numbers are listed, but the addresses of solo practitioners are included.

The second part of each volume is the largest and most familiar. Here you will find most firms with over five lawyers, but remember that only those who have paid for space are listed. This section includes full addresses and telephone numbers of firms, biographies of members, areas of specialization, and representative clients. Look for graduates of your law school among members, and check members' professional affiliations to see what their interests are. This is one way to find out before the interview whether the firm will really be interested in you, and you in them.

You should also pay attention to the firm's listed areas of specialization, but do not be misled by generalizations. Terms like "general civil practice," "real estate," "probate," and "trials and appeals" could apply to most firms, and so do not tell you much about a particular firm. On the other hand, the terms "insurance" and "defense" seldom appear in the same listing with "negligence" and "worker's compensation," and terms like "criminal," "tax," and "public housing" give you a very good idea of the kind of work you might do if you worked for that firm. The list of representative clients is also a good source of information, but bear in mind that probably only businesses, corporations, and banking institutions will be listed. A small town lawyer or one who represents only individuals would probably not list representative clients.

The third part of these volumes includes information on legal support services and suppliers of products for lawyers. Ostensibly a service to the bar, this section appears to be more of a means of raising advertising revenue than anything else.

The last four volumes of Martindale-Hubbell can also be very helpful. Volume 15 includes a directory of corporate law departments. The last five volumes contain a directory of Canadian and international lawyers, and digests of Canadian, international and American laws by state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. A good idea for anyone interviewing with out-of-state firms would be to read through the relevant jurisdictions in case legal questions arise during an interview.

Since Martindale has become available both on Lexis and CD-ROM (Compact disk read only memory), the potential for accessing information is greatly expanded. It is now possible to construct complex searches covering a number of different variables to identify lawyers or firms that meet your profile.

Not to be outdone, Westlaw has established an online West Legal Directory that replicates much of the information in Martindale. West also produces a booklet available through most placement offices covering online placement research.

State Legal Directories

If you do not find all you want to know in Martindale-Hubbell, try the appropriate state legal directory. Many of these directories are blue paperbound or hard cover volumes published by the Legal Directories Publishing Company, Inc.

Each directory contains a biographical section on blue paper which is roughly comparable to the second part of Martindale-Hubbell Here again, the listings are for paid subscribers only. The yellow section of advertisers which follows many also provide useful information.

The first two parts of the directory (on yellow and white paper) are perhaps most useful for job seekers. Here you will find listed the staffs of various federal, state, and local government departments and agencies, the courts, and both U.S. and state legislators. If there is a judiciary section, it contains biographies of judges within the state.

To find a particular attorney in a state legal directory, you would first look up his or her name in the alphabetical list. The listing will tell you the city and county in which he or she practices and the telephone number.

For an address and the name of the firm, turn to the roster section. This section is organized in alphabetical order by counties, and within each county by cities. There you will find the attorney's name, abbreviated name of firm, complete address, and telephone number. For more information about the firm and its members, consult the blue biographical section.

Corporation Directories

If corporate law is your main interest, your most valuable tool may be the three-volume Standard and Poor's Register of Corporations. Volume One is an alphabetical list of corporations by name, showing their address and telephone numbers, officers, accountants, banks, and law firms used, revenue for the past year, number of employees, products, and other information. (See the front of each volume for directions.)

Check to see if the company has a corporate counsel in-house, or if it engages a particular outside firm for its legal affairs. Volume Two lists directors and executives of corporations, with biographical information and home addresses. Volume Three indexes the information in the first two volumes according to industrial classifications and geographical location, and also lists the names of individuals listed in Volume Two.

Government Directories

For similar information on federal government agencies, try the U.S. Government Manual, which will tell you the names of officials and agency staff members. Now Hiring: Government Jobs for Lawyers, published by the American Bar Association Law Student Division, is another valuable guide to federal jobs. The emphasis in this book is on information pertaining to jobs for lawyers. Thus you can find out how many male and female lawyers are employed by the agency, how many openings are anticipated this year, the locations of the positions, the entry level qualifications, the nature of the legal work in that department, and many other items of interest to job seekers.

Another fine source of information about employers in Washington, D.C. is the Congressional Quarterly's Washington Information Directory. The Directory claims over thousands information sources in government and private associations on the following topics: economy, energy, health, consumer protection, education, employment, housing, justice, transportation, minorities, communications, defense, science, international affairs, environment, and women.

Work the Directories

Work the directories you are using for every possible bit of information that may be useful. What kind of clients does the firm have? What is the principal business of the corporation? The amount of information that these directories convey is tremendous. Make use of the codes and symbols that are used to identify the organizations.

If a job with state government appeals to you, check the library reference department to see if a guide to state agencies has been published in your state or in the state in which you hope to live.

Some guides of this nature contain information on the structure and functions of every state agency, but may not tell you anything about the staffs of the agencies. For names of individuals to contact, you will go back to the state legal directory (yellow section in front).

If none of the above resources covers the employers you are considering, ask for help in your placement office or the reference department of your school or public library.

Computer Databases

In addition to the Lexis, Westlaw, and Martindale-Hubbell databases described earlier, there are literally hundreds of specialized databases and directories available online through such commercial networks as ABA/Net, Prodigy, The Source, CompuServe, or on CD-ROM (compact disk-read only memory). CD-ROM systems are increasingly available in libraries and many private businesses.

Although it is difficult to predict specific developments, it is virtually certain that the 1990s will usher in even more information systems that will benefit law students astute enough to utilize them. Thus, it may be worthwhile to acquaint yourself with electronic communications if you are not knowledgeable now.

Summary

Preparing for fall interviews or the independent job search can be a laborious and time-consuming process, especially if you are not quite sure how to go about it. If you know where to go for information and how to interpret what you discover, you should be able to save time and trouble, and avoid scheduling interviews with legal employers in whom you are not really very interested.