Job Options: New Law Grads

If you plan to set up your own law office alone or with some other young lawyers, you can shorten the time from famine to feast by opening your office in a town or neighborhood where you are known. If you plan to join an established firm, going to an area where you are known is not as important. An established firm will be able to supply work during the period in which you are developing your own reputation.

Because of state admissions requirements, most law students who plan to go into private practice have decided on a location by the time of graduation.


To the law graduate who plans to begin his career with the Federal government or in a corporate legal department, the state of admission is not as important. If the graduate plans, however, to work in a local or state government department or in a Federal government-sponsored local program which requires appearance in court, the state in which the work is located will become important from an admissions standpoint. Likewise, if the corporation where the lawyer plans to work requires that he or she handle trial work, admission will be required in that jurisdiction.

In the past decade a trend toward more mobility in the legal profession has developed. Years ago, lawyers tended to put down roots for life in one location.

Today they are moving from one firm to another and from one location to another, much more often during their careers. This trend reflects the general increase in mobility at all levels of society and a growing awareness of the need to satisfy one's personal goals in life. Lawyers from larger cities who become disenchanted with city life are moving to far away towns where they feel their life styles will be better. Middle aged practitioners are reevaluating their goals in life and leaving the practice to try something new. All of this means that a law student's career location choice upon graduation need not be a lifetime choice. Mobility is possible, although it is often expensive.

In choosing where you will practice, you must consider the community itself and the effect this will have on your practice and your life. All survey data indicate that lawyers have higher incomes in larger communities. But money isn't everything, and the smaller town may provide more recognition and status. The choice of a small town also is likely to mean a more relaxed pace, without the trials of commuting into the city every day. Mid-sized cities and suburbs offer a bit of both worlds.
In making a location decision, you may also wish to consider the general area of the country and the overall economic outlook for the community you are considering. Chambers of Commerce and the Federal Government publish a great deal of material on these topics which is generally free on request.

Learn the 10 Factors That Matter to Big Firms More Than Where You Went to Law School

Doing Your Homework

Before the interviewing list is posted on the bulletin board, you should have given a great deal of thought and time to the resume you will use in seeking a position. The resume is usually the initial contact with a prospective employer and should be an accurate and favorable reflection of you. There is no perfect format for a resume, but it should be typed neatly, with no spelling or grammatical errors, on a single page, if possible. The information should always be in reverse chronological order. It should include your name, address, telephone number, academic and extra-curricular records in college and law school, special honors, work experience, and special talents you may possess. You will have to use your own judgment in deciding whether athletic achievement or hobbies will impress an interviewer.

When the list of private law firms is posted, choose those in the areas of the country you have selected and those of the size you are interested in, and then check them out in Martindale-Hubbell law Directory. Many of the Martindale-Hubbell listings contain information on the kinds of law practiced, the major clients and, in the back of each book, firm biographies which describe the credentials of individual lawyers. You may find that several of the partners attended the same college as you, and that one is active nationally in an organization where you volunteered your time while in school. Such facts may be helpful in securing employment in a smaller firm, although in a large firm they may mean little. You may find that the firm has hired a large number of graduates from your law school in the past, or that its lawyers are active in professional areas specifically of interest to you.

The same publisher also prints Directory of major U.S. law firms, a two-volume set, by state, which includes information on areas of practice, management, and background on many larger law firms.

Another directory which might be of assistance to law students is the Law and Legal Information Directory. This large volume contains information on legal associations, federal agencies, research centers, book and media publishers, legal aid offices, public defender offices, and the like.

These sources may be of help in selecting a potential employer to whom you wish to send your resume or by whom you wish to be interviewed.

Finally, be sure to review the materials which are available in your law school placement office. Members of the National Association for Law Placement maintain questionnaire responses from firms which are interested in hiring from your school. These sheets contain information on such items as past hiring and promotion practices, pro bono policies, areas of specialization, and sex and race of partners and associates. Similar information is also received from public interest groups, government legal offices, and corporate law departments.

You may wish to contact acquaintances in the legal field who may be familiar with the organizations to which you are sending your resume. You may find out whether a specific group has a good reputation, if it has experienced turnover in recent years, whether your acquaintance recommends it, and why to you, in particular. More generally (and particularly useful to students beginning the search process) are acquaintances who are in practice. They can provide you with information as to how practice differs from school, and how their firms or corporations evaluate, interview and select candidates.

The Campus Interview

Since individual interviewers handle the campus interview differently, it is difficult to write one scenario for all interviews. However, there are some basic considerations and techniques: (1) let the interviewer guide the conversation, (2) don't monopolize the conversation, but answer each question frankly and to the point, (3) do not argue with the interviewer, and (4) deport yourself and dress in the way you think the employer would want you to look and act. The interview is your chance to know more about the firm, so have your questions ready. Some of those you might ask would be "How many associates are being sought this year? What growth has the firm had in the past ten years? Are associates ever asked to work in your branch office in Washington? What is the firm's associate training program? Do you have regular associate evaluations? What is an average day in your firm like? Would you describe the system used for associate evaluation?

Could you give me an idea of the way in which associate work assignments are monitored on a daily basis?" The answer to the latter question may be a clue to the way in which the firm is well or poorly managed.

Be aware that some firms use the campus interview to learn as much as possible about the students being interviewed, believing that the students' turn to ask questions will come later. The applicant will have to judge whether he or she is being interviewed by this kind of firm, or by one which expects to have to answer many questions during the campus interview.

The campus interview allows a very short time for the interviewer to learn something about you and for you to understand more about the potential employer. Yet, it is one of the currently available methods and you should prepare carefully. Preparation means not only that you've done homework on the organization, but also that you are prepared to discuss a piece of writing or research you've done recently, a job you've held, current economics, the future of the legal profession, or any number of other topics. Preparation may help you avoid those intensely embarrassing interviews in which no one has anything to say. It might improve your interview results if you practice beforehand with a friend who takes the role of the interviewing partner or associate. If your law school has videotaping facilities, this tool can be used to practice for the interview.

The Employer Interview

If you are lucky enough to pass muster through your resume and the campus interview, the next step will be for you to go to the employing firm for a one-or-two-day series of interviews. If you are married, your spouse may also be invited to visit the firm and look at the community where it is located. Firm interviews vary. Some organizations schedule a series of formal meetings with one partner after another while others utilize a small, selected group of partners for this task. Certain firms restrict the process to interviews in the office while others may arrange helicopter flights around the area and cocktail parties and dinners. Be sure you find out in advance what the plans are so that you can pack accordingly. Dress should be neat, clean and professional; don't wear tennis shoes under your best suit or heels so high you totter.

Be on time. If your plane lands late or an earlier interview runs late, call ahead. Be calm; if you arrive soaking wet because of a cloudburst, take the extra ten minutes needed to tidy up.

If you are subjected to a series of 20 or more interviews, it may be difficult to remain alert through the repeated conversations about the same topics, but try to act as though the information you are reviewing for the fifteenth time is brand new and interesting. If you are comfortable doing so and the tone of the interview seems to allow it, you may initiate a topic of conversation. Remember that each person who interviews you is likely to be asked to vote "yes" or "no" regarding your employment.

Summer Clerk Programs

Many firms use a summer clerk program or part-time academic year clerks in cities which have law schools, to get to know prospective associates better. If you are selected for this kind of program, you should never forget that your clerkship will be a prolonged evaluation and that your abilities and potential value to the firm will be continually assessed, though not necessarily by any formal procedure. The author has noted some clerks in law firms who spend a great deal of time in the coffee room and who spend time conversing with secretaries and other employees about non-legal topics. This is especially true of the clerks who work part-time, year round. They apparently become relaxed as familiarity with the firm increases. Most of them do not realize that they are continually being judged and that they may be hurting their chances of being asked to join the firm.

A phenomenon which has occurred at some large firms which compete for top-of-the-class graduates from prestige law schools is related to their second-year summer clerkship programs. These firms are providing apartments, maid service, cars, and entertainment to their summer clerks in an effort to attract them to the firm at graduation. This is a far cry from the life of another clerk who may work for another firm at the minimum wage. It is the author's opinion that prospective associates are more attracted by meaningful, interesting work with talented lawyers than by cars or entertainment. In addition, these firms with the novel programs may be creating problems for themselves later on when, and if, the young lawyer joins the firm as an associate, he or she is asked to work a sixty hour week and take care of his own expenses and entertainment.

What Employers Look for in Applicants

Each employer has its own special set of criteria which it thinks is important in the selection of an associate lawyer. Following are some of these, in no special order of priority.

Class Standing and Law Review: Some organizations, particularly the larger law firms, use class standing as the primary screening method. Some will not interview students below the "first tenth" of class standing. Other firms use the "top third" as a guide. Applicants from schools using the "pass-fail" method of grading are finding this to be a problem.

Appointment to a law review is very important to some firms but not to others. These latter firms would rather see a good academic record combined with work experience while in law school. Generally, the large law firm regards appointment to a law review highly.

Stability: Most prospective employers would not be very impressed by a history of a student who had attended three different colleges, tried two different majors and took a year off while in law school to sail a boat around the world. This kind of life pattern does not present the picture of someone who can take on a job and complete it. On the other hand, some time taken to obtain supplemental work experience may be viewed positively.

Special Talents: Firms which handle large fire and accident insurance claims litigation might find an undergraduate engineering degree of interest. Firms in international practice would certainly be interested in an applicant with foreign language capability. Some firms particularly like to hire law graduates who have talent in team sports, on the theory that these people can work better as part of the law firm "team."

Personality: The personality of the applicant and the hiring organization are very important to the decision-making process. Organizations generally look for personalities which are compatible with the character which the organization itself has taken on over a period of time. Some law firms or legal departments are friendly, informal groups of lawyers; they tend to hire people like themselves. Other organizations are formal and highly structured; these groups will prefer the less outgoing, more matter-of-fact type of person.

It is difficult to determine the personality of an entire organization from a campus interview-this will generally have to wait until the firm visit when a dozen or so partners and associates can be met and lawyers observed in their work-setting. During the campus interview all the applicants can do is try to observe the personalities of the persons interviewing and try to present the best possible mesh with those personalities.

The Employer's Decision-Making Process

Each law firm has a different decision-making process. Some firms require unanimity of the interviewers, others not. Some leave the hiring decision up to one person, the head of the recruiting committee or the head of a department.

Some decisions are fact based and others are "gut" based. The question "Why didn't I get an offer," is often impossible to have answered. Most firms will not tell a rejected applicant that, "Partner X took a rabid dislike to you and threatened to leave the firm if we made you an offer," or "Your personality just turned us off." There are usually some concrete reasons for arriving at a decision to hire a particular student, but, particularly with the "maybe" or the "no" candidates, the decision may be a consensus of instinctive gut reactions. In other words, it is often impossible to say why candidate "A" is "yes" and candidate "B" is "no."

Many large law firms and corporate legal departments utilize non-lawyer coordinators for their recruiting efforts. An applicant should realize that these persons, although not lawyers, can have a great deal of influence on the decision to hire or not to hire someone, especially marginal candidates. Often these non-lawyers screen all resume applications. Some of them attend the campus interviews and talk with the applicant about the policies and benefits of their firms or departments. Some even sit in on the hiring deliberations and present their reactions or views. A student applicant should be careful to give the proper respect to a recruiting manager so that his or her opinion is positive.

Lawyer Couples

With the advent of more married couples who are both lawyers, new problems are encountered in the job-seeking process. Some law firms have a prohibition against hiring both husband and wife. These firms foresee potential problems if both parties do not advance at the same rate. One of the four partners in a Southern firm recently told the authors about a problem his firm had experienced after hiring a married couple, both lawyers. The wife's work was excellent, but the husband's was not. After two years with the firm, the partners asked the husband to leave. His wife took umbrage at this and chose to join him in looking for other employment. The training time and investment in both of them (one-third of the firm) was lost.

In small towns there are still firms which will not hire spouses of lawyers who practice in the same town. In some cases this even applies to non-professional help, such as secretaries and paralegals. The reason usually given is potential loss of confidentiality or conflict of interest.

The married graduating couple may have a harder time getting employment than would the same persons if they were unmarried. Many of these couples will set up their own practices where they can control the firm themselves.

Looking for a Job-The Do-It-Yourself Approach

Although campus interviewing has grown rapidly in the past decade, the majority of lawyers are still hired through the direct resume method. The sending of a resume may result from a referral from a friend who knows that an opening exists or it may come from the law school placement office which maintains a list of interested firms which are not, however, participating in campus interviewing. It may result even from a broadside mailing of the resume to firms in the area in which the student is interested, although this is not a particularly fruitful way of going about a search.

The campus interviewing approach follows seasonal patterns. Do-it-yourself job hunting does not. Openings can occur at any time of the year because of increasing business or because of the departure of a lawyer or lawyers.

The advice given previously concerning resume preparation applies equally in this kind of job search, as do the interviewing guidelines. The only additional preliminary step would be the preparation of a covering letter explaining that you are applying for a position and are available for an interview. Often this letter includes the remark that the writer will call the firm in about ten days to make sure that the resume has arrived. This means that the recipient does not have to reply, and it provides a way of finding out relatively quickly whether an interview will be granted. If the letter says that you will call in ten days, be sure to do so.

Such a letter should not, except in extraordinary circumstances, be longer than 2 or 3 brief paragraphs. Your resume should provide all the information necessary for an initial evaluation of your candidacy. If your situation has changed dramatically since you wrote your resume, rewrite it or provide an addendum.

Advancement Expectations

Here the factors which private firms consider for promotion are amplified. The same concerns are expressed in corporate legal departments, except where noted.

Hours Worked: Most law firms look at hours recorded by associates and reward the fact that an associate has put in long hours on behalf of the firm. Some, more than others, expect associates to work harder than the partners and to be available for evening or weekend assignments. All firms expect associates to work as hard as partners, in terms of hours put in to the job. Corporate legal departments generally do not put as much emphasis on overtime work as do private firms.

Fees Collected Through Associate's Efforts: Many firms today have the systematic means for determining how many dollars were brought in to the firm through the efforts of associate lawyers and how much of each associate's time was written off as training time. In this way they can quantify the productive use of his or her time. For example, if an associate consistently spends too much time completing assignments and the billing partner cannot bill for all of the time spent, the time is "written off" to training. The associate who has too much time written off will not be advanced at the same rate as the associate who uses his time more productively. Corporations, of course, do not collect fees, but they do look at the productivity of time use.

Obtaining New Clients: In smaller private firms, the ability to bring in new business is vital to the continuing success of the firm; and associates who have this ability and use it will be rewarded. In larger firms the emphasis put into client-obtaining is not so great. However, the associate, even in a 150 lawyer firm, who can bring in $50,000 worth of new business will probably receive a higher bonus or greater salary increase than a comparable associate who brings in none. Small pieces of business are generally not recognized in these firms.

Professional Proficiency: This is probably the most heavily weighted factor in firms of all sizes and in corporate and government legal organizations. Maintaining quality is the life-blood of any law practice group, and the associates are the key to future quality. The leaders of the firm or group know this and will give work quality heavy consideration at the time when salary and bonuses are under consideration.

Compatibility with Others: Whether organizations openly acknowledge it or not, the fact that an associate is compatible with other lawyers, staff, and clients, receives heavy weight at evaluation time. Associate lawyers should try to work well with the clerical support staff. Some law graduates, impressed with their sudden standing as lawyers, develop a superior attitude toward staff and treat them like children. The authors have heard many older lawyers comment negatively on this when evaluating an associate's performance.

More serious in inhibiting an associate's advancement is an inability to get along well with clients. Sometimes a client or an executive within a corporation will call a lawyer with whom he formerly worked and request that a certain associate not be assigned to his matters because he simply doesn't like him or her. This event will be related many times during the evaluations of that associate's potential.

Ability to Work within the System: A law office has rules and procedures. The associate, who goes along with the rules, prepares his time entries promptly and well, fills in the required forms, etc., will advance over one who bucks the system intentionally or through neglect. Corporations are particularly interested in cooperation with company policy and procedures.

Timeliness: An associate should be very sure to set and meet reasonable time expectations on assignments in any setting. If an associate is asked to prepare a certain document by Friday afternoon, for example, and agrees and then fails to do so, it will be a mark against the associate. If the time is not available, it is better to politely say that there is not enough time to do it or ask to have the time frame lengthened, than to fail to meet a deadline.