Are You Being Ghosted by a Legal Recruiter? Why Legal Recruiters Lose interest in their Candidates

One of the more common occurrences for candidates in all markets is for them to contact (or be contacted by) legal recruiters, who initially seem interested in the candidates and submit them to law firms, but then quickly lose interest and become unreachable. This is one of the more frustrating aspects of being a candidate working with a legal recruiter. You speak with a legal recruiter, the recruiter seems enthusiastic about representing you, the recruiter submits you to some law firms, and then you never hear from the recruiter again. If you call or email the recruiter, the recruiter may be slow to respond—or worse—the recruiter may not even respond at all.
 

Harrison Barnes

A relationship that seemed very positive at the start suddenly has ended. The recruiter has disappeared and you are left wondering if there is something wrong with you.
 

• Did the recruiter hear about your last review?
• Does the recruiter know someone in your firm who said something bad about you?

This article is organized into two parts. First, it discusses why it is completely nonsensical for recruiters to submit you to law firms and then forget about you and ignore you. If the recruiter knows what he or she is doing, the recruiter understands that there is no business reason for doing this. Second, the article explores the reasons why this “recruiter blow off” phenomenon happens with alarming frequency.

The key thing to remember is that almost every single time this happens—99.5% of the time—the problem has nothing to do with you. The problem is your recruiter.

Have you ever been dropped by a legal recruiter? How did this make you feel?
 

• See What Should I Do If the Recruiter I’m Working with Is Not Following Up with Firms They Have Submitted Me To? for more information.

 

1. Why It Makes No Sense for Legal Recruiters to Submit You to Law Firms and Then Break Off Contact

Typically, the legal recruiters who submit you and then forget about you are the recruiters who do not care about their candidates, do not know what they are doing, do not have the time or resources to submit you to more firms, or do not have the time, resources, connections, or market know-how to find the jobs or secure the interviews in the first place.

Legal recruiters who know what they are doing do not “go ghost” on their candidates because they are personally invested in the success of their candidates. Moreover, savvy and knowledgeable recruiters realize that it is in their financial and professional interest to stick with the relationship and make it work so that it culminates in a win-win scenario for both parties: The candidate gets a job and the recruiter closes a deal.
 

1. Good recruiters need to know what is happening in the market at all times and they also know that they might miss the chance to close a deal if they fail to inform you of a great opportunity

Brokering a job involves being able to obtain and convey information as fast as possible. It is important for you to know what is happening in the market with your candidacy and with your submissions. This is basic information to which you are entitled and it is also information that is necessary to ultimately secure a job. This is your life and your career and you deserve to be informed and updated about it at all times. The idea that your recruiter should hold this information close to the vest makes no sense. If the recruiter cares about you and your career, the recruiting profession, and the recruiter’s career as well, the least the recruiter can do is provide you with this information.
 

• At BCG Attorney Search, we send our candidates weekly reports detailing the status of their candidacies at each firm.
• On a weekly basis, we update our candidates as to the interest level of each law firm we are discussing with them.
• Our candidates can log in to our website at any time to view their status with law firms.
• Our candidates also can call our toll-free number and speak with someone about their submissions and status. They do not need to leave a voicemail or send repeated emails hoping someone will respond. A live person is always available to take these candidate calls in a prompt, pleasant, and efficient manner. We know our candidates have enough to worry about and we want to ensure that they can at least always know “where they stand” without a hassle.

This is basic, important, information that you are entitled to know as a candidate and something that you should always be provided.

What information have recruiters given you in the past? Do you feel they knew what was going on in the market?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• Behind the Scenes of How the Most Effective Recruiters Work
• Summary of Law Firm Recruiting Process
• Do Recruiters Just Mass Mail Resumes?

 

2. Just because the initial list of firms was not interested in you does not mean that others will not be

There are constantly new openings in the market. There are large firms, small firms, and everything in between. The market is a moving parade. At any one moment your practice area may be slow, and then, later, it may become extremely active. The market changes day to day. I have seen instances where one day there were one or two openings for a certain type of attorney in a major market and the next week there were at least ten. This happens all the time. Recruiters who know what they are doing understand that the market fluctuates and that new opportunities are constantly emerging. If a recruiter ignores you just because you did not get any interviews initially, then that recruiter does not know what he or she is doing and is wasting your time as well as throwing money and their reputation away at the same time.

When there is not a lot of demand in the market for an attorney in your practice area and market, you will need very exceptional qualifications to find a position. But when demand is high, expectations are lowered and you may not need to meet such high standards to secure an offer. You just do not know—and the situation could change within a very short period of time.

Good recruiters know that interest in you is right around the corner—whether it is the next submission, the next interview, the next market cycle, or the next market over.
 

• See The One Call Close and the Moving Parade for more information.

At BCG Attorney Search, we inform our candidates of new openings within an hour of them becoming available. At least once per week, our recruiters send each of their candidates a list of potential new openings. We take this very seriously. The BCG management team closely monitors each of our recruiters to ensure that their candidate files are up-to-date and that their candidates have received every new job listing in a timely manner.

We do not drop candidates because they are not getting interviews after their first and subsequent submissions. We keep marketing and submitting our candidates (with their authorization) until they find the best fit for them—and everyone does eventually find that fit so long as they do not give up and keep moving forward with their searches.

I receive calls and emails from law firms all the time to tell me that they have a new job opening—and in more cases than I can count that opening happens to be the “perfect” job for a candidate with whom I have been working without success. Then, within days, a candidate who has been hitting walls suddenly gets an offer. I have had associate candidates triple their salaries when this sort of thing happens and I have seen partners double their salaries.
 

Almost every attorney out there has something special and unique about them. You will find something perfect for you if you stay in the game!

Good recruiters know of countless strategies that can be used to get attorneys jobs when they are not experiencing initial success. Candidates can look at smaller law firms, different markets, or even different practice areas. The possibilities are endless. Good legal recruiters should show you where the opportunities are and encourage you to explore them. They will never give up on their candiadtes just as candidates should never give up on themselves. You and your recruiter are a team working towards a common goal, and it is in the interest of both teammates to not give up.

Have you ever seen the market change quickly for you? What happened?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• I'm Working with a Recruiter That Has Submitted Me to Firms But I Don't Have Any Results. Should I Switch Recruiters?
• I Haven’t Heard Back After an Interview. What Should I Do Now?

 

3. You could be a source of referrals for the recruiter later

Referrals are very important to most legal recruiters. If a recruiter simply drops you—or does not respond to you—then the odds that you will be a referral for him or her in the future sink to close to zero. Every single time you are working with a legal recruiter, the recruiter should be thinking of you as someone who can refer other attorneys to him or her in the future. Regardless of your qualifications, the odds are very good that you may know attorneys who are likely to be good fits for positions the recruiter is recruiting for in the future.

Have referrals helped you as an attorney? How?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• Getting Referrals from Powerful People (We All Know Someone)
• How to Network

 

4. You could be a different (or more marketable) attorney later

Attorneys who are dedicated to their profession are constantly evolving and becoming more skilled, seasoned, and marketable. The attorney you are today is not necessarily the attorney you will be tomorrow. I have witnessed attorneys undergo incredible career transformations in a matter of months—whether it is getting a major client or getting into a major law firm suddenly when it looked almost impossible. Anything (and I mean anything) is possible. Why would a recruiter want to give up on someone who could be a star placement down the road?

Have you ever seen a recruiter give up on an attorney you know and that attorney later found a job at a prestigious law firm? What happened?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• Never Give Up
• Never Stop Improving

 

2. Why Legal Recruiters Submit You and “Ghost” You

So why do recruiters sometimes engage in the counterproductive practice of submitting candidates and then going “ghost” on them?

For one thing, it is important to understand that for many recruiters, the business of legal recruiting is a “sales” job. As salespeople, legal recruiters are constantly on the lookout for “easy leads” and to make the easiest sales possible. They are taught early on that you only pursue the “best” leads and drop the rest. Most legal recruiters are only interested in the most marketable attorneys—the attorneys who will offer the highest amount of reward for the least amount of work. This is how most sales professions work, and legal recruiting is no different.

Additionally, many people who are drawn to legal recruiting are drawn to it because of the “presumed” freedom it offers. Many legal recruiters are part-time and value their freedom and independence—so they can be stay-at-home parents, travel, pursue other activities and interests, or simply not have to work full schedules. These recruiters may be very capable people, but they sometimes have other things to focus on besides candidates (especially candidates who might take longer to place).

Furthermore, quite a few legal recruiters are former practicing lawyers. Some of these former practicing lawyers (not all) left the practice of law because they did not like being accountable, the emphasis on detail, and the hard work involved. They saw legal recruiting as a career that could both offer a respite from the toil of the legal profession as well as the opportunity to potentially make a good living without such a high level of accountability and pressure. Almost every former attorney out there who is a legal recruiter would have made far more money had he or she stayed with the practice of law and succeeded at it.

The point of this is not to criticize the legal recruiting profession or the people in in; however, like all professions, it is not perfect, and there are some things wrong with it. Most of the recruiters who cold call attorneys and whom you are likely to speak with in the course of your day are recruiters who are not likely to be in the profession in the future. Sales is a profession that is rife with a “sink or swim” mentality, where people are hired quickly and let go just as quickly. This is also the case for many legal recruiting firms.

Even though marginal players with varied motives exist in the legal recruiting realm (as described above), it is important to know that there also are dedicated established legal recruiters, and dedicated established legal recruiting firms. An established, fully dedicated (i.e., full time) legal recruiter is far more likely to understand the value of sticking with you over time than a legal recruiter who does not understand the market, or who approaches recruiting with a short-term gain “sales” mentality, or who is escaping another profession.

What are some things you have done in the past that helped you decide which recruiter you wanted to work with?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• How to Choose a Recruiter That Is Right for You
• How to Choose a Good Attorney Recruiter
• Choosing the Best Legal Recruiter
• How to Select the Best Legal Recruiter and Maximize the Effectiveness of Working with One
• Should You Become a Legal Recruiter and If So Where?
• 10 Things That Most Legal Recruiters Will Not Tell You

These are some of the reasons behind recruiters going ghost on their candidates:
 

1. The legal recruiter wrongly concludes you are not a good candidate if you do not get initial interviews and moves on and tries to find a candidate the recruiter believes is better

This is probably the most common reason you stop hearing from a legal recruiter. If you do not get initial interviews after one or several tries, the recruiter often wrongly concludes that you are a bad candidate and decides to move on. This is short-sighted on the part of the recruiter, but unfortunately it plays itself out in every legal market with thousands of attorneys each week. This is similar to someone ignoring you in junior high school simply because the most popular kid in class does not like you. It is juvenile behavior, plain and simple.

Most amateur legal recruiters only have openings for a few major law firms in most major markets. They do not know a lot of law firms, and they also do not understand how the market works all that well. The largest law firms may receive literally hundreds of applications for each opening they have. The applications will come from all over the country and the world. They will receive enough qualified applicants to build a substantial law firm. Law firms will reject your application for more reasons than you can imagine—and it should certainly not stress you or your recruiter out.

Have you been rejected by a law firm before? What happened?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• Top 12 Reasons Attorneys Do Not Get Law Firm Interviews
• Why Law Firms Reject You

It takes thousands of hours of learning—and trial and error—before a legal recruiter often knows what he or she is doing. To really become competent, a recruiter should work in an environment where he or she can observe, learn from, and be mentored by senior legal recruiters. There is a learning curve with recruiting and recruiters need to learn how to evaluate candidates, how markets work and fluctuate, how to emphasize candidate strengths, and how to downplay (or turn into strengths) candidate weaknesses. They need to understand why it is so important that they stick with their candidates through the long-haul, and they need to know that things eventually will work out for candidate-recruiter teams that keep going in the face of setbacks.
 

• See The Only Three Questions Law Firms Evaluate Applicants By for more information.

When dealing with most legal recruiters, you need to remember that theirs is a sales profession. In sales, most buyers will not buy the first, second, or even the third time someone tries to sell them something. Some sales of large-ticket items can take years to happen. The very best salespeople understand this. If they believe a lead is “viable,” they will continue pushing. It is the same with legal recruiting. If a legal recruiter thinks he or she can close the deal for you, the recruiter will continue working with you despite the fact that you may not look marketable to an average recruiter.

A mediocre recruiter may work with you for a short time, and then conclude that because a few firms did not bite initially, there must be a problem with you—that you are not a good “lead.” But a good recruiter understands that just because he or she cannot get you a position on the first, second, or even third try—that you still might be a promising candidate and will keep going.

Understanding whether or not you are a good candidate requires that the recruiter be smart and have a lot of history to draw on. The best recruiters may have worked with thousands of candidates in their careers and, on top of that, they may be employed by legal recruiting firms that have also worked with thousands of candidates. They have all this experience to draw on and it all benefits their candidates.

In the entertainment business, it is very important for “talent” (actors, musicians, writers, etc.) to find the best agent possible. The best agents typically have the most experience and can see things in even amateur actors that would make them very successful—when poor agents cannot. The best agents will believe in someone, see his or her unique qualities, understand that the right role will come along, and market the person to the right opportunity when it comes along. This is what you need. Being a good “agent” requires someone with experience, who has access to the best parts, and who can draw out the best qualities in his or her clients.

How has it felt when a recruiter has dropped you in the past (if you have been dropped)?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• How to Get Your Recruiter to Work for You
• Help Me, Help You - Tips on How to Maximize the Benefits of Your Recruiter/Associate Candidate Relationship
• Rules of Engagement: Tips for Working with a Legal Recruiter
• How a Good Legal Recruiter Finds the Best in You and Communicates It to Employers: How to Define Your Unique Selling Proposition
• Two Fatal Deficiencies That Prevent 99% of Attorneys from Achieving Greatness
• Two Things the Most Successful 5% of Attorneys Do That the Rest Do Not

 

2. The legal recruiter does not have access to jobs because if the recruiter did have this access the recruiter would realize how marketable you are and would never let you go

It is incredibly time consuming and a massive effort for legal recruiters to constantly monitor the market and engage all of the law firms and find jobs. BCG Attorney Search and its affiliated companies (such as LawCrossing.com) have over 100 employees dedicated to doing nothing else but finding jobs by calling firms, researching openings, and more. Classifying these positions and matching them to our candidates is a major process, which involves numerous technologically-advanced processes. Because we have so many resources and so much technology behind these processes, it is very rare that we do not have new jobs for almost all of our candidates each week. This does not mean that every job will be at top law firms—but most are.

The law firm legal market is huge. There are over 25,000 law firms in the United States that are a decent size. There are even more if you look further into the market. This giant market spits out hundreds of thousands of openings each year, and many are appropriate for you—whoever you may be. Many of these openings stay open for long periods of time and law firms have a very difficult time filling them unless the right attorney comes along.

It takes so much effort to understand what is going on in the market that the average recruiter does not have time to do this, nor does the average recruiter have anywhere near the resources to do so. Without these resources, your legal recruiter will (falsely) conclude that there are no opportunities for you and give up on your candidacy early in the game.

Why is having access to more jobs so important for a recruiter to have?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• What Makes BCG Attorney Search the Greatest Legal Recruiting Firm in the World
• BCG Search Has Best Recruiters in the Legal Job Industry

 

3. The legal recruiter does not understand the market

Just about every attorney out there is marketable if the right legal recruiter gets involved. This does not (by any stretch of the imagination) mean a good legal recruiter can get every attorney into a top law firm, it just means that your skills are most often going to be right for someone and there will be firms out there interested in you if your recruiter looks hard enough.

Understanding the market is difficult. I would be the first to admit that I do not have anywhere near a perfect understanding of the market—nor do I know any legal recruiters who does. There are simply too many moving components—the economy, each law firm’s expansion plans, social conditions in a given market—and more. In fact, understanding the legal market is arguably more difficult and time-consuming than understanding the stock market because there is not enough data to draw on.

With that said, the only thing that most legal recruiters can reliably understand is the concept of the “moving parade” mentioned earlier. The legal market is always changing, and when it does, it is important that your legal recruiter have jobs to submit you to. This means the legal recruiter needs to have access to openings that the recruiter can submit you to when the market changes in your favor—and it always does.

How can you make sure the legal recruiter you are working with understands the legal market?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• Why You Should Never Use a Legal Recruiter
• Finding the Right Recruiter for You
• Recruiters as Agents: What Should You Look for in an Agent?

 

4. The legal recruiter is embarrassed

Legal recruiters are often able to get you interested in exploring the market by encouraging you to let them send your application to various firms with all sorts of implied promises that you look great for the firm and that they believe you will get an interview. When things fail to go in your favor, the legal recruiter may feel embarrassed. Rather than dealing with it, the recruiter takes the easy way out and avoids you, or stops communicating with you. The recruiter will be afraid that you will be angry or disappointed with him or her, which is the last thing the recruiter wants.

I am not sure what else to say about this other than the fact that if the recruiter is embarrassed to speak with you, the recruiter should probably not be a legal recruiter to begin with. A legal recruiter who is too embarrassed to give you bad news will certainly lack the energy and motivation to deal with law firms and sell you there—for fear of being embarrassed as well. Recruiters like this may also be afraid to send you to firms that appear “above your punching rate” for fear of being embarrassed by rejection from those law firms as well. Recruiters afraid of rejection are a bad lot—they typically have a difficult time with cold calling both firms and candidates and tend to be quite timid.

Recruiters most afraid of rejection tend to be former attorneys—often the most qualified ones. Just because someone worked in a major law firm and went to a top law school does not make that person a good legal recruiter. In many cases, you should treat these qualifications with suspicion because a recruiter with the great academic/legal qualifications may lack the sorts of “sales” qualifications that make the best and most effective legal recruiters. Many legal recruiters act like they are still working in major law firms, treat candidates very formally like “clients,” and have about as much passion as a wet brick. This often does not serve you very well and should alarm you. Despite the negative about “sales” in the legal recruiting business, your recruiter needs to be a good salesperson. Probably only 1-2% of attorneys in the best law firms could ever be good legal recruiters because they do not understand or appreciate sales.

The reason the best attorneys often do not make good legal recruiters is that they are used to being “coddled” and earning respect based on their superior academics and pedigrees. They believe that this alone makes them good legal recruiters—and it does not.

The final issue with legal recruiters is that many times recruiting is more about the recruiter’s ego than it is about you. Recruiters care about how others see them and how law firms see them. They are afraid to do anything that hurts their sense of self-worth. Their sense of themselves and egos may depend on them believing that they only work with attorneys from top law schools, only work with the top law firms, only work with partners, only work with the “most marketable” candidates—and so forth. Anything that detracts from this automatically hurts their sense of self.

How can you avoid working with a legal recruiter that lets their ego get in the way of helping you find a job?
 

• See Flow, Your Ego and Your Career for more information.

 

5. The legal recruiter did not do anything

While this is not always the case, it does happen much more often than you might think. I have heard of many legal recruiters in my career who simply did nothing to get their candidates jobs when they said they would. Is this common? I do not think so—but there are many legal recruiters who are simply not in the business for the long-haul. If they are not in the business for the long-haul, then they may make mistakes, not do what they say they are going to do, and more.

Legal recruiting is a sales profession. There is a low barrier to entry in most legal recruiting firms—“can you use a phone?”—and many people enter the profession for the wrong reasons. Many salespeople are better at convincing you to do something than at following through. A few are simply not competent. Many are on their way out the door within weeks, or months, of starting at a legal recruiting firm.

Fired attorneys, stressed out attorneys, incompetent attorneys, and attorneys with problems often enter the recruiting profession because they believe it will be easier than practicing law (it is not). They bring many of the same issues that got them in trouble as practicing attorneys into their new roles as legal recruiters and, unfortunately, to your candidacy.

At BCG Attorney Search, we provide our candidates with reports each week that show them exactly where they have approved submissions and where the submissions have been sent—as well as the status of each. If you are hiring a legal recruiter to do something for you, that recruiter should at least be doing what he or she says he or she is going to do.

Has a recruiter ever not done something they said they were going to do? What did you do?
 

• See How Legal Recruiters Manipulate You for more information.

 

6. The legal recruiter does not have the time or resources to keep working with you

Many of the best legal recruiters simply do not have the time to work with every attorney. There is nothing wrong with this especially, but if a recruiter takes you on as a candidate, my belief is that the recruiter should continue working with you until the recruiter gets the job done. At the largest legal recruiting firms, the legal recruiters may not have the time or the energy to continue working with you. The legal recruiters may have more than enough candidates for the time they have available and only be able to work with a limited number of people at one time. If you fail to get any initial traction—or fail to close interview after interview—the legal recruiter will simply move on to someone who is getting traction and does better at interviews. This is extremely common in the legal recruiting industry. Legal recruiters only want to work with the people who are getting the most initial interest from firms and do well in interviews.

The problem with this is that some legal recruiters often have a poor understanding of “low hanging fruit.”
 

• Working with candidates who are getting an initial interest only means that they are failing to get positions for many attorneys who otherwise would get positions if they worked with them over a longer period.
• Failing to work with attorneys who fail to get offers or progress beyond first interviews means that the legal recruiter will not be able to coach the recruiter’s candidates to improve and will similarly miss many placements the recruiter might otherwise make if the recruiter worked with his or her candidates over an extended period.

Regardless of this, if the legal recruiter does not have the time or resources to continue working with you, then you should find another legal recruiter who does. At BCG Attorney Search, we are selective in choosing whom to work with, but once we select you as a candidate, we typically stay with you as long as it takes to place you. Each of our legal recruiters also has a large team of people assisting them and this helps make sure that they are not too stretched thin for time to devote to each candidate. Finally, if one of our recruiters gets too busy, we always have more recruiters who can step in and take on new candidates.

How can you find a recruiter that is willing to work with you over a longer period of time?
 

• See How to Know If You Are Marketable by a Legal Recruiter for more information.

 

7. The legal recruiter does not care about you and is motivated by the quick buck and not a relationship with you

Legal recruiting has a major sales component to it. Many legal recruiters say things like they are “interested in your career” and make a big deal out of this, but when it comes to doing the work, staying in touch, and continuing with you they are not interested. Money is a major motivator for many peoples’ actions, and legal recruiters are no different. If the legal recruiter is not interested in your career, then the legal recruiter will move on.

What are some ways you can separate the good legal recruiters from the bad ones?

Who pays a legal recruiter?
 

• See What Makes a World Class Recruiter for more information.

 

8. You may have unreasonable expectations

After testing the market with you one or more times, and having extended conversations with you on a few occasions, the legal recruiter may conclude that you have unreasonable expectations and that the recruiter’s efforts and time are better spent elsewhere. This is very common and happens quite often—in all legal recruiting firms. The fact is that not every attorney’s qualifications entitles him or her to work at every caliber of law firm. As much as legal recruiters may want and hope for this, it simply is not the case.

If an attorney has unreasonable expectations for what is possible, then the legal recruiter will realize that he or she cannot be of service and will move on. The recruiter should, of course, be upfront about the reason for moving on—but many avoid confrontation and do so without saying anything at all.

A very common type of attorney who has a difficult time moving into a major firm and has unreasonable expectations is a partner at a smaller law firm with business and a low billing rate. The largest law firms will require several million dollars in business from lateral partners and will also require that these partners have very high billing rates (over $1,000 an hour) to ever get looked at. Many partners in smaller law firms may have $1,000,000 in business and a billing rate of $500 an hour and demand to be placed in the largest and most prestigious law firms. Despite repeated conversations and a few “strategic submissions” here and there, this rarely works out. The reason that this does not work out is that (1) this is not enough business, and (2) the clients will not be portable (a $500-hour client is unlikely to agree to move with a partner to a new firm that will double the client’s fees). I encounter partners with demands like this as least a few times a month in my practice.

Secondly, after 5 or 10 years of experience in plaintiffs’ practices in things like employment, securities or other types of litigation, many attorneys suddenly decide that they want to do defense litigation. There are a myriad of problems with this:
 

• A defense firm will almost never hire a plaintiffs’ attorney because there are going to be far too many potential conflicts. It is simply not worth the risk.
• Defense attorneys tend to be far more skillful with pleadings because that is where their skill and best chance of success lies—and not at trial.
• Defense attorneys are paid by the hour to work like crazy on pleadings, and plaintiffs’ attorneys are contingency-based and do not have the same luxury of time and money to improve their skills.
• Defense firms also can pay attorneys more money than plaintiffs’ firms to write briefs and do other work and therefore tend to get better quality attorneys with better skills. Accordingly, the defense attorneys tend to be better at this.

Attorneys trying to switch from plaintiffs’ to defense work often experience all sorts of roadblocks.

Thirdly, many attorneys have unreasonable salary expectations. For whatever reason, these attorneys may believe they are entitled to a much higher salary than the market is willing to pay attorneys with their backgrounds. I have had instances where an attorney wanted to make two or three times their salary. The most I got them was 50% more, and they kept turning down offers because not enough money was on the table. In situations such as this, the recruiter may conclude there is nothing they can do for the attorney.

How can you make sure your expectations are not set too high when it comes to what is possible in your legal career?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• What Are Your Salary Requirements?
• How to Arrive at Your Salary Expectation
• Why You Should Find Your “Tribe” and Not Just Focus on Money in Making Law Firm Job Decisions
• The Top Reasons Why Money Is the Dumbest Thing Any Attorney Should Focus on When Joining a Law Firm

 

9. You may be difficult to deal with

Many attorneys are difficult to deal with. Without getting too much into it, if a legal recruiter believes you are too difficult to deal with, the recruiter may simply stop dealing with you. There may be many reasons you might be difficult to deal with, and some recruiters are more sensitive than others. Here are some common reasons I have heard recruiters give regarding attorneys who are difficult to deal with:
 

• Not being honest with a legal recruiter.
• Not being honest with law firms.
• Not showing up to interviews.
• Not telling a recruiter about other firms you have applied to.
• Using inside information the recruiter has given you about openings and applying on your own.
• Micromanaging the legal recruiter.
• Calling and emailing the legal recruiter all the time.
• Repeatedly turning down offers.
• Not approving any law firms.
• Not responding to the legal recruiter when contacted by the legal recruiter—repeatedly.

There are numerous reasons candidates might be difficult to deal with for an individual legal recruiter—and these are just a few.

Do you think it is fair that a legal recruiter should not work with difficult candidates?

See the following articles for more information:
 

• How You Deal with Problems Will Determine the Quality of Your Life
• How You Handle Chaos Will Determine Your Success or Failure
• The Solution to Problems Lies within Each Problem

Personally, I never lose interest in my candidates. Every candidate is placeable, and every candidate is marketable if the recruiter has enough time. I have developed all sorts of systems to ensure I can continuously be on top of the candidates I work with, and while it would be ideal if most placements happened quickly, I realize that most do not because there are too many moving pieces. For a placement to happen, the candidate needs to like the firm, the firm needs to like the candidate, there cannot be too many candidates better than the candidate—and more. Everyone is an individual and has unique skills and talents.

Like many professions, legal recruiting is a profession with a set of rules and various idiosyncrasies. Not every legal recruiter is good at his or her job—but many are. Ultimately, you should understand that the odds are that if a legal recruiter is not communicating with you as the recruiter should, it likely has far more to do with the recruiter than it does with you.

See the following articles for more information:
 

• A Comprehensive Guide to Working with a Legal Recruiter
• Recruiting a Recruiter
• How to Find the Right Headhunter?
• Non-attorneys as Legal Recruiters
• Beyond the Listings: Why Use a Search Firm?
• FAQ about Legal Recruiting
• Why You Should Be Talking to a Legal Recruiter Right Now
• Should I Use a Legal Recruiter? Top 10 Reasons to Use a Legal Recruiter
• Three Types of Recruiting
• Conducting a Professional Legal Search, A Personal Approach
• Do I Really Need a Recruiter?
• Can I Use More Than One Legal Recruiter in My Job Search?
• How Many Recruiters Should I Use?
• Should You Apply to the Same Firm Through Different Recruiters?
• Should I Work with Multiple Recruiters?

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