LEGAL RECRUITERS’ WORLD

Nobody Loves You When You’re Down

BY THE RODENT

Who do you hear from too often when you don’t need them, and not often enough when you do? Pose this riddle to lawyers and most will give this answer: legal recruiters.

If you’re an attorney, you are likely to have your first encounter with a legal recruiter during your first year of practice. It all starts with a mysterious phone call, usually a message from someone you’ve never heard of before. It’s cryptic, something along the lines of: "I’m calling about some legal information that might interest you." Thinking it might be a potential client or someone who has discovered that not all the information you put on your state bar application was accurate, you anxiously return the individual’s call.

Immediately upon discovering that the person who called is a legal recruiter, you are gripped with fear. Because you are a new lawyer at The Firm, you are paranoid. Because you are paranoid, you are sure that your phone is tapped and The Firm’s hiring partner is listening. Another possibility is that someone else at The Firm will find out about the conversation, your loyalty will be questioned, and you will be fired.

Unsure of what to do, you hang up the phone, close the door to your office and take 20 minutes to compose yourself and let the sweat dry.

After a while, you start to feel flattered. You decide they’re calling because word of your considerable skills is spreading through the legal community. Other firms, you have convinced yourself, are dying to steal you away. You are the lawyer in demand. Eventually, however, you come to learn that the new edition of the Martindale-Hubbell lawyer directory has been published. Everyone whose name appears for the first time is getting called.

Speaking of Martindale-Hubbell, it’s kind of cool when your name first appears there. Cool, I mean, as in cold calls. I suspect that most copies of Martindale-Hubbell are sold to people who make cold calls for a living. When you’re at The Firm and a phone call comes in from someone whose name you don’t recognize, it’s likely to be from one of the following:

1. A legal recruiter with a job opening for you.
2. A stockbroker with an investment opportunity for you.
3. An insurance agent with a policy for you.
4. A person from your past who has a summons for you.

Once you realize that getting calls from recruiters is a fact of law firm life, you take time to listen. After all, you might need these people someday. You hear about the "incredible opportunity" at the "dynamic firm" composed of a "great bunch of lawyers" where they work "reasonable hours." Such jobs also typically include travel to exotic places, tons of money, a car, a plane, a boat.

Passing up one spectacular job after another does not always serve the lawyer well. You may decide to stick with The Firm, but, for whatever reasons, The Firm may eventually decide not to stick with you. As a result, you’ll end up wishing you had jumped at one of those opportunities offered by your favorite legal recruiter. Instead, you’re no longer in Martindale-Hubbell, and your phone isn’t ringing.

When the time comes that you are no longer securely employed at The Firm, and you need help finding a new position, the dynamics of the relationship between you and the legal recruiter will have changed. For some reason, when you are the one who initiates conversations with legal recruiters, all of those spectacular jobs are already filled. In fact, the only law firm in town that seems to be hiring is your old firm. You wonder if they’ll take you back.

©2002 ABA Journal