With a few exceptions (most notably, labor & employment and bankruptcy/work out attorneys), the current job market for junior associates –with or without large firm credentials– is not good. I don’t anticipate any meaningful improvement in that market any time soon.

1. Employment is preferable to unemployment. Some income is better than no income.  Given the current environment, if you have been unemployed for more than six months, you should treat a job offer like a raise — be satisfied that you got one!

2. Network, network, network. Unless you have an “in demand” skill set or a substantial book of business, you are more likely to find a job through your own efforts (networking and meeting with people) than you are through the efforts of a third party working on your behalf.

3. Work every day. You got laid off.  Do something productive every day.  Do contract or hourly work.  Increase your visibility by calling, writing and meeting with people every day. Set goals such as one appointment or meeting per day every day for the next several months until you land a position.

4.  Consider alternative career paths. Today’s misfortune can be the onset of tomorrow’s good fortune. Looking back, the best thing that happened to me professionally was when I was laid off from my junior corporate associate job over 13 years ago.  My career path changed from practicing attorney (something that I was ill suited to be) to attorney placement (my true professional calling).

5.  Be your own boss. It’s difficult to lose your job when you work for yourself.  It’s even harder to dislike your boss when you are working for yourself.  Losing your job can exact a heavy toll on your psyche. It can be demoralizing.  Pick yourself up off the ground, regain your composure, and set out to be better (work harder, smarter, longer, more effectively) at whatever you choose to do than the next guy.

For a free consultation, feel free to contact me at:

e-mail: chuck@trense.com or direct dial: 404-814-0201.

The rest of the story is this…Recruiters who are willing to place your need to secure employment ahead of their need to make money can prove to be invaluable to you in this market.   Please don’t get me wrong. The Trense Group is a “for profit” entity.  However, those recruiters who are in business for the right reasons — first and foremost to serve the needs of their clients and candidates — should always embrace the role of “facilitator” ahead of the role of “obstacle”.  Recruiters have a choice.  We can be of help or hindrance; a deal maker or a deal breaker.

Perhaps a real life story will help crystallize the point that I am trying to make.  When I was in the early stages of building my legal placement business, I submitted a young litigation associate to a top tier law firm for that firm’s consideration. I was convinced that my candidate was ideally suited for the need that law firm had. The law firm agreed, but apparently did not have the money in the budget to approve the payment of a placement fee.   As a consequence, the law firm rejected my candidate.  I suspected that the fee was the real issue so I proactively offered to waive the fee. The law firm took me up on my offer and hired my candidate.  That candidate is now a partner with that firm.  That candidate became the source of countless profitable referrals to me.  That client remains one of my top paying law firm clients to this day.  In fact, when their corporate clients ask them for the name of a legal recruiter, my search firm is the name that they are given.  Whenever the opportunity to “pay it forward” has arisen, the short term cost of doing so has always been outweighed in the long run by the multiplier effect of the enduring rewards associated with having done so.  There is still a place for recruiters in this market.  Those with the right priorities can and will add value to you in your job search.

Using too many recruiters can trigger the law of unintended consequences for several reasons. ONE, fearful that they might “lose” the deal to a competitor, the recruiter feels compelled to blanket the market with your resume by sending it to every firm who has a hiring partner or recruiting coordinator — lest the competition get there first. While this helps the recruiter get a leg up on his or her competition, it does not necessarily inure to your benefit. TWO, when you work with multiple recruiters, you are effectively diminishing the chances that any single recruiter will get paid for the time and attention that they invest in you. Because search firms are for profit entities that typically get paid only if they successfully place you (contingency placement), they are incented to spend their time disproportionately with candidates who provide them with the greatest odds of getting paid. THIRD, it sends a tacit message to each recruiter that he or she is merely a means to an end. In other words, your trust and allegiance is in the process rather than the person. Most of the top recruiters succeed because of their highly personalized approach, and the strong relationships that they have built with their clients. FOUR, and finally, utilizing too many recruiters is like having too many cooks in the kitchen. It increases the likelihood of something going wrong — such as a confidentiality breach or the embarrassment of a dual submission.

So how do you know precisely which and how many legal recruiters to use? Whether they will admit it or not, every search firm has tier 1 relationships, tier 2 relationships, tier 3 relationships with clients, etc. In a perfect world, you want the search firm that presents your resume to a prospective employer to have a tier 1 relationship with that employer. By tier 1, I mean that search firm has a relationship with their client that is as good as or better than any other search firm. You might think of this relationship as that of a “preferred provider”. At the Trense Group, we utilize a business model that puts the candidate’s interest first, and maximizes your chances of being submitted by a “preferred provider”. Because it is impractical for us to have a preferred provider relationship with every firm in a given market, we have built a network of correspondent relationships with other trusted search firms. You might think of it as a broker-dealer relationship, where the Trense Group is your broker and we are able to tap into a network of like-minded dealers on an as needed basis. Legal placement is a relationship business – client relationships, candidate relationships, and competitor relationships matter. By working cooperatively and collaboratively with our competitors, we are able to maximize the likelihood that our candidates’ chances of getting noticed are heightened. This is because our candidates come to the hiring authority through preferred providers who possess the full backing and leverage that only a tier 1 relationship can deliver.

Hourly rates are but one component of cost, however. What clients really want is quality work at a reasonable price. They want good value. If an experienced paralegal can do the same work as effectively and as efficiently as a junior associate, then law firms and their clients are going to be bettered served by having the paralegal do the work. Conversely, if a $500/hr. partner can provide the same answer in twelve minutes that it takes a $250/hr. associate an hour to provide, then the value lies in seeking the counsel of the partner. Unlike the price of housing and the value of your 401k, big law hourly rates are not plummeting. Rather, for many firms they seem to be frozen at 2008 levels. I am not seeing, nor do I expect to see, the top tier law firms lowering their hourly rates across the board by 20%. What I am seeing, instead, is partners with rate sensitive clients moving to firms where their rates are the norm rather than the exception. I refer to this phenomenon as “right sizing”. I expect to see more and more “right sizing” in this economic environment.