BCG Attorney Search

The Standard in Attorney Search and Placement. BCG Attorney Search is widely known to be the most selective recruiting firm in terms of who it represents in the United States.

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Why You Can Never Stop Practicing Law for More Than a Few Weeks Once You Start

Summary: This is a must-read article for any attorney who is considering taking an extended leave of absence from the practice of law. This article discusses how firms view extended leaves, the potential ramifications of such leaves on an attorney's career, and the factors firms will use to evaluate whether to hire you when and if you want to return to the legal profession.

Are you an attorney who daydreams about “taking time off” from the practice of law? Do you think you can go somewhere and “decompress” or “get perspective” or simply “take a break” and then come back when you feel like it? More and more, it is becoming common for lawyers to quit their law jobs—often very good and prestigious law jobs— and do things like become ski instructors, travel through the Far East, start bakeries or write novels.

You may not be alone in your musings, but you might be in for a troubled future—financially and otherwise—if you follow your fancy. It may turn out that you have the adventure of a lifetime or fill a hole in your soul, but the downside is (whether or not these good things happen) in all likelihood you will not be welcomed back into the legal profession with open arms when and if you decide to return. Read More.......

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How to Be Happy Practicing Law

The first job I ever had was as an asphalt contractor in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Grosse Pointe is an area of about 25,000 people that is socially stratified between middle class and very wealthy people. The city is built along the shores of Lake St. Claire. The wealthiest families tend to live along the lake and as you move away from the lake the houses get smaller and smaller until you arrive in Detroit—which is very poor. 

Asphalt cracks in the winter in cold climates, which causes it to break up and look bad, so each year people from all wealth brackets were happy to have me work on their driveways. This was a source of income that kept me busy all summer. I generally would start my summers working on the larger lakefront homes and move inland as the summer progressed. After several years, I started to notice some patterns. View More.....

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Why Most Attorneys Are Angry

Summary : Find out what causes so many attorneys to be angry in this article.

Several years ago, a solo practitioner from Ohio applied to work with BCG Attorney Search. His name was Michael Winston. He applied several times and each time I told him we could not work with him. Mr. Winston had never worked in a law firm, performed unremarkably in law school, and had been unemployed for a few years. I had nothing to sell because he had no experience.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Mr. Winston became convinced that I did no recruiting whatsoever and that my only purpose was to write about the legal market, advertise jobs and then tell people that I could not help them. He presumed I got some sick pleasure out of this and was holding him back. Why else would I not be interested in representing him? Read More......

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Why Most Attorneys Are Unhappy

Summary : Learn what most good attorneys do that causes them to be so unhappy here.

Right now I am working with some attorneys who are looking for jobs for very strange reasons.

One attorney slept in after working most of the night and was 20 minutes late for a meeting with a client.

Another attorney discovered that the attorney is disliked by a colleague at their 1,500+ firm.

Another got too tipsy at a party and was flirtatious with someone.

In another case, the problem was that someone in the attorney’s firm found out too many personal details about the attorney’s life. Read More....

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Two Things the Most Successful 5% of Attorneys Do That the Rest Do Not

Summary : Learn how to do these two things that will ensure your successful career as an attorney.

Two different attorneys approached me recently looking for jobs. Both were self-confident men who had every reason to be successful but will not be. Both attended top law schools and did extremely well there. Both got jobs in major law firms out of law school but had recently lost their jobs. One was fired and the other quit. Both attorneys made the same fundamental career mistake but in different ways. The attorney who was fired approached his career tactically but not strategically, while the attorney who quit approached his career strategically but not tactically. You must be both strategic and tactical to be truly successful in your legal career.

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Attorney and Law Firm Rankings: How to Determine the Most Prestigious Law Firms and the Most Marketable Attorneys

Summary : This article reveals the secrets of the Harvard-inspired ranking system used by high-end legal recruiters to appropriately match attorney candidates with law firms. BCG recruiters assign rankings of “5” (highest) to “1” (lowest) to every law firm seeking to hire attorneys and to every candidate seeking to find a law firm position. The rankings are based on a host of criteria including (for law firms) the stature of the firm’s client base and caliber of the firm’s partners and (for attorney candidates) the candidate’s law school grades and the candidate’s work ethic.

Lawyers rarely have a full understanding of why they are or are not marketable to certain types of law firms. Similarly, law firms do not always understand why certain types of attorneys are, or are not, attracted to them.

Part of our jobs as legal recruiters is to send the most appropriate candidates to the most appropriate law firms. This means that we do not send a candidate to a law firm if the candidate is not suited to that law firm. This would only have the effect of upsetting both the firm and the candidate, and make us look like we do not know what we are doing as recruiters. Attorneys and law firms must be matched in a manner that is appropriate for both sides of the equation.

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The Four Types of Attorneys : The Finder, Minder, Binder and Grinder

Summary : Knowing which one of the four types of attorneys you are matters a great deal to the future of your legal career.

My conversations with attorneys all day long are filled with short exchanges where they tell me exactly what sorts of roles they are fulfilling inside of law firms:

Partner With No Business. “I am on a lot of committees for associates and in charge of our associate satisfaction committee. A lot of our partners have always said I do very well helping associates and partners relate to one another.” This partner is what is known as a “binder.” A binder attorney makes sure the firm and various people inside of it (paralegals, associates, partners and others) all get along cohesively. Every firm has attorneys who excel at this.

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The Similarities between Human Trafficking and Practicing Law: Why Control and Energy Are So Important to Your Life and Career

Summary : Learn how you can regain control of your legal career and have the career you are entitled to and deserve in this article.

Several years ago I was working with an extremely talented attorney in Silicon Valley who was up for partner in a major law firm. She had an extremely distinguished record and a phenomenal history of achievement. She had graduated at the top of her class from a very good college and excelled during law school at Berkeley. Her parents had immigrated to the United States and opened a restaurant to survive. My candidate spent her childhood working for her parents at the restaurant and her entire legal career working for the same law firm. She was “tough” and had an exterior and personality that came from a life of working hard, overcoming odds and sticking up for herself. Her confidence was such that I remember thinking to myself that she was among the tougher attorneys I had spoken with in a long time—men or women.\

She received stellar reviews throughout her time at the law firm and in her most recent review, a year prior, she was told that her chances of making partner “looked good” and that she should continue doing what she had been doing. What she had been doing was billing 2,500 to 3,000 hours a year, having very little personal life and basically giving everything she had to the firm for her entire career.

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How to Know If You Are Marketable by a Legal Recruiter

Summary : Find out if you have what it takes to be a marketable attorney in this article.

Someone I know was recently diagnosed with a fatal form of lung cancer called mesothelioma. I started investigating mesothelioma and the attorneys who represent people with this type of cancer. What I learned was fairly astonishing. Despite the fact that there are less than 2,500 cases of mesothelioma per year, every attorney out there seems to be jumping up and down trying to get cases.

These attorneys advertise aggressively on television—something that seems unusual when there are only 2,500 cases annually.

If you call them on the phone, they offer to fly to you the next day wherever you are.

When I started calling attorneys to request information, they sent me First Overnight Federal Express packages that arrived at my office from all around the county at 7:00 am in the morning.

Click here to read whole article.

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Why Desirability Is the Key to Getting Law Firm Job Offers (Even When Firms Have No Openings)

Summary : If you want to get more law firm job offers than you ever have before, you need to understand how to make yourself desirable to law firms.

Several years ago, a third-year attorney working for the US Attorney’s Office in Hawaii contacted me looking for a position. He had gone to Harvard Law School, had done well there and wanted to return to California. He had submitted his resume to 15 of the best law firms in Los Angeles but had not received a single interview. He was depressed and seemed to think that everything was over. “I thought it was smarter for me to apply on my own,” he told me.

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The Most Important Lesson You Can Learn from Retiring Partners at Major Law Firms

Summary : What can retiring law firm partners at big law firms teach you? Find out in this article.

Every few weeks I receive a telephone call from a partner in a major law firm who is being forced to retire because the firm has age limitations for partners. These partners generally want to go to a new firm. Instead of wanting to retire, most of these partners actually want more work, more challenges and so forth. Last week, to my astonishment, I received a call from a litigator in his late 70’s who was not being forced to retire, but whose firm was no longer letting him do trials. He told me that he suspected the firm was not giving him any trials because of his age.

There are generally only two reasons why a law firm will hire an attorney seeking to make a lateral move. One reason is that the attorney is relocating to an area of the country where he or she is from and seeks to return and settle in that region. 

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Why It Is Almost Impossible for Attorneys to Stay Confident and Powerful

Summary : Learn why so many attorneys lose their confidence and why protecting your confidence will allow you to succeed when others around you fail.

There is no profession that crushes human confidence more than the legal profession. An attorney’s confidence is under a consistent prolonged assault at every level of the process – from starting law school, to getting an initial job, to remaining employed as an associate, to making partner at a firm. Very few attorneys are able to practice law for their entire careers with their confidence intact.

To cope with this prolonged attack on their confidence, many attorneys do things like:

To read whole article Click Here..........

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How to Excel at Second Round Law Firm Interviews and Get More Job Offers

Summary : Have you passed the first law firm interview and are about to go back for round two? Learn how to impress the law firm during the second interview.

Last week, I spoke with a candidate who has been unemployed for over a year. I was initially surprised that he had been unemployed for so long, given his apparently stellar qualifications. But I soon realized the problem: He was making mistakes in the way he handled himself during second round interviews and as a result he was not getting job offers. “I always get first interviews with law firms, but after a second round interview they never hire me,” he told me. “They seem to like me after the first time they meet me but not after.”

Click Here... to read whole article.

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Top 20 Mistakes Attorneys Make When Choosing to Look for and Accept New Jobs

Summary : Avoid making any of these major mistakes made by attorneys that are thinking about switching firms, as they could seriously damage your legal career.

Recently I was looking for a new home and I called a good friend of mine, a very successful mortgage broker. My home was not even for sale, but one day a realtor called me and said that Dennis Quaid and his wife were interested in looking at my home. Since I had nothing to lose, I decided to see what would happen. Several hours after they looked at our home, they made a cash offer to purchase it – and I was not happy about it. “I like my home!” I told the realtor. “I do not want to move!”

Over the course of a few hours the price they were willing to pay went up by almost one million dollars. I finally agreed to do it, but only on the condition that I be allowed one week to find a new home, and if I could not find a new home then I could back out of the purchase. See Here.......

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Should You Become a Legal Recruiter and If So Where?

Summary : Considering becoming a legal recruiter? Find out if this is the right choice for you and which recruiting firm you should choose in this article.

At some point along the line of deciding career paths, many attorneys consider becoming legal recruiters. In fact, when I bring up recruiting to attorneys confused about whether to continue practicing law they almost all say “I’ve thought about that!” I have written hundreds of articles for attorneys trying to decide what direction they should take in their careers, but none about whether they should become legal recruiters. You need to find the best audience for your skills. No career decision is more important than this.

Click Here to read full article.

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The “Systematic Reason” Why Most Attorneys Fail in Large, Prestigious Law Firms

Summary : If you want to succeed in a large law firm, you need to understand what is causing so many other attorneys to fail.

I started my early career as an asphalt contractor. Like practicing law, there is a great deal of money that can be made in asphalt contracting if you are very good at it. Like practicing law, people advance and succeed in the asphalt contracting business for a variety of reasons.

NOTE : At the outset, I want to warn you that much of what you are about to read may be offensive to you personally. It may upset you because I am going to lay out some cold, very hard truths about practicing law and succeeding at it—and it is not going to be what you want to hear. I am going to tell you why you may not deserve the success you have and how to hold on to it. I am also going to tell you why if you have a great opportunity you need to take advantage of it and give it everything the opportunity asks of you. Read More......

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The Real Reason Why Most Attorneys’ Careers Are Out of Control

Summary : Learn what you must do as an attorney to make sure you are in full control of your career.

This week I received one of the more inspiring phone calls of my career.

The caller was a young counsel-level attorney in a great law firm, with stellar credentials, who is very good at her job. She bills a lot of hours, publishes articles in legal publications, gives talks, sits on committees and is trying very hard to do everything right for her career.

Notwithstanding, she did not have a book of business. Without a book of business it has been very hard for her to get traction in her job search. It is not enough to just be a good attorney. There are good attorneys everywhere and tons of them. Continue here.