For many years, the legal market in Dallas has focused on financial services and commercial real estate. This business has certainly been affected by the pandemic, and we’ve seen personnel reduction in some large and mid-size firms.
The new year typically brings a flood of freshly bonused and holiday rested attorneys into the job pool. With few firms paying bonuses in 2020 and stability of some firms in question, we are not seeing the usual increase of lawyers interested in making a move.
Houston has always been known for energy and oil & gas. An area located west of downtown known as the Energy Corridor is home to many of these companies. There are currently twenty-one Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Houston, most of them related to Oil & Gas/Energy.
Included in the Top 200 are Phillips 66, ConocoPhillips, Plains All American Pipeline, Baker Hughes and Halliburton. Upstream, downstream, drilling, pipelines, and oilfield services. These companies have large corporate counsel offices and equally large outside counsel with multiple law firms.
As the state capital of Texas, Austin is a vibrant, culturally diverse city filled with endless opportunities for talented legal professionals seeking greener career pastures. As an Austin-based attorney, blazing a more rewarding career path takes the right mix of lawyer marketing and networking skills.
Like most big cities, the legal market in Dallas is fast-paced and highly competitive. If you’re a legal professional, rising above the pack sometimes takes a little creative networking. A good lawyer marketing strategy hinges on knowing how and where to network, all of which can make a huge difference when career success weighs in the balance.
Like any other profession, Houston-based lawyers rely on networking. As one example of lawyer marketing, professional networks are all about building rapport and developing mutually beneficial relationships. The more you network, the easier it is to establish and differentiate yourself.
With the continued growth of internal recruiters with law firms and corporations, is there still a need for an outside recruiting firm? Yes. Hiring through search firm devoted to law firms and corporate legal departments is a good way to avoid damaging relationships with businesses that you often work with or causing tension with a competitor. Hiring from the same pool of talent becomes far less complex when working through a discreet, impartial third party.
A legal search firm brings expertise, confidentiality, and provides the luxury of only interviewing the best of the best. Let us expound on some of these ideas.
Want to attract legal professionals for networking and/or possible job opportunities? Are you interested in building a legal practice or expanding your professional network? Or, possibly looking for a new job? A strong push on social media is a great way to get involved in conversations and meet new people, employers, or influencers, expanding the opportunities you come across.
Like it or not, remote work is a part of our professional landscape for the foreseeable future. Although for several years it was commonplace for many companies to allow professionals to work remotely some or all the time, law firms have typically not been part of that group. Attorneys may work from home on occasion, but it was not the norm. Same with paralegals. Rarely did you hear about a legal admin, billing clerk or receptionist working from home. Now they are.
After an extremely active legal job market in 2019 and an equally great start to 2020, we hit a mammoth roadblock with the COVID-19 pandemic. Scheduled interviews quickly went from in-person to video or phone to being canceled altogether. Employees began working remotely and within a week, office buildings were empty and Zoom and other video platforms were commonplace.
When you’ve uploaded your resume to a job site, you’re undoubtedly bombarded with a wave of recruiters and agencies reaching out. We often take recruiters for granted and lump them all into the same box, but there are several factors that can go into picking the recruiter that best fits your needs.