Legal and Compliance Executive Search Blog

A huge new crop of students will be entering their first year of law school at schools across Texas in a couple of weeks. While job opportunities and career paths accessible to Texas lawyers are boundless, learning as much as you can early on about the diverse career paths will make a significant difference in your future. You need to dedicate the time, attention and commitment it deserves to educate yourself about the different areas of the law so that you may equip yourself with the knowledge necessary to make an informed choice as to your area of pursuit. Take advantage of mentoring programs offered at your law school, talk to your professors, especially the adjuncts, who have practical experience in the “real world,” and talk to as many recent law graduates and practicing attorneys as you can to learn about the career paths they have chosen, and why.

As a legal recruiter, it goes without saying that my days are spent reaching out to candidates for potential placements at law firms and being met with a fair share of reluctance from those candidates when it comes to chatting about the opportunity being offered. However, I’ve found that the more junior the attorney or associate, the more hesitant they are to engage in conversation. And, I get it. Junior associates, especially those at large firms, have gotten where they are by keeping their heads down throughout their brief careers transitioning from academia to now practicing at a firm—and, hopefully in a field—for which they worked so hard to land. In law school, they got good grades, graduated in the top 5, 10, 15%, etc., made law review, Order of the Coif, and various honors, etc.  As new associates, they follow instructions, meet their billable hours, and dare not think that the firm they’ve landed at might not be the right fit long-term. Further, why would an associate want to move after only a year or two, or maybe three or four, only to land at another firm that, in their mind, is likely very similar to their current firm in most respects. Lest their resume start to project the impression that they’re a “job hopper”.

Last week, Texas Monthly summarized the results of a new report from Citi Private Bank’s Law Firm Group, that showed that demand at Texas law firms dropped by 7.1 percent the first half of 2016. (See “Texas Firms See Greatest Drop in Demand in First Half of 2016” by Brenda Jeffreys.)