What Happens When You Work
With A BCG Search Professional?

It cannot be underestimated that when a candidate works with BCG Attorney Search, that candidate gets the full support of an entire team. Unlike recruiting firms, where a candidate might be reliant on the “whims” and recruiting style of one “legal recruiter” (who could have any number of issues that interfere with effective recruiting), BCG Attorney Search candidates have their LPPs as well as their legal placement teams (“LPT”).

BCG was started in 1999 and since that time we've placed thousands of attorneys. We've also developed very rigorous processes and procedures to make that possible.

When BCG starts working with a candidate, the first thing that will happen is the candidate will be assigned a Legal Placement Professional, and also a team that they'll work with. The way a Legal Placement Professional is typically assigned is they will be assigned someone that looks like they would be a good fit for that candidate.

LPPs are assigned based on the perceived fit of the candidate and whether or not the person looks like they might be interested in a certain market that the placement professional is familiar with.

They're going to offer suggestions about the best way to get your materials seriously reviewed, about strategies to use with you, about candidates they may have worked with that are similar, about law firms that may be active in one market and may possibly be active in your market.

In addition to the LPPs and the legal placement team, Harrison also reviews every candidate that our LPPs are working with. He provides input that he can give from his 20+ years of experience.

The number one core value is that we must get attorneys jobs. And so what that means is out of that, a lot of beliefs are developed. And we believe that our profession is a very important one. It's something that's capable of improving careers and saving careers, and even saving lives and making people happier and helping them enjoy themselves and really fall into something that's meaningful.

If you're looking at just one city, that's only one set of opportunities. Looking at more than one opportunity is going to be very helpful for you because it's just going to drastically increase your odds of being happy.

The questionnaire is important because when a good Legal Placement Professional is representing you, they're personalizing you and humanizing you to law firms. And that's different than a recruiter.

An LPP will prepare for a meeting by taking a look at your resume and then getting a sense of your practice area, strengths, and weaknesses. An LPP will also get a sense of other practice areas where you might fit.

It's important to realize your goals at the beginning of the process may not be the same as they are at the end of the process. A lot of times attorneys don't understand everything there is about their marketability. Regardless of what your goals are, our goal will be to do whatever is necessary to reach where you want to go.

One of the things that attorneys fear is that if they show any weakness, that weakness is going to be turned against them, and people aren't going to want to work with them. But if you hide something from a potential employer, it can backfire in a big way. It's important to be honest with your LPP because we can help you navigate the waters when addressing perceived weaknesses or complications.

Our most common recommendations are to stay in your current firm, to look at larger, more sophisticated firms, look at smaller law firms, look at smaller markets, larger markets, or to look at similar firms.

There's a lot of conditions where I recommend an attorney stay in the current firm. One of the main ones is that something trivial happens, someone will make a negative remark to someone or something will happen where the person is upset or they think they need to start looking. And that's not always the case.

You may be at a smaller law firm, but you just may have something inside of you that just demanding to do so much better and you're excelling. You're outgrowing your firm. You show the potential to just go all the way and you have fight and energy, and you just got it in you and that's the kind of person who should be moving to a bigger firm.

One of the reasons is to be in a position where you can get business. If an attorney wants to get business, then smaller firms typically have lower billing rates, there's not going to be as many conflicts when you do try to bring in a client, you may be able to do a lot of the work yourself because your billing rate's lower.

Your information is going to stay confidential. Law firms know that if they disturb your confidentiality, word is going to get around, and they're going to get a horrible reputation in the market.

A Legal Placement Professional will put together a cover letter and a package with your information. And then they'll contact the firm with that information, in addition to calling and following up, and so forth.

The way a blind submission works is you might say, "I'm working with a third-year corporate associate who's at a top law firm and went to a great law school," because you don't want the person to know who they are, right? And say, "Would you be interested in seeing their resume?" And then the law firm may or may not respond.

Prior to contact on behalf of a law firm, the LPP will prepare the candidates' application materials for the law firms. They're typically tailored for each city the person wants to work in.

Employers will have a lot of questions about you typically. But one of the things that they're always going to want to know is they're going to want to know why you're looking at new firms. So that's really the most important question.

Each week, LPPs will send their candidates a formal report that contains all the firms that we're marketing them to and their status, whether they've got an interview, offer, interview and no offer, that sort of thing. We'll also include the article of the week.

A law firm a lot of times will not say no because you may be a fit at some point in the future. A law firm can have an opening, but may be interviewing people and not interested in interviewing new people until they complete interviewing the people that they have already started interviewing.

The LPP will assist you with travel arrangements and prior to your interview, your LPP will do an interview prep call. They're going to help you go over the reasons you should tell the law firm why you're moving or interested in another firm, which is important.