Why It's Good to Email Your Resume to Law Firms
[00:00:00] I summered at a firm in San Francisco that had accepted a return offer, but I'm eager to move to LA. Is it fine for me to just email recruiting teams at other firms and ask if they have any openings? Or is there a risk that comes back to bite me?
Any other comments about how easy or difficult it is would be appreciated.
That's a good question. There's a couple of things I would say in response to that, the first is if you have to decide, what are your reasons for moving to LA so that, back to having a long-term goal and so forth you need to understand what is the reason you want to be in LA.
I like LA much better than San Francisco, just because it's not as gloomy in San Francisco can be gloomy, but at the same time, you have to understand what the reason is. So you can get openings in a lot of different places. So openings you can check at LawCrossing. It's a good source.
Also, if you're coming from a major firm, you may already know the law firm websites will have openings. Then you can also email your resume to those law firms. So if you email your resume and you have the kind of resume they are interested in, they'll call you and ask you questions and so forth.
You can do that, and I don't see a problem with that. I [00:01:00] don't know if you've had to accept your offer yet. But you can email your resume to law firms and sometimes your school may allow you to go on-campus interviewing. I'm not sure after having an offer, but that's how I would approach that.
And there is a risk that it's going to come back to bite you. Most law firms do not talk to other law firms about people applying there. I've been doing this for 22 years or something. I don't know what the number is, but for a long time. And during that period, when I've represented candidates, I can only think of one example and it was in 2000 when someone's confidentiality was disturbed and that was because the person who had committed a crime at their firm had been fired and the firm that received their resume knew about it.
Most law firms are very good about not disturbing confidentiality. So I don't think that if you get another offer or you contact other firms that they're going to contact your existing firm, they may contact them to confirm that you work there or something. But, most law firms are so busy and the recruiting departments are so busy that you don't have anything to worry about. The only concern that I would have about what you're seeking to do [00:02:00] is it may violate some rules of now for your firm or your school or something. I don't know. So I just would be careful about that.
