How to Advance Your Career By Relocating to Another Area of the Country as an Attorney

Description

In this webinar, Harrison brings forth a game-changing perspective that could redefine your legal career. It's not just another run-of-the-mill webinar; it's a live session that opens the door to opportunities. Thousands of attorneys like you wrestle with job hunting in a single market, often needing to be aware of the untapped potential beyond their current location.

Harrison's insights highlight a critical truth – the legal world extends beyond your immediate surroundings. He'll share invaluable resources, like a bar reciprocity guide, to help you explore new horizons. Don't miss this chance to learn how to navigate the legal landscape by broadening your search. Harrison's journey underscores the webinar's significance. As a law student, he faced a scarcity of opportunities in his college town. By daring to explore other markets, he secured a foothold in the competitive legal field. Later, as a practicing attorney, he experienced a job market downturn in Detroit. His decision to cast a wider net led him to flourishing opportunities in Los Angeles and New York.

The lesson is clear: If confined to one location, you limit your possibilities. Many attorneys, even from prestigious firms, find themselves jobless in their saturated markets. But when they look elsewhere, magic happens. They unlock a wealth of interviews and job offers that can reshape their careers. Harrison's webinar is about more than just geographical relocation. It's about transcending preconceived notions and biases about different markets. Refrain from letting misconceptions about cities like LA, New York, or Cincinnati hold you back. Every market has its unique charm and opportunities. The key is to look beyond your comfort zone. Even if you lack a bar license in certain states, many markets eagerly welcome legal talent from elsewhere. Harrison's own experience attests to this. He secured interviews in California by committing to take the bar, demonstrating that openness to relocation can pave the way to your dream job.

Moreover, consider the suburbs. Often overlooked, suburban law firms offer plentiful opportunities. If you're commuting to a big city but seeking a change, these firms could be your ticket to a more balanced life.

Finally, remember that connections matter. Places tied to your past, like where you grew up or went to college, can be advantageous. They provide a sense of familiarity that firms often appreciate.

Harrison's webinar offers a unique chance to recalibrate your legal career compass. Embrace the power of relocation; you could be the success story that inspires others. Your willingness to explore new markets might be your greatest asset in an ever-evolving legal landscape.

Transcript

All right. Let's get started. So, this webinar today, this is a live webinar. After I'm done, we'll take questions. But this is, in my opinion, one of the more critical webinars that you may listen to. And I'll tell you why. And it's because there are lots of attorneys, meaning thousands, that I encounter every year.
 
They can get jobs there if they have difficulty getting a job in one market and opening themselves up to searching in other markets. And I'll send it around sometime during this meeting, a bar reciprocity guide. I prepared for everyone to review if you are admitted to the bar, like how you can go to other bars.
 
There's also a viral article on BCG, but as a general rule, looking at other markets in your search is very important. You must look at other markets in your search to avoid getting in trouble. I'll give you a couple of examples about when I was searching for a law student and attorney position. So, as a law student, I had gone to college in Chicago, and I wanted to work in Chicago when I was in law school, the law school I went to. Only had four or five firms that, when it came on campus, and I got interviews, one got to the second round but didn't get an interview.
 
So then I had to look at the firms that did come to my law school, which was on the East Coast. And so I got all these interviews in Washington, D.C., New York, and places like that. So, I ultimately went to New York, which was good because I put all my eggs in one basket and tried to work.
 
Chicago, I would have had many problems and not get jobs. And sometimes, the markets closest to you are specific markets that are much easier to get positions in and others. After I graduated from law school, I did a clerkship. In Michigan for one year as a federal judge, and when the clerkship was coming when it was half over, I applied to firms in Detroit. At that time, there were only maybe four or five big law firms that paid kind of market rates, which weren't even like New York market rates; they paid different rates; they paid kind of Midwestern market rates, and there were like four or five firms, and I thought I'd stay in Detroit, And but instead I got maybe one or two interviews.
 
I got three or four interviews in all the firms. But I was having a problem because they didn't have any work. They needed more work. They were during a recession. They were letting, they weren't. Detroit was a city, and the whole market was going downhill.
 
So I got like this: I didn't get rejected, but I got told we'll call you if we have work. I couldn't get a job, even though I was clerking for a federal judge in that city. So then what I did was I sent applications to big firms in Los Angeles, where I thought it would be fun to work, and then I also sent stuff to New York. I was shocked about Los Angeles. I got, I don't know, maybe 10 or 12 interviews with major firms, and in New York, I got interviews too. And there was a lot more activity in California because the California economy was doing much better than Detroit, so that's where I ended up. So, if you look at other markets when you're searching, it could change your life in the course of your career because if I just wanted to stay in Detroit, I would have had to take a job at a not-a-very-good firm that didn't, to me, make a lot of sense when I could work at a big firm in New York or something.
 
Suppose I had stayed in New York. I might have been unhappy with the hours, the commutes, and that sort of thing. So you have to look at other markets in your search. It's one of the most important things you can do. I always have candidates who are laid off or fired from big firms.
It could be in Atlanta, San Francisco, or wherever, and I have a challenging time getting interviews in those markets because so many attorneys compete for the same jobs. The law firms they want to work at would just prefer someone employed. But then they start looking at smaller markets, and all sorts of great things start happening to them.
 
They looked at five interviews in Tennessee. They'll get eight interviews in Cleveland. They've never been to and got all these interviews in different places. And it changes the course. It can change the course of your life. Before starting the webinar, I'll tell you one funny story.
 
I had a candidate at one time who was in West Texas, which is any way it's like when you think of Texas with tumbleweeds and things blowing around, and he decided he wanted to work. He could go hiking in a city where he was just completely flat, and he'd never been to a city where he could go hiking. Still, he thought he would go to Portland, so he applied to firms in Portland and Denver. And he was a patent attorney working at a three-person law firm and making very little money. Probably the equivalent right now of, 000 a year or something like that, when big firms would be paying over 200, 000 so he told me to apply to firms for him in Portland and Denver, and the first call he got was from a firm.
 
The Portland firm said we don't have any openings in Portland, but we have an opening in Pittsburgh. And we'd love to talk to him in Pittsburgh. And this guy had never been out of West Texas. He'd gone to school in Texas.
 
He got it; maybe he'd been to other parts of Texas. He got to school in Texas for college. He'd gone to law school there. And so all his background was in Texas. He'd never left Texas. So he got so he decided to go interview with this Pittsburgh firm. He got on a plane and flew into Pittsburgh.
 
He arrived at night and took a taxi to the hotel. The hotel was in the same building as the law firm. So he got up in the morning and then went up in the elevator to interview with the law firm all day. And then got on a plane and went home, and the firm offered him this incredible salary of, I don't know, it was like, with the equivalent of 250,000 a year.
 
So they quadrupled the salary to his making, and he couldn't believe it. And his wife couldn't believe it. And so they moved to Pittsburgh. The first thing he did was he bought a brand new Suburban, which he wanted, which I guess was popular for people in Texas. And then, they started raising chickens in their backyard of a rental house. But it was pretty funny. But the point is, he's a partner in a significant firm now, and I think Philadelphia is like a big-time partner. And his entire life changed just by looking at these other markets. It's incredible. Like you, instantly, if you look for other markets, your whole life and career can change.
 
And so many people are like, I remember when I was applying to people who have prejudices against different markets, so they may think, oh, L. A. is all plasticky. The people are fake, but there are probably 100 different neighborhoods with different personalities in L.A., or people think New York's too hectic, or they think, I don't know, Cincinnati's too slow. But if you look at other markets, you'll get more jobs. You're going to find people that are interested in you. You will apply to places with an opportunity that will change your life.
 
It's that simple. Again, I have so many people who come to me. And they're in one market. They're not having any luck, and they decide to look at other markets, and everything completely changes for them. And this is one of the most important career advice I can give you.
 
Target markets are easier to work in, for example, if you have the bar. I got a job in California because I told the firms I would take the bar. I was in courtship right before I sent out because I hadn't. I still needed to take the bar. I told them I would take the California bar.
 
And so they gave me interviews, and then when I but there are specific markets like Florida and California where the firms are only interested in you if you have the bar. But in a lot of markets, they are. Let me just show you, here we go.
 
So again, relocating, I want to stress this to you initially. I'll talk about different practice areas. I'll talk about different markets, but relocating is crazy. It's such an effective way to get ahead in your career. Another example is that I recently had a candidate in Denver that or not even Denver, like someplace like Aspen or Vail, where they're working many jobs, decided they wanted to relocate to some town where their parents had moved to Wisconsin, like a tiny town. And I thought this person would only get interviews, but I'll try them. And so they got three job offers in this kind of rural county in Wisconsin.
 
They got to move with their family. And all this stuff is just profoundly helpful for you if you can relocate and look at other markets. And it would help if you packaged yourself differently when trying to relocate to markets.
 
But in general, it's essential because if you're just banging down the same doors and you're in the city you're in, or you're not having any luck, and it could be that there are too many attorneys, it could be that the economy is slow there. It could be that who knows.
 
There could be lots of reasons why your market could be faster. And so if your market's slow or you need to make headway. Maybe the industries are changing. Maybe who knows? But if that's the case, then look elsewhere. That's one of the most important pieces of advice I can give you.
You have to look at other markets because some are dying for attorneys. If, during an economic boom, you're trying to, there are so many ways to get ahead by relocating to other markets. And just a final point I make is this is definitely what I would consider, at least in the large law firms, and most of their practice here is not all a slowing legal market.
 
You may be hearing about all these tech companies laying people off and interest rates rising; likewise, all these things happening, people in the firms and the companies will. Could you not talk about it? They'll try to be like, Oh, everything's okay. But, to some extent, that may be true for some people, but it's a pretty bad economy right now.
 
And your strength is being able to look at other markets. One example would be many people working in big cities and then commuting to the suburbs. Most suburbs all around the country have law firms, so they never think of looking for jobs in the suburbs where they work or other suburbs.
 
They only look in the big cities. And therefore, if you look in the suburbs, you're often very surprised at how many opportunities there are. And then, when you look at the big markets after the market picks up. You're going to be able to move back to a big market. So people just don't think about this.
 
This is pretty much what relocation material is. Lawyers who move can be beautiful to different markets. That should be pretty obvious. They can be appealing. The the, the the, the, making moves if you're moving can be helpful. One of the things that I'll talk about is that when you relocate to certain markets, there are specific markets where you'll have much more luck rather than less luck.
 
So something, when I talk to BCG candidates, it's always about things where you've lived before, where you've grown up, places where your brothers and sisters may live, or your places where you grew up part of your childhood or where you graduated from high school or where you went to college places that you have some sort of connection to are always important. So that's just something to think about.
 
It would be best to write down the areas where you feel you might have a connection. It doesn't matter. 100%. It's not that firms will still hire you if you don't have a connection, but they will be much more cautious with you if you don't have a connection. If they need the person, then that's what they'll do.
 
What's interesting, too, is that just before I get started with this, many professions, engineers, doctors, just all sorts of different people. People constantly move if you're a doctor, and you'll be sent to a residency wherever it's just you.
 
So attorneys should, too; you shouldn't feel bound to one market. You should always be interested in working in other places because you may have more opportunities if you work there. It's just absolutely mind-boggling to me the success stories I've seen from people willing to relocate to other markets.
It's wild. It's there's been so many lives that I've seen change for the better. And when I say change for the better, I'm talking about people I placed 20 years ago who are like big partners in law firms that they relocated to or broke off and started their firms.
 
And now there are 50 people or a hundred people in the firms. It's just really an exciting thing, and it's exciting. I think about moving to a new city because you're meeting new people. You have a chance to learn from all your mistakes in the past and grow in a different way as a different person has a different brand with people.
 
You're. You're starting fresh, and you can; any attorney can relocate to different markets, except for California and Florida, for the most part, but there are tons of different markets you can work in. Many people relocate to many different markets.
 
Some people start their careers in New York, then move to Miami and Texas. And that is a fun thing. And you can get insight into different markets. You can also often pick up and move to other continents or countries.
 
I've placed people that we're at a big firm, and I don't know, Houston doing project finance, and all of a sudden they're working in Hong Kong or a corporate capital markets attorney working in San Francisco. And then all of a sudden, they're in London or Dubai. You get so many opportunities when you're working, and you can look at other markets you don't get otherwise.
 
I had a case not too long ago where. I was working, there was an attorney that had been at, like, a big firm, I think like Skadden or Simpson Thatch or something like that, and he was like, I don't know, like an 8th or 10th year, he'd gone to an outstanding law school, and the firm just was like, hey, we don't have any work for you anymore. He took some time off, and because he couldn't find a job, he spent a couple of years just unable to find a job.
 
One of the first things he did was he was like, okay, I can't find a job. And this is a brilliant guy. He went to Chicago, Stanford, or something like that for law school and couldn't find a job. So, he decided to take some classes and apply to medical school after taking the required classes and the MCATs.
 
He did well. He's a smart guy. And all the loss and medical schools rejected him because they didn't like second-career people. I guess he said. So then he took a job as a bartender, and he was doing that for a couple of years. So he hadn't practiced in 3 or 4 years.
 
And then, one day, this position came up in some weird place, Saudi Arabia, or maybe it was Dubai, Qatar, I don't know. But anyway, this position came up with a prominent English firm in one of those cities, and he applied to it and got it. It was well-paying, and he was able to keep his career.
 
So just, the idea of like you're unemployed. You need help finding a job. And he was in international arbitration, a practice area where there are only a few opportunities. It's just very competitive because so many people from other countries are trying anyway, but he changed his life and got a job on another continent.
 
And he liked Moving there. So this can change your life. And it says here for excellent attorneys for relocation. It doesn't matter what type of attorney you are. You can be a family law attorney. You can be an insurance defense attorney and relocate to different markets.
 
So there are some exceptions that I would say. And I know, many times, there's foreign attorneys on these calls. It's tough for someone to apply to a law firm from a foreign country and get a position there in the U.S. There are just a million different reasons, which I covered in other articles, but it's pretty much U.S. Employers prefer U.S.-trained attorneys because they will likely stick around and be committed to hiring a foreign attorney. There are visas. And anyway, you get the idea. But when the law firms interview you to move to a different market, they need to understand why you're going to go there.
 
What is it about the particular firm? And what are the things going to? What do they think is going to make you stay there? When I applied to firms in California from Michigan I, whatever search I ran also included Fresno, California, and Fresno is this scorching California region in which many people would prefer to live.
 
And yeah, I'm not criticizing Fresno, but that's not the case; I think it might be like an agricultural town or something. Anyway, I applied to some firms in Fresno by mistake. And the calls I got were like, why would you ever want to come here? And I didn't have an answer.
 
Whereas if you're applying to Los Angeles, San Diego, or the Bay Area, people think you want to be there. You have to have some sort of reason. That you want to be in a region because if you don't, then the law firms will just think you're going to leave. So they like it when law firms like things from people in houses.
 
They like it when their families are there when their spouse or kids are from there. I don't know, but there's, there has, there's always different reasons you should try an area, and you have to. Most employers, not all, but a lot of them will ask, why are you interested in this particular region and or this particular area?
 
They don't ask that so much in places like New York and Washington, D. C. Chicago, like your big cities, because they're all like thinking that everybody would want to live here. So there's no question. But in the smaller markets, they're often going to ask that. So I'll talk a little bit about today.
 
Some of those that have the most success and those who don't have a lot of this are geared towards Moving between large law firms because it's based on an old and older presentation. So, I'm going to talk about smaller and large firms. The majority of attorneys, by the way, are with.
 
Smaller firms. You know that I think it is also very relevant. And also, we talk about markets that are likely to be receptive. And then just the idea of how many jobs are available in different markets. And then the factors that drive that drive if you can get a job in a particular market, meaning some markets are very active.
 
Some markets are prolonged. For example, the Bay Area has been incredibly active at certain times. And you, anybody that was a corporate attorney at a functioning law firm, meaning three or four people, could get a position in most firms. Maybe there are better firms, but it is an excellent selection.
 
In the Bay Area. So, a lot of these are just things beyond your control. And then it's something that you should understand. One of the things I've noticed that's also very interesting, which is a crucial point to consider, is when you're relocating, there are a couple of exciting things. In my opinion, it's easier to get a position in another market. And it's much easier if you have your family or something there, or your spouse is from there when you're looking to another market. A lot of times when you're looking for jobs, say you're in Chicago and then you want to work at another firm in Chicago, the problem with that is the law firms are going to assume that maybe you're not doing good work or maybe there's you're having problems. Maybe you need to get along with people.
 
Maybe if they hire you, you won't be loyal. Because you're not loyal to your current firm and you're moving. So all these kinds of questions and doubts come into their mind. And maybe they know people at that firm, at another, at the firm you're at, and they don't like them, or they've had a bad experience with attorneys from, all of these things are going through their mind.
But when you're relocating. There's none of that. It's like I'm from this area or want to work here. If you're at a firm, say in New Jersey or Virginia, or you want to relocate to New York, the New York firms are like, of course, he wants to be in New York.
 
There's no question that they'd want to be in this more extensive market. It's so much more sophisticated. This is how people in New York think. But if you're relocating, if you say you're in Richmond. You want to go to another Richmond firm, and there will be all this suspicion about why you're moving and not that they won't hire you. Still, it's a little bit harder because there's a little more, there are a lot more questions asked, and it's just, it's a little, they, you just have to be, you have to be prepared differently, and firms tend to be a little bit more open when you're not from an area because they don't have those questions.
 
I think that's the psychological reason for it. But I've seen a lot of this happen. This is an example. It's an old example. I apologize. But it's interesting in California. This example still holds for corporate-related work; Los Angeles is not the, it's not the biggest market in California.
 
Some things only happen a little there, like how capital markets a lot of the law firms, the people do multiple different types of corporate work instead of being very specialized. It's just less sophisticated than a market and, in many cases, the Bay Area. So there's a lot more demand.
For corporate attorneys in the Bay Area, there is one in Los Angeles. So if you're in Los Angeles and you're applying to jobs and not getting a lot of luck, that would probably be a lot different if you're going to the Bay Area, where there tends to be much hungrier for in the right economy. So, in contrast, it's exciting.
 
If you're a litigator in the Bay Area, you'll have a more challenging time getting a job there than in Los Angeles because there's more demand for litigators. And so there's just a lot of things going on here in the background that you have to understand that have to do with economies, the size of the market, the demand, and everything.
 
And so there's just a lot of factors. I'll cover some of these factors today. One of the factors is the type of attorney you are, meaning what practice area you are in, what your seniority level is where you're relocating, and what is the demand in the market that you're going to do. They need more attorneys like you. Do they need people with your background? And that sort of thing. The first one, of course, is the type of attorney you are. This is going to affect your success. It shouldn't just be moving to a different state. It should be moving to a different city, but different types of practice areas are in demand at different times.
 
Sometimes, your practice areas are in demand; Other times, it isn't. An example would be data privacy, which became a thing that everyone wanted to do, and it has become trendy recently. I hate to say it if you're a data privacy attorney, but there are many more attorneys than there are.
More people want to do it than there are opportunities. So people went and got these privacy certifications and everything. And in law firm jobs, there's less opportunity than in-house. It's certainly an active practice area, but your demand for your practice area is just significant because different practice areas are active; the example I gave you of the person relocating from Denver to this small area, or maybe it was Denver, no, it was Vail or Aspen to this county in Wisconsin was a family law attorney. They just didn't have enough of them, and everyone was getting divorced there.
 
It depends on what's going on? So the first thing is that litigators are Always in demand at some point in some place that a big firm or a small firm. There's just a lot of litigation work out there. It's the most popular practice there.
 
It's what people learn to do in law school. And that's pretty much what the majority of people are doing. But it's more difficult for. Litigators typically relocate because they have local rules and relationships with other attorneys and judges.
 
And so it's a little bit more difficult for litigators to relocate. Typically, most relocations I'm involved in are people in transactional practice areas, meaning corporate patent real estate and things like that, where it's slightly different. And there's fewer attorneys that do that.
 
And because there are so many litigators. There's not as much interest or pressure to hire them necessarily because there's just a lot of them around; corporate attorneys are one of the most marketable practice areas; all forms of corporate transactional work when the economy is good, you pretty much, can relocate To most other markets if you're a corporate attorney in a good economy when corporates in demand, the reason that is, is because it's interesting.
 
So, during slow economies, they only hire a few opportunities. They only train a few corporate attorneys. So, the ones that can get jobs or stay employed. During bad economies with two, three, or four years of experience, when the economy improves, it is almost like golden and walking on water because there are so few of them during economic expansions. Corporate attorneys are in demand everywhere because there's a deal activity.
 
So you could be a corporate attorney and. Buffalo, New York, and you could relocate to Los Angeles. This is really how it works, and even in other areas of the world, if you're in capital markets, not so much like regular types of corporate but just a very marketable practice area.
The problem with corporations, though, is when the market slows down, as it does now,
 
Corporate attorneys have a difficult, if not impossible, time in some cases finding jobs. You've had your periods like 2000 to 2001, 2008 to 2011. Then you now have 2022 20, so there's 2023, so there's it goes through these expansions that typically historically, if you were to track this back to the 1970s, would every eight years, just like their corporate attorneys are like, fleshed out and then and then, it's not always eight years, obviously 2011 to 2022, 23 is more than that.
But you had other things going on in that period: The government pumping money into the economy and during COVID. One of the tips for moving into a new city is to think about your more specialized practice area.
 
The more likely your skills are to be transferable, the more marketable they will be. It's always fun for me when I get a senior attorney. So you might have a senior attorney, 60 years old and 65 years old, getting laid off or pushed out. Of a big or small law firm, whatever, and having some particular skill with some weird type of patent prosecution or some type of corporate transaction or real estate.
 
It doesn't matter about some type of food and drug law. And so these people start looking for positions. And all I have to do is figure out their expertise. It's very rare. Type it into our database. And pull up firms that have jobs in the past or have jobs now, and because there are so few people with that, meaning you might have, I don't know, 100,000 people that experience they suddenly are getting jobs, and all these weird areas like someone from I'm just thinking of one, one guy's in Denver.
 
He ended up in Texas and Dallas in his late sixties, and the firm couldn't have been happier. This kind of thing happens when you start, mainly the more specialized you are. Being specialized can make it difficult to get jobs in your market sometimes because there's just a little demand for people like you.
 
But in contrast, when you start looking at other markets, it can just open everything up, but you're suddenly like this: There's a glove, and it just fits perfectly on your hand, which is fantastic. And so that happens. So, I'll talk a bit about different types of attorneys and markets. I will also discuss some practice areas that need to be added here. And I'll give you some ideas about that.
 
But I think the general thing to understand is that the more specialized your practice is, the better your practice area is. The fewer people doing it, the more marketable you'll be because law firms need help finding those people. So one, it was funny yesterday when I was recruiting recruiters.
 
It would help if you came to work in our firm and I, it's something I don't do a lot. I should do more of it because I was recruiting recruiters. And I texted this one recruiter who was also, most of the time when I recruit recruiters, I just look up people at a recruiting firm, and then I type their name into the BCG database, and they've applied for it sometimes because we have a lot of applicants.
 
And then, I start texting them instead of calling or emailing them. And so I texted this one recruiter. And she'd been working at, I don't know, Axiom or some sort of other recruiting firm for five or six years, but before that, she'd been working for, I don't know, five or six years as a family law attorney.
 
So I texted her, and she said I'm not interested in jobs. I'm a recruiter. And when I called her, she said that the reason she said that is she'd been, she'd been approached by four or five. People like trying to get her to go back and work as a family law attorney recruiting her.
 
So it's very funny that sometimes these practice areas become very much in demand, and you just, you wouldn't expect it, but even someone that has walked away from the profession and done something completely different is suddenly being recruited.
 
It's very funny. And Yeah. Yeah. So if you're in the proper practice here, sometimes, when the market's right, it can make a difference. So this is about litigators; there's it's litigators are almost always in demand. It might not be at the largest firms, but there are smaller firms that have work.
 
Some people will hire them. Tons of litigators are always available at all times. Now, it doesn't mean you can relocate; you can work as a litigator in the largest law firms. But it does mean that if you look hard enough in whatever market you're in, most litigators can find a job.
 
There's because there's typically and, in every city, there's litigators probably in every street. So it's very. Moving within your market is only one of the most competitive relocation practices. But it can be tricky to relocate to different markets if you're very specialized.
 
I've noticed with litigators that it can be difficult in many circumstances. When I talk about practice areas, it's essential to understand how they work in different economies because of the work the economy goes through.
Contractions and expansions. And right now, it's in a contraction. There's been a lot of news stories lately about starting salaries decreasing. Some businesses that hired people at a salary of 50,000 are now hiring people starting to sell for 30,000 because they're finding applicants.
People who went to school for specific disciplines are now getting interviews.
 
Yeah. It just depends. But the nice thing about litigation is that it's interesting. So, the corporation becomes impossible in bad economies. But what happens in bad economies is very interesting when the economy cools.
 
What starts happening is a lot of a lot of work starts coming into law firms because people are mad, and they're looking for money from transactions that went poorly and all sorts of things. And so that is how that tends to work when there's a bad economy. Is that the litigation off, primarily commercial litigation, will pick up sometimes, even personal injury litigation and insurance defense and all these things?
 
And litigators, what's nice about being a litigator is that you can often be more marketable in a good economy than you would be. In a bad economy, you'd be in a good economy. So I've seen firms. You know that when you read a story announcement about how to lay off 40 corporate attorneys in 1 day, and then on the same day, they're like that?
 
They're letting people go. They're interviewing and hiring litigators, which is funny. But relocating for a litigator can be. It's a little bit difficult. And the best litigators, meaning a lot of times in litigation, can be very competitive. It's a large law firm, especially those looking for things that show that the person might have the skills of a litigator.
 
They want them to be a writer; they want them to negotiate. They need to be advocates; these air skills are natural and can't be tested. So what they tend to look at, especially the large law firms they're interested in, in things like, having been on law review, then many times, federal district court clerk shows. Still, even more than federal district, they like circuit court clerkships are the best firms; the top law school is essential, but then things that they don't even look at really that much for corporate attorneys, for whatever reason, for Litigators, they're looking at class rank, order of the coif, like, all this stuff that tends to matter more for litigators, and honestly, I think I think that's because they're, I don't know but I, that's just how it works for litigators.
 
Maybe it's because it's the only measure; it's just more critical. It matters when someone's three or four years out. If they get interviews, it's just essential. And often, especially if you're relocating to a different market, they're measuring you on all this stuff that would be less measured and concerned about in a transactional practice area.
 
It's just I'm not sure. You know why that is. But in the large law firms, it's more emphasized now. That's just for talking mainly about commercial litigation. And obviously, there are tons of different types of litigation. And that doesn't matter. Real estate litigation is different; there are Tons of types of litigation.
You can look at BCG and see all the different types of litigation. Appellate litigation would be one of these. But again, it tends to be emphasized for major commercial litigation firms. And all these things are essential. The law school, the big firms, and this is only if you want to work at the most prominent firms.
 
It's just that it's much more competitive. If you're working at a large law firm in Dallas, which is an excellent market at a top firm there, and you want to relocate to Miami, I don't know, you know that they're going to have, they're going to be the Miami firms are going to look very closely at the stuff.
 
It's a large firm doing commercial litigation. I bring up commercial litigation because that's where most of the positions are for litigators. Then, it's just more critical for litigators and other types of attorneys. This is only for the largest law firms.
 
It often could be easier for the smallest, mid-level, and law firms that don't pay market rates. And you go down this, this, these Different prestige levels, which I'll talk a little bit about if anybody has questions during the Q and A, but the idea is with the prestige levels is, the very most prestigious firms are going to be very difficult to relocate with even as long as you have the best, you have the best qualifications and then the smaller firms less and and and it's just, it's all about supply and demand.
 
You have to be smart, by the way, And this is just, this is for if you're a law student, this is for if you're currently practicing, you're young, this is if you're trying to figure out what you can do to, sell different types of to sell your experience to different types.
 
It's there to develop business as an attorney. Anytime you go into something where there's a lot of competition, there's a lot of people doing what you're doing. It's harder to get business, it's harder to get jobs, it's harder to do all those things. An example would be a risk and executive compensation attorney, ultimately marketable senior at the senior level, marketed at the junior level, and able to get paid a lot of money.
 
It is easier to get business because there are certain practices that, if you go into, you're very well suited to because only a few people are doing them. And so you can get into significant firms. I've seen people like when doing Arisa that are working at the top law firms prestige, like the top 20 prestige level law firms in the country that went to fourth tier law schools.
 
And it's, they get those jobs because they're able to. Develop vast books of business. Only a few people do them and that sort of thing. So always remember, like from a business standpoint, what are you doing? What is the practice here you're going to, and how much competition is there, taxes, and others that you want to hate to keep bringing up these practice areas?
 
Cause I want to, I want everyone to, get to the more points here, but this is very important. Tax is another one where. There are only a few positions in large law firms. Meaning most tax attorneys in large law firms will support transactions. Not all of them, but a lot of them will.
 
So there's, and there's a lot of tax attorneys in these giant accounting firms. So that's a challenging practice here, even if you get an LLM and stuff to move into a law firm. So all these things you need to think through when you're looking for positions when you're relocating if you're relocating from Chicago to, I don't know, a place far away Seattle and a law firm is hiring you like they're going to have to pay your relocation costs.
 
They're going to have to worry that you may leave. If you can't waive in, you may have to study for the bar exam. So they're investing a lot of money in you, especially for a litigator, like why in the world were there so many litigators where they want to hire you and have to relocate you and all that stuff?
 
So it's just something other than what they're interested in. And then with the corporate, and some of them are, and we'll do it, but most of them aren't. And then many people are interested in hiring corporate and intellectual property attorneys because they are compared to that, because litigators, if you're a patent attorney, for example. You're admitted to the USPTO; you can do most patent-related work and don't need a license where the firm wants you to have one but don't need a license.
 
The other thing is that litigators must be licensed to go to court, which can take a while. So it's just more complicated. And then the other thing is litigators relocate all the time, sometimes cannot move into the bar, or they may get admitted right away.
 
And they come close to clients. And there's just all sorts of problems. Litigators often need to learn the local rules, so they can take longer to get up to speed. And there's more of a little more of a learning curve for litigators. Then there are different types of corporate attorneys or transactional attorneys.
 
And so you just have to be aware of all this in your practice area and what you're doing. What's very funny is in Washington DC because it's pretty, it's very easy to wave into. Everyone from all over the country tries to go there: Chicago and New York, Seattle and Portland. Everyone's trying to go to D.C., so that it can be challenging. And most of the jobs in D.C. are litigation-related. So, it can become challenging to get admitted. There's just a lot of stuff here that I will miss. I want to take only a little bit of time.
 
Remember that we will send all this stuff regarding the bar if it still needs to be sent. I'll send it during the question and answer, but we will send you information about our interchange, which is essential to understand. And, when you're relocating, if it's easy for you to move, then it's much more manageable for the law firm to hire you again. Corporate attorneys are very marketable during good economies. I've seen crazy things happen with corporate attorneys, such as relocating to various markets and doing very well there. You can. Often, you can relocate from different markets if you're a corporate attorney or a corporate partner.
 
 What's interesting about corporate is that I don't know how this is fun, but some of the first placements I ever made were unemployed corporate partners for one reason or another. And some of them had been unemployed for five or more years. In some cases, for just bizarre reasons.
 
One of the guys that was unemployed had, there had, he'd been a sec commissioner while a partner in a major law firm. I am curious to know how that worked. And then it turned out that. He had a wife in both Los Angeles and one in Washington, D.C., where he'd been a commissioner, and there were news stories about it.
 
He lost his job and had all sorts of problems, and I got him a job in a major firm in a big market in the Bay Area because there was such a demand for people like that. I've had lots of examples. I could list probably a hundred. Of corporate attorneys who are unemployed who have had various issues and problems in their past that when the market picked up, we're suddenly in demand.
 
It's very funny. I'm talking about things that blow your mind, meaning I don't know about that, but people being investigated for criminal activity. Like, all these sorts of things. There are so few corporate attorneys when the market picks up that law firms are willing to look the other way because they just need people.
 
And they figure maybe the person learned his lesson. And it's just very interesting. And there are always markets that are growing. When you hear about different markets in the United States, it could be Boise, Idaho. It could be whatever the market is that's exploding in Montana.
 
I don't know, but these markets are constantly exploding. I remember when there was this shale stuff going on. I don't know how long ago, but people were drilling for shale and converting it into oil. And all of a sudden, they were; there I had all these attorneys getting interviews in North Dakota, like who would have thought just people like being flown out to North Dakota from all over the country to get interviews is trusting the state's attorneys are corporate attorneys.
 
So anytime you read about a market that's booming, like they, you might be reading the Wall Street Journal, you're reading some other paper, and they're like, oh, this market. This is really on fire; there's all this housing, and prices are increasing. That also means that there's demand for attorneys.
 
So it is brilliant for you to apply there. I remember there's been a couple of big boom cycles in Florida, like in Miami, where, You know, they're throwing up all these kinds of minimums, and prices are going up and everything. And suddenly, real estate attorneys from all over the country are very marketable when not in other markets.
It's fascinating that if you watch markets and the news and see what's going on many times, you'll be exceptional. It'll be effortless for you to get a position in those markets when you might not have. Necessarily been able to and a regular market.
 
So, always read about markets that are busy with corporations. Again, you think about the centers of the country where a lot of deals are being done, which are always like New York and the Bay Area. And then smaller deals, of course, are being done in big cities and smaller markets nationwide. Let's see what this is about.
 
Yeah, people will often do very specialized work in corporate, and there's just a story here. And so being more specialized is very good. I have some examples. I remember one of my there was a firm called Brown and Wood that was in the World Trade Center, and it's no longer around.
 
I think it emerged into, I think, Sidley and Austin this is a couple of decades ago or whatever, but I remember they used to be very specialized in this sort of weird type of corporate transactions that very few people did. And so someone could spend their career there doing this one type of corporate transaction and do nothing else.
 
And so I remember I had this candidate that was let go from there as like a 12th or 14th-year attorney. Because the firm, the partners, and the partner in the firm that did this transaction, I don't know, had moved on or died. And so this guy was out of work. And so when I got him, I had to find three or four firms in New York that were still doing this.
 
And all three of them, with open arms, welcomed him. And he got offers. And he, at that time, I think, had been very discouraged because he thought his career was over. So, a lot of times, being very specialized, I can help you. Other times, it can hurt you.
 
I'm not saying it's always perfect. But if you have a skill that few people have, that skill will be accepted. You're going to; you're in very, very good shape, unless there's some sort of thing that can be abolished with your, you're different, different practice areas.
 
So these are just, again, some stuff about corporate attorneys. I want to stay within it. Corporations can be very funny. Sometimes, it just booms in different markets. And then the demand can be a demand and not a demand.
 
I'm not going to spend a ton of time on patent prosecutors. I only bring up patent prosecutors to let everyone know it's an exciting practice area. What makes patent prosecutors unique is that you must be a patent prosecutor. This is just something for other attorneys to understand.
 
It's essential to see when you navigate your career. You understand what they're doing, but they typically must have scientific, mathematical, or computer science backgrounds to be eligible for the patent bar. And then once they take the patent bar, which is very difficult, they're admitted to this federal patent bar or the U.S. patent office so they can prosecute and argue patents for this organization.
 
But what makes them unique is very few attorneys, obviously; most people are majoring in English and political science and economics and things that go to law school. Very few attorneys major in this kind of, this kind of scientific thing.
 
And because there are challenging curves in these scientific and mathematical things, most don't have good grades, so they don't go to good law schools. It takes a long time for them to move up. But they're very in demand. They sometimes get jobs.
 
But if they look at enough firms, they'll always get a position. Certain things are in demand, like electrical engineering, computer science, and physics. Again, I will only spend a little time on this, but the idea is to be very specialized. It's just a perfect thing.
 
And again, there's a small percentage of attorneys that are eligible to take the baton bar. Thank you. Even a smaller percentage takes it; a smaller percentage stays doing it and gets the experience. And there are just different practice areas you can do.
 
There are over 300 practice areas on BCG. So you can see different types of practice areas. Some of the things that I've noticed are very funny are firms that may have something like. They'll have a practice area like there's practice areas like there's a lemon law practice area.
 
Lemon law is suing car makers or dealerships or something for when a car keeps breaking down when you buy it. And we were making placements that few firms around LA were doing. With a starting salary of some of these people, meaning the to move there was, you would think it'd be Like, you know, shallow. Still, it was, like, a fifth-year attorney making three hundred thousand dollars a year could never have imagined that, so you know, anytime you're in. There's only a little lemon law practice.
 
There are attorneys, so we'd search our database. You know, get only a couple, and so there's just, you know, if you have skills that are highly in demand, which I recommend to every attorney because if you have skills that are highly in demand, It also means that there's a lot of clients.
 
If a few attorneys are doing your kind of work, that will be helpful. And then, if your skills are easily transferable, it becomes even easier to move markets. So, what are some skills trust in the state's attorneys? Great market. I've had to trust in the state's attorneys before that we're looking in their local market and decided to look nationally and got 50 interviews.
 
There are few people if you have certain types of practice areas. Trusting states, by the way, became a very active practice area. When COVID happened because a lot of people got very interested in that, it became just completely Out of control, but if you're in, you know, If you have skills that are in demand where there's a lot of clients, There's not a lot of people doing what you do. You can work doing the same thing in different markets, which can be beneficial.
 
So, just think about your practice here now. Some practice areas can be challenging and almost alienating, so some examples might be where only big firms do that work and big firms will let people go, like when they get senior, which I told you earlier, like international arbitration; there are others like project finance.
 
There's there's just different types of practice areas. Capital markets are probably not so much, but there are different practice areas where you're in perfect shape and should govern your career. Based on your ability to have a niche product in demand, I would think.
 
So very smart. If there's not a lot of people doing what you do, and there's not a lot of people with the skills you have that are trained in what you do, you can move markets very quickly because only a few people like you. So what are some examples? I'll just give you a few examples.
 
I had made a placement not too long ago of an FDA attorney. She relocated from Washington, D.C., to San Diego, for her husband to join the military. So, I am still determining what exactly the circumstances were. But, again, she wanted a job in San Diego. There were two firms in San Diego.
 
There's FDA-related work. Both of them engaged in a bidding war because no attorneys in San Diego do FDA work. They didn't even have openings. They just needed and wanted someone like that. Again, the more specialized you are, a lot of times, the better. I recommend that everyone do what they can to be specialized because that will help you attract clients.
 
It will help law firms can't find many people like you. Thank you. It will allow you to relocate to different markets, just all sorts of things. So, you need to be strategic with your career and how you think about the type of work you're doing or how you market yourself as an attorney.
This is just another piece of advice, and I hate giving so much advice here, but I just want to make sure that I'm making you as marketable as you possibly can. Another piece of advice that I think is very important is if you are any type of attorney, people will always love to put all sorts of different experiences on their resume.
 
They'll say, Oh, I did a commercial litigation. Then, I also prosecuted a trademark. I helped out with a real estate transaction and did some work on it, so if you put all these different things in your resume, it hurts you because law firms and clients, by the way, want specialists.
 
I keep talking about this and I just keep seeing resumes of people that aren't specialists. Every law firm wants to hire someone that specializes in something now in smaller markets, maybe not, cause there's not enough specialist work. Still, most law firms want specialists, and in addition to law firms wanting specialists, clients want specialists.
If you were, I just, if you were accused of murder. You wouldn't want to see an attorney who did corporate law and a little bit of criminal law. That wouldn't make you feel safe and secure. You would want to hire an attorney who specializes in your practice here.
 
That's just that you'd want to hire a criminal law attorney. You want to hire the best one you can get. So that's just how it works. So these are markets for relocating. I'm just not going to spend a ton of time on them. Major markets can be good. Relocate if there are few local people in your practice area, and, many times, smaller markets like a small town in Virginia will be difficult unless you're from that area. I think the best markets for relocation are typically California if you have the bar, then the East Coast Chicago; I would say, at this point, that market has not been as active as it usually used to be.
 
So I would say that you might be a little better off in things like Texas and Florida if you have the bar and the, just keeping in mind some of these markets, California is huge. It's 1. 6 of the world's economy. There's always a lot of demand for attorneys in California. The health of the market can go up and down, but what's interesting is a market like California, there's the market like, again, there are markets that are busy like California all around, but if you compare a market like California to Pittsburgh or Detroit and things like that.
 
Some markets are either growing or, a lot of times, they're shrinking. So, a market like Detroit, where I had an issue, is getting a position that used to be a massive market with a lot of opportunity. And the auto industry used to be the equivalent of what the technology industry is now, where all the opportunity was.
 
And so it was a very vibrant legal market. Thank you. But then, with the decline of manufacturing automation and so forth, that market started going downhill, and markets where a lot of technological innovation was happening, which would be California and so forth, started taking off.
 
And New York has traditionally been the center of finance, so that's all. So there's just A lot of things going on in different legal markets, but you want it when you think about legal markets where you want to work. You want to think about markets that are expanding rather than contracting because if a market is contracting, everyone will be fighting for work.
 
It's like a race to the bottom. Why would you want to participate in that unless you had some practice area that would help you, like bankruptcy? In a race to the bottom market. So think about the markets you want to work and stay in because those markets will determine your success or failure as in the market.
 
California is in demand, and Palo Alto is always highly active, especially for corporations and technology. And again, the markets that are expanding are great. Again, the Bay Area, just all these law firms on Sand Hill Road.
Everybody wanted to be there because there was an opportunity. You go, you should go, and you should try to participate in markets with opportunities, and I can't stress that enough. Going to markets with a demand for people like you is very good.
 
And markets where a lot of the people that are hired aren't from that market are also brilliant. Trying to find markets where there's a lot of activity versus the opposite is good. And I'm not going to talk too much about these markets.
 
But when you move to some of the markets, you need to keep, and depending on how much money you make, you should consider things like taxes. So California's taxes are 8. 5% income tax. There are no taxes in Florida or Texas. There are lots of taxes in New York City.
 
There's, so the, the, you need to think about that. It would be best if you thought about the cost of living, whether or not you can buy a house, like the commutes, all these sorts of things are essential to consider when you're moving to markets.
 
And so these are a lot of the stuff I've gone through. I want to save everyone's time before the Q and A. But this is just about California and the kind of demand there for attorneys. And talking about New York and then just different markets that the big markets, so that you understand, get very bad during market slowdowns.
 
The reason is that so many people in those markets compete for the same jobs. So, just imagine if there's a time. Let's say 8,000 jobs. This is a high number. Let's say 2,000 jobs for corporate attorneys in New York. But there are 8,000 people looking for work. That's not a good situation because you compete for every job with four people.
 
And that's what happens when those markets slow down. And, in specific markets, you can be transient, meaning you just come there from anywhere, and no one cares. That's a good New York and Now, Miami, Texas, and California are relocation-type markets.
 
And it would help if you thought about that in terms of transients. The ability to work in different markets. I like smaller markets. And because this is not an excellent economy, I feel everyone looking for a position should be looking in smaller markets.
 
And what I mean is markets outside of major cities. It could be suburbs; it could be marketed outside of major cities. So, an example would be if you are working in Detroit, you could relocate to Grand Rapids, a smaller market. If you're working in New York City, you could relocate to upstate New York, which is often an excellent market.
 
Very receptive markets actually to people from New York. If you're working in I don't know if you're working in Chicago, you could relocate to the suburbs of Chicago. There's just all sorts of things that are brilliant moves. And that you can make it to smaller markets.
 
And it's easier if you're in specific practice areas but many small markets; I wouldn't call Seattle a small market at this point, but many markets are growing. Phoenix is a market that took off. It just keeps growing. It's just crazy. So that can be a perfect market for people.
 
I am just thinking about markets that are growing. This is a little bit. There are a lot of slides here and a lot of stuff I could talk about still, but I do want to go to the Q and A; I just want to make a few observations here. Relocating is really. One of the most brilliant things you can do to improve your career.
 
No, it's one of the most critical aspects of your search. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is that many careers come up against dead ends. They come up against dead ends in the markets they are in. So you may be in a big market and must realize that getting a job will be difficult.
 
That's terrifying, by the way. Imagine. You have apartments or houses or cars, or whatever student loans, and you're suddenly in a position where it's going you're having a tough time getting a job and, or if the jobs you're getting aren't going to be enough to pay your expenses to support you, that's pretty terrifying and not something that makes you happy or makes your family happy, and it's pretty freaking bad.
 
Also yeah. You may be in a market with no opportunities, and nothing is happening. And that's a contracting market where too many attorneys compete for your competing jobs. And so you can't get a position, or there's no opportunities for senior attorneys because there's so many junior and mid-level attorneys.
 
You may want to work and relocate for all sorts of reasons. And I can't tell you how many attorneys there are. When I say how many attorneys, I'm talking about thousands and thousands of attorneys whose careers have hit complete dead ends in different markets. One of the 1st placements I made was fun.
 
It was a woman that was in Atlanta. She was fired from her firm. Not only that, but the firm was very negative about her for whatever reason. And if anybody called, they would share; they didn't like her, and she was having a tough time and lost. And I remember one time when she flew to LA.
 
For an interview, I went and met her at the airport and started crying, so this is how it works. People, when they're, this stuff happens, get very upset. I got her a job with an excellent IP firm, and she wasn't an IP attorney.
 
Her background was in corporate, an outstanding IP firm in the Bay Area. And she worked there for several years. And then I think the firm merged with some other firm. And the firm was called Penny and Edmonds. And basically, all these IP firms were struggling to stay in business.
So the former was another firm. And then, at some point, she lost her job, but she had taken, she'd gotten these skills doing a particular type of transaction.
And I won't tell you the transaction because I want to give away our identity. But she opened up this law firm doing it, and she opened it up, and these clients from all over the world were just finding her website, so she started charging 250 an hour.
 
And then she was getting more than enough work to build a couple of thousand hours a year. So she just kept raising the rates, then it was like 500, and it was 600, and it was 700. And now she's bringing in with a small law firm, like over a million dollars a year with no overhead. It's just incredible.
 
So just, all because she was open to relocating and, story after story like this, I can tell you, so it's, this is what you need to do to keep your career on track. This is what you need to do. To save your career and get the respect and everything you deserve.
 
If you try to stay in the market, you're in many times; if there's not an opportunity and you're not getting any bites, it could be for many reasons. It could be because there are too many people like you. It could be because the economy's wrong there.
 
It could be because there are not enough clients for your practice here. Who knows? It doesn't matter. What matters is that you're trying to sell stuff in the wrong market. So, you don't want to sell snow cones to Eskimos. You'll sell them something that they want.
 
And so you can only try to sell a product with interest; you can't open a Rolls Royce dealership in an impoverished city in the middle of nowhere; come on. So you have to take your business where people want it. And so you just have to, these are just some stupid things here about different things you're, I guess your professional profile would be, and these aren't stupid, but it would be your practice area.
 
Your experience, how many attorneys are in the market like you, and whether the markets expanded or contracting could be on the number of attorneys are saturated. Is the market saturated with those types of attorneys? Is there an opportunity for those types of attorneys?
 
I talk about this a lot, but it's essential to understand this. For example, in New York City and pretty much Los Angeles and most prominent markets, these law firms, especially the large ones, can say, Hey, we'll hire first-year attorneys, and we'll work them hard, and if they do a good job, we'll keep them around as mid-level attorneys.
 
But unless they have a business or do something along those lines, we're not interested in them after eight or nine years. I would appreciate it if they look for another job or we just basically tell them that for another job. And it's not because there's anything wrong with the attorney necessarily.
 
It's just because They want to hire people younger and hungrier to bill out lower rates to the clients. These are just things that law firms are interested in and can do in large markets because so many people want to avoid working there, or they can always replace you with someone better.
 
If you're not, they think you need to do a better job or work hard enough; they can just bring someone in. So, You know, there's just market dynamics going on everywhere, and in markets where there's a lot of attorneys, they can afford to let people go. They can afford to lay a lot of people off because they know they can always find people.
 
So this just happens. And so you have to understand that with the market, you're relocating often; you can relocate to a market, and There's no one like you there. Or I tell the story a lot. I probably tell it every third webinar, but I'll tell it again.
 
So when I clerked for a judge, I was clerking in Bay City, outside Detroit, but over an hour outside Detroit. And it's part of the Detroit court. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But anyway, when I was clerking there, all these young attorneys were not young; there were like five or six that would come into court.
 
And they were close to my age, one or two or three years out of law school, and they would always come into court. So, I got to know them outside of work. And the point is that. After 20-plus years after clerking for this judge, all those people were at the same law firm that they had been at when they, when I knew them, which was when they were one to three attorneys, meaning some markets like there's just not a lot of people so they keep people around and they, they don't have a lot.
 
No one wants to work in Bay City. It's an old lumber town that has been going downhill. Okay. Since the 1900s. Again, this is a dead market where there are few people. These people were in a city called Midland, where, for whatever reason, a little bit is happening because of Dow Chemicals, but then you have cities like Flint around there, which you've probably seen on the news.
 
But anyway, there's just all sorts of markets. Some dynamics and things will. Help you and where you'll find receptiveness where you might only sometimes. I've got all these stories to tell, and I think they're helpful just because they show you how things work.
 
I had this woman in San Francisco who had something horrible happen to her. I think it was like her boyfriend committed suicide in front of her or something. It's just so outrageous that you would be irrevocably scarred from it.
 
And so this happened. And so she had a mental breakdown, which anybody would. And then ended up losing her job. Somewhere in the Bay Area, she was a corporate attorney. And after six months of just being completely devastated, she'd been at the firm that she was at less than a year, like nine months or something, decided to look for a job.
I didn't contact me first. She contacted some locals. Recruiter that she knew in the Bay Area and only got a few interviews. No, nothing happened because why would someone hire someone with nine months of experience, severe problems, and hadn't worked for six months?
 
So I was just like, listen, man, you're, that's. There are too many attorneys in the Bay Area because thousands of junior corporate attorneys need to have these issues that you have. And you have a good background. You did well in law school.
 
You got a job with a big firm. So let's look at other places. So she's to I Sonata firms in Ohio, Memphis, and Arkansas, like just these different places. And she got so many interviews, when I say in a mean or something like 20 plus interviews, that she completely was overwhelmed, and she went on some of them, and then she would get a job offer, and then she would just ghost the firm.
 
But anyway, the point is, she eventually took one of the jobs, but Honestly, I don't think she wanted to work again. I don't know, but she eventually took one of the jobs. So my point to you is that all these great things if you look at other markets, you think your career is dead, you can get lots of jobs if you're interested in another quick example.
 
I had this I was working with. She was in a big market, and she was trying to find a job, and she had, I think, been born in Germany. Her mother was from the U.S. Her father was German or something. She was born in Germany and lived there. Until middle school and then moved to the United States.
 
Then, I went to college and law school and got a job with a big firm in the market. And then all of a sudden, there was like this huge market slowdown. There were no jobs for corporate attorneys, and she didn't know what she was going to do, and she was losing her job, and I was like, hey, why don't you apply to firms in Germany?
 
So she does that, and of course, literally over Zoom, ends up getting a position with a vast English law firm. I also got some other interviews. So this is how it works. If you look at others, and she went to Germany and practiced in Germany, how much fun is that?
 
No, I don't think she needed to be admitted to the bar or anything. I am still determining exactly how that worked, but she got a position in a big law firm in Germany. When you start thinking about these different markets you can work in, it can change the course of your life in your career, and it's just a major. It just changes everything.
 
And again, people that get laid off, partners that, that have skills but have but can't aren't, can't be marketed. I don't think they're marketable to all these people. Just don't do anything. They think nothing's happening to their career and blame themselves, but it's just the market.
 
What are you supposed to do if you're trying to sell something in a market with too many competitors? That's why you would. Again, if you're on a, if you're on the road and there are 100 different clothing stores, and you try to open a road, doing a clothing store, you'll have a tough time because there's just too many competitors.
 
If you're on the street with 100 different gas stations, you must send your stuff and what you're selling to places willing to buy it. And all you have to do is identify. Different markets to move to. It's pretty easy. There are some rules about relocating, which I think I covered some of, but some would be things you want to try connecting there.
 
 The more connections you have, the better. You must have marketable skills in that region where they can't find people and have a good case for being there and relocating. You have to position yourself and not relocate on a desperate basis.
 
You can do many things and read about them on our site and different ways of doing it. But. I know the only effective career strategy for someone struggling in their market is relocating. Again, you can relocate within a state.
 
I see things all the time. I see just these crazy things. And I talk about this, again, this is another thing I talk about, but. I used to like them; I used to answer them. When this is a young company, I used to answer the phones when law firms were calling and stuff, and we still get these calls because I see the emails going around.
 
Just in California, there are all these small towns and things that are like an hour from another place, and because it's a vast state, the same thing happens. Nevada, the same thing in Arizona, there's just these places in these markets where there's not a lot of people, but there's always like an attorney in one of these towns, or there's two attorneys in the town.
 
And they both go to the, in, they're small, and they go to the court an hour away or whatever, but there's always like these markets where there are just a few attorneys. And then, so what happens is every year, some of these attorneys will call, and they'll say, Hey, I'm retiring, and I need someone to take over my practice.
 
And I'll say, how big is your firm? And I'll say I bring in 600 000 a year and have a secretary. So I'm, and I have these expenses. I'm usually clearing about 400. I'm like, wow, this is, and we can; you find someone to take over my practice and work there, and I'm sure I can try, but no one ever wants to do it.
 
I don't know why because why would you not want to take over a business and make 400,000 a year? But these kinds of things, they're all over. It's tons of them. I got a call. This is a funny story. But I'll tell you, I got a call from this attorney in Costa Mesa, California, which is in Orange County.
 
And it's a nice area of California. And he was in, like, He was in the same building. I think it's Morrison and Foerster and Oreck and a lovely building. He had very nice offices in the building. And so I started talking to him, and he had this law firm doing trust and estate work that was bringing in.
 
I don't know, like 1. 8 million a year or something, and he was making like 1. 2 or 1. 3. And not only that, he was like, 80 years old and barely functioning, but he was there, but he was, he would talk, and would drool a little and but he was still doing the work.
 
And I couldn't believe it. And I was like, wow, that's a great business. And so he started, so I told them, I can help find these other firms you can merge it into, and they'll pay you something. And then I started talking to him, and he was Mormon and a charming guy with all these values and pictures of all his kids and this big family.
 
And so I went, and I've met with him a couple of times, and he was like, I want you to take my firm and run it. And I was like, what, and so he kept trying to get me to run his firm, and this is, again, I'm running this legal placement firm. I don't know why I was spending so much time with him, but I was like, wow, maybe I can take this over and run it from virtually everything, but eventually I was just like, you know what?
 
This is not something I want to do. The two of us parted ways, but there are people like this that you can find when you send out resumes. You send a resume to someone in a small town, and, who knows, you could take over business making.
 
It's, you don't know, but my point to you is that there's so much opportunity. When you start relocating and looking at places, I had a business that I could have if I didn't want to do what I'm doing now, where I could have made over a million dollars a year walking into calls every year. They're small.
 
In law firms, someone might say, Oh, I'll bring in 200,000 and pay my secretary. And after that, I, but these things are all over there. So I'm just trying to make everyone aware of how much opportunity there is when you start thinking about other markets and get out of the shell like you need to work in this one place.
 
And I, and that's the only place I want to work. And that's just not healthy if you start looking at many different markets in your search all over California. There are hundreds of markets. If you, I mean, everything changes, I'll just, I mean, I could tell these stories all day, but I like telling them because I believe that they can show you the opportunity out there. So I had another candidate she was in.
 
Working at a substantial intellectual property firm in the Bay Area, I was a patent attorney and had gone to, I don't know, the University of Michigan for law school. He was a brilliant person. And just a lot of excellent characteristics that made her very remarkable. So she had all this stuff, but she decided she wanted to be an environmental attorney, which is.
 
It's litigation. It's completely removed from being a patent attorney. And if she tried to do that in San Francisco, it would be next to impossible. Not only would it be next to impossible, but it would be impossible because every environmental job is going to get 50 applications from people wanting to work there.
 
So why, right? Why would there not be that many? Every environmental job is going to get a lot of applications. Why in the world would somebody hire a patent prosecutor for the environment? So she got a job in something like Sacramento, which is a smaller market.
 
She went and got a job at a smaller firm, and she stayed there for several years, and then she got a job in a big firm doing that again. All this would have been impossible had she not been open to relocate. So all these people who are getting jobs and their careers are changing, and they're switching practice areas, walking into an opportunity that never would have existed, are doing that by being very smart with their careers.
 
And walking into different markets instead of competing with all sorts of people. Think about companies. Companies are constantly opening up law firms. They're always opening offices and new markets where there are opportunities. Companies are opening things where there are opportunities.
 
Fast food restaurants are moving to different growing markets where there are opportunities. So everyone's chasing opportunities. And to chase opportunities, you need to find new markets for what you sell. Think about McDonald's. They have a whole team looking for people to do, to open, to find growing markets and where there's opportunity.
 
And it's just the whole thing. And hotel chains, everyone's doing that. So, doing the same thing with your legal career would be best. Don't get stuck in this Halo, where all you're thinking about is your market. If you look at other markets, your whole life can change. Just think about me.
 
I'm sitting there, and somebody offers me a business like a law firm business that he's built up over 50-plus years. That makes over a million dollars a year and says, here, could you take it? This stuff is actual. This happens when you start looking at other markets, and you can find people like that.
 
This guy, too. He was. It was hilarious. He was looking for an associate or someone because he needed help. And he started showing me the resumes that he wanted to hire. And he had no idea what he was doing. And anyway, the point is that you need to look at other markets.
 
You look at other markets that will help you. And I can't stress it enough. It's changed so many people's lives. I, and again, I don't want to harp on this; keep harping on it. But it can be miraculous. If you start looking at other markets, you will change the course of your career if you're stuck in the market you're in.
 
All right, so I'll take a quick break, and then I'll come back. I see that people are already asking questions, which is good. And I'll answer all the questions you have. The other thing is the questions. If this is the first one of the webinars you've been on, they can be something other than something about this webinar. They can be about personal things you're dealing with in your career or questions you have,
 
It's perfect to ask questions because sometimes the answers to those questions or the different insight you get in those questions can also help you in terms of advancing and what you're trying to do with your prayer.
 
So I'll be back in just one second and then maybe like a minute and a half. And then when I come back, I'll take questions.
 
And again, just one other thing for when you're asking questions. If you're logged in to Zoom, it'll show your name, but I won't; I'll just cut and paste the question. Moreover, all the questions are anonymous. I think people. I am always a little nervous about asking questions and people knowing their identity and stuff.
 
So this is just to help. Everything is confidential. Okay, if you're, many times when you relocate as an attorney, you can certainly; it doesn't really. I wonder if there are ethical considerations around leaving existing clients in your previous location.
 
I'm not aware of any, but generally, what people will do is they will only service their clients if they're moving to another state. So I don't; if you want to ask a follow-up question, I may need help understanding that. But I think clients need a free market.
 
I think that clients can go anywhere that they want. Let's see, this is an interesting question because I think a couple of people have asked Foreign questions. Okay. I'm a corporate attorney from Hong Kong with ten years of experience. I recently moved to the U.S.and I'm an attorney in Washington State.
 
What do you think about the legal market for attorneys in Washington state? I'm willing to move to other states as well. Which other states do you think I look into? Okay. So that's a good question. So one of the things in this is that this applies to people all over relocated to different markets.
 
So you have ten years of experience. And now you want to work in Washington State. So this is a thing I'll show everyone. This is something that I teach to candidates. I teach it to law firms. It's a critical way of understanding your particular marketability in different markets.
 
So the first thing is that every attorney doesn't matter who you are or your background. Every attorney is marketable. You're marketable somewhere, and you're pretty much always marketable, even in your market. It's just a question of the types of firms you're willing to look at, how much you're willing to make, and how far down the line you're willing to go.
So, at the top of the market, you have to go. Your most significant, most prestigious firms. These firms are complicated for people to get into. It's probably one-tenth of one percent, or I don't know what that number would be, but it's shallow.
 
There are very few attorneys, maybe 200 to 300 positions a year. If that may even be one, I don't know, less than 300 positions probably a year at these firms for entry-level people. So these are something you should be okay with. These are your Ravast, just places locked out that are very difficult to get positions in.
 
So that's your standard form. Then your next one will be like your Amlaw 100, 200, and prestigious, very prestigious boutiques. And those sorts of firms. Those firms let me just see Bluetix. So those sorts of firms are much more accessible.
 
These are probably the kind of firms you're thinking of. So, there might be 20 of these types of firms in Seattle. I am still determining what the number would be, but this is what most people aspire to. So these are the firms that pay; they pay the market rate.
 
They're prestigious. They have big clients, that sort of thing. So this is where most people are trying to work because they receive so many applicants. If you're from a foreign country, even if you're admitted to the bar, they're always going to prefer, as you would too, if you were them, they're going to prefer hiring local attorneys.
 
And not only that, but they have all these rules where it takes a lot of work to get a job with them. If you're more senior. The market of ability of attorney is, typically, two to two to six years, two to one to two, somewhat marketable.
 
Let me see. Yeah, it is just for laterals, then three to six at big firms. Three to five, five to six, very, I'm just trying to give you guys a very marketable and then, and then three and then when you get, maybe seven, 10, not two, and then ten plus.
 
Very difficult. So this is just the rule. This is a level of experience. It's just how things are. Is it age discrimination? It's not age discrimination. It's just experiencing discrimination. And very confident with that. And this is just something to keep in mind. So, as a 10th-year corporate attorney, you will need more time to get a position.
 
It's also going to be the loss of supply and demand. Are they going to prefer U.S. Attorneys who may not have visa issues and all that sort of thing? And they may not that may, that may be from Seattle or whatever, and they're not worried about leaving.
 
So these are the firms that everyone was trying to get jobs at. They feel bad when they don't. I think they're like second-class citizens if they're, especially if they went to a big law school or whatever. But this is different from where most of the jobs are. Your three firms are like your midsize firms.
To get boutiques, good small firms. And this is probably where most of your opportunity is going to be. What's important to understand about your five firms? This is just the thing I developed, but these are going to be, primarily, the largest clients with the most prominent clients, et cetera.
And then these will also be clients with a lot of money. And then these are going to decide to get boutiques. These are going to be smaller firms and smaller clients. And all of these are going to be working for companies.
 
 All these attorneys are going to be working for companies. And I'm just telling you that companies have more money. And that means more money. And most money. And they can afford to pay you a lot of money. So then, when you get down to two, this is companies and individuals, mainly some companies.
 
So what I'm saying here, and this is a lot of information to talk about, but I'm talking about this because most people in your situation are trying to go and think, oh. I need to work at one of these big firms I've heard of. This is where I will apply, and they expect to get some results and the odds are not impossible, but they're pretty frickin slim.
 
So the only way you'll get a position in Seattle is if you start trying to talk to midsize good boutique firms with smaller clients that are more minor to midsize clients, and this is the only way that will happen. And then for your two firms.
 
That's probably going to be where you're going to wind up. So these are, this means you're working for smaller businesses. Now, you have to do that, and anybody will have to because if you have all this stuff going against you, you're from another country.
 
You have a lot of experience. You may have all this stuff. You just have to go down and look at smaller companies or smaller firms to get a position. It's just that you don't have any other option. Because of the big firms, you may get hired if you have some specific type of experience, it's scarce that they can't find, and maybe clients in China or Hong Kong.
 
But other than that, the firms have no incentive to hire you, but you start looking at the smaller firms that may not see people like you with your type of experience or may have work, and they don't, they're not willing to pay as much as the more prominent firms, then you can get a position.
 
So that's how I would recommend approaching things, and if you do that, you'll get a job. But if you keep all your attention on these firms you've heard of and that sort of thing or. For him to get a lot of applicants locally, you're just not going to have a lot of blocks.
 
 That goes for everyone on the call. You just have to start the smaller firms to get a job, and then you can move out and move up to more prominent firms as you get experience, especially in corporate. So what's nice about corporate is you could start at two firms, and if the economy takes off, you can get a job at four firms.
So there's just all these things going on in the background, but your main objective should be to. This is all consumers with low, with little money to spend.
 
That's that. Let me just see. Okay. This is that. My second question. Closing that.
 
So this question is. Considering I'm currently a junior associate with only two years of experience, would this be an opportune time to relocate, or should I accrue more experience with my current employer? Okay, so that's a good question. Typically, it is essential if you have specific reasons to relocate right now, meaning you're losing your job.
 
The firm doesn't have any work, something along those lines, and by all means, start relocating. But I think that, regardless of your experience level, I would recommend this to anyone on the call. Again, I'm recruiting and placing people, but I'll just tell you that.
 
From, you're from the from you know what you're doing. Unless your firm is not that prestigious, you can get into a much more prestigious firm, or you don't have a lot of work, which works poorly. You're always going to be much better off trying to. Relocate after you get more experience.
 
So if you can stay there for five years, we can share that for six or seven years. There's a different reception of the people getting a legal market when they manage to stay with one employer for an extended period because it shows that you can get along where you go.
 
It shows that you're loyal. It shows that you're willing to commit to an employer. It shows that if they hire you, you're likely to stick around, and they won't have any breaks in servicing their clients. It just shows a lot of excellent things. Those things it shows are very favorable for your career and can help you in the long run.
 
So, You know, if there's a way for you to move to a much more prestigious firm in your market or another market, there's no point in doing it. I always recommend it to everyone. That if your firm is okay, there's nothing wrong with it. And, then, you stay where you are as long as you can because that makes you more attractive later on, and it sends many outstanding messages, too.
 
The market, and once you've been there for six or seven years at a firm, they start. They're like, wow, this person's committed. They're sticking around. Maybe I should know all those sorts of things, so that's good. The only thing I would say is if you can move to a much more prestigious firm in another market and or you're going to switch practice areas or something, you should try to move now, but you need to have excellent reasons for that.
 
You don't just relocate markets because you think it could be a better opportunity. It would be best if you tried to move. You can get ahead only when there's an accurate way, and many of the moves I've discussed so far. On this call, some people had been forced to move.
They weren't; they just ran out of opportunities in their market, or there was no opportunity. The market was going downhill. Okay. I'm currently a junior associate with only two years of experience, with this being a, Oh, this is the same question I just answered. I'm sorry.
 
No, I have to cover this one. Sorry about that. I built my reputation in my current city for handling high-profile cases. Would this reputation transfer effectively if I moved to more considerable power, bigger fish, or what I'd be starting? Yeah, so I mean, if you're doing significant things in your city, you have no reason to relocate.
 
I wonder why you would even want to do that unless you think you can do the types of cases that you do in a larger market will do much better. So I've certainly, if I was in your situation, I don't know why I would even think about it because you're getting clients. Your people are contacting you.
 
You're known. People are bringing you up when others ask for people to do your work. So there are all sorts of reasons that I would recommend not moving. I don't see why it makes sense. The only way that I would recommend doing that would be if you have some sort of. Some sort of reason to, so this is an excellent question, and I think I think that, for all the things that I've said about the advantages of relocating in a lot of cases, there's no advantage.
 
There's no reason to; if you're doing well in your market and you're, and you're getting clients, why would you relocate? It doesn't make any sense. The only way it would make sense is if you feel like you could do much better in your other market, but then you have a whole other task of getting a reputation and all sorts of things.
 
I was talking to someone the other day, and that was interesting and related to this. My significant other is from a town called Mammoth in California, which is like a ski town, but she's also French. So she worked in Mammoth doing real estate work, like selling real estate, and was very successful and got along with people. It was like a natural cooperative environment.
 
She was selling things and making a lot of money, and everything was good. And then she decided she wanted to move to France and do stuff there. She knew someone who was very high profile and was able to get her a position with her family at a place called Sotheby's, which was the top real estate place for doing what she did.
 
And as she started doing deals there, she just got eaten alive, like people in her office just out, would take her clients, compete with her, and try to undermine her and all these awful things. And so she was shell shocked and then started, felt horrible, and then started working for a much smaller real estate firm doing things.
 
So, all the reasons why I'm bringing that up. I'm bringing that up because when you move into larger markets, you're suddenly dealing a lot of times with a much more competitive market that's back, that's a dog eat dog and can be very scary, and where things are done differently and where people are so competitive, they eat other people alive, and that goes from practicing law.
 
I don't know why there's any advantage to doing that unless you feel so fricking competitive and you feel like you can handle anything that's a good thing for you, but I. I wonder if that's the smartest thing to do for many people.
 
So I would tell you to be careful because I'm just trying to get into a bigger market. Only sometimes, it's helpful. That's this next question. Okay, how do my years of experience factor into the equation? For example, as a mid-level associate, would it be more accessible or more challenging for me to adapt to the new market compared to a fresh associate as a new partner?
 
No, so the best time I did bring that up here, which I'm glad. So the best time to move for anyone is here. So your best time, your very best time to move, is between your 3rd years. The reason for that is it's pretty much marketable for the gemstone.
 
It should be very marketable. Okay, the reason is that it's effortless to move between your 3rd, 5th, and 6th years if your billing rates are reasonable. There's, not too high, meaning. Meaning you're not competing with partners. Partners mean your billing rate has to rise when you get more senior.
 
So, there is no competition or partners for the Mariners. What I mean by that is when you're like a 10th year. If partners are giving you work, your billing rates are close to the partners. The clients would rather have the partners do it. Partners make more money when they do their work instead of giving it to others.
 
That's the gist of it. So you're very marketable. You know what you're doing, so you can do most things independently. Meaning you don't have it's not, it's like a junior associate. It's not proven, but you're a proven-proven commodity.
 
And then the other big one is law firms don't have to worry. About you making your partner anything, they can get several years' worth of work out of you, but you're making a partner. And not only that, but you're committed to working in a law firm. And so they you're, they anyway, you're going to work hard.
 
Work hard because you're close to being a partner.
 
It's pretty close for me. All right. So these are some of the things that are crucial to understand. And so this is why people at this level, 3rd to 5th or 6th year, are very marketable. There's no other time in your career when you'll be more marketable. Other than when you're maybe a first-year associate with excellent grades from law school.
 
And if you're a partner with business, this is the best time to move, especially to larger firms and that sort of thing. Many people start at firms that would be considered like a, a three, or even a two, and they can move to four firms.
 
They never would have been able to have a hope in hell of getting in when they were in law school. So that can help you quite a bit.
 
Okay, so this is a question about litigators. So litigators are interesting. I don't know about local case law and precedent, but litigators know a good litigator from a bad litigator. They have lawyers and people who are litigators who are very hungry.
 
They want to do a good job. All these things go along with being a litigator, and if you are a litigator, your transfer and your able skills will be whatever the kind of work you do. So you may specialize in suing railroad companies, you may specialize in defending malpractice claims against doctors, whatever, the more, the more, the more specialized you are, typically the easier it is to move.
 
We have this I'd love to share with you about it. No, if I pull up the suitable spreadsheet on this call, I have ten spreadsheets in my thing up here. Right now, The most marketable practice is in litigation, but they're not like commercial litigation. There are things like medical malpractice defense or things you wouldn't even consider.
 
The most straightforward way to communicate transferable skills is to have some sort of specialty within litigation. If you're a commercial litigator, that's what it is, but you may have a particular skill there. So litigators, the ones that will be the most marketable, are attorneys who can have a specialty specializing in something.
 
And if you specialize in something, then law firms are going to be much more interested in you than if you have other types of things going on. Let's see here. Again, if anybody has more questions, there are a few more questions to answer. Now, I will answer all the questions. Okay, so this is a question about someone who has clients or client relationships and may want to move.
 
So that's a good question. In terms of retaining your clients when you're moving, you either have a good relationship with them that they'd want to move in with, or you don't. Many senior associates or people who have been the same for over a decade will be the go-to person for that client.
 
The client and the partners often will take less interest in the client or the candidate. I'm sorry, the clients anymore. The people that will be interested in the clients will be the senior associate. And so many times those people will relocate with you if they're not your clients.
 
If they are your clients, then when you do move firms, they will be concerned about your billing rate.
 
They can be concerned about the billing, the ability of the new firm to service them, and that sort of thing. If you can ask a follow-up question about talking about your clients in the new firm when you're talking about clients for a new firm, if you're bringing them over, then the law firms are going to wanna know how much business it is, like from the clients, how long the of the clients have been.
 
Working, how long they've been working for it with you and that sort of thing. So, if you've been working with a client for three years, and they bill 100,000 a year, that's part of the business. And then, if you have ten clients like that, you have a million dollars. So that's often how the law firms will think about clients.
 
 This is an interesting question. This person says I primarily worked in nonprofit legal roles. Could this be an asset or hindrance? Yeah. Nonprofit is incredible because I don't know if you're working in a nonprofit or working a lot from doing a nonprofit, but a nonprofit is a huge business.
I don't know what the number is, but I think it's like over a trillion dollars or something in the market is with nonprofits. I could be wrong, but I think it's something like that.
 
So, if you're working in a nonprofit, that's an excellent thing. There are plenty of nonprofits where you could work as an attorney.
 
Or if you're working in a law firm, there's plenty of that. Nonprofits are in every state and every country, and there are Tens of thousands of them in most states. And so it's a huge portion of the economy. It's a weird portion economy because people will start nonprofits, get donations, and keep the money.
 
But whatever, they need to be more closely governed. But yeah, you can do very well. I'm working in nonprofits, and this is something I've been looking at. Quite a bit recently because there's, not for placing attorneys, but just reading about nonprofits. It's fascinating.
 
Okay. How does BCG facilitate a smooth move for those, especially in state Pacific areas, like real estate or probate? Okay. Yeah. Real estate, and 2.
 
Practice areas where real estate could be doing better, but those are two areas where people can do very well moving to new firms, and you can transition from small markets to big markets, from big markets to small markets. There's a lot of demand for those types of attorneys in different markets.
 
I relocated people to Los Angeles from weird markets like Maryland or Boise; Idaho was one of the ones I can remember. There are lots of ways to relocate to different markets. And it's something it's not that; I guess my point is it's relatively easy in those two transactional practice areas. You can typically get a lot of opportunities doing that. Let's see here.
 
Okay. So here's a question. I'm the person's name up. So, I'll just question someone from Greece who wants to relocate to the attorney position. Yeah. This is from Greece; I'm just saying for Greece.
 
So you just have to; the problem with all these relocations is there has to be some incentive for the law firms to hire you. You have to have something. So there's, and this is a good question. It could be from Greece. It could be from Alaska, wherever I'm just saying, areas far out of nowhere.
 
But the point is that you must have transferable skills if you're relocating to a market. And so you can't just be; you can only expect to relocate to a market with transferable skills. So if you want to work if you've been practicing for five years, but you're practicing something with your skills aren't transferable.
 
There's no reason for a law firm to hire you. Even if you're from Greece, I'll just tell you hypothetically, and I'm not trying to be rude here because I know this is difficult, but you want to relocate to the United States. The first thing people would tell you to do is they would say, Oh, get an LLM, which is a graduate degree in law.
 
Then, that will allow you to take the bar exam in different states. Most people choose New York or California. Then, once you take the bar, you want to find a job. But again, it takes work. Finding a job is extremely hard for people coming out of LLM programs. Most of them try to find a job.
 
These big firms like firms, but law firms are very nervous because if they hire someone from Greece, the person's from another country. They don't have any local connections. They could leave and do all sorts of things. So that makes it difficult.
 
So that is just as it goes for everyone. This is recorded. So, hopefully, other people will see this. But the question is, how does a foreign lawyer? Lawyer, get a job in the U.S.
In the U.S., that's the question. So first thing, if you get an LLM, that's one,
 
Then you take the bar, then you can apply to jobs if you want, but that's you're probably not going to have a lot of luck. You can apply to; You can apply to smaller firms to make and have some luck.
 
Then you need to get a, you need to get a work visa. I am still trying to figure out how that works. You have a green card, I don't know what it's called, but you get some sort of work visa, typically sponsored by the employer. Because I've done that for people before, typically sponsored by an employer, and after you get your work visa, you can work.
 
But the point is that not this. This route is challenging. So you can do that. And the problem with these LLM programs is that they might charge. I don't know how much to charge, but they're expensive. They might charge like 100,000 or something or more. It's just crazy. And they don't offer.
 
There's no one year. I don't think they give scholarships or anything. There are probably cheaper ones. I'm just saying these are most of them. And you take the bar past the bar, and then you can apply to jobs in the U. S. Wherever you want to work. If you apply to small firms, then you might be able to get a position.
 
You might even be able to get a position in some cases for one year. It's some big firms. It's tough. And then, if you apply to smaller firms, you'll often have luck. You know what I would do a lot of times if you said you're from Greece? I would find firms with Greek people in them or owned by Greek people because that will happen.
 
There's going to be some potential. Their firms were pretty cool on them. That's how I would do it. Or something, but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm just saying that people would be like your situation, but this route works.
 
Maybe I don't know. 5% 10% of the time. It isn't easy. I don't know why it's so tricky, but if you were to be aggressive doing this, you could get even 100. The issue is how many places are you applying to. It will be tough for you many times to get into the most prominent firms because it's just too much of a risk for them.
 
And they're going to want, they're going to prefer people that are born in the U.S. and may have contacts and have worked here. But how many places do you apply? Okay. So there's that. So that's one route. But the smartest thing to do is to, and this is how things can work better: if you get your LLM, we take the bar and pass the bar.
 
And then and then what you do, most people need help understanding this preferred route are you. You can do that, but then you go and get a U. S. J. D. Get a U. S. J. D., Which is a bargain. It's just the same as other American attorneys have.
 
And then and then you don't have to take the bar. Then you can do it eventually later. And once you get a U. S. J. D., then the reason that's good is because it shows how well you compete with the U. S. People on an 11 and 11 level playing field. So what does that mean?
 
It means that in an LLM, pretty much everyone gets good grades. It's not there's no it's, it's just it's not really that there's not a lot of competition there. But if you get a U. S. J. D, there's class, and you're ranked, et cetera.
 
And then after you get that, you either take the bar where you typically take the bar or then you apply to jobs. So that's the most innovative way to do it. This works. This is what then applies to jobs. And this is what people do, that end up To do the best so I, it doesn't mean you're going to get a job in a significant market, but I see some of the funniest stuff.
Sometimes, I was talking to someone who did this route that was from, I don't know, Cambodia or something. It's not like China, just some Cambodia or something like that. And I was talking to him, and his resume was like he was working in some sort of Midwestern farming town in Kansas or representing farmers.
 
This is very funny. But he ended up moving to a larger market, but it's just you have to you; this is the route people must take. I wonder why no one's ever written an article about this. I probably should, but this is how most people are from foreign countries.
 
This is the preferred route. So, having a J.D. is just much different than having an LLM. An LLM is just, it's it's, it's just like grad. It's just that it doesn't really; it gets you; it makes you eligible to take the bar in the U.S., which is a perfect thing, but it's not something that will distinguish you.
And as a foreign attorney, it's just even if you go to Harvard or whatever, it doesn't, it's not that important. You have to get the J.D. to get ahead.
 
I have been doing this for a quarter of a century, and I wonder why anybody ever talks about this. I really should write an article about it.
 
But it would be best if you got the J.D. after your LLM to have a better chance of employment.
Okay, let me just hear some 2nd-year patent prosecutor. Working to relocate. Do you have any suggestions? So I would say yes, you can get a job in California, but the California bar is difficult. So, just understand that in California California, without the bar, firms are terrified of hiring you.
 
So why is that? Law firms are so scared of hiring people without the bar because so many people come to California or the U.S. They, I'm sorry, move firms from one firm to California, and they take the bar, and they don't pass.
 
So, the pass rate. I am still determining what it is, but it's below 50%. And it's even more complicated if you're already an attorney; it's just like this challenging bar exam. It's not that you have to be smart to pass it. You just have to work hard studying.
 
And that's a nightmare, unlike a lot of others. Bars, you can't waive in if you have a certain amount of experience. So, if you don't have the bar, I'm in California, and the law firms are just terrified of hiring you. That doesn't mean you can't prosecute patents, and that sort of thing, but law firms just don't like it.
 
A patent attorney with a computer science background. The nice thing about being a patent attorney is that you can work anywhere. California may be off-limits, and Florida may be slightly off-limits unless you take the bar. But, because I'm sure because of low pass rates you can get a job anywhere.
 
What's so cool about patent prosecution is there are so many small firms that do patent prosecution; there are firms that can be in Long Island, New York, that are three people doing patents for Amazon or Microsoft. There are so many patent firms out there.
 
It's just incredible. And they all have needs for people. So it used to be there's a whole history of what happened to patent prosecution firms. There used to be some big firms that had only patent prosecution, and a lot of those firms got absorbed by more prominent firms, but they also couldn't compete.
 
So large firms now with patent prosecution, large firms with patent prosecution are interesting. Because what happens with them is they have to charge them, they charge hourly rates. And so that scares everyone away. It scares people.
 
And so they charge hourly rates, which scares people away. So there's that, and so often, patent prosecution doesn't scare, but it scares many people. I would say it scares a lot of clients away. So what happens is that the people getting the work as patent prosecutors are small firms individuals.
 
What they're doing is they charge fixed fees for patents, so they charge fixed fees. And so what that means is that a lot of the work because the companies want to save money the companies would rather pay, can be like, 300 K for a patent, or, just something ridiculous, 300 K for a patent, or that's, Probably way more than it should be.
 
Sure, it's 300k for a patent. But, these firms might say, we'll do it; we'll do any patent for 40,000 or something. I don't know the number, but I'm just giving you so people, all the work's going to the smaller firms. What's nice about being a patent prosecutor is you can try to get a job with a large firm, but large law firms do a lot of patent prosecution. Often, your best option is to try to find smaller firms that do patent prosecution in some cases or even individuals, as I've worked with people who had a million dollars in business doing patent prosecution for certain types of companies.
 
So I just recommend it. Where are you? I would try to just look at a lot of firms. The only way you can find these firms is in many ways, but many times, you can just do a Google search, which will for patent prosecution things from wherever you want to work, and you'll see firms doing it.
 
Large law firms, by the way. They are not doing as much patent prosecution as they used to because all these people are starting to charge fixed fees, and the clients aren't; they don't need to be involved in that anymore. And so that's how that's going. So it's essential to understand that.
 
If this question is, let's see, how about this is a good question. How about becoming a foreclosure attorney or bankruptcy attorney? Yeah. Let's see. During a slow economy. Yeah. Yeah, it's essential, though. Yeah, you can do all that stuff in a slow economy. You can do a foreclosure defense.
 
You can do foreclosure. You can do all this, but you should; one of the things is you should go into a practice area that you enjoy or that appeals to you, not just to make money. Enjoy not just one.
 
So what does that mean? That just means. Yeah. Yeah. When you choose the practice area you're going to go into, you go into it based on the fact that it appeals to you, that there's something about it that you like, that you think it's going to, it's a substantial practice area for you.
 
But, if you go into something that you like, you'll see the world and everything you're doing through a different lens than if you just go with something to make money. I always recommend it. Everyone tries to find a practice area that excites them and appeals to them that they'd like.
 
So sometimes people want to go into it because they're interested in corporate law because they like working with businesses. They're interested in family law because they'd like that dynamic. Whatever the dynamic is that appeals to you as you look at different practice areas, and you can see yourself doing it, which excites you.
 
That's what you should do. So here's an example that I'll bring up that I don't know how quite relevant it is, but anytime I was in like college or law school, you always get these, I don't know, they're all online now, but used to get these books where you could, read through what these classes are about, and then choose one based on your interest.
 
And they would, one might be about, I need to learn how to do tech transactions. Whatever the stuff you're reading that appeals to you and that you like and that just excites you when you're reading about it is the exact sort of practice area you should do.
 
So some people would read about tax law and say, this doesn't sound very pleasant, but others would read about it and say, wow, that's cool. And then some people might read about, I don't know, trademark prosecution and read and be like, Oh, that looks cool. And other people would not.
 
So you just have to think, when you're looking at what appeals to you the most, and go into it because you'll make money anytime you do something you like. You don't have to worry about the money because your enthusiasm for that practice here will be, and we'll, everyone will pick up on it.
 
Clients will pick up on it. Your firm will pick up on it, and you'll go farther. If you pick something you don't like, then you really won't. Law firm owner of a boutique owner of a large market, no reciprocity leaving my state for two years, thinking of opening a local office in Connecticut and hiring a local attorney there so I can avoid taking the bargain.
I would then manage the office. Do you know the Connecticut market? My firm handles IP. Yeah. I, I don't; what I would say is, in terms of this, is a good question. Do I know the medical market? I know all I know is the types of firms that are interviewing our people.
 
I know where things are intense and slow. I don't know the rules; no, you can do that. You can hire a local attorney. I know someone with a prominent personal injury law firm with many attorneys working for it, and they want to open an office in another city.
 
And so I think he took the bar, but then everyone else is, I don't know how it works, but then there, but yeah, I think it would be wise to hire a local attorney. No, I don't know. If you have to, if you have to take the bar to go into Connecticut, you can wave in. So, I would always look at those requirements when you're trying to move.
 
And Yeah, but if you're leaving your state, I don't see why you couldn't, oh, you said no reciprocity, why couldn't you continue to service those clients? Yeah, I don't see any reason why you couldn't. I, again, need to learn the laws of professional responsibility and how this works.
 
There may be better people to answer that. If your question is, could I find you a local attorney to work for you? Of course. That's not why people love that sort of stuff. And it's straightforward to find. Most attorneys want to work for you, especially if you want someone to be the only attorney in the office.
 
So I need to see how difficult that is. How would you find an attorney? You can use a recruiter, and it's difficult for a lot of people to understand, like how to screen resumes, but if you were to hire someone, the biggest, whether through a recruiter or you just, many times, you can just.
 
Put ads out on your own. And it doesn't matter how you do it. But the idea would be you want to find someone that has some sort of stability and looks like you're going to stick around that you have something to offer them, meaning, I don't know, ability to run an office or independence or, but you have to have some sort of thing to offer.
 
And then, yeah. And then, bring someone in that will be a good fit for you. But yeah, that's how I would recommend it. I'm sure there's; if I were to look for an attorney for you, I'm sure I could find many people who can do it. Okay. It's not anything complicated.
 
Let me see. I answered the patent attorney's question. I have one more about. I work in New Hampshire. Okay. New Hampshire is an exciting state. There's a lot of rural areas, and there's a lot of suburbs. Every market has opportunities in it. What I would recommend anytime you're interested in the market it's fun.
 
You can search Google for Attorneys in your practice here and your location. Let me see here for one second. In your practice here and location, let me know. An area like that. And when you do that, you, it's typically easy to find people doing the type of work you do.
 
You can find law firms doing it. You can find individuals doing it. It's just so that's what I would look for; when you say opportunities, that would be those two opportunities. There are job openings, and then there are places you can apply to many times.
 
I'm sorry. I'm right. So, the idea is to create job openings. What does that mean? That just means that a specific firm has openings, and because of those openings, you apply and hope that you get the job, which is one way of getting a job. It's only sometimes the best way of getting a job. The following way is to find places to apply to.
 
What does that mean? That means that you find firms that have your practice area. And then also in the location you want to work with, and you apply to them. You just find the person to apply to. Typically, you apply to a named partner if it's a small firm. If it's a large firm, they're usually recruiting people.
 
It's a mid-level firm. You just, you find places, and you just apply to them, and you say, Hey, I'm this type of attorney. I'd like to work there. This is how most people do; it's a much easier way to get a job than applying to job openings because when you apply, you're competing with everyone.
 
And so there's that. All right. Thanks everyone for the questions. And these webinars are beneficial. I'm trying to; I'll try to do a good topic next week. And thanks for all the questions. And again, the relocation is a smart move for anyone's career.
 
I appreciate the extent you can do it. It is always recommended that people try to relocate because it definitely can help your career. Now, let me just ensure I have no more questions. That's it. Thanks, everyone. And I will talk to everyone next week. Thanks.