15 Reasons Law Firm Attorneys Should Not Look for New Jobs

Description

All right. So we're going to get started. This particular webinar, I think, is a very important one. We'll discuss reasons, not just now but throughout your career, that you may start looking for another job. And those are the wrong reasons because many times people start looking for a job when it's probably the dumbest thing they could do.

As a recruiter and someone who makes money placing people in jobs or selling people access to jobs like on LawCrossing, this may seem like something that I shouldn't talk about. Still, I'm at a stage in my career where It doesn't matter if you want to look for a job for me; it's just how it is. This is what I'm going to talk about today.

I will talk about the mistakes people make when searching for a job and the reasons those are wrong. And if you are making these mistakes, you'll probably repeat them. And it can negatively affect your ability to have an excellent legal career.

Critical topic. I'm excited to talk about it because it can help you. It can help almost every attorney. And the thing about moving firms is that attorneys and partners always find reasons to move firms. Associates find reasons to move firms. Everybody finds reasons to move firms.
But many times, the reasons for moving firms are wrong. It's more about them. Then the person that they're mad about most of your problems and, frankly, whether it's here or in life, has more to do with you and your decisions and taking accountability for things than it may have to do with the other person.

So that's what we're going to talk about today. Of course, there are excellent reasons for switching firms, and I've covered those in previous webinars, but this is the dark side of why. It would help if you stayed at your firm differently for different reasons. One thing, too, that's important now, too, is that this is a slow legal market.

It could be doing better than a couple of years ago. There's one big argument to be made: unless your firm is slowing down and you think you'll lose your job, you're much better off in a safe place than one that may not be in the future.

So you're the double versus the one you don't. This is a live webinar. And what that means is it means that I will be taking questions at the end. If you have any questions, you can enter them in the Q and A, so they may be about specific points I'm talking about.

People at the end of the webinar often add general career questions, and I'm happy to answer those, too. So, I'm happy to take as much time as you'd like to answer questions during the webinar for these webinars. Again, this is, in my opinion, a critical topic, and I encourage you to take notes and learn about it. Hopefully.

So, attorneys are always thinking about switching positions. And there are many reasons to search, but I would say. Fifty percent of the time, many attorneys search for new positions for the wrong reasons. And if you're happy or unhappy, it's generally not where you work, not generally not about where you're working.
It's more often about you and how you think about the world and your position. And that's what we'll talk about today: how are you thinking? About you and based on the way you think about yourself can make a big difference. So, I would say one of the biggest reasons people look for jobs, and I understand this quite a bit.

You may be compensated as well as you want, but you must be more appreciated. And this is especially the case for millennials. Millennials were always told how great they were. And then they got into law firms, and it was the opposite. And so they didn't, they weren't happy.

And often, partners I talk to when they want to move feel like the firm doesn't appreciate them either. They can go to another firm and make more money, or they can go to another firm and take clients with them or give clients lower billing rates or whatever.

And so they feel like they're giving away many of the fees they collect to support unproductive partners and associates, so they feel they need to be more appreciated. Senior associates often feel they need to be more appreciated. Even though they're making a perfect living, they may feel unappreciated because they're not partners.

Junior associates feel unappreciated because they may think there's too much work or because they're given busy work, which most juniors do; who else is supposed to do it? They feel unappreciated for that. And the point is that, just as a society, if you work anywhere or start your own business, society needs to be more warm and fuzzy for people trying to start their businesses, and law firms are not warm and fuzzy.

It's just how employers are. So I go to law firm lobbies all the time, and I go to funerals, and I would say that people are much nicer at funerals, which are depressing places. They hug, and obviously, a funeral home can be more welcoming than a law firm, but when you go into law firms, you're not hearing a lot of laughter most of the time.

People are competitive with each other. Partners are competitive with other partners. Associates are competitive with other associates. Everybody's competitive, and they're under a lot of stress. And that's what the job is; that's why they pay. The job pays a lot of money because of the stress.

And people may smile when they see each other in a funeral home. Still, many attorneys aren't smiling at each other inside of law firms, and many times, there's a lot of competitive pressure between different partners and law firms, and, excuse me, they just don't even smile at each other.

Associates may not smile at each other; partners may not smile at each other. And it's often rare for an associate to hear what sounds like a genuine thank you for doing an excellent job because they just don't. This is just how it works. And in almost all cases, it's not going to change by going to another law firm.

Sometimes people think, oh, it's going to change because. I have this considerable firm pedigree, or I went to this excellent law school, and people will think highly of me if I go to this other great firm, and that's just not the case. You're expecting that it's going to be the same thing.

It will be the same even if you think you have a perfect background. And, in the few decades I've been doing this job, one of the more exciting things I've seen Is watching talented attorneys with top credentials being upset because they're not treated as special people by law firms just because they're excellent credentials.

And that's just it doesn't happen. Once in a law firm, you must compete with other attorneys and do your best. Those credentials got you on the door and gave you the right to do the work, but they're not going to; they don't matter.

Law firms want you to be intelligent, motivated, and look good to clients. They like it when you have good credentials, but they need to pay you for the credentials. They're paying you to be there and do the work. And so, regardless of your level, you must remember that law firms are employers, and you're working for them and have all sorts of stresses of their own.

Their stresses include getting clients to pay, paying staff, preventing partners from leaving, replacing associates that are leaving, staff suing them, all sorts of issues, and getting work done. So, the law firms honestly do not have the time to appreciate you.

That's not why they're there. They're there. And the appreciation you'll receive is a paycheck, your bonus, and the right to work there. You learn a lot if you work at a big law firm and for prominent clients. If you're working at a small law firm and doing workers' compensation or personal injury, you'll get that experience, too.

And you can change that experience and start a massive business with it. You're getting training and experience and the right to work someplace. That's it. And if you feel you need to be more appreciated because you're getting experience in a particular practice area. Or you're learning how to be an attorney or getting paid.

Then, whatever, then, that's, you don't have to feel appreciated. The appreciation is getting the experience. And these things we're learning that you're getting paid. Getting experience and having the right to work somewhere is a massive show of appreciation.

And it's something that a lot of people take for granted. And when it's not there, you will miss it. So let me just tell you something that happens all the time. I get these calls. I don't take these calls much because they're painful, but we always get them. Every day of the week.

Constantly will have attorneys 15 years out of law school, 20 years out of law school, and maybe started a great firm and left and then or a small firm. It doesn't matter; I left and then went and did something else. They went to work in the government. They went into the house.
They. And then they come back, and they say, wow, I would be more than happy to go back and work in a firm as a first-year associate. I can't believe how much these jobs pay now. So think about that. If you start in a big firm and make all this money in 15 years, you'll probably be more than willing to return and make that big salary again. This happens. Often, attorneys leave these big or even mid-sized law firms and make all this money.

Because in the real world, you don't get paid this much money. You also don't get that experience. If you go to work in-house, you're just going to get, most of the time, a variety of experiences. You can work in the government, same thing. So these are all essential things to think about.

You're appreciated for being there and having a job. So a lot of times people will leave because there's too much. They say there's too much work. I'm being overworked. This could be more pleasant. This is a widespread complaint. It's widespread. It's more common, by the way, among junior and mid-level associates than it is among senior associates and partners.

However, the law firm that runs the entire law firm would only run if it had associates bill as many hours as possible in exchange for a fixed salary. How do you think hospitals and stuff make money? They make money by having residents and other people work for free. At least in the law firm, you're getting a big salary.

And that's just how it works. Law firms of all sizes function to the extent. That you expel more hours to them than you're paid. That's just how it works. And in exchange, you will be considered for a partner. And that's just how it is. Their job is to make as much profit as possible from your work, just as it is in a hospital and all apprentice systems.

Germany has apprentice systems for artisans. Every possible place in the world that trains a professional does so in exchange for paying them less money. I'm turning them into profit centers in a law firm; an attorney typically takes about five years to become competent. It's like the 10,000-hour rule.

I think there was Malcolm Gladwell; we wrote a book about it where it took about 10,000 hours for musicians and everyone to learn what they were doing. It's the same thing in the practice of law. You have what would be a big jump, like your first year, where you learn a lot your second year, it's a little bit less than your third year, it's a little bit less.

The more time goes on, the more you start learning about client relations, getting a more sophisticated approach to legal problems, and, again, if you're blessed to be at a large firm and get paid that much during your apprentice time.

That's awesome. If you are at a small firm and getting trained by one attorney or two attorneys during that time, that is awesome. It's a perfect financial transaction for you. The more work you get, by the way, the more proficient you're going to become. It would help if you learned how to be an attorney in law school.
After that, you learn how to take the bar exam; everything else you must do is learned on the job. You have to have experience. You have to have clients. And starting a new firm because there's too much work is ridiculous. You're getting trained and paid to be somewhere.

So why would you switch? Because there's too much work. Too much work means that the firm is thriving and has an opportunity for advancement. If you can figure out how to endure these stresses that come from transitioning from a pupil to a trained attorney, that's great.

Now, I am not saying that you need to be someplace where you're working 3,000 hours a year and going insane. That's just not a good option. Law firms know you will leave if they give you too much work. So I'm talking about spending only some nights in the law firm seven days a week.

You need to set your limits. The problem is many attorneys are very impressionable and need to set limits. So, you need to set limits for what you will do with your time. That means you should not think that if you need Saturdays off, a half day on Sundays, or even Sundays off, you set those limits because if you don't, no one will do it for you.

So, you must learn to set limits and avoid being exploited. So you can stay sane. You have something to give. But the first five years are a learning experience. The other thing is that, if you look at doctors, they sleep in the hospital, closets, and things when they're learning because that's just how it is.

And the more work you do, the more confident you'll be. You're going to see all sorts of connections. Other people want to see you're just going to change. You're going to learn how to do all this stuff. And if you leave the law firm and go in-house or to the government or something, it would be completely wild.

You'll never learn how to practice law and be dependent during that time. You're just going to stop at one point and never move. One of the things, too. I just want to talk about going in-house. This is a dream of all young attorneys if you go in-house And want to work for a big company.

Most of the time, if a big company wants a general counsel, they will hire a partner out of a law firm, preferably a large one, but only sometimes. They won't hire a second-year associate and expect that person to advance. They're going to hire someone with very sophisticated legal skills. So leaving is not a good experience, not a good idea.

If you want to be a successful in-house attorney, it's incredible. Leaving a good job where you're getting trained would be like getting a medical degree, never doing a residency, and learning what it takes to be a doctor. Young doctors work hard, mainly because they make the firm the hospital's money, but they also work very hard.

They're expected to be competent when they're tired, overworked, all that sort of thing. It's the same thing with practicing law. So if you leave early because there's too much work, it's likely to go to waste. And the whole thing is your job when you're young is to make.

Older attorneys make as much money as possible and help the law firm survive. And so you should always stay in a firm just because there's too much work and it gives you too much to do, especially when you're young. Now, if you're not paid for that work, and you're paid one-third of what your colleagues are at a similar firm during that time, then yeah, maybe you think about it or even half.

Or even closer to 60, 70%, but the firm, you need to get the experience, and the presence of a lot of work just means there's a lot of opportunity for advancement, and the firm is doing something right. And lots of work also means job security; I had no law firm when I was at my first law firm.

They had so much work that they never gave reviews. They were like; we are not going to touch this. And because they needed people. Everyone had job security. No one would lose their job unless they did something just wholly incredible. Never be unhappy that there's a lot of work.

Again, there are reasons to leave if there's a lot of work and you can go somewhere better. I just want to cover those real quickly. One reason would be that there needs to be more that you could work on, potentially much more sophisticated work in your practice area. Better experience and exposure to larger clients.

There are some reasons for this, but training during your first five years is essential. More work is needed to lead. Also, the more work there is, this is just very important to understand. The more opportunity you have to make partners, because if the firm has a lot of work, they're also probably going to have a lot of work for senior people.

And those senior people. They will need to be partners if they're going to keep them around and if they're working hard. It's just something to think about. Another reason that people leave. They say morale is low, and I always hear this. I hear this from attorneys working in 2,000-person law firms, saying the morale is low and everyone's unhappy.

Of course. This is really how every law firm is. Morale is low in most law firms. Morale is affected when people leave. Morale is affected when there are rational and mean partners, which there are at almost every firm. Morale is low when someone's friend or colleague gets fired. Morale is low when the law firm loses a lot of work.

Clients are lost when cases are lost when people don't make partners their layoffs. And when there's too much work, morale is low for many reasons. And sometimes, law firms will have bad news in the press. The press hits Every law firm, and bad things are said about it. The larger the law firm, the more often these things occur.

That's just how it is. And it would help if you didn't worry about it. Sometimes, bonuses are lower than when people believe they should be. And that's not a reason to leave either. Sometimes, your bonuses are lower than they are at peer firms. Sometimes your salary is a little bit lower.

When there are raises at different firms, all this stuff happens. And sometimes the morale is low, the economy is hot, and it's low when it's cold. And very few times in almost all law firms, morale is high. Everyone is competing with each other for work. Everyone is competing for favor with different types of people.

So, of course, the morale is going to be low. There are some law firms where the firm does an excellent job of keeping morale high. Most of the time, these are smaller firms. But in this exception, it is the norm. And you know that it's, this, it's not the norm. And morale is almost always going to be low.

Wherever you work, you have to understand that morale is low. It's not; it's just the nature of law firms. Now. There are law firms that people are very proud of because they're growing their law firms that are very proud of because of their brand. But the idea is that it's just how the business model works for most law firms.

They hire young people, work them very hard, and then replace them when they leave or get fired. It's just how it works. People make partners. And then, they often only have business if they get business, they're let go. And that's just how it works. Partners with businesses often need to be paid what they feel they deserve, and they leave.

And that affects morale. Sometimes, they take a lot of associates with them, and there's just constant cycles that ensure that morale will always be low in a law firm. And the solution is to look for something other than a new job. It's to learn how to be happy in that environment. That's it. So you have to realize that you can find, look at the good in the environment or look at the bad, and people always want to look for the bad.

You need to. Put your mind in a place where this stuff just bounces off you, and you concentrate on what's good for you. And, I'll just tell you here personally, like at BCG, for example, we used to hire people, and some people we hired had been at their last firm or employer for eight years or six years and things like that.

Others have been at their last employer for one year for eight months or two years. The people at the firms for eight months and two years always leave within eight months or two years. And when they left, they said, Oh, things are changing. We don't like it. And this sort of thing.

And the people at the last employer for eight years came to our firm and stayed there for eight or ten years. It's just certain people will see the world in different ways. And those people that stayed eight years and six years and things all did well. And they did well because they committed and didn't let this bother them.

A lot of times, people will say others are leaving. And you decide to look at what looks as well. Okay. So if you're in an office with 200 people and people are leaving, that's pretty much normal. It's just how it works. So this is stupid here, but there's a man, and he's no longer alive.

He had an overdose. But someone that, you know, but I, this man I know, is very wealthy and has been married a few times. And he controls his trophy wife. And basically. Dictates who she can associate with. And so he had a few failed marriages. No one has failed marriage before.

Maybe we had one failed marriage, and he realized that if his wife, anyway, it doesn't matter. But he realized that if his wife started associating with women who were unhappy in their marriages and complaining all the time about their husbands, then his wife would start doing the same. And most of those women that were doing that ended up getting divorced.

And so he concluded. If my wife is associating with people, and this is a very successful businessman, like someone that. Getting into it's unimportant, but it made a lot of money, tens of millions, not more in business. And he had all these kinds of things in a business he started.

And so he realized that happiness and unhappiness are contagious and people will basically if it's a race to the bottom or everyone's unhappy, that's what we'll do. If it's not, we'll do something opposite. He witnessed this with his previous wives. With friends of his and their wives as well.

And he was happily married for 15 years before he died. He credits us with ensuring he and his wife spend their time with happy people in their marriages. And I think that's a good rule. You spend your time at work with people who are happy with your job. You spend your time at work with people who have figured out how to make things work when others don't

Because unhappiness, stress, and all these negative emotions Are contagious, if others in your firm start looking for jobs, they will seek your approval. You start doing the same as well. People become like those around them. When I joined my second firm, I made friends with this woman and was in a relationship then.

So I was just friends with her. But when I arrived, she stopped by my office, saying how great the firm and her job were. And then gradually, over time, it started when she would stop by and just talk about how horrible the place was. And I'd be like, I want to be separate from this conversation.

I'm trying to succeed and do well here. And she got furious. She said somebody would realize how bad of a thing it is. And then she left and went to another firm, did the same thing, and tried to sell her. I had her practice, and that didn't work out. And then it's just this is how people are.

The law firm model is built on constant destruction and renewal. And this is just how it works. And so due to this, there will always be people leaving looking for jobs all the time. Because they're unhappy, and if that suits you, being around those unhappy people is depressing.

Negativity is not suitable for you. It hurts your career. There's no point in being part of it. All it will do is lead you in the wrong direction. And if that's where you want to go, that's fine. But you'll lose your career if you spend time with these people. It's just, and spending time with these people is straightforward.

Drug users: if you use drugs, you will find drug users and be friends with them. This is just how it works. If you're negative, you will find other negative people. If all you're doing is you're on the way up, you will find other people on the way up and be close to them.

It's just how it works. The best response is not to get psyched out by people leaving your law firm, but instead just realize that this is part of the cycle and you want to stay around positive people because if you stay around positive people, it's going to roll up, it's going to rub off on you.

People are tribal animals. They want to follow what others are doing. And it would help if you didn't care what others were doing. You should put your head down and get to work. And even associating closely with people on the way out can hurt you. If you're seen as taking their side, it's just how it works.

So if you're seen with negative people and the law firm realizes that these are your friends and the people you spend time with, the law firm will think you're also part of the same thing. It would help if you were very careful, and you should be friends and close to people who are doing not those who are not.

So this is very common. People get a poor review and should be praised by the law firm, or you've gotten them in the past. I want to be clear on something. If you go to law school, you probably were a good student or, at least, enthusiastic enough to get into college. In college, you probably did better than average, if not extraordinarily well, and were praised for your work.

You probably did okay in law school, if not better, past the bar, so you wound up in a law firm, which is very hard to do and takes a lot of work. All along the way, you were praised for passing the bar, going to law school, all these things, and getting all this positive feedback.

But no one took you and broke you like you would break a racehorse, making you learn to work for others and do all these things. It's just never happened. So sometimes you may have been in another job. You may have been an entrepreneur. You may have worked on doing something else and gotten positive feedback.

But a law firm is about breaking you in and making you an attorney. It was interesting that I was in a law firm as a summer associate in New York, and I billed maybe 35 hours a week. There was a significant recession at the time. It was like in the mid-1990s, and things were not going well in most law firms in New York.

And I thought about it like, okay, I need to get in by nine and take a short lunch, and I can leave at five. That's how I thought about my job then, which is not an intelligent way to think about it. My first review was halfway through the summer program, and I couldn't believe how harsh it was.

It was in a dark panel room where I could hardly see anybody's faces. And it almost was like a movie set about a sinister law firm. And everyone was very unhappy with me. And it just did not go well. I thought that my life was over. Every little thing that I'd done that looked wrong was criticized.

No one talked about the things that did well. Everyone gave me an evil review, and I didn't know what was happening. And I also asked all the summer associates how their reviews were. And there, it wasn't a huge class because there was a recession. It was maybe like 15 or 20 people.

And with only one exception, all the other reviews were terrible. People were like, I don't know what the frick happened. This is wild. And these were people from great law schools that had done well. The only exception was a woman from my law school whose sister was an attorney at a big firm doing very well.

And her sister said the only thing this law firm will care about is you working as many hours as possible. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for people who will show up and build a lot of hours. She received an excellent review because she worked hard during her first five weeks of the summer and dedicated herself to the job.

And so I started doing the same thing. I started billing 70 hours weekly for the next five weeks, showing up on weekends. And the quality of my work was the same. It could have been better, but it was, compared to what it was later, but I just did more work.

And at the end of the summer, the woman and I were the only people that received offers. Other people should have paid more hours doing stupid things like that. Working till 6:30 and then taking a company car home instead of working till 11:30 and doing that. So she and I were the only ones to receive offers because we gave so much to the firm.

And so that's, I realized that the firms, all they cared about. And honestly, That was what the review was about. The review wasn't telling me I needed to do better work. It was finding fault with the work that I had done because I needed to build more hours. And this is one of the things that happen in law firms.

People with lots of hours often do not get poor reviews. It's just how it works. And another thing to understand and this is essential. Almost all junior associates inside law firms are reviewed quite critically until they're in their second year, sometimes their third year, sometimes until, rarely until their fourth year, but, usually, their first review needs to be corrected.

Their second review is going to be maybe a little better. The third review might be a little better, but they can be terrifying. And what the law firm is doing is trying to make you into an attorney and to show you what you need to do, how to raise the bar, and when you get to be a third or fourth year at some places.

Through maybe your seventh or eighth year, the law firms will give you decent, if not stellar, reviews. I couldn't believe some of the reviews I saw for mid-level associates. By the way, you are profitable when you're a mid-level associate. You're profitable, so you understand because they don't need to write off much of your time.

They can give you most things to do, and you can do them. You charge less than senior associates, so your billing rate is. It isn't an issue; you save the clients a lot of money. And so it makes the partners look good to give you the work to do because their clients save a lot of money compared to what a senior associate would charge.

And you don't need a lot of oversight. You're doing everything correctly, like what the junior associate would. So, if you're a third or fourth-year associate, this is even the fifth. That's when you're going to start getting better reviews. Just what you understand, you take all the feedback.

It's tough as a junior associate, and then you take that feedback and improve. Then, as you get more senior, you'll be told cryptic things like you're on the right track, or everything looks good, and you don't know, and if the work slows down, you may just be asked to leave. Hence, it's just how it works, so the firm won't be friendly to you because what happens when you get senior? Are your billing rates starting to be compatible, similar to the partners?

All clients want to have the partner do the work, and so that's a problem, especially when the billing rates are similar for all clients. All partners make more money when they do the work themselves instead of having others do it. And then sometimes this is another one people think, oh I'm going to be a hacker in a boutique. And this is a fantasy of attorneys from large firms transferring to a boutique and being happy.

They believe that the pressures of a large firm will suddenly disappear, and they will be happier if they're in a boutique firm. This is just something that a lot of them believe. And the idea is that there'll be fewer hours. The attorneys will be more excellent to each other, and life will be much better.

And that is the case, but there needs to be a solution with this logic. And this is something that all law, all people that go to boutiques almost always eventually understand. All law firms are businesses and trying to make money. Any firm that's a boutique owned by a few individuals wants to, or three or four, whatever the number of partners wants to make more money.

Of course, they do. You would, too, if you owned if you were part of a firm like that. So everybody wants to make more money, and they're making less money now than a boutique, but they still want to. All businesses' objective is to grow firms big and small, want to build a lot of hours, and have people they're working as hard as possible.

Everybody does. This is just how it works. So, regardless of the practice area, work can be hectic inside law firms. And when it gets busy, you will be expected to work hard. Law firms love it when they get a lot of work to do. And that's just how it works. They want if they get a big case, they get a significant transaction.

There's no reason they will say, Hey, we're a boutique. We're not going to work hard on this. They're going to be very excited. The boutique might become a midsize firm. This is what happens to boutiques. And the idea of a boutique is that you will need more support.

So, Suppose you're trading a big firm for a smaller one. In that case, you'll have to do many more things that you might not have to do in a large law firm, meaning secretarial work and paralegal work if you're a mid-level senior associate work that a junior associate would do.

So, this fantasy of a boutique is brutal. And the thing with a boutique Is if things go wrong in a boutique, they go terribly. If the firm loses business, it must immediately let people go because they have a limited number of other businesses. You're in trouble if someone doesn't like you and one of the three partners doesn't.

If a group of partners with a lot of business leaves or the firm gains a lot of big one big clients, things go smoothly. By the way, I've seen entire law firms of 25 attorneys shut down, but they lost a client. They just, they're off the map. Just went overnight. It's essential to understand smaller firms are often hazardous.

So, leaving a firm to go to a boutique is not a, it's only sometimes good. Good thing. And then the other thing that happens is if the boutique is successful, meaning it's doing well, doing work for good clients, and generating it's niche, then it's almost always going to get absorbed by a more prominent firm.

It just almost always happens. There used to be in the United States. When I started in this position 25 years ago, most patent prosecution was done by boutique firms or firms that may be bigger than boutiques doing patent work. Law firms realized this could be profitable work and went around and throughout.

10 to 15 years absorbed every single one of them. And then, when it absorbed them, it didn't know how to work as a patent attorney. So, the point is that these smaller law firms are often hazardous. They often, if they're doing well, they're almost always merged into larger law firms. And where does that put you?

You're back to a more prominent law firm. And again, if you may upset someone in a smaller firm, you're in trouble. If you're a more prominent law firm, if you upset a partner, you can just avoid the partner and work for another one. But in a smaller law firm, this just never happens. Smaller law firms are better for many people if you are comfortable with the people there, but your career can end much more quickly in a smaller law firm than in a larger one.

Smaller law firms also have. Less financial leverage. Large law firms are stable because they're built on multiple pillars and have different practice areas. Everyone knows that a corporation can get very slow when a corporation gets low commercial litigation picks up. And so the or I. P litigation.

So, law firms were relying on one type of business. For everything, suddenly, we can rely on one another, which keeps things going. So, boutiques may just be in one practice area. So if corporate or patent or whatever slows down, they will be prone to going out of business, and they go out of business all the time.

We have in our database, I don't know, 50,000 law firms, and we're communicating with them all the time. And these law firms. Is this consistently going out of business and disappearing? So every week, like we'll get these email bounces and, one or two or three or five or 10, we'll have gone out of business over the past week.

It's just what happens. And most of them are smaller firms. And so the fewer practice areas, they need more stability to keep you employed when things get bad, bad things happen. The other thing for you to understand is if you go to a boutique if you want to go in-house, if you ever want to go to another firm, you're going to have a much more difficult time.

Getting into a more prominent firm than you might otherwise have or an in-house compared to a large firm. Everybody knows what it means to work at a great firm like DLA Piper or McDermott or something. Everyone knows what that is. But when you're with a boutique, I don't know that it's not a brand.

It's something other than what big companies are using. And so most in-house employers, almost all of them will hire from a big firm or a giant firm they've heard of rather than some boutique they have yet to learn about. And then, at a boutique, you'll have a much more difficult time bringing in significant clients.

As you know, brands and law firms, so are clients. Clients are very aware. They want to say, Hey, we use this big firm or this big firm. And that has a lot of cachet. It makes them feel special and looks better for them to use. It looks better for the general counsel to use it.

This is just how it is. Large companies with much business typically use full-service firms instead of boutiques. So they're essential matters. So what does that mean? That means if you go to work in a boutique, you're likely almost sure to be with a firm where it's going to be much more difficult if you ever to bring in large clients, and if you can't bring in large clients, you're not going to be able ever to make the kind of money you want to do.

And you may be stuck at a certain level. So that is challenging. However, because of the lower billing rates, now, this is very important. You will be able to bring in smaller clients, and those smaller clients will be clients. Those are of a caliber that you might not otherwise be able to bring if you were working at a more minor law or a more prominent law firm.

So larger law firms are limiting because if you want to work at a vast Chicago firm and you want to make partners, they will expect you to bring in huge clients. But this can give you much more if you're in a boutique with lower billing rates. Employment stability.

You just need to understand the advantage of what works for small clients, which will also probably make you less money, but only sometimes. You'll be more able to make money if you have a business. But boutiques have different pricing powers.

So this is another thing that many associates and other people are concerned about. They want to; they feel like they need to be given more authority. They want to run deals. They may want to take depositions. They're early in their career. They may want to go to court. Who knows?

But they often feel they need more authority or responsibility. Not having enough authority and being upset about this is good because it shows you're ambitious, hungry, and want to improve. Believe it or not. There are a lot of attorneys.

I talked to one the other day who was trying to do a completely different practice area. And I was like, why are you trying to do that? And he's I like being a litigator, but I think I should do transactional work because I'm afraid to go to court. And so there's a lot of attorneys out there that limit themselves in the practice areas they're in.

But not having enough authority is often not a good reason to leave. I've worked with partners, for example, that have 25 years that are 25 years out of law school. Practicing with major American law firms that have never done a trial. I've seen associates doing litigation in law firms that have never taken a deposition of a party.

And they may have taken the witnesses and things but never of the party to a lawsuit. And a lot of corporate attorneys are experiencing the same sort of lack of responsibility in their careers and in the largest law firms. The lack of responsibility and authority indicates that the work is done carefully and ploddingly.

You're learning, almost with Wax On, Wax Off, and the Karate Kid, where they taught these fundamentals before other things are done. You're learning a lot of stuff earlier in your career. And because you need to get responsibility doesn't mean you should look for a job. It means you're being drilled in the fundamentals.

And keep in mind that if you start your career at age 25, You will be practicing. Think about the two presidential candidates. Each of them is over 80. So you can practice this career for 55 to 60 years. And just because you're not given some authority during your career is promising. And by the way, The people that have authority are partners.

So what that means is that as you're, if you're an associate or senior associate or counsel, you're essentially a soldier. So, soldiers do what other people tell them to do. When you become a partner, you become a general, and you can tell other people what to do. But that's just how it works. Even a general must report to Other and higher-ranking generals, which is how it often works.

But that's just how it works. So another reason to leave is when it turns. They have eight-plus years of experience and don't think they will make partners in their firm, but they're not being asked to leave. They often will leave. And they may be making over half a million dollars a year, and they're billing only a few hours.

So, I speak with attorneys like this all the time. And they're often unhappy because they think they won't become partners. They're not being asked to leave in their current firms, and the firm is happy with them. And in a situation like this, you need to be very careful. There's generally no reason to look at other firms and see what is out there because you need the political relationship capital.

I always recommend that when attorneys are in the state, they're careful about leaving because the amount of money they make as a senior associate will often be more than they're likely to make in-house or with a smaller law firm. And then they can perhaps be made part.

You just don't know. But if a law firm keeps you around as a senior attorney, it's essential to the cost-benefit analysis on whether or not you should leave. If the cost exceeds the benefit, I had this exciting thing happen. I don't know, it was a few months ago, and I was talking to an Awo woman who was like a 17th or something ridiculous, a 15th-year associate at a prominent New York law firm in Los Angeles.

I don't know, making something crazy, like 670,000 a year. And she wanted to look for a job. And I'm like, why in the world? Who cares if you're an associate? It's like you'll always get paid more in-house. Law firms will only pay you that much if you have a lot of business. So, if I were you, I would stick with this forever.

And because what is the cost-benefit analysis now? She's going to have to find a partner. They told her they won't make a partner. They told me they won't even make a council. But if you go someplace else, you're just not going to have that. But what attorneys do, by the way, is they get upset with their role, and then they leave.

And when they leave, there's not as much money, and they don't have the political capital, and no one protects them because they've been at a firm for 15 years, they're not going to get fired, but they go someplace new, and they don't have that. I would guess that about half the attorneys who leave large law firms at a senior level tend to only last for a short time in their jobs and don't have situations as good as the next one.

Often, if you commit to a law firm and you've been there 12-13 years, they will tell you. If you do this, we want to make you a partner. If you do this, we'll do it. But sometimes attorneys often talk about how they want to start businesses. Young attorneys will do this. Older attorneys will do this.

But one thing to think about if you're a senior and want to start a business is that most businesses. If you have a business generating, you're making 500 000 a year in a law firm, and you start a business that's doing 5 million a year, and you have a 10 percent profit margin, which is good for a business.

But with all the hassle and work of generating, of having a business, you can only make 10 percent, and maybe the following year, you'll make 3 million, right? Then, it only sometimes makes sense. And in a law firm, you're a business; you're an individual little business saying, this is what I'm going to charge for my services, and think about it that way.

So, it's thinking about alternatives and what they are before making a move. A lot of times, attorneys also move because they want a title, and that can make sense in a lot of cases. Like I've. Many attorneys have left their firms because they wanted a different title.

They felt that they got a different title that would mean something to them, and it's possible that an attorney would be helpful. Sometimes, it's a good idea, and even if you're a council-level attorney at a big law firm, you can often move to a large law firm.

It could be more prestigious. But just thinking about these options is very important because if you become like a council or an apartment level attorney at a small law firm or made a large law firm, in most cases, that law firm will want you to be.
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That law firm will expect you to make a partner to bring in business at some point. So that will be even less stable if you don't bring in business. Many people are unhappy and think it's because of the law firm. And it's important to understand that a lot of attorneys are unhappy.

This may mean that the law firm is not entirely for you. Stress, disappointment, anger, depression, substance abuse, and health problems are on par for many attorneys. And there's also something else that I want to bring up, too. A lot of attorneys they're unhappy even before they become attorneys.

Now, it's not the rule or the norm. Most attorneys become unhappy during law school, and this problem starts, but many are unhappy before becoming attorneys. And so, what do they do to cope with that unhappiness and these negative feelings? They throw themselves into schools to distract themselves from their problems, and they're unhappy, to begin with, and use schools and outlets to have some certainty and control in their lives when everything isn't extraordinary.

And it would help if you worked hard to get into a good law school. You need to work harder than others and be competitive and really. Want to achieve something, and many attorneys, regardless of the firm they're at, have histories of remarkable achievement.

There may be five at a Kappa or Coif, and there's nothing wrong with this, but if you have this sort of drive many times, you're trying to prove something, you're trying to prove it to your parents, you're trying to prove it to people that had doubts about you when you were younger.

To teachers, that said, you'd never amount to anything. I know that I had these reasons for being very motivated. And the problem is that you think you'll get into a law firm and that will solve everything. Still, it's often the exact wrong environment for someone with these problems in this background because instead of feeling important to you, you're going to be in a position where you're exposed to the stresses and things that brought you to the law firm in the first place.

Most successful attorneys I've ever spoken to and worked with are frankly very balanced. Still, more than I would say 50 percent of them have all sorts of issues that they're trying to prove to parents and people who didn't believe in them, friends or people that called them nerds when they were younger, beat them up, or things that maybe their family lost money. Who knows?

And their family was something. And so they're trying to prove something. And a lot of attorneys are miserable. You need to find out if the problem is a firm or whether happiness comes from something to do with the attorneys themselves. But it's a complex topic. I am Glad you're listening to this because the makeup of many of these attorneys is that being in a law firm is something other than something that will solve it.

And I have conversations with attorneys all the time. When I discuss these things, I find deep-seated issues where they're, where they get very defensive. When you bring up certain things in some cases, I've lost candidates when I've tried to get to the bottom of this, because the, you're, when you're bouncing around from job to job because you're unhappy about things that maybe the law firm didn't cause you're jumping around is not going to solve this.

A change of scenery isn't going to solve it. One of the things that they often talk about is that I remember a friend of mine who had alcoholism, and I was out with him. And another woman and her parents, one of her parents, had alcoholism, and we were in a bar.

And he was talking about how he wanted to move here and move that and move and get out of Los Angeles and move to a small town. And she said, and when he got up to go to the bathroom or something, he said this is what all alcoholics do. They think that if they make a geographic change. Then their lives will be better, and everything will be well; attorneys do the same thing.

And again. This woman said their family constantly moved from town to town and thought things would be better. They'd make new friends and everything, but this is just an alcoholic-type thing. And this is the fantasy that many people have with law firms.

And so there's reason to be unhappy, but you must often examine if there's something in your background. That's making you feel like that. And then, many times, people want to move because they think they'll be happy in another practice area. So they think, I wouldn't say I like corporate law.

I want to do litigation. I don't like litigation. I want to do corporate work. I don't like litigation. I want to do something for the environment. And it's essential to understand that many attorneys will try to say they're unhappy in a practice area. And people want to do this all the time. I see resumes with this all the time.

People need to be more satisfied with their existing practice areas. And there are significant differences between different practice areas, but only a little. Early in your academic career, people may develop different aptitudes. So some people will be interested in science and numbers, others will be interested in reading and writing, and then and then typically, if you're good at English and reading and writing, you will major in history, anthropology, English, that sort of thing.

If you're good at math and science, you'll probably major in something related to that, like economics or something. Still, at the most simplistic level, people are generally either numbers people or verbal people and people, they look at your brain, and they can say, they figure out what you're motivated towards and science and numbers people, if you're that kind of person, you're typically going to graduate you're going to do best or like more naturally be interested in things like real estate, corporate.

Tax, patent, project finance, and things that involve that. And if you're verbal, you're typically interested in litigation, employment, antitrust, and criminal law. And the thing is, this is just important to understand: people who are good at English and things can be noticed.

Those skills and people would be as well. And they almost grab; they almost naturally gravitate towards one. And it's the same thing with people with these number disciplines that are good. They can gravitate. They understand what each other's people are like. The only reason to switch practice here, in my opinion, is because of these two reasons.

So, you probably should if you're corporate and are more verbal. Be in a verbal discipline if you're more math and science stuck in, or whatever, and litigation. Most corporate attorneys would never want to do litigation. Then, you probably should switch practice areas.

But other than that. Most practice areas are pretty much all the same. Employment is the same kind of back-and-forth fighting or family law in litigation. And if your mind is in a different bin, she should switch practice areas, and we'll be happier. But other than that, you must switch for the right reasons.

So, switching practice areas generally is not going to make you happier. And it's typically early in an attorney's career, and they'll think, Wow, this is stressful. Maybe I should switch practice areas. Maybe that's the reason I'm getting bad reviews. But most of all, you know that if the person is in like a verbal and they're verbal, or they're in a transactional, and they're trans, numbers, and then they're in practice areas, excellent.

The only thing that could be better is switching practices here because there will be no noticeable difference. Sometimes people say, Oh, I like litigation, but I think I would be happier doing employment. That's fun. That's okay. But law firms, but there's, you're doing pretty much the same thing, and you're not going to be noticeably happier, unhappier.

If you're doing another practice here, many people will say they're bored and want to enjoy looking for a new position, meeting new people, selling themselves, and the thrill of getting interviews and offers. There is a dopamine-type rush that people seem to get from doing this.
I am still determining what it is, but they are enthusiastic about moving employers.

And they think that the next time is going to be the best. And they move around between firms like this, often because of the same reason we covered earlier. They may have been in a position where they are, feel criticized or don't feel like it anymore.

It gets boring. And then, they suddenly revert to looking for a job because it's something that they understand and feel good about. Many attorneys will apply to firms in Hawaii, Alaska, and worldwide because they're thinking of working in these different places.

And I think these geographic moves could be better. People should do their best to stay in the markets as long as possible. When you're in one market, you're learning. And you're developing relationships and not developing, and you're never developing roots.

When you move, you must start all these relationships and your reputation. In some cases, it may be a good idea, but generally, it's only if you're going home, which in case, you know, from where you're raised or there's no work in your market. But the problem is that if you are bored all the time in moving firms, law firms will not be unlikely to trust you.

They'll know you're just a mercenary and will likely do it again. And being bored is no reason to move. I mean, you need to find ways to be excited about your job in that board there and do things that interest you And find things that interest you, and then you also need to find things outside of work that will give you experience.

So this is another one just working in-house. As I told you earlier, I might've spent much time on this. People believe that if they go in-house, there will be less stress, so they should look for a job. And they will be happy and have more free time on the business side of clients.

I've written much about this elsewhere and encourage you to read this article. There's an article that discusses going in-house right here, but basically, what happens to most resumes of people that go in-house is they go in-house, and they eventually go in-house.

Sometimes, they're at the in-house job for a year, sometimes two years. They see that things could be done better in houses and law firms. They may need more work, or let's talk briefly about this. You go in-house; you're in a cost center, not a profit center, meaning the law firm.

The company has to pay you whether or not you work or not. You typically generate income differently than other people. You're likely to let go. The company merges, goes down, moves, a new G, a new G. C. comes in, a new C. E. O. comes in, and the company goes out of business. When you're in a law firm, you generate revenue, making you more likely to keep your job.

Most people who go in-house only stay for a short time. They typically have their first job; they might be only there a couple of years, and then they leave. And if you thought it was challenging to get an in-house job in a law firm, it's even more difficult when you're coming from another in-house job.

All the skills valued inside a law firm are often not risk averse, meaning finding fault and things and making arguments are often less popular when attorneys get inside companies because you're seeing people break the rules you're not taking and showing them solutions.

And you're unliked like your fear because people want to do things to make money, but you're preventing them. And the. Young in-house attorneys make this mistake all the time. They get out of the company. They often say it's unethical because companies are all bending the rules.

If you read the news, every company's in trouble. Amazon's in trouble this week for an antitrust suit. Google had antitrust suits. Every company, crypto companies, every bond, everyone's leaving all this stuff. Companies are impossible. Law firm law firms are much more stable than companies.

And you'll realize that when you go into the house. So you lock attorneys from a large or any law firm that will go in-house. And typically, there's just all these different moves. And eventually, I see the resumes because they're on my Resume revision calls, and they are all like.

The people you'll see that were done by like a professional resume outplacement company because what's happened to usually probably paid for by the last employer is in-house attorneys are just discarded and, like crazy. And not only that, but you never generate business.


And just as in law firms, there's a preference for young attorneys for jobs. There's also a preference for the same thing. And in-house jobs. It takes work to get a job once you go in-house. Companies and law firms all want to hire younger people. They want to hire people directly out of law firms that have those skills that are younger and have them.

And once you go in-house, you'll have to work hard to get jobs. Your skills are going to deteriorate because the jobs of in-house attorneys are often to refer people to outside counsel. They get very good at it. And that continues. Yeah. And the work quality because you're not surrounded by other attorneys expecting to do the best work.

It's going to deteriorate. And you can only go back to a law firm. Never. Rarely hire an attorney from an in-house job to return to a law firm. It just doesn't happen. And again, the companies are not fans of their in-house attorneys. The in-house attorneys tell people running the company what they can't do.

This is what they're paid to do. But the more negative you are, the more you're disliked. And so you often feel isolated. People will avoid you. And you also lose control of your career. You won't have clients. Clients give partners and law firms control because they can take those clients and go elsewhere.

They all have a business, meaning you, if you work in a law firm and have clients, that's a business. I had a business when I left the law firm as a third- and fourth-year attorney. I had at least a few hundred thousand dollars in work that people would pay me, but I can rely on, and had I stayed longer, I would've developed more business, but if I'd gone in-house, I would've thrown away that business and that opportunity.

So there are a lot of dangers from that career choice. At this point, everyone. To understand that the other big one is having a mentor at your current firm. If you have a mentor at your current firm and someone looking out for you, you should be careful about leaving. People get jobs; people become partners in law firms because they have mentors.

People often will have their whole careers made. Having an older mentor who gives them their book of business when they leave, the person suddenly has this big book of business. I was talking to an associate not too long ago who had moved firms with a partner she was with three times in seven years.

That same partner had moved three times in the seven years. And what happened to the partners? He would get to a firm. And he would bring her along, and a few other associates, and then the firm would typically guarantee him a particular pay for his first year, second, first, and second year.

And then they would renege on it after a certain period, which is very common. And then he would move to a new firm. And when she told me she wanted to move firms without her, without him, I was like, you're crazy. The last thing you should do is go to a firm without this guy.

Because he would eventually make her partner, whatever firm he was at. He liked her work, and she had job security. She was doing good work, or he would not have kept taking her along. And he kept asking her to go along. So if you have someone that's on your side in your firm and that has your back, it's going to be a considerable challenge.

If you still need to, you can find another mentor again. Because if you have someone protecting you, this is a huge advantage. If someone is protecting you, this means your career is safe as long as this person has your back. I can think of so many instances where, when I was practicing, I would see particular associates working directly with a potent partner. All of them made partners because I had someone on their back.

So it's essential. You can have an outstanding career just because one person has your back many times. It has a lot of power. And then sometimes the firm is saying you have a future. Then you decide to leave if a firm's telling you something like that, and if you believe they mean it and they have a reason for saying that, then you have to be very careful about leaving because if the firm likes you and you have enough work.

And you're going to have a future there. And if the firm's telling you that, you must think about it. Does it make sense for me to leave? Now, there are reasons to leave, which could be you're moving to a more giant firm, more opportunities, and you have clients, and the clients would be happier.

But you have to be able to find a firm that's going to like you. When you go to a new firm, you may not have that ability or be a threat to people who were summer associates there and doing other things. Before most people get married, for example, they have a lot of relationships with many other people.

And most. Many relationships do not work out, and because they don't, most people marry the first person they date and find something that works. If you're in a relationship with someone because I found something that works, it works if you're in a relationship with a law firm. If you're doing well, then you ought to be very careful about starting at a new firm because, in the new firm, you may not have a future.

Having a future in a law firm is dependent on people liking you, having enough work in your practice area, being told you're doing good work, and having a good cultural fit. Cultural fit, by the way, is enormous. So if you are clicking with a culture and feel comfortable there, people make you feel comfortable.

Then the last thing you should do is, you're going to need helping that and cultures of, you can feel culture. When I walk into some place, I can feel the culture. When I walk into different companies and law firms, it's just a feeling that people pick up. And if you're in something where that's good, then that's important.

So, many people would like to have the idea that they want to try another career before committing to a law firm. If you do that, you will almost always never. Be able to go back to a law firm. So you have pretty much one shot. Going to other law firms will be okay if you're in a law firm.

But it becomes almost impossible to return once you leave the law firm world. That's like telling other people. And this could work out that you want to see other people for a while and then try to start up again. Now that can work out. But generally, that doesn't mean it can. But in law firms, once you've decided to leave, You will most likely be believed again.

There's a rule. There are all these rules that I've encountered, but the biggest one is never to rehire someone. If you rehire someone, they'll always leave for the same reasons they left the last time. And by the way, law firms almost exclusively hire from law firms.

So I've been in this business for 25 years and. I can tell you with almost 100 percent certainty that you'll be 99 percent better off if you want to get a job at a law firm. Even taking a federal clerkship or something during your third or fourth year or fifth or sixth.

Practicing and trying to go back to the law firm can be a little tricky. So, if you're in a law firm, you must make it work, and you only get one shot. So once you leave the law firm, the law firm concludes that's not what you want. You want something else. And if you come back, you'll probably have the same conclusion again, and it's not worth their investment.

You don't invest with someone that's coming with a law firm. What would you do if you had the choice? To do something, whether it looked like it was permanent or get involved with someone or wherever the person was interested in people like you, as opposed to something else, you'd have to think about that.

By the way, it is possible to leave and take a critical position in government if it's high ranking. Some people go to work and. Different branches of the government international trade and things, and then want to come back and if you have rare experience, it can work, but not always, so most of the time, and a lot of times, people believe these firms like Sullivan and Cromwell and go to critical positions in government and then be able to come back, but They don't.

It's rare, and it doesn't occur very often. Attorneys are classified into these camps: junior associates, mid-level associates, senior associates, and partner-level attorneys. Becoming a mid-level associate can take about five years before you become competent.

And again, if you are trained and paid during this period, this is a good deal. You are developing skills, ways of thinking, access to large clients, and stuff you'll never get later in your career because no one will take the time to do it again.

And once you leave it, you lose that connection. You can go to another firm, but you're better off staying where you're at most of the time. If it's good, the same thing goes for smaller firms. If you are doing this, you could be doing all sorts of practice here that is consumer-facing, whether it's trust in the States or social security law or whatever it is at a smaller firm where you still want to learn, you want to learn how they get business.

You want to learn how to talk to different types of clients, what clients are likely to pay, and what aren't. So whatever practice area you're in, whatever firm, doesn't need to be significant; you can always be learning. And if you started a new firm. It does not change the fact you're in training, but a lot of stuff will be difficult, and they make it more difficult because the law firm knows.

You may leave, so they're less likely to give you many things than they might if you stay. So, if you leave a law firm during this period and go in-house or into the government or something else entirely, you'll never really learn how to practice law if you leave early in your career.

All this experience and training you could get that would make you a better attorney will often go to waste. Mid-level attorneys often make mistakes when they start, when they start to know what they're doing, and when they start to become profitable, but only sometimes.

If you leave as a mid-level attorney, you can often get into a much better firm. So if you are doing a practice area, that's very active, and you're at a smaller midsize firm, and you've gotten that training, then yes, that may make a lot of a big difference, but if you started at firms, the summer associate.

You go through this whole thing and then leave during this time. It can be disadvantageous. Law firms love the idea of people who started there early, whether out of law school or as summer associates and have continuity and know how things work. And if you do that, it can be a huge benefit.

And senior associates often get restless. They're concerned they won't become a partner. I'm concerned. They should be doing something else. They're not being paid what they think they should be doing, but they're not being asked to leave. And often, that's a mistake. Law firms want to keep you in the air about what will happen.

The only reason to leave at that level often is if you need a mentor or see a future there. But most of the time, you have to be very careful. About leaving, be very deliberate about what you're doing. They usually fire you, wait for you, and ask you to leave immediately. They may give you six months, and they give you a year, so you're always going to have time to find something.

And they'll usually give you much more than three months. And there's harm or no harm in looking for a job if you don't have to, but if there's no pressure to leave, there's no problem, and the same thing goes for income. Partner. They're going to have a problematic partner with business.

Have business reasons, and I'm not going to criticize that because they're often excellent reasons. But the point is that leaving jobs for the wrong reasons will harm your career. And if you're going to switch jobs, you need to know what you're doing before you do, and I believe firmly because I see this from 30,000 or 35,000 people.

But the level that firms and careers are often very much harmed by moving for the wrong reasons than by staying so important moving can be fun and exciting. You can find new things to like about the new firm that you might not like about your existing firm, but you may be setting yourself up for something that doesn't benefit you in the long run.

Okay, I'm glad we got through that quickly. You've heard the amount of information I had to cover. What I'm going to do now is I'll take a quick break, and then I will come back in one or two minutes, or maybe, and when I do, I'll take questions. It could be about this or anything we may have, not anything related to your career.

I'll come back in just one minute.

Yeah, so we will go to the Q and A. Let me start today. I'm going to start towards the bottom. Let me just see here: I need help staying in my current firm after a series of negative performance evaluations. How can I reconcile my desire for professional growth with reality?

What benefits might there be to remaining where I'm at? Okay, so that's a perfect point. There are two types of reviews. There are these: there's a review to pay attention to, stop making dumb errors, and work better with others. Others are more respectful.

Come into the office more, work harder on FaceTime, all that sort of thing. If you get these reviews, these are on you, meaning you need to improve. And so you need to listen to these reviews very carefully if you're receiving them because if you are making dumb errors, you're not working well with others you're talking to, not being excited about getting work, then that's a problem. You need to improve, and if you're not doing those things. And so it's essential to always put yourself first. See how I could improve these things in the shoes of the person you work for.

Now, sometimes this may have been; you may have done such a poor job with all this stuff you need to leave because you've just burned all your political capital. And that's it. But if you can fix this stuff, you're generally much better off just for your, for your future, for your future reputation of fixing it while looking for a job.

You always want to do the best you can to fix these things. These are the mistakes that junior attorneys will make. They'll get assignments and must listen more carefully about what's needed. They won't look to see if they'll make dumb errors. They won't proofread things and try to get them turned in fast enough.

They won't Be; they won't try to get in and work better with others. They won't be respectful to senior associates who are people that are above them. They will work harder than they should. They'll they, as a junior, you're supposed to work hard.

They won't be seen. They won't. They won't be excited about getting work. They will stay on the way to get to work. So these are some mistakes you typically make, but other times, the firm will give you poor reviews because they just want you to give them one second.

Okay. They're asking you, but they're asking you to leave because they're telling you the stuff because they don't think you're a good fit. So if you improve and you do all these things, and you're still getting these bad reviews, then it may be. In your best interest to leave.

It would help if you also looked at what the firm does. What have I seen happen? With people that are like me that are having issues. Have they asked to leave? Have they fired them? What happens? It would help if you watched the film. Very closely. However, if you're getting these poor reviews and feel like you're getting reviewed for things that are not in your control, you should be looking for a job.

Especially if these just continue because, most of the time, poor reviews are an opportunity for you to improve. Athletes have successful coaches. Executives have coaches, especially high-level ones. Everyone has coaches. Presidents have coaches.

So even presidents of countries have coaches. I used to work with someone who was a president; they used to talk to presidents and coach them; everyone has coaches. And so there's nothing wrong with people making you get better. That doesn't mean there's something wrong.

That's not doesn't mean it's an opportunity. So, is this coaching-type stuff? Or is this a firm trying to get me to leave? And are my peers getting good? But you need to try to fix whatever they're telling you to, and then if you fix them, you'll often be much better off in the long run.

So I typically recommend doing what you can to fix things. 1 other thing I just want to say to everyone that I would ask the questions: if you, your name, you're signed into Zoom, I won't use your name. So I know people want to be careful about their identities, at least all, so that's fine.

Next question. So again, I won't use your name type of question, and you're worried about that. Yeah. I struggled with paranoia and negativity after working for a firm that was going downhill. It was a good question. So, it went downhill, and nearly all of the associates shortly after hiring them.

Wow. It's hard to shake this need to look for my, for myself, only mindset, but I know that the only way to succeed is to leave this behind. It's negativity. It's hard to mask the office, and even impacts my personal life and relationships because I'm always in a lousy mood and love my work.

Wow. So this is an excellent question. Yeah, and this is good. So one of the things is that law firms prefer hiring younger people because older attorneys are often damaged goods and will not enthusiastically Throw themselves. It's a great question. So you take a lot of those into
the work and will be suspicious on the lookout for all negativity for science, something as well.

And so this is how it works. So, a young attorney that comes into a law firm typically differs from this cover you behind. So when something terrible happens, they feel that they may not anticipate it, and they're more impressionable, so they work harder and want praise and things as an attorney gets older.

You don't see law firms hiring people with 20 years of experience. Fifth-year or senior associates do it; it scares them. But this person knows he is at a firm and a stroke parent after working for, so I wonder if this person's at or was at this firm.

But law firms can do all sorts of things. They can let everyone go. You just, you never know. And it isn't easy. Oh, it's this negative: it is hard to master the office. Okay. I would be cautious. Someone that is essentially letting people go like that all of a sudden, I think, is a scary firm for you to be in that particular thing I would probably let go.

I remember my first Legal position, in which I was with a judge and in a two-year clerkship. He and I were not getting along because of the politics of what he was and how he was operating, which were his right because the President appointed him. One doesn't matter, but I just didn't like it.

And so I became critical of it. And then suddenly, he and I were on the outs and, as we should have been. Instead of a two-year clerkship, I went to him and discussed it and agreed that it would only be a one-year clerkship. Had I not done that, I am 99 percent sure or 90. Five that I probably would have been fired because it was just too much.

And I was acting like a punk, but the point is like, when I got into my next job after having worked as a summer associate in a place where only two people got offers, myself and one other girl, I realized you have to work very hard. I realized I'd have to be careful about keeping politics under the radar.

Another thing the judge did was he only had two conversations with me about the quality of work the few times I was there. One time was about a typo, and the next time was about a typo. So, I realized that I had to learn from all this. And so I've become a better attorney, but I was paranoid.

So, people are also paranoid in relationships, like people will have broken up with them. And so the next person that comes along, if they see signs that something looks weird, rather than feel like someone broke up with them, they broke up with them. So this is what people do. In this particular situation, I would recommend it.

Leaving the firm. I would say they let everybody with me go. It's scary. And realize that you weren't let go because you weren't let go. That's a perfect thing. You're doing excellent work, but you have to go in and learn the lessons and the, which is very valuable.

So, what did these attorneys do that got let go? So, what did these attorneys do? What I did and what I did when I got to a new firm, I realized that never get involved in politics, never get involved in politics, you just have to avoid it altogether.

And your relationship with your employer needs to be good. So, my relationship with my employer could have been better. So what he did was because he didn't like my politics. And I wouldn't say I liked how he went and would start looking for typos and things. And that was a way to justify our disagreement and potentially fire me.

So you fix what you can, but that's it. Most of the time, just so you understand, when people are fired, they're fired for financial reasons or because. The employer knows they're not on their side. That's it. Once the player knows they're not on their side, the player has no problem letting them go.

So you always try to get a mentor, and as I talked about earlier, in addition to getting a mentor form, form close relationships with people in power. And then, if you do that, you're okay. So, in close relationships, it means being very available to them, solicitors, solicitors of work, all that kind of stuff.

But. Any firm letting all these people keep you around obviously likes you, but that's just a bad sign. One of the things that I noticed was interesting. I was talking about a couple of big firms; I've been having these meetings every morning with our recruiters, and then I was talking. We were talking about firms, and There was one firm we were talking about that used to be considered a complete rockstar law firm, like a Scadden or an excellent law firm.

But then what they did is they did the unthinkable for a firm of that caliber. They laid a bunch of people off, and all of a sudden. This is back in the first time they did. It was like 2001 or two 2001. And the next time they did it was in 2008. And so the entire firm, their reputation suffered severely.

And now, all of a sudden, the best students from Harvard and everybody no longer wanted to go there because it's just institutional memory. If you don't hear about firms, they certainly may do it, but you don't hear about firms like let me fix something quickly with this email.

You don't hear about firms like Skadden and many other excellent firms laying people off. They just don't because the reputation is too strong. And the other exciting thing is when law firms typically let people go. Let me just give me a second.

When law firms, even if they let people go, like the best law firms, one of the things they do is they never say anything negative about them. Like them, they are very friendly to them. So if a law firm has terrible things to say about people who are leaving, especially publicly, then that's a lousy time and something you should be aware of.

Okay. Great discussion. Thanks. I have to go now, but I always do. Because this person isn't here. Okay. I think maybe this is just a comment. Oh, sorry, this person's name. Yeah, this looks like it's going to be a question.

Okay. Senior associate, I get paid well, but health insurance is costly. More than I've seen anywhere on Reddit, information or other sites provide inadequate coverage for my family where I live. I need new health insurance. Is this an acceptable reason to go to a different law firm, or should I try to research health insurance and buy it from some other source?

Yeah, so that's a good question. Health insurance is essential. I know that, for example, one of my daughters was receiving the hospital for seven days, and the bill was like 120 000, which wasn't even, she wasn't injured or didn't have it and anyway, but and then she's back in there again, and it's like another, 100, 000 for the same thing.

So, health insurance is critical for many people in some law firms. This is a good way for them to save money. By making the health insurance on you if that machine, but to be honest with you I wouldn't, if you're doing well at your firm, I will not leave because of health insurance.

I think it could be an issue of, I don't know, 500 a month or 1000. Still, your political capital and the opportunity for advancement are probably more valuable than health. So the health insurance is a, there's a benefit. But the relationships and how close you are to advancement.

It's actually in having people protect you. Moreover, you pointed out that your career is more valuable than help. And I just want you to understand that this is important for senior associates and everyone else.

But when you're senior, you're being kept around because the firm likes you or they have big clients who can give you work at your billing rate. And so that's actually. It's important because if you go to another firm, you will have only some long standing relationships and other people looking out for you.

You're going to have to find new people to give you work. So, finding new people to give you work will be difficult, and it could take you years to get to that level. And that you are right now. So that's that. The other thing about moving to a new firm and this Reddit is that you must avoid comparing things.

I hate telling. Stories from going to religious services, but I will tell you the one I heard last week. There's a story in the Bible, which, again, I'm not trying to take sides here. I don't even know who the older watch was in the New Testament, but where this landowner goes out and hires.

A bunch of people work in the morning and say, I'll pay you this for the day. And they say, okay, that's great. And then he goes out in the afternoon, in the middle of the day at lunch, hires more people, and says, I'll pay you this for the day. And she said that's great. And then he goes out later in the day, like an hour or two before the sunsets or the end of the day, and says, I'll pay you this for the day.

And it was the same amount. And so when the people hired in the morning found out that everyone was paid. The same as they were, they were agitated even though they worked later. And then, when people found out in the middle of the day, they were agitated. And so everyone was distraught that other people got more for working less.

The idea about that is you, and so there's a bunch of lessons that I need to remember, but the idea is that you should only sometimes be putting yourself in a position where you're comparing yourself to others. You should just be glad of what you have. It would help if you started thinking as an owner; it's an owner and not an employee.
.
So what's strange is that my email is an owner rather than an employee. So, what does an owner think? An employee thinks, and employees like. What's fair? What are other people getting? What are other people getting? And all that stuff. And then they worry about that.

And then they feel mad if not getting what if they don't get what they want. And so I'll just tell you a quick story. So I had this. I used to have in-house counsel. That was recommended to me by another religious person I knew that I spent time with attending their stuff.

This person had graduated from law school at some ridiculous age, like 19. He is from Berkeley and the youngest graduate, but he is not. Obviously, but law firms did not want to hire a 19-year-old despite the fact he was very significant in law school.

A rabbi referred him to me, and I hired him. Six months after hiring him, it was probably what I could afford at the time, maybe 80,000 a year. I am trying to remember. This was three decades ago. He has all these firms in Silicon Valley.

Started raising their salaries for incoming associates too, I need to find out, 120 or 150 or something. And all of a sudden, he was mad, and he's I need to get that amount. I'm upset. And, because I need to get that amount, I will leave every day at five and show up at 10.

And so eventually, I was like, wow, this is wild. If I want to hire, I can hire someone. Eventually, I gave him a raise that amount, but I was like, things slow down. I am still determining where this will leave you. And sure enough, things stood down.
Something happened, and I found a reason to let him go. And I think it was as simple as having a relationship with someone in the office. I don't remember, but this is what happens if you start trying to get all these things and comparing the others; it will hurt you.

So you need to concentrate just like they discussed in the biblical lesson on what you have and not worry about it. What do others have? And if you do that, that's going to help you. Every, there's, every law firm can, you can compare your job to any law firm. Other law firms will pay more money.

Other law firms have more benefits. Other law firms have more prominent clients. And if you want to think negatively, you will show it, and you need to concentrate on what's good. And the power of that lesson is just that, which is probably from the old test.

I don't remember, but the power of that lesson is that we make ourselves unhappy by comparing ourselves to others. And that's not something you should do. It would help if you always realized, by the way. That there are always a lot of people that are better than you. When I read the news, I'm just amazed at the levels of success and power and things that people have compared to me, and rather than feel jealous, I'm like, wow, that's great for them.

If I make these decisions, so you just have, you can't worry about this stuff is a significant point and the more you work on it. The better off, the more you are happy with what you have, the better off you will be and just how it is. So you don't want to worry too much about what others are doing because it will.

It's going to affect your happiness. Why would you want to concentrate on something that will make you unhappy? Okay. One reason I want to join a boutique firm is the prospect of working closely with clients and having a more direct impact. That's a good point. However, what potential downsides should I consider in my current job that might make this trade-off less appealing?

Okay. So the only point of a boutique is that, and that's very good. You can work more closely with clients in a boutique. So that's very good. So you can work more closely with clients in a boutique. With clients in a boutique, that's a big deal, and I need help understanding.

Okay, so yes, you can work more closely with law firms in a boutique with clients in the boutique. That's true, but the point is that if you get more senior in any law firm, you will be there, so I want this now. And is it essential to do that long-term when the long-term issues may be harmful?

Once you move to a boutique, a boutique makes it harder to get big clients to go in-house, and all these things I talked about. It is harder to go back to a large bottom, and it is likely that your workload will be the same, maybe the same, and that you know that you will have to do lower-level work.

You may work as a paralegal legal secretary, or area junior associate. And that's one of the things that people don't like. Those are some of the drawbacks. And the other drawback is most boutiques want to be large law firms.

That's it once you understand that those are some drawbacks, which I think are significant and essential to consider. Okay, this is a great point. Yes, so there are things that you know that everybody should do. You should focus on a niche within your practice area as much as possible. So I just read a book about, I don't know, people, how to win business and that sort of thing.

We should focus on a niche within your practice area. You should write and speak to people in your industry or, I would say, write about this. On LinkedIn and the firm website, you should go to conferences if you can, join the Bar Association, send your articles to people, those people who benefit from it, meaning general counsels and so forth. And then you should, if possible, find your nation.

Or meeting with them. So, these are the things that attorneys do to get large books of business. The biggest thing I can say to everyone on this call is that the most important thing that any attorney can do is to focus as much as possible on a niche within your practice area. This is one of the most important things anyone can do.

And then once you do that, you get the word out that you're an expert or good at this sort of thing. And then people will start using you. are thinking of you. An example might be you do litigation, but you represent small hospitals sued for doctors performing unnecessary operations; whatever the niche is, you become known for that.

Most attorneys are trying to be all things to all people, just as most businesses are trying to be all things to all people. For example, at BCG, we only do lawful and permanent placements. We don't. In-house placements. We don't. We only do one thing, and because of that, every day.

I learn a lot of stuff in this business because of what, because of that. I'm learning things daily, whereas I would just be going along if I were doing 15 different things. So it's the same thing with attorneys, like the best attorneys. Like I was talking to an attorney last, what was it?

Last Tuesday night, I was at an event in Seattle, and it was pretty cool. It's this place called the Dale Chihuly Museum, which is the most beautiful glass. But anyway, the point is that when I was talking to him, he had this niche of doing M&A for mid-sized firms or mid-sized companies doing a specific type of M&A for a particular type of company. He had developed this vast book of business where he had a guarantee.

Of 7 million a year in terms of the benefit of the niche. Most attorneys and means he's got tens of millions of dollars worth of business never develop a niche. They just think your niche could be anything. If you're doing plaintiff's law, maybe you do mesothelioma for people injured by painkillers.

Something just very niche is going to help you. Whereas if you try to do something, that's what I recommend doing. And your marketability will go way up if you're doing many things. Like, I'll just tell you another example. So yesterday, I talked about two resumes I've looked at in the past 24 hours.

So, yesterday, I did a resume review. So, if you are a BCG candidate and want to have your resume reviewed each week, you should be getting notice because we have this. We do a public one, which will be coming up soon, but the first resume I reviewed was of a litigation attorney who had done all this litigation stuff everywhere in his resume.

It was about litigation, except for two things. So that's a good resume. It's all about one thing. If you have, but often, people list all those associations and things that have nothing to do with the practice area, which should come off. You just need to say where you went to school; if there's anything on there that detracts from your practice area, remove it.

But he did that. He was a good candidate. This morning, I reviewed a perfect trust in the state candidate. Everything on their resume talked about trust in the States. Great Canada, but that's, these are very rare. Most attorneys will have a specific type of trust in the States. Sorry. She did like high-end, setting up certain types of trust.

So the point is your value to the legal market will be to the extent that you can develop a niche, and it doesn't matter what the niche is; it can be anything. One of the things that I thought was incredible is that it has been a while since I've done it, but we used to get these calls from these firms that did something called lemon law, which I didn't even know existed around Los Angeles.

And, I thought these jobs must pay 80,000 a year or something. And incredibly, they were looking for associates paying 300,000 a year. I didn't guess there was a lot of money involved, so you never know. So, a niche can be a compelling thing. And if you can develop a niche, market yourself in that niche where everyone thinks of you.

When they think about that, I have another one of my candidates. I'll just tell you another story. Develop this business where she's got, I don't know, probably three-quarters of a million dollars. She's a solo practitioner doing contracts for software services companies worldwide, and she's the only person out there who does nothing but that if she was a lot. I was going to a place for a law firm, and she could get a job in a law firm, but this is what you have to do.

You have to have. There is some niche where we're, and if you can develop that in your existing firm, that's amazing. And then that no one's going to tell you to do this. I'm telling you to do this. This is how this is what successful attorneys do. You need to; wherever you are, you don't have to do it in your first year, but you must start thinking carefully.

About your niche, this time in your second or third year, one of the things they say is that this is important. Let me just stop this part for a second because I'm trying to; I don't know why I can't close my Outlook. It's just the craziest thing. Okay. But let me just share again. Okay. Yeah. So, having this niche is very important. And the niche is something that the best attorneys do.

Everyone who becomes successful carves out a niche, and then you know exactly what you are. I was also reading this book that, in your twenties, people will forgive you for not knowing what you want to do.

Then, by your thirties, especially your mid-thirties, you better know exactly what you want to do. Otherwise, you're in trouble; you need to have a niche as early as possible, something that interests you, and then you just follow that and do nothing but that, and then you're going to be successful.

Again, recommend this on every call, but it's a great book. It's always the same. Think and grow rich. They talk about so much stuff there, but one of the things they talk about has always been the same specialized knowledge: knowledge is what people, how people get rich.

How people get wealthy and successful is through specialized knowledge. This is just, it's always been that way. Doing something specialized. Google search engines, Apple, designed computers, and so on. This is just what happens. You need to have some sort of nation known for it.

And how can I know if I have a mentor? I've worked with a partner who seems to have an internal instinct and works at a considerable branch office. I had an issue with another partner, but she kept me at bay. Okay, that's good. So, the relationship sometimes has ups and downs. They will get mad if I try to correct a remedy.

Yep, inconsistencies or mistakes in our motions or arguments. Sometimes, they respond by giving work. Even though they always need me to clean up, other associates do the work themselves. Is this kind of instability a problem? Or do I need to understand the dynamic and the one you just mentioned? Yeah.

That's a great point. So yes, you are screwing up. You're doing well, but you need to keep your distance and not bring up the issues you'd have about the attorney's or the partner's weaknesses, and I'll just tell you how to do that.

So this is an example of when I was in the 2nd law firm I worked in. I was my wife. Doesn'tit didn't matter, but I did. He had never lost a case like I'm an excellent attorney, but for whatever reason, I don't know if he had dyslexia or he'd gone to Columbia Law School and done it for his father, but his writing didn't make any sense.

He would, it was only sometimes, but if he wrote something, there would always be weird mistakes that needed clarification. You might start to have a sentence out of there. It just didn't connect with anything. And so what would happen is he always would. Higher associates to work with and with him, but they would always point out that he was doing something dumb and make corrections.

And then he could tell that. And so he would always get rid of them. So you go to work with this guy, and you piss him off, and then he would send you to purgatory, and he kept doing it repeatedly. I always had a great relationship with him. Wrote me recommendations.

I sent him business all sorts of things. So, you learn to anticipate everyone's differences. So, some people prefer to avoid certain kinds of assignments. For some people, all these disagreements aren't something you just do; you must support people.

Instead of correcting his mistakes, you allow them to make them, meaning you can say you can sometimes make suggestions. Still, you need to be very careful because if you do that, you will threaten the person or whatever, and you need to; some people are crazy.

I remember one of my first jobs as a summer associate. I went in to ask a partner a question, and he said, I don't have time for this bullshit. I'm so pissed off. I'm going to take a walk. And I was like, the only thing I did was ask him a question. So, it's not a good idea to walk into that guy's office and ask a question.

So you just learn from that. And then he became someone that I enjoyed working with. So that's just something to think about. So, this particular partner seems to be a mentor. She's protecting me from other people, but the way, if you have a mentor is if they start taking you aside and they say, this is how you do this is how you do this.

I knew I had a mentor in the first room I worked in. I told them I wanted to do a deposition, and they said, no, you're not ready. And I was like, what do I do? And they talked to me for a little bit. But then, when I came in the following day, the person left me two voicemails.

It was only like five minutes. And so each one was like almost, one, one was five minutes and cut out. The next one was almost five minutes, telling me how to do a deposition and what it was. At that point, I realized the person cared about me and had my back. And that's what you need to do: if you start realizing and seeing things like that, then you know, the person's got your back, and it will help.

So that's just something that I'd recommend understanding is that, if someone does have your back, then that's what you're going to spend, that's how you will, we'll see it. And then, if someone has given you a lot of work. That means they are your mentor. They like your work, but your job to get it from them is to make them feel like you've got their back.

And so you need to do so in a way they may not always see. So maybe you make corrections to their work without showing them you did. Maybe they realize you did, but you don't change the meaning. Or maybe you make sure you're saying, and there are many ways to do it. But those are just some suggestions.

It would help if you learned how to work for other people. And there are soldiers, which generals soldiers only get; soldiers only become generals if they impress the hell out of, if they impress the hell out of the generals.

So that means people need to feel that you're supporting other people, but that's it. So you just need to impress the hell out of others. And you do that by making them feel like you're supporting them. I've been feeling increasingly bored. My current role is as a law firm attorney. It seems like the daily grind is taking a toll on my motivation.

Then, I was drawn to the idea of being an in-house counselor at a tech company, which seemed more aligned with my tech-savvy background. Could you discuss the idea of staying put in my current firm versus a shift to medical?

Match my skills and interests. So you can, if you stay in a law firm, you can a law firm, you can do tech work. Of course, you can go out and solicit tech-oriented clients. Of course, you can. So why wouldn't you be able to do that?

So that's how you can keep, and then tech clients will respect or respect your tech background, and you'll be able to bond with them, so they're more likely to want to use you because you're like them.

Also, at the law firm, you will learn more about tech, technologically oriented work, and related work If you go to rated legal works in a law firm. The problem, by the way going, and so you basically, this is the same thing you carve out a niche. So maybe the law firm will not do it for you, but you need to do it yourself. It would help if you had to figure out how I will carve out a leash, a niche within this practice area.

And then the thing about doing legal work in a law firm is, you're always going to be learning because the law is always going to be changing, and you're always going to be hopefully advancing with more clients. And so forth. The law firm offers you in terms of a legal related thing.

Much more stuff is related to that. It doesn't mean you're working for others; you're expected to do the work they want. And if you have more than five years of experience doing this. Then, you're still three or four, and you can't see yourself doing any longer; you have a couple of options.

One would be trying to move to a law firm representing these types of clients. And the other, of course, is going in-house. But the only thing to understand about going in-house is once you go in-house, you won't be able to work with a law firm again. You won't be able to get a client in the practice here again.

You're not going to be able to understand the law and so forth isn't going to advance because what happens inside law firms is that people are constantly the, the law is changing. You're working with others, talking to other attorneys, researching things for clients, and being paid to. Still, if you go into an in-house environment, your job becomes looking at legal issues and referring them to outside counsel.

That's just what they do. And clients and law firms in house counsel will change all the time. They change when there's a new GC. They change when the new GC comes in, guts the legal department, and hires their people. They'll change when there's a new CEO. Look at Twitter, for example.

It is a huge company you would think is now what's called X. But it is a vast company with many opportunities and a tremendous legal department. I'm sure that, I don't know, but I'm sure that when Musk took it over, he fired many people in the legal department, and those people, what are they supposed to do?

So this is just how it works. So you have to be very careful about going in-house. And if you're bored, what I would recommend is starting to. Build out your career and the work you do in a and maybe in the law firm first before you make that move because once you make that move, it's generally somewhat of a dead end.

I don't like to say that, but it can be not easy, and once you have a business as a partner or a niche, people are giving you clients. That's suddenly power that you can carry into your entire career. You talked about applying to a partner who has your back.

In that situation, I turned down the partner's offer to join him at a new firm, including the pay raise he offered. This was a tough decision. It involved contacting another partner at the current firm and trying to turn it down. Even though the partner valued my work, I didn't feel I trusted his work ethic.

Staying behind has been stressful. I wonder if I made the right decision. Okay. So, work ethic. Come on. Let's talk about work ethic. I don't know what you're concerned about. You're seeing this work ethic. Was he not working hard enough? Is he absent? I don't know.

But or is he doing things that were suspect to you? It seemed wrong. Okay. Look at Rudy, do you want, just look at. Look at any politician, and people are going, almost any politician and people will find things wrong with them, right?

Find things wrong with them or judge if they did something inappropriate at a party when they were 13. Who knows? So wrong and morally suspect. So that's not your issue to get into that?

No, I'm not saying if the person's committing crimes that, you shouldn't be alarmed and not wanna part to pardon it, but you have to be very careful about judging the people you're working with.

You stay out of their problems. I've worked with attorneys. I remember one attorney who worked for Michael Ati. I was working with someone just committing all these crimes; he's the guy who represented Stormy Daniels in prison for threatening Nike or  something.

The point is that your job is not to worry about most of this stuff. And if you don't trust their work ethic, that's not a reason not to work there. Because any place you work is going to have all sorts of problems. Every big law firm has been sued for breaking the law.

For your attorneys breaking the law for doing something terrible. This is just how business works. And I'm not saying I approve of it, but you can't find, if you have a mentor, there's no reason to find fault with them. That, no, you follow the person, you don't have to participate if they're in Broglio or however the word's pronounced, but you just need to not worry about it, is the point.

Okay, sorry, I'm going to answer some of the earlier questions. There's a lot; I do appreciate these questions today. Generally, I am still determining what it is, but people often ask concise questions. Today, people ask very long questions, which I like, so thank you. I'm a new associate.

I like my bosses, but it's pretty infuriating being micromanaged and having to listen to superiors screw up a case. I play all sorts of manipulations. I play all these sorts of manipulative games to try to push them in the right direction. When I see we're headed off the rails and I'm almost always right, I will present things to them to make them feel like they came up with it and I missed it, or mention it in passing and pretend to know what it means, etc.

And they will come around. I just care about the work I'm going to do. I want to look good and win these cases, but I want to uphold everyone's thinking. What should I change about my perspective? Okay, this is a good question. Your job as an associate as an associate, and this is just how it works anywhere.

It is to make your superiors feel good about themselves and value. So regardless of the mistakes they might be made.

You follow them and make them feel good about themselves and make them like you. Huge mistake. If you need more, if you need more and better than partners. You would be a partner. So why would you? I've seen this all the time, but I've seen associates come into firms and be like, oh, this attorney who's recognized as one of the top attorneys in the states, they're wrong.
And I'm going to be correct.

And I know what's right. But no, your job is to make people feel good about themselves. So, I'll just tell you what I do at BCG. If a candidate comes in, Okay. And I see 15 things wrong with their resume and things they can improve. I don't call them up and say, Hey, your resume is a threatening mess. I appreciate you planning to work with us.

But wow, it's. You're just doing all this and this and this wrong.If I do that, they won't like me and won't want to use our services. And no resume is perfect. So, I call up instead and say all the great things I like about the resume.

I tell them what they're doing. That's great. I tell them I point out the positive things, and if I leave a voicemail. They'll call me back. If I don't do that and just start criticizing them, they will be like, hell, I don't want anything to do with you. And they're going to run away.

If I did that with a law firm and said, no, one will work there with a salary or pain. And with this bad reputation you have in the market, what do you expect me to do? If I do that, no law firm will use my services. So you have to think like a business person and think if you want to get business.

If you want to stay in a law firm, you must blow people up and make them feel good. I've seen so many careers ruined by precisely what you're talking about. I had one candidate who went to a top three-ranked law school, was at the very top of his class, and was six months into his... Law firm job as a litigator at a major U.

S. law  firm, like very prestigious. He did exactly what you're talking about. He had a partner that was a junior partner that was handling the matter and doing something. And he said this is costing too much money. You can go in and do it this way and save a lot of money. And he did. He went in and told the partner that, and he was fired.

And then. And then not only was he fired, but he had this severe depression that he suffered earlier in his life or something, and it was reactivated. He went into this vast funk and started his practice doing something you would never imagine someone with his background doing.

And has been doing it for the past. You have to be careful. This can screw you up. So, how do you make people do the right thing? You write a memo, and you say, these are the options, what I think. You may lead them to a conclusion, but you don't make them include inclusion.

So people hate it. When you tell them something because they don't feel ownership, people love it when they feel like they reach that conclusion based on your conversation with them. And that's really how things are done to move things forward. So that's what you should be doing.

And another thing that I hate to say, but I will say it is many times, and this is just how it works.
I was talking to a partner the other day. You see what I discussed earlier about having all these midsize clients, and he went to a prominent New York law firm. This is a guy I was talking to in Seattle, but he wasn't in Seattle.

He went to a prominent New York law firm, and suddenly, the bills to his clients increased by three times, and his clients were like, what the hell's going on? And then he did this for about a year, and some of his clients were jumping fish and the ship. He went to a midsize Midwestern firm or a sizable Midwestern firm.

And now everyone's happy. And I said, what is the difference between the two firms? And he's, you know what these New York firms are like, they will find every way to build.

Brought up, the expense for every transaction, and so forth. So his point was that sometimes firms will just jack up the bills. This is a lot of what's going on in litigation and things like that. So how does that work? I'll tell you, I have more than enough examples, but early in my career, I had this case where it was at the very beginning of the case.

And we would win it without being very close to winning it if we did an excellent job on the particular motion coming in very early in the case. So I wrote this significant motion, and the partner that I was working for went in to argue the motion and turned it in. I thought I turned it in, but I had, and this is credible; I took out some of the better arguments in the motion, turned it in, and then made a feeble argument to defend us in his and then lost a motion you should have won.

And the only reason for that was because they wanted to keep the case going and the bills going. This is not an ethical thing to do, but this is happening in a lot of firms. They want to keep billing, and it's just how they are. And I'm not saying they're all like that. And I'm not saying that 25 percent of them are like that, but a lot are like that.

And our partners, often, when they bring in business, That's how they're compensated. So they might want to overwork cases and things. And you may see that, and they may not make the arguments they should be making because they want to keep things going. That's not your concern. You and I are saying that's not your concern.

You can't worry about that. That's the way it is. And it's never going to change. I don't like it any more than you do, but. You have to learn how that game's played, and then maybe when you're in a position later on where you have a business. You realize that your compensation depends on how much you bill on different matters. You will think much differently about this because a lot of times, if they're doing that, it's from a position of being scared.

And I realize how bad this sounds. It's pretty scary. But that's how it works. How significant are these questions today? These are just excellent questions; I think they will help many people on the call. You just, everyone's asking excellent questions.

Thank you. These are amazing people, by the best webinar questions in months. I'm a new associate interviewing with other firms in my area. I'm at risk of being outed or getting a bad reputation. I think it's pretty wild and fair, but I worry that people might gossip, not that I'm important.

Okay. So, the general rule is no law firm will ever talk to other law firms. And I'll give you some exceptions to that in a minute. Other law firms about people in

So they just don't when you use a recruiting firm, and I'm not trying to sell you a recruiting firm by any stretch of the imagination. Still, this never happens in a recruiting firm because if you do this, if a lot of firms do this, then the recruiter will stop sending people.

And there's nothing, and then not only will recruiters stop sending them people, but the recruiter will talk negatively about them. So that's one of the reasons, by the way, the critters. I'm not. I'm not trying to say that's not the purpose of this call, but many firms did this.

But there are a couple of situations where you need to be careful, so you need to be careful in small markets. So in small markets, meaning you might be, I don't know what a small market could be, but let's say, Okay. Someplace in Wisconsin. That's one of the cities there.

Let's say, not Detroit, but let's say. Some other suburbs like Lansing or something, maybe not even Lansing, but you must be careful in smaller markets because some attorneys like there will talk. It's just; they're not that the ethics of large firms and mid-sized firms and even smaller firms in big cities are basically no, there's no way we do this.

They just don't because if they do that. It will prevent them from getting more applications, and all sorts of things, but smaller markets are a little different. Sometimes, they are just less competitive people with these other small firms, and there's little opportunity there.

So sometimes they will say things you have to be careful about. I would only recommend it in large, small, and any market. If you interview for the firm, that is better than when you're at. And where you're at, and the insecure attorneys, there could be a problem.

So, this happened to me on one occasion. So I'll tell you what happened. So I was at my first firm Quintimani, which was back then, it still is, but it was. Back then, it was pretty extraordinary. It had; everyone there was either someone from Gravath or had gone to Harvard and been at the top of their class or Stanford, the same thing.

So, it was a much smaller firm of 50 attorneys, but it had an incredible reputation. It still does. But even then, it was just like, these people are amazing. And so I had a friend who had gone to my same high school, and he was working at an entertainment firm.

They had an entertainment practice where people worked on movies and drove around in convertibles. And I thought, wow, that's so cool. And he said you should interview here like it would be so cool. And I guess he had a, and I thought about it, and he just kept calling and talking to me about it.

And he would get a commission if I went to work there. So I went to interview at this firm, and the attorneys were far from as qualified as I was. And in terms of their pedigrees and stuff and anyway, it was very uncomfortable. They're, like, acting like a big deal.

And I'm like, why are these people being and anyway, so it was a smaller, less prestigious firm. A firm that was competitive with others but never could get the same kind of work. And it did get back to my firm. And I found out about it not because they said anything but because I could tell.

And just a lot of little things happened. I wasn't being paranoid. At one point, a partner I was friends with let it drop months later. So you just need to be careful. If you send out applications many times, trusting people can be challenging.

They won't say they got your application and talk about it. But they will, they often will say something. And so you need to be very careful. In smaller markets where you can't trust attorneys and where they're, there's just the firms that are very competitive or if you're interviewed, if you interview with a place very far beneath you that wants to undermine the better firm, those are the exceptions.

I hate to say anything because it's rare, but I have seen it happen. It happened to me and my entire history of representing. Tens of thousands of attorneys at BCG. It's only happened once and very early in my career. Like when I was about six months into it, and I was submitting.

He is a candidate for many firms around LA and his practice area. And then, about a week after I submitted them, an attorney from his firm called me, the one he had been working at, and I thought he was still there, but he'd been fired. And he'd been fired for doing something unethical, like that they thought was horrible.

And he was very close to making a partner like weeks away. And he did something that they were very upset about, and other firms knew about it. So when I submitted him to another firm, I said nothing about this. It is a very unethical thing. That other firm called his other firm, which he'd been at.

It was like, this guy's going around saying this. And so that was pretty scary. So that's the only time I've seen that happen where someone essentially did something they thought was almost criminal. And another firm knew other firms knew about it. I didn't know about it. And then when I sent him out firms, these firms are like, you can't, this, this is what's happening.

So that's the only time I've ever seen it happen. And that again is having represented tens of thousands of candidates. No candidates ever said that's basically because most law firms will respect that because they won't be able to get applications. From other people about that, and no one's going to gossip.

No one says anything when they get an application from another firm. It's just wild. They wouldn't do it because it's just not how it works. In Los Angeles, probably every attorney at a big firm has applied to Latham or something at one point or another. Everybody wants to work at a firm like Latham or Skadden or something.

So no, Skadden doesn't say, Hey, this person from your firm applied. Most firms don't care, even smaller firms. They're just like, they get applications, and they're not; there's nothing against people applying. And that's just. It's just not happening.

So, what strategies can I employ to stay motivated and engaged while resisting the temptation to look for a new job? Yeah. So what strategies are the ideas you visualize, and what will happen if you do well? You visualize and think about what the future holds.

You go to, you look at the lives that partners in your firm are living, maybe you look their houses up on Zillow, I don't know, or what is it, you see what you're doing, you think if that's what you want, you realize that the longer you do it you're going to learn more and have and your life's going to change.

In a positive way. You look at the positive things that have happened to people who stick around and, then, you, and then you continue to learn. And then you also carve out a niche. You think about what your life will look like if you give it your all.

So what is your life going to look like? And it can be significant. You can do everything that you do. Thank you. You have to put in the price when you're young. There's a kind of success. There's an easy way to succeed. And easy easy is very hard in the long run.

And then there's the hard way. I don't know the statement, but it's something like that. And then it was hard. Complexity is accessible in the long run. So what does that mean? So many people will dabble, and so dabbling means you'll try something and get bored of it and will quit. So what happens to anything is when you start something, and you're new at it, you'll go up like this.

And then the more time goes by, the less your improvement will be, and then you'll keep improving. And so if you want to be an outstanding tennis player, you can't just walk in and be a good tennis player. You have to start, and then you have to get good at it and better and better and better and better.

And so that's just how it works. Suppose you're going to be an attorney in a big firm. Or, in a small firm or anything, you must commit to it and stay focused. So, what does distraction mean? So you, I'm sure when I was in high school, people dropped out. So that's it, they're done. And that's what you came up against.

So, people dropped out. People dropout of college, people drop out in college. College and then the same thing with law school. And then they drop out of law firms. Why don't you think about the fact that you did all this work in college and then maybe in high school, and why will you drop out when you get exactly where you should be?

That doesn't make any sense. So you don't; after spending high school, college, law school, and then getting a job in a law firm, why would you drop out? Would you drop out of law school because the classes are challenging? Would you drop out of college because you've got to spend all-nighters writing papers or preparing?

It's wild. So no, you don't drop out. You realize that the temptation is to look at other things. I was reading this, and it is funny. But auto workers, I guess, are people who don't even need a high school education. Some can make much money working a similar couple hundred thousand dollars a year.

It's just absolutely amazing. I was just reading an article about the strike this week. But the idea is that people will often drop out of high school, take these jobs, and think, wow, I'm making all this money, and I can afford a car. And then they'll do the same thing with college.

Like they'll drop out and think, wow, this is great. Now I can, and then they'll drop out of law school. So, people stop at different points. And so I just wonder why you would stop. Because or look for a new job because things are a little tricky. It would help to look for the positive of where you are now.

There's nothing wrong with moving to a much better firm or place. You're going to get more opportunities, or you're going to have potentially a longer career. That's very smart. So I don't think I wouldn't say, you know, that I wouldn't look into that. There's nothing wrong with leaving sometimes, but you just need to be careful, and you don't want to drop out of something because of your firm because things are getting a little tricky.

This is, this is easy. Like most people do this, this is a little bit harder. This is much harder, and this is harder still. It's your reach; you want to avoid reaching the point where this is too much for you. So I was reading something, and I shouldn't even talk about this, but they said sometimes people are promoted beyond competency level.

And they were talking about why our current vice president and I will name names. Still, they would not be partners because she's a, I'm not partner, but president because in the vice presidency, she's Beyond the conference level. I will argue one way or another about that, but I thought that point was interesting, that sometimes people are promoted and get to positions.

I'll be on the competency level. It happens in law firms all the time. Huge people who join competent law firms may leave and should never have been there in the first place. But you just have to remember that you always want to be going beyond your competency level or doing the best you can.

My branch office needs consistent work. My firm nationally has a ton of work that I've been consistently tapping into. For example, I was put on a massive trial in another state with a partner who thinks higher than me and chose me out of maybe a dozen associates. To work with, I was calling, saying hello to other offices, and emailing the same types.

Is this a reliable method, or should I be worried about staying in a branch office? We're moving to another branch office. Yeah, branch offices are dangerous. So I remember it was funny. I was interviewing with a law firm when I came from Los Angeles. I was interviewed with them, and then I was talking to the hiring partner.

He said, where else are you interviewing? And I told them about some other firms; I think I was talking late on the phone. Hello, how well is Heller? Herman and some other good firms run away, and he goes, but Heller Irma, a San Francisco firm, had all these highly qualified people in it because be careful of branch offices.

And it would help if you were careful with branch offices because the power and the work is always in the main office. Sometimes, law firms will open branch offices just because they need to. Have all these different offices to look powerful and to have reach to service different clients.

But in reality, everything is run out of the main offices. I was at a firm called Dewey Ballantyne and. And they had such little respect for their Los Angeles office that they would bring in to work on their matters. People from other LA law firms, instead of referring work to their own office.

A branch office can be hazardous and very difficult to make partners sometimes, or it can be more accessible. So sometimes. Because they want to set an example of opportunity, they will make people partners who may have yet to be partners in the main office.

So there's sometimes an opportunity, but generally it's much more difficult. And branch offices also. It can be challenging to get work because there's a need to have relationships with people in the main office. I know of people trying to make partners, and the law firm will tell them, you need to spend one week, a month here and our main office to forge these relationships and things.

So I would be very, you have to be very careful about branch offices. You need to make sure you want to ensure that the work that's coming into a branch office is generated locally by partners there. Sometimes, a branch office is just like a straw man.
Only a few people are generating their own business there. And if that's the case, you need to be very careful.

There's a lot of great, unique questions. What indicators suggest I should stick it out at my current law firm, even when I feel overwhelmed by the workload and the atmosphere isn't uplifting? Okay, so the indicators are you're learning there's an opportunity and being given a lot of work.

You have good relationships. Partners seem to like you, you seem to be treated given better work and opportunities than others. So those are some of the things. The other would be that people are making partners and advancing time. The work is increasing and all this sort of stuff. So, the most significant thing about working in a law firm or anywhere else is realizing that getting work is like a privilege.

Work is a good thing. Work means there's opportunity. Work means the firm is doing something right. Work means they're getting to keep business. Like, all of these positive things. And no, you can't expect the law firm to be uplifting. Working for them, being in the army or war is not uplifting.

None of this stuff is... Where you can make a lot of money is going to be uplifting. Just realized that is something now if you: if you're getting very negative feedback and people seem unhappy, if people, when they leave, the good stuff doesn't happen, this is another thing.

When you leave, good stuff doesn't happen. So what's interesting to me is that many people come and become recruited, for example, in this recruiting firm. And when, and they had no experience before, and it's a very at times it's been a very high-pressure environment where people are exposed to a lot of different types of thinking and stuff.

And the people that do well there become very successful when they leave. And so the idea would be, what happens to people who leave after doing this? Do they become successful, or do they become? Is it? Are they having problems? And so you need to see what other people, what's happened to other people in my position?

So that should be a sign. What has happened to others in my position on DSO? If good things have happened to them, then that should tell you that there's something good about that environment. And and and it's making people into good people. So those are some indicators of why it could be bright.

But if others in your position are having problems, that's not good either. These are so many great questions, outstanding again; these are like the most extended questions I've ever seen in one of these webinars years I have been working with certain partners who are, let's see, very appreciative and mentoring to me, but are also a bit unstable, tend to make mistakes and will get weird about sharing work and billing me hours from their assignments.

Knowing where I stand with people who are very up and down is hard, adding to my stress. Are these problems every day, and how should I adjust? How can I know if I'm at risk and need to find a new job? I've been here briefly, and it may be hard to find a new job, but I'm in the demand area where you're at.

Okay. So this is called codependency and okay. It needs to be completed codependency. Codependency is making others. Control how you feel. So what does that mean? That means if others are having problems or are not there, and if others are stressed, you pick up on that.
So you need to develop.

It's not easy, but you need to develop a center and a meeting where others' problems don't where others do not affect you. And that is challenging. But that's something that you can get out of therapy. It's something you can get out of just understanding what this is, but you can use this for others.

It does not affect you in terms of your mood. So people are going to come in and be very depressed. They'll be stressed, so you must understand how to deal with that. But all these things are a problem. And also, you're saying partners tend to make mistakes.

Yes, of course, they do. This is just how it works. And that's okay. But again, as I said earlier, your job's not to. Point all that out. You just need to live with it and share work. Billing hours and assignments are signs that their clients are unwilling to pay.

So that's useful to know. And then these are typical problems. What I'm a little bit concerned about here is if the partners are unwilling to give you work. That means that their clients are unwilling to pay. So, if their clients are unwilling to pay, this is important to understand.

That means there's no monthly Dolittle; they must keep the cost down. That's something I very much recommend keeping top of mind and thinking about because if that's happening, then you may have a hard time in the future because the firm may need more work.

So if you are in an in-demand area and feel you can go someplace with a lot of work, which you need to survive, you might want to consider bringing the job. So, everything you're saying. It is a reason to look for a new job because work is like air.

If a law firm runs out of work, it runs out of air and means you're going to be gone, and you will be gone because they need the air for themselves. So these are all, that's actually. Everything about this webinar was really about why you should stay.

But if there's no work and they cannot show work, that's a problem. And that's a good question. So this is a sign that you want to go to a firm; if you're at a big firm, a lot of big firms, they will have so much work that you just can't even keep up; that's a good sign.

It's nothing to worry about, maybe because that means there's opportunity. How seriously should I take a partner out like me? I'm in a branch office, with only a few partners to work with but an extensive network nationally. I've been swamped, and I'm attracted to being one of the most associated with the firm since joining earlier in the year.

However, this younger salary partner has been upset with me for catching his mistake months ago. Yeah, this is just a recurring issue. Like all these associates, people here are saying they've caught mistakes, and the people are mad at them. So what does that say? It says you need to be very careful about this, which he made more of an issue than me, and it's gone out of his way.

I suspect a terrible mouth and others. So it's widespread. This is just a big problem. You have to be very careful about finding mistakes or how you do it in a way where you're not acting like you're. Superior to the partner and everything. So I spoke to other partners and learned he has a reputation clue that has yet to be fired.

I'm close to the influential power. Should I move? No, you're fine. So you're lovely. He's an income partner because of the sense of power of people who don't have power. So, people that do not have power typically will exert power on people they can't.

Have power or will exert power over people that they can't. So all that means is that that's a sign of fear, weakness, and all sorts of stuff. So, I would be okay with this junior partner. If you're close to people who have the power in the work, that's precisely what you should be doing. There's always going to be a law firm, by the way; there's always one faction of 20 attorneys against another faction, 20 attorneys that hate each other.

There are most associates; there are problems with one partner or associate or another. These are not things that you really should worry about too much. I wouldn't just ask a lot of great questions there. This is just fantastic. Sorry. I'm honestly astonished at how in-depth these questions are today.

I work in a big firm's specialized and bustling litigation practice here. I'm in a branch office. I'm swamped in the Midwest, but I've had a lot of doubts and paranoia. A well-known toxic younger salary partner. The same thing has happened up here, right? Same thing. Interesting. These are young partners with issues.

Okay. A well-known salary partner does not like me based on something minor and has gone out of his way to make me miserable. Sometimes, partners will start being protective about work, especially the ones I'm closest with. And my only option to stay busy is to work with other offices. That's okay.

This has been a good source of work, but it needs to be more consistent. Another firm with a more prominent name wants to interview me for another branch office. I've only been here a few months. Would moving or trying to move be a mistake?

What would justify not justifying? Okay, many times what happens, and I'm just, I'm not going to talk about this in one way or another, but people will. I was working with a guy once that had been at a considerable firm, I don't know which one it was, something massive, like in New York, and he'd left that firm and gone to another firm for two or three months, and then and then gone to another firm.

Then he'd been at that firm for ten years and asked me if I should list on my resume that I was there for three months, and I said it's up to you, but I need to find out.

Or if he had done something. He'd gotten the job with this kind of phony resume. He said, should I tell him about it? I don't know that, during a 15-year career, that matters very much. I don't, I think, so if you're at a firm for only a few months and you can go to a better firm then with a lot of work, that's probably pretty good.

The point is that we keep coming back to this. So younger partners, people without power and partners without business, often feel scared. So they will take that out sometimes on others. But not only that.

But they can be difficult. So, this is a salaried partner here. This is the same thing here. And this is that there's a less desperate, younger, toxic partner. Doesn't like the person, the same thing that happened up there. So what does that tell you? That tells you that you want to avoid people.

You want to try to, and this is just a piece of advice for everyone. You're better off getting work and working for people that have business. And people that don't. So, the people with a business have the power to give you more work, and all sorts of things that people who don't have a business will often do can make life hell for you.

So you just need to be very careful. I would prefer to avoid the idea that you have to stay busy with other offices. So I predict personally, even though,

Look at this: everything I talk about is stating that, or I think you should go interview with the other firm and say, how much, do you have a lot of work? What kind of stuff are you doing? And would it be easy? What, how, who would I, who can I work for? Ask all those questions.

There's nothing wrong with interviewing with them; I don't think you have to worry about a toxic partner. I think that's the least of your worries. I think what you should be worrying about is, let me just see here. You should be worrying about let me just see here.

Yeah, it would help if you were worrying about something else. It would help if you were worrying; you must worry about what I said earlier. It's just that work is like air. We need to move many times if there's no air, there's no air, you need to get out, so that would be the big piece of advice to run, or you can get out, or something like that.

Yeah, I've gotten reviews from certain types of partners who are pedantic over ours as a first-year associate. I will be assigned an enormous motion to dismiss summary judgment, a research issue. I want to do it perfectly and error-free; I've been told my work is excellent. However, these partners complained about too many hours in the work, even though I was never given guidance.

Sometimes, the partner boasted about the client's work without any changes while somebody complained. Okay, including to other partners about my hours spent on it. Sometimes, this feels very unreasonable. If I'm not playing games with my hours, it's honestly recording my time spent.

How should I respond to this? This is how I need to leave. I am very, very much trained on how locals work. Okay. So this is a good point. Yeah, so the, I rarely, most law firms want you to work a lot of hours, and they want clients willing to pay, so if the clients aren't willing to pay for your hours, then.

Then that's an issue like most law firms want you to build as many hours as possible, meaning work as much as you can so they can build the firms. And now they're telling you to work only a few hours. So, law firms that are telling you only to work a few hours, all that means is their clients aren't willing to pay you for that.

And that means their clients are maybe not. The most prominent clients are very budget-conscious. So that's a problem. Suppose you want to do high-level work. So if you build a lot of hours on an issue, what that means is that that means that you get the ability, you can look at very in-depth things, that means you can look at issues and become a better attorney.

And I'll just go over this with you briefly because I covered this every week, but I'll talk about it now. So what is it? So you have different prestige levels of firms or firms that you know, and I just, I've developed the system just because I've been doing this for so long, but firms that are ranked 5, 4, 3. So a five firm was like, clients will spend anything. They don't care.

They just want you to do as much work as possible. And then you get firms that are this. This is like your amlaw 100 to 200. And this is like yours, your, top of a, whatever, walk towel for bath, all that stuff. Clients do not care. They'll pay whatever. They don't care.

And these, there's some cost sensitivity. Then you get your kind of midsize firms. That is more like this. But, the bills, midsize where, and, this means and, this means just cost. No object. Don't care. It's just whatever, whatever, don't care.

This is some cost sensitivity depending on, but we still can look at issues, still look at issues. And then and then this is some costs, cost sensitivity. It means lower billing rates.

Lower billing rates and need to contain costs. And then this, and these are all businesses working for business. So these are small to midsize. And then these are going to be Mid-sized public companies.

And then these are going to be, and then when you get down to twos, these are these tend to be, mainly individuals, some companies,

some companies, and everyone's cost-sensitive, and this could be, I'm not saying negatively, this could be insurance defense is representing individuals, that, and then, etc. And then these are your most cost-sensitive you. Be representing only individuals with limited budgets like him.

I'll do this for 500 and that sort of thing. So we're representing only individuals.

So this is important to understand. So when you say your firm is cost-sensitive, the higher you go in terms of these rankings, the more you spend. The better off you will be, the more clients will be willing to pay. Also, the more clients are willing to pay for the work, the more they're willing to pay, the more you'll learn, and the better your attorney will be.

So you can undoubtedly stay down at this level representing all the individuals or working for midsize firms, but the more you do that, the more the hours will be controlled. Now, when you go to work for these AMLO and Hunter and these big firms, they don't care. They want you to build as many hours as possible, and in the process of doing that, you will become.

A better attorney that looks at things in a lot more depth. When these attorneys go up against them, they typically kick the crap out of them. When these attorneys, AMLO 100, 200, go up against people from smaller firms, they often win. It's just how things happen.

It would help if you were very careful about this. There are so many great questions. I've been doing this for a long time, and I've never seen such in-depth questions. It's an exciting audience, their partner in my small office of a large firm that is very negative about the pay.

Management bonuses, rates, and sayings in front of summer associates. I started in a good relationship with this person, but it quickly soured or something minor; Phyllis is now saying negative things about other partners, but I know that some of the management partners like him or listen to him working with him, even bad things for them.

Okay. So I'm going to talk a little bit about this is another freaking good question, and I'll tell you why in a minute. I want to avoid ever working with this person in the future and manage this nicely, extricate myself from a toxic partner.

Okay. So, every question, like every question we've been asked about, is about working with partners with no business. And again, I'm not negatively saying this. I don't want to offend anybody, but most of the time, when there's a partner that's in charge of Summer Associates, or there's a partner that's a mentor to all the new associates, and again, I'm not being critical here.

Still, most of the time, these are partners without their businesses that are given a role of this role because the partners with businesses don't want to do it.

They are just too profitable. So the firm decides to put someone on associate, help summers, or mentor first years. This is what happens to partners in a lot of business. So, for every question that's been asked today, many are about people having problems.

Working with people without business, which are toxic partners that don't have a business that is income partners. So what does that tell you? It tells you that those people are likely to give you a tough time because they probably feel that way because of their position. And if someone is in, pessimistic about the firm, like those are people that you avoid. You don't want to have anything to do with them. Even other associates, like, just don't play with that toxicity.

What does that do? What does it do when someone's saying negative things? So you avoid people. I'm not, I don't know, but you have losers. And then you have winners, and you're better off if you spend your time with winners.

And if you spend time with winners, it's done. That's it. It would help if you spent time with the winners. And winners will draw you up; winners will pick you up. And losers will drag you down. It's as simple as that. And that's what you need to do.

As you need to do that, and you need to do whatever you can to try to stay with winners as opposed to losers, you should not be spending time with negative people, with people that are going to find fault with your firm, people that are, no, it's just not good.

Avoid it. Okay. And then anybody you try to work with people that are succeeding, The people that are succeeding. Great presentation. I've been a construction litigation attorney for six years. The first five were small firms, and the last was a mid-sized firm.

The current firm likes me. I average, wow, 2 250 or greater hours per year. And I can become a partner here in the next year at most. However, the firm also has several issues.

The pay could be more competitive. The sport needs a high turnover ratio. And since the department does insurance defense, our clients are adjusters at an insurance company. I'm concerned that if I stay, as I transition to partner my book of business, I Will be limited to insurance companies.

I think the best option is the Amlok 200 firm, which will make a better platform to establish company clients and thus not be limited to insurance defense.

Also, I presume that support and pay will be much higher. The only downside is that I will take longer to make a partner if I move. So you're better off. I think so. First of all, what I like about this particular resume or person is you're talking about construction litigation, which is a great field to be in. There's a lot of work.

And that's great. It's, and it's mainly like everything I discussed earlier. So this is very smart being a construction litigation. Now, doing insurance defense means your clients are budget-conscious. And that's a concern.

Your clients are budget-conscious, and you can only do so much; you cannot work in as much depth. And what that means, I'm not trying to be rude here. You probably could be a better attorney at this point, just because you're training and there are limitations of what you can do as someone that would be an AMLO and hydrogen block two firms.
What's nice is if you feel like you can. Get business from insurance companies and develop a niche there, and that's very good. I met someone the other day who developed this kind of niche and became very successful. They figured out how to, I don't know, how to grow into something big.

So, if you want to do more profile work in construction litigation, then yes, you should move to a more giant firm. It will probably make you a better attorney. But the downside is that you may, If you're in a position now where you feel like you can develop business from insurance companies, you understand it, that may be a smart long-term move.

Still, the billing rates will be higher if you go to an AMLO 100 law firm. It's going to take a lot of work to get clients. And so that may be a good idea, or it may not. I don't know. I need to find out precisely what you should do.

But what I would say is I think that you can still get the bill of an outstanding career if you know how to get those types of clients, because if you understand how to get insurance company clients, you can develop a big book of business doing that, then that puts you.

You're much better off than if you're an animal 100 or 200 law firm. One of the reasons sometimes moving to a more giant firm is not intelligent is because developing clients may be more challenging. And if the work and construction litigation, which I believe it is.

It tends to be lower bill hours and things the largest law firms do; I want to do something other than that work. And these law firms end up sending work to other places. So it's just something to understand, not to other places; the largest law firms prefer to keep those practice areas away. So, what is an example of that? Like employment, labor, and employment used to be trendy practices.

Inside of bought firms of all sizes. But the problem with labor and employment work is that because it's so routine, many bought firms decided it needed to be more smart for their clients. There's a lot of downward pressure on billing rates. And because there's downward pressure on billing rates, the clients want to avoid paying for expensive attorneys.

To do that work. And so, they will demand that the large law firms take less pay or higher billable rates. And then the law firms eventually are like, you know what, we don't want to do this anymore. And they end up giving the work to go to and shutting down their labor and employment practices.

So that's what I would be a little bit concerned about. And in terms of your career, if you join a large law firm, are they even going to keep the practice area, but also, more importantly, you will learn a lot. That's, that's a lot to give you in terms of an answer, but those are things to think about.

These are just excellent questions. You've often talked about being wary of working for people who keep work to themselves and do not share it. I'm at a large firm in New York. How close do I need to monitor this? I'm an associate who receives a lot of work from a single partner. This person is generally beneficial and has given me a lot of work and feedback.

Some are very critical, and some are very good. I worry when they start giving work to other associates. I worry when they start giving work to other associates or if I need to be in the loop with something. I'm overthinking. Yes, you're overthinking it. You, I mean, I think that's good. This all goes back to codependency, which means I base my feelings on others and what others are doing.

This keeps coming up. It's okay. But what I would recommend is you need to diversify, you need to diversify who you're working for. Most businesses are diversified. They have multiple locations and they have multiple products. They diversify. And so if one thing goes bad, then there are, even law firms, they have corporate litigation, real estate, they're diversified, so you need to diversify who you are working for.

And meaning working for other people. Because of one, because the problem is if. If you're working for one partner and that partner leaves, or you get in some spat with them, which you just can't control, then you're in trouble. I had an instance where I knew a woman working for only a significant client in this firm in the Bay Area.

A vital partner. She was the only partner in that firm who was doing work in this practice area and working directly for it, and she used to go to work every day. And this partner would talk about her dating, her sex life, her lack of a sex life, like all this stuff with her. And this woman would sit there and listen to it.

And then, one day, this woman went into the office and had some fling that weekend. And talk to her about this fling. And all of a sudden, this partner just started hating her. I don't know why they talked about it, stopped giving her work, and let her go. So the point is when you have, and then this person, because they were in such a niche practice area.

There were no jobs in all of California, and they went into a different profession entirely. So you must be very careful about working with one partner because if something goes terribly with that partner. So, you must diversify your work and try to impress as many people as possible. And that's the problem and the issue with what's happening with you right now.

So let me just see. I just can't believe how many questions there are; wow, good questions. I work for Tiny Doom Law Firm. Our biggest client seems interested in talking to me alone without the owner. How do I sit with the client that I'm willing to jump ship and go in a house with them instead? I realize this is a nuclear option.

We need to listen to the client and tell the client the first thing you do when the client talks to you. And this is what you need to do when the time talks to you: you need to say, I'm happy. I'm loyal and listen and then don't say anything.

Just go back and say, I'm happy. I'm loyal. All these sorts of things when a client does that. Now, why do I say that? I say that because you don't know what's going on. Is the client trying to recruit you? Is the client testing you for the owner? You don't know.

You have no idea. So you need to go in and tell the client when the client says, sure, I have talked to you, but when the client talks to you, this is what you need to say. And it would help if you walked away from that conversation having said that because otherwise, it could suddenly be interrupted.

The partner, whoever is the owner of the firm. Hates you and no longer fires you. So it would help if you were very careful. So when your client goes to the client, you say, I'm happy. I'm loyal. Listen first, listen, and see what they want. And then and then, basically, you respond.

I'm happy. I'm loyal. Say some great things about the owner. And then about, and then get a sense if the person's serious. Yeah. And then a sense of the person is severe, and the person is profound. Then you contact them later and return to work, and you can get a sense.

If this was a test or not, if suddenly this partner owner of the firm is just very friendly to you and concerned, then you know that it was a test or that the firm that the company said something to them. So it's an excellent question. It would help if you were very careful.

About how you do that because sometimes you just don't know. So that's the answer. Every time I've talked to them, I'll talk to partners in these substantial law firms, and I'll call them and leave them a message or something.

They'll call me back, and they always say the ones that come back, I'm thrilled at my firm, they're doing a great thing, blah, blah, blah, and, but the ones that call you back, that they have interest in you and you don't know why, but even though they say that they're probably.

They're testing you out; they're calling you back. So they always say that. So that's the same way you need to act. And then, you need to see how serious the person is. And then, once you realize that, you can go from there. I joined a 200-plus attorney firm in November 2022. I graduated from law school in 2014.

Okay. But very bluntly stated in my interview that having worked at a tiny firm only, my skill level should be considered something other than that of a ninth, not very interesting ninth year, relatively. To that of a ninth-year relative to a more extensive pharmacy between junior associates. Whoa. And that's not good.

Okay. The way they met, they appreciated this, that described a mentoring program and hired me. Then, a couple of months were pretty much dried up. I did make some errors, proofreading type issues, and one or two misunderstandings and revisions.

I had very little to do since March and April, despite numerous conversations that insisted it was simply a matter of workflow. Still, I was quietly taken off the case despite The client having stated directly that the work at Salinger is excellent.

In a six-month review, I was told much work would come my way, but three months later, it's not come, but virtually nothing. Yeah, so you should leave. That's it. So it would help if you left because first of all, there's no work, but the problem is, it's great that you've got the job.

But if partners aren't giving you work, they think they just don't want to. Because, however, your work was perceived early on. So that's just that. Many times, when you're coming out of a. A group of small firms where a certain quality of work is not expected if you go into a more prominent firm and need to learn how to do things as they do is proofreading, ensuring your arguments are outstanding, and ensuring everything's tight.

It's just something you learn when you're a big firm and it's a small firm. You don't. Either. You, and the thing is, you can learn from this experience and go to another firm, but if there's no work, they're basically saying if we're not going to fire you we're not because we don't want to get sued or whatever.

We're not going to fire you, but we're not going to give you anything. And that should be a sign that there's nothing to do. And if our partners feel they need more confidence giving work, that's what happens. So there's no reason. You should have no reason to stay around because there's no work; how will you advance?

If you made some mistakes and are blocked, that's a sign too. So they're just saying that you should take off. And so that's the message. Now, if suddenly a bunch of work shows up, maybe that's different, but I would say the next time you do work, learn to. Very carefully review everything; it doesn't matter what the client says.

It matters what the firm says about your work. These are fundamental questions. The thing is that we've talked about this and every question. Everything that people ask about when they work is oxygen. So if you're not getting work, you must leave if there's not enough oxygen, right?

Because the partners are going to take, are going to get rid of you first regardless of why you're not getting work, you need to leave, so it goes on. It's just that there's nothing positive about this. And they probably don't think you are; your work is up to their standards because of how you're trained.

And the work things acceptable at a smaller firm are not acceptable at a more prominent firm. So it's just the level of detail and things. It's something other than what you would be expected to know. But you may have picked up some bad habits and must fix them.

So I just would, if it were me, I probably would strongly consider leaving, and then when you're when you do, if you do stay, make sure you improve your work. This is the rule that I learned. And it took me a couple of years. It takes a couple of years to learn, if it takes you one day or even you.

Two hours to write a letter. It should take you; you should spend, I don't know, maybe a letter, which should be three pages long. It would help if you spent at least six hours, and this is, I'm sorry. It sounds wild, but this is how it is.

So if it takes you, if it takes you, it took you eight hours, maybe it's been 16 hours. So this is just how it works. This is, you have to, you have to make something perfect, especially at the big firms.

It might take two hours to write a letter and one page to perfect it at a small firm. But the big firm, you need to turn something that's just people are like, wow, even though you're given the same information, you need to spend that much time, and that's how it works. I know it sounds wild.

But it's what it is. So, let me just get this. When doing things, you need to spend more time proofing them, checking your citations, and ensuring everything's proof. Oh, my God. Look at this. Oh, could you give me one 2nd? Sorry. I'm sharing one 2nd. Honestly, I cannot believe the quality of these questions that have literally Yeah.

Never seen anything like it. Okay. Oh, here we go. Sorry. In decades of doing this job, this is the first time I've seen questions this good. Okay. How solicitous of work should a young attorney be? I've had mixed results. Some partners like it. When I'm solicitous, some will pull back and more reach out.

Is this just a political, personal game of being a law firm as an associate looking for work? I've been swamped. Need to re-op as I just wrapped up a bunch of matters. I'm very friendly and sound on the phone. I'm used to my image. How can I avoid overdoing it?

Okay. So yes, partners like it when you're being concerned. So this is an excellent question, then again. Wow, these questions are just so freaking awesome today. It would help if you were solicitous. So your job as an attorney is always to get work, always to find work, and get work as much as possible.

So what does that mean? That means that as an associate you need to chase, you need to chase down work, down work and get repeat business, business from partners
and partners respect that because that's what they do to get clients. Even if they're blowing you off, that's teaching you different ways of going after work and as a partner.

Your job is to get business from, or get work from other partners, sorry, other partners and therefore preferably, much preferably outside clients. So that's the job. So the whole job, everything begins and ends with getting work.

That's it. So when a law firm decides who to make a partner, look at these mega accounts thoroughly. So when a law firm decides who to make a partner they might have three people, they might partner, partnership partner decisions might be between three people, one with 2000 hours, One with, one with 23, and one with. Or, 29. So the person with 2900 hours is much better at getting work and willing to do it than the person in 2000.

Here, when deciding who to make a partner, it's not even close like this person can get more work. Then these people. People might say, Oh, I was staying at home, I have kids, or I have other responsibilities.

They don't care. If you can get all this work done and do it, then the law firm will think highly of you because this shows that you can go out there and hustle even better. If you're like a 3100, that's great. So your job is an attorney. Okay.

It's to do everything you possibly can to get work. And so that's the game. And then it becomes the same game when you're doing this with when you're doing the same thing in public: going out and getting work.

There are a lot of questions in your webinar. You met some reasons for staying put in a law firm, but have you encountered instances of attorneys loyal to firms resulting in mis growth opportunities? Can you elaborate? Yes. Sometimes, you will join a firm, be loyal, and spend your career there. And then all of a sudden, they'll tell you to leave.

And that happens a lot. It happens that the most prestigious firms happen. All over the world, it affirms where they're loyal, and then they just mean lose out. So the best predictor of your future is watching what happens to other people, but you just watch that.

So you used to see what's happening? Are they succeeding? Am I doing the same thing they're doing? What's happening? And if you see all those people failing, then that's a sign that maybe the same will happen to you, or you must conduct yourself differently. What made them fail, what made them succeed, and what made people succeed?

That's it. So is it because of lack of contacts? Sometimes, people fail because they need the right people in the corner; they may get partners without business. You must understand that they may have set limits on coming to the office or working weekends.

So, the more you understand this. The better off you'll be. If you see people not succeeding and realize that, then it's probably time for you to look at something else. And that would be what I would recommend. Okay.

Next one. Thanks for my question. Your answer was perfect. Clarify what's an associate. Let go of the old firm and join an even better firm, but my attitude from this prior experience is to color my perspective in ways that I'm not just realizing. It's hard not to interpret everything as an assignment to be fired reactively.

Yep, that's true. I understand that. Yeah. And this is not going to be a helpful attitude. I'm still young but like an older adult with a damaged goods mindset. What do you suggest in therapy? So, I will say something unconventional, but I would just do searches online for self-hypnosis.

I'm sorry, but I've made this recommendation to many people, which works for me. On whatever the issue you think is. The issue could be trusted in overcoming past trauma. I don't know, but I am just thinking to get your mind off that, and I think that can be very helpful for you.

That's how I would recommend doing it. I would do self-hypnosis. I would do that. I would also, yeah. Do what's called journaling. There's a famous, and again, I'm giving you a lot of information that may be odd, but you do journaling.

There was a famous course at Columbia, and it was something about becoming self-confident, or I don't know, but the idea was every day. You write down everything you're worried about, just list it out, are worried about and scared about, And that sort of thing.

But you just do that once a day, spend 10 minutes, whatever, 15 minutes, and then, at the end  of the week, you review the stuff and what you wrote for the past seven days. So, one day, you realize that a lot of the stuff that you're worried about; the idea is once you do that, then you look at what you were worried about a month ago, you'll start realizing that everything you are worried about, most of it would not be anything to worry about.

So that's the problem. And then what you're saying about therapy and meditation, that's a good point. Meditation, the whole idea of meditation, is also psychedelic. And I'm sorry to get into it. I know leaders of organizations and things to do this, but psychedelics may be like ayahuasca.

I'm not suggesting you do these or anything illegal, but the idea is that a lot of those del lakes, a lot of those, the whole purpose of this psychedelic journey, which you should read about, there's books about it and stuff, but. But their purpose is to get you out of your ego, and that's their purpose.

But that's what medication is about. That's what psychedelics are about. So, if you can get out of your ego, you'll likely be happier. And that will be much more helpful for you in the long run. So this is probably the last question I will answer because I have to; I can't believe how many good questions.

By the way, if you're, I know there's still a ton of people on this webinar. Listening to this stuff is probably the most brilliant thing anybody can do for their career because you're learning. Individuals like small mistakes that people make that just destroy their careers and ways to get around them.

And I'll tell you, I hear from partners and law firms not every week, but quite often, that learning the stuff and understanding is like Making their careers turn them into. So this stuff can very much help you, and it's great that you're listening to this because the more you understand, like, the better you'll do.

And there are only a few sources of this information. So, what can an associate do to stand out? The package is highly reliable. And some of the partners want to work with rare quality things. They can do it. So the other big thing is to make people feel important. That's it.

You get people you get people you, you compliment people you bring out the best in them, help them see their good qualities there's again, I'm not, but. One of the things Henry Kissinger was very famous, obviously, and brilliant.

He was a professor at Harvard when he was young, like 22 or five, but he could go up to people and compel them to network with them. Make them feel good about him and like him and recommend him. I don't know what he did, but he had some unique God-given ability.

And so the whole I, he became mighty and famous and sought out based on making other people feel important and his brilliance. Again, I'm not telling you from one political party or the other, but that's someone very good at that. So the way you become very successful is you not only do good work, but you make people feel good about themselves.

So you don't talk about their bad things. You talk about their good things. So anybody can find bad things about people or negative things or criticize their work, which many people on this call have, which I understand, but they can say, oh, they don't know what they're doing and all that sort of thing.

So the less you do of that, the better off you will be. So you have to make people feel good about themselves. You have to. Be there when they're down if you do and help them, you have to make, be understanding to people and be nice to them when others, all these sorts of things.

These are the rare qualities. And things that not many people do, but the more you connect with people, the better off you will be. So, I'll tell you one final story, and then I will probably hop off. So there are a lot more questions, but this story is just a personal story.

Last week, I was talking to or last night, I was talking to my fiance. And she is trying to launch a personal brand that does soaps, lotions, and that sort of thing. It has a great website and was doing all this right. And now she was thinking, I need to hire a PR agency.

And these PR agencies were trying to charge 15,000 a month on all this stuff. And because I live in Malibu and have kids and stuff with new people, I know people like George Clooney and who else, what is his name? Randy Gerber launched a big vodka, a vast tequila brand.

And so did this guy named DeLeon at that. There's also someone else that my kids are friends with, John Paul Mitchell, who launched this big shampoo, and these people are making hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, with these brands. And so they didn't start hiring PR firms.

They started basically. John Paul Mitchell or Paul de Leon or whatever they were going out with, he was making shampoo in his car and going to and making contact with all these different salons and telling him how great this product was and grew into a vast business doing that way.

And that's the same thing. The people who launch these tequila and these different brands send reps into nightclubs and bars, create personal contact, and form relationships. And then those people refer other people to them and so forth. They start by giving things away for free, checking in, and seeing how things are going.

And so that was the point I was making to my fiance. I was like, you have to. You can't just hire a PR firm. Everything's based on personal relationships. This is how people become billionaires and all this sort. So it's not just because they hire a PR agency. They go out, contact individuals, and are concerned about them.

And then those individuals. In the long run, those relationships will help them and those people that, if you're John Paul Mitchell or Paul did, I don't feel, but if you're making a relationship with a hair salon. They see your company grow based on meeting with them and getting suggestions about improving it.

They feel like they have a role in your success. And they start referring other people to you. It's the same thing in a law firm. You have to go out and form solid relationships with people inside the firm and make them feel like they've given you good advice and feel like they're part of your success instead of seeing yourself.

As opposed to them, like many of these questions, today was all about, " Oh, partners are making mistakes, and I'm correcting them, and they're mad. No, you have to bring out the best in people, and you have to make them feel like they're helping you, and you have to make them feel like they're responsible for your success instead of thinking you're like the only person out there.

And if you do that, you will be much more successful than others. And I hope you take this advice because I watched it. Countless people. I'm not countless, but so many people have become successful doing this, and it's enormous. It can change your life if you understand this. This is how people become incredibly successful, and That works.

So again, thank you for spending all this time on this webinar. I was just amazed at the quality of these questions. I think anyone who stayed on this for the whole time, which is a lot of people, will be way ahead of anyone else in this profession.

And just, sometimes, when I was young, I listened to Tony Robbins and. Read books and helpful things, and I think that may be successful. So, I'm just trying to pay it forward with this. There's a chart for this. And there's I'm not promoting businesses or anything.

But I hope this information helps you. And then I will, we'll be here next week. One thing is because it's the start, I think, of October and November. Yeah. So October is the start of, thank you. I always do a resume meeting in the third quarter and send information. Not that I won't do it next week because I'm going to be in New York, but I'll do it.

The following week is an excellent opportunity to send me your resume and have it reviewed live. You obviously will strip if you don't do it; strip your name, identify information, and splat it out. But it's always helpful to see how resumes can be reviewed. So, thank you, everyone, for being on the call, and I'll talk to everyone next week.