Description
- Background: Junior lawyer loses position after six months due to partner's mistake and lack of support from the branch office manager.
- Challenges Faced: Worked extensively for remote partners, limited training opportunities, and volatile branch office dynamics.
- Framing Job Search: Emphasize positive aspects of the previous job, such as enjoying the work and the national boutique setting. Highlight challenges as issues with branch office dynamics rather than personal failures.
- Addressing Termination: While admitting being fired may not be necessary, focus on reasons that support your case, like partners wanting to handle all work themselves or lack of local assignments.
- Moving Forward: Apply to firms even without current openings, as they may be less likely to scrutinize the reasons for leaving your previous job. Craft strong arguments that showcase your strengths without disparaging the former employer.
- Strategic Approach: Consider Harrison's strategy of applying to firms that need your expertise, as they may be less inclined to probe into the details of your departure.
- Moot Court Analogy: Approach adverse facts like you would in a moot court competition—frame them to make you look strong without casting a negative light on the previous firm.
Transcript:
Okay. Let's see. I'm a junior lawyer who lost a position, but chief firm. Okay. I think. Okay. After just six months, I've been getting great reviews and buying lots of hours. The last month I got stretched too thin. I failed to catch a partner's mistake on a deadline. The partner who was working remotely for another office threw me under the bus.
My branch office manager did not stick up for me and I lost my position. There were a lot of great things I liked about the job. I liked the work. I like working in a national boutique and I liked some of my bosses, but. There were things that did not. Partners did not have time for training associates.
Most of my time was spent working for partners at other offices. The branch was slow, volatile personalities, and the partners in my home office were obviously super remote, so there was little opportunity for FaceTime. How can I frame my new job search in the best possible light? Do I admit that I was fired?
And what questions do I need to ask myself to move forward? Okay. So this is interesting, by the way, I want to just bring up a quick point. Now, this is very similar to a lot of questions. So I'm going to refer to some of the other stuff, the other questions there. But what's interesting about this question is a lot of these are about branch offices.
Think about it. Branch offices, having problems, branch offices, getting work from other offices, branch offices, this branch office is that. And it's interesting. There are. Branch offices of major firms all over the country that never made a partner because you're not around the people that have the power to do it.
A lot of times branch offices are open because there's one or two clients there and they want to have a presence and then they hire people and there's no work. So branch offices can be. Very volatile places to work. It doesn't mean they all are. Most of them, if you take a great law firm like Latham Watkins, they're freaking awesome.
They have great branch offices. If you take a firm like Quinn Emanuel, their New York office is awesome. And they're based in LA. So the point is a lot of branch offices are very good, but a lot of them are bad. So it's just, it is a important consideration for attorneys. When you go to work to be very careful with branch offices, it can hurt you and you need to be careful.
Because you may not have, you may have limited opportunities to advance. You may have less work, all these things. Okay. So this particular question that you're talking about with your people losing positions, are you losing positions because you made a mistake? Again, this is the second person's talked about having made a bad error.
And gotten fired. So again, this happens all the time. It shouldn't happen, by the way. It should be the partner's responsibility most of the time to catch this stuff, but whatever. That's because they're the ones that are ultimately accountable. So I think again, when you're fired from any job, you need to frame it in the best possible light in a way that you would be, if you were representing a client in a, that was accused of a crime or did something negative, you need to frame it in a way that would make you look very positive instead of negatives.
So you need to just move forward and apply to a lot of places. You don't, you need to talk about what you liked. But often the best thing you can say is there wasn't any work. There was infighting between the different offices. They didn't, whatever you have to. In a way it doesn't make the firm look bad.
So typically the best off answer is there's not a lot of work. It was, or it was a difficult, I don't know, but something that doesn't necessarily draw a lot of attention to you because there's just, it wasn't difficult. I was working for. A partner remotely, then they didn't, they preferred to work at, I don't know.
You need to come up with other reasons. Do you admit that you were fired? Preferably not, but you can say you, you find reasons that support your argument. So partners want to do all the work themselves. They didn't want to have associates work on it. They're, they didn't have any, they didn't have any local work, enough of it.
And so I was working only for remote partners, but then. They started giving all their work to people and they're all, you have to come up with arguments and things that are strong that are on that your side, but ideally, by the way, ideally, if the law firm needs you. So I just want to keep coming back to this.
If the law firm needs you they're going to assume probably that something bad happened. And if something bad happened, if they need you, they're not going to want to make you uncomfortable and ask you about it. They may not, but if they need you and the balance is such that if you go to work there, they're going to make a lot of money.
And why would they turn you away or by making you uncomfortable? That's probably the smartest thing to do. So if the law firm needs you, then they're not going to ask a lot of questions about that. So my strategy, again, I'll come back to Harrison's strategy is to apply to firms without necessarily without openings.
So here's a, so apply to firms. Without openings, because they're not going to ask these questions as much. And if people want to ask it, that's fine. You come up with a good answer. They're obviously going to think something's off, but they may not want to ask about it. And if they do just come up with a decent reason that deflects the blame or something in a way that doesn't make the firm look bad.
So just come up with arguments. I can't be the one that makes these arguments for you because I don't know exactly how you would argue it, but you basically need to frame. Everything in terms of something that makes you look strong and without making them look bad. So just think, what would you do if it was a moot court competition? What would you do with negative facts?
