Description
- Challenges Faced: A young lawyer lost positions at two firms due to practice area elimination and a deadline mishap.
- Negative Experience: The last firm laid off without severance, showed no regard for prior work, and potentially blackballed.
- Concerns Raised: Can a new position be secured without glowing references? What employers are more likely to hire without references?
- Encouraging Insights: Missing deadlines are expected in legal careers, often due to partner supervision lapses. The firm's reactions may be driven by self-preservation.
- Advice for Job Search: Focus on finding firms needing work, consider smaller or busy firms, and emphasize business value. Sharing experiences may work positively if framed carefully.
- Success Example: Story of a lawyer with low grades but impressive achievements who landed prestigious positions based on business needs.
- Key Takeaway: Employers hire for business reasons; addressing work needs increases chances. Apply to firms in need, even if no openings are advertised, and carefully navigate interview discussions about past challenges.
Transcript:
I am a younger lawyer without good references after I lost my position in a short period of time. The first job was a small firm that eliminated my practice here. That's too bad. The second was in a volatile branch office and I was fired when I mistakenly Missed a deadline. Okay. Let me just write the end of July.
I just want to make sure I understand this. Let me practice. The second was in a volatile and it was fired when I mistakenly missed deadline. That sucks. Okay. Let me just start in the beginning. So I'm a younger lawyer with all good references. After I lost my position at two firms within a short period of time, the first job was a small firm that eliminated my practice area.
The second was in a volatile branch office and I was fired after mistakenly missing a deadline. The last experience is extremely. Distressing, the firm was spiteful, laid me off without severance, gave no regard for my prior work, and even though I was able to get the deadline excused, held it against me in the harshest possible way.
I was only at the firm six months and now need a new job, but have few references I can trust. I'm worried this firm blackballed me. My questions are, can I find a new position without a glowing reference from supervisors? What kind of employers are more likely to hire without references? Okay, so that's a great question that, by the way, people get fired as junior attorneys all the time for missing deadlines.
I just wanted to say something that may make you feel a little bit better than you miss a deadline. It's not, it's. First of all, it's the partner's responsibility to supervise you and make sure that doesn't happen or a senior associate, you can't possibly be able to understand all these deadlines and juggle all this many times as a junior attorney.
It's not a good thing when that happens, but missing a deadline is definitely something that a lot of people get fired for, especially junior attorneys, even senior attorneys, and you're not really getting fired for. Missing the deadline so much because almost every attorney out there has missed deadlines.
What you're getting fired for is you're getting fired because the partners are trying to cover their ass with a client or each other. Who knows? But you can't worry about it. So the firm was spiteful, laid you off without severance, gave no regard to your prior work. And even though you're able to get the deadline excuse.
Yeah, so a lot of times these deadlines things the court's always going to be understanding there's motion things you can do to get it excused. But you don't need necessarily to have references or worried about the from blackballing you. They, you may have had a bad experience there. You can, if you need to, you could always say you missed the deadline, but yes, you can find a new position by growing references and what most, what kind of employers are most likely to hire you without references.
Okay. So this is a very simple answer and I'm glad this is being asked because it's a very important question. So law firms are businesses. So what does that mean? So they need people to do the work, people to do the work. So that's it. So they lose money if P if work's not getting done. So they lose money if work's not getting done.
So all you need to do is find a bunch of, is find places that need work done. Work, nothing done. So I'm just typing this out. So that's it. So you just need to make sure that. that you find a firm that needs work. What does that mean? It may mean that you need to go to a smaller firm. It may mean you need to find a firm that's extremely busy.
It can mean all sorts of things. So I saw something that was just hilarious in my early in my career. There was this woman that had gone to university of Minnesota law school or something had been on law review, which Does it mean a lot? Yes. Some places you need to have the top grades. I think that's what it was like when I went to law school.
Maybe they have 15 places and 13 are for... People with grades and two or four writing. I don't know what it was, but it was something like that. And so most people that some schools law review is based on grades. Other schools, they just have these things where you can write up why you're special because you grew up poor or whatever.
And you'll get on that way. But anyway, so this one went to University of Minnesota and was on law review. But graduated with a C minus average or something just horrible. And then somehow got a clerkship on the sixth circuit or ninth circuit court of appeals, and then had something else. Maybe it was I don't know.
I don't know if she worked in the Supreme court, but something just incredible in her background. She got an interview with. What I mean, the job with one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. Like when I say prestigious, it was like one of the top five hardest firms to fricking get a job in probably in the country.
They never looked at her grades. And then when I moved her to another firm, it was a huge firm, like a very prestigious firm in Silicon Valley, like one of the top probably five. Most procedures. They never looked at her grades. So what is the point to all that? The point is that not necessarily they didn't look at her grades, but the point is that people hire people for business reasons.
This woman look at on paper, they didn't think of anything and both those firms hired her and she did fine even though she had bad grades. So my Point to you is that employers hire people if they can make money. And if the work's not being done, they lose money. So all you need to do is find firms that will hire you.
You can apply to a lot of places if they have a lot of work that needs to be done. apply to places without jobs, they will hire you. People realize that mistakes happen. If you need to get into detail about what happened, you can tell them and they may feel sorry for you. And, but most of the time you need to preserve yourself is very strong.
So the first job to eliminate your practice error, you can absolutely 100 percent say that in your interviews. The second job, you can say, if it comes down to it, you can say. There was a, an issue that happened with a matter where a partner looked bad and I took the fall. You can say all sorts of things, but you have to be very careful and you have to think through it.
And I'm not going to tell you exactly how to do that but the fact that all this stuff happened and that you fixed it is good, but you basically need to move on. You may need to apply to smaller firms. You may need to apply to firms that don't have, that don't currently have any. What do you call it?
That don't have openings, all that sort of stuff. And if you're able to do that, you're going to have a much better chance of getting a position.
