Navigating Attorney Interviews: Signs of a Good Fit, Stability, and Personal Growth

Description

• Strategic Fit Matters: Learn the crucial "one-third rule" – ensuring you align with the firm's personality.
• Boutique Challenges: Uncover the intricacies of working in boutique law firms, where a bad fit can lead to rapid dismissals.
• Identify Your Tribe: Explore the impact of shared backgrounds, ideologies, and even demographics on professional compatibility.
• Sensitivity to Trends: Understand how economic fluctuations and legal trends can significantly impact boutique firms.
• Defending Against Dismissals: Insights into why people with solid skills get fired – the role of personal connections and likability.
• Survival Strategies: Navigate office dynamics and avoid pitfalls to secure stability, personal growth, and a fulfilling legal career.

Transcript

Navigating Attorney Interviews: Signs of a Good Fit, Stability, and Personal Growth
 
Okay. So this first question is, I'm a new attorney with mixed success in interviews. A few months ago, I was in a role. It had multiple job offers. Wow. From those, I chose a boutique firm in a practice area. Ultimately, I wanted to do it, but something else was needed with this firm. Every firm was flawed, but I felt it needed to be a better fit.
 
My work was well taken, but my supervisor was often combative and defensive with me, unlike others, and did not seem like a person. It's a good point. I tried to turn around and watch what others did to please this boss, but nothing worked. Eventually, she fired me for a textual reminder mistake, which was unfortunate and frustrating.
 
I also needed more allies in the firm; despite my best efforts, I struggled to connect with partner-level attorneys. I'm now looking for a new position, hoping to find a better position. How can I turn my firm into a bad fit? Are they not likely to offer stability, or is there something I'm missing that I did wrong?
Okay. This is an excellent question. There's just so much depth to this and so many things that people ask that are similar to this every week. You have a bunch of issues I'll talk about in this right now: minor errors; by the way, these minor errors getting fired is something. That is coming up. People are asking this question weekly.
 
So this is a fundamental question. Again, people have been asking this weekly for the past several months. Almost the past several months. So this is very important. We'll also talk about boutiques right now. And we'll talk about what else? I don't know. Boutiques, practice areas, practice area-specific firms, and what else?
 
I'm just trying to write down the issues here. And these are all. There are a lot of good questions here that everyone should understand and answer as firms. We'll talk about, let's see, not, no allies in terms; we'll talk about, say, finding a firm that worked, eventually, practice area, my lousy fit, let me see.
 
No allies; I'm just ensuring I have all the questions because these are excellent. I think these will apply to everyone who is on this call. Okay. So, the first thing I want to discuss is partners firing our partners and needing to be more friendly to people. Okay. So bad, let's just talk about it; let me make sure I have all of these questions I want to discuss.
 
Okay, I'm just pretextually fired. Okay, so the first issue is the one-third one-third rule. And that rule says that one-third of the people you meet will like you, which is what many studies have shown. You will like and will, basically will, like you.
 
This is what applies: I will like you. And the other third, other one-third, won't care, either way. Let's take on this person, S. The other third will dislike you. So that's how it works. So people like and dislike people and like people for all sorts of reasons. It doesn't matter why it is.
 
Your objective, of course, is to join a firm where, you know, two-thirds to two-thirds to four-fifths. We'll like you, and then you avoid those who don't. Different firms have different personalities and Different personalities, so you want to make sure that you join a firm where you feel like more people will like you than not. So, I'm sorry to bring this up. Even though it will get me in trouble, I will bring it up.
 
It won't necessarily get me in trouble, but it's something other than what people want to hear in a meritocracy. But people hire people like them. People hire and work well with people. Like them, every firm has a certain. I talked about this today, but every firm has a specific personality.
 
So they hire around all sorts of socio-political, whatever political and topological, or at least that term lines. So they hire a logical, they hire people. They hire people who are like them, so they hire people who may have grown up in the same types of backgrounds, meaning from the same types of neighborhoods, from the same types of parents.
 
They figure that out. I don't know how they do it, but people do that. And they hire people who are the same, who are the same political party as them. They hire from people that are from the same types of tribe, meaning It could be, and again, I'm going to go here somewhere that people are going to; it could be some religion.
 
It could even be, I'm not going even to say it, but it could be, first of all, this could be mainly males. It could be mainly females, males, and females. It could be people that look a certain way. I'm not going to get into this, but there are certain firms you will walk into. And you will see everyone in glasses looking very nerdy.
 
You will walk into others, and we'll think you're in a fricking magazine ad or something. It's just that's how it is. And so people hire people that are like them. They hire people. If you broke up in high school, you had your stoners, nerds, whatever. Stoners, nerds, athletes, famous, nonpopular people.
 
As people go, you will go into different groups, and they're part of different groups. So your objective And when you're looking for a job, it doesn't matter if this is a fricking boutique or not your objective. First, if you go into a boutique and people are not like you, there's a complete difference.
 
Then, you are going to do poorly. I knew a guy who couldn't get a job because he had gone to these great schools. I think he went to Yale, then to the University of Chicago or the University of Virginia. I was in school with him. His whole explanation of why he chose Virginia was because he was a holo player, and he learned this because he grew up very wealthy, had his own horses, and went into interviews.
 
The response is that people thought he was a hole, basically, and who has time to do that? And so he did not get any jobs, nothing, even though he had a great academic background. That's what he's, you, so you identify with a particular group, and that can hurt you. You go into a law firm, and most of them, at least in different cities, are very democratic, filled with Democrats.
 
And you start talking about politics and how you identify with a particular political party and how you think all these things, people are not going to like you. If you go in and you. You appear on the side of some very controversial political issue; you. People aren't like that; they're not going to like you.
 
Suppose you appear on the side of their political issue. Everyone they're going to like you. So you just need to identify with that sort of stuff. There are law firms composed entirely of people of different religions. If you are in certain parts of Utah, everyone will be from one religious party.
 
Suppose you are in certain parts. If you're in Salt Lake City, that will be different, but it depends. There are firms you can look at that will be almost all females. You just get a sense of people. So my point is that when you join a firm, it doesn't matter if the firm's good in your practice area.
 
It doesn't matter if they pay a lot. It doesn't; none of this stuff matters. If you do not fit in, if you're not going to do, if you don't feel that a lot more people are going to like you instead of not caring or disliking you, then you're going to be toast. You're not going to, you're just not going to be able to get a job there.
And that's a problem. Or if you, I'm sorry, do get a job there and they're just hiring you because of the work done, you'll have a tough time advancing if you're that different. It's just how it works. It's not it's not to say that there's anything wrong with you or there's anything wrong with the firm.
 
This is just how groups work. Everyone tries to say, this isn't the case. Certain people will be advanced because law firms need people of certain backgrounds. It could be your parents, or you're a famous politician, whatever the thing is. But the point is that if you don't identify with people, they will come down on you and basically not like you because of something.
 
You may remind them, they may have, just to give you an understanding, they may have been all nerds in high school and may see you as. Someone that was very popular and that made them feel bad about themselves. And this is the way of getting back. I was a nerd, but now I'm in control, and I don't like you.
And I'm going to push you out. This is just how people think, but you just have to be; you must understand the type of people you will work with. Non, are people always this way? No. Are well-organized firms and so forth always this way? No, but it's just important to understand that. So again, people hire people who are like them, and if you make minor errors and get fired, it's more likely that's going to happen if it's not.
 
Boutiques, it's essential to understand that these are very closed groups of people. They're closed; they're tiny, intimate groups of people. And so what that means is that if you don't get along, they feel any tension, they feel anything. That you're more likely to lose your job. That’s just one thing we need to identify. People feel comfortable. That's very important. So if you don't do that's going to be, that's going to help. The other thing to understand is that if you don't identify with everyone, the firms are also more sensitive to economic trends.
 
Census, economic trends. So that means if they're if they lose business. It's going to hit them harder, business, they, business do not, I wonder if the case, if they, all sorts of things can happen to boutiques. Also, in practice areas, specific firms can experience problems. For example, if they all go bankrupt, the market could slow down.
 
And when the economy gets terrible, make it business and be sensitive. You also have an addition to. In this bankruptcy, you have firms that do things like I've seen; there used to be a lot of firms doing IP litigation. And because of a particular court decision, a lot of stuff happened with IP litigation firms, making it more difficult for patent trolls to sue.
 
So that hurt a lot of the firms that were doing that. So boutiques can be very sensitive. And again, those are all the things that can happen with boutiques. So what I'm saying to you basically is that if you work for a boutique. Or you believe that you're getting fired for minor errors and so forth.
 
A lot of times, it's just because you're a terrible fit. And bad fits, by the way, where you do not fit, you need to fit into this one-third, and so forth, are much more likely to occur in boutique law firms. And law firms with a lot of people. So, in law firms with a lot of people, to get a lot of people, they need to attract many different types of people into the firm.
 
If that's not happening, this is what you get. And so you just need to be very careful about that. So, there are a lot of questions this person asked, and I just want to make sure that I answered them as well as possible. But anytime you're fired for minor errors, it is basically because people don't like you.
They're going to keep you from being fired for minor errors. If people like you, they're going to defend you. So that just leads you into a group that's a bad fit. And you need to figure out why the group's a bad fit. They may, they just may not like people like you. Sometimes, it could be as simple. This is stuff I've seen.
 
Excellent law school, great firm pedigree. So say you, I don't know, you went to Harvard and I don't know, Harvard and you work at Old Melvaney and Myers. And then you went to a great, and then you went to, I'm just using Old Melvaney cause they're such a well-respected firm, and then you go to a firm.
 
With people who didn't go to top law schools or opposite people for whatever reason, what will they do? They're going to want to find, we'll find fault to prove that they're better, all sorts of things. They're better thinking where you're unique, and then we'll eliminate you.
 
So it's just that you have to be very careful with all this sort of stuff. Really, and what, how things work in firms. You just want to ensure all these things are being done, so I understand that's a long answer. I wasn't trying to overdo it. I just want people to understand this.