David Baugher, The Daily Record Newswire
An attorney just out of law school faces a tough job market. Keith Lee, creator of the popular Associate’s Mind legal blog, says young lawyers need to find ways to distinguish themselves from the pack. Lee, who graduated from law school in 2010, practices law at a small firm in Birmingham, Ala. He advises individuals and business clients on estate planning, contract disputes, litigation, intellectual property and other matters. What follows is an edited interview with Lee, author of “The Marble and the Sculptor” (ABA Publishing, $24.95 in paperback), which captures his own journey as a young lawyer.
Q: Should anyone begin as a solo straight out of law school?
A: It’s definitely not the ideal way to start, but, given the current job market, that’s the way a lot of people are having to go. Ideally, I would think you would always want to get a job as an associate, even though that’s not realistic right now. Law school doesn’t make you ready to practice law. It was originally an apprenticeship-style profession, and then law schools came up and supplanted the whole apprenticeship method. In the most recent stats, only 56.2 percent of 2012 graduates found a permanent job within nine months after graduation. You are likely to have to go solo.
Q: So what’s the best way to develop yourself professionally?
A: Your best bet right out of the gate is to join your local bar association. If there is a formalized mentorship program you can take part in, then do it. If not, start going to bar events and find a mentor. You need to find an experienced attorney or multiple attorneys who can help guide your practice. You are going to screw up and make mistakes, and you need mentors who are not just going to pat you on the head and say “Good job.” You need mentors who are going to challenge you and force you to grow.
Q: What’s the best way to get a law firm to notice you straight out of school?
A: The problem that many law students have is that they should have been hustling and networking all through law school. Try to be on law review or mock trial teams. A lot of city bars have law student divisions now where you can come in and join. If you just thought, “I’ll go to law school, get my J.D., pop out and get a job,” then you are just not paying attention to the job market. You should have been on a trajectory of establishing relationships with lawyers while you were in law school.
Q: How do you get a job if you didn’t network in law school?
A: One thing you don’t want to do is just start putting up resumes on Monster.com. That’s not how lawyers hire people. Lawyers hire through their network. They want people prescreened. If I’m going to hire a lawyer at my firm, I’m not going to put a job posting on Craigslist. I’m going to ask other lawyers that I know, that are my friends, that I have relationships with. That’s where jobs come from. It’s so old-school and people forget but relationships are everything. If you are a new lawyer and are low on relationships, the best thing to do is to go to the bar, meet people and provide value. Don’t be greedy. You can’t just say, “Hey, help me.” You need to help the other person first. If someone says they are working on some IP thing or contract, go home, research the heck out of that, then shoot them an email and say, “Hey, I got to thinking about this, here it is. I thought you might find it useful.”
Q: What are the top errors lawyers make out of law school?
A: Whether you are at a firm or you’ve hung out your own shingle, the biggest thing is to manage expectations of the firm, what they want and what you can deliver. If a partner says, “Hey, we need a memo about whatever,” don’t just be like “Got it.” Ask, “When do you want the memo?” Get deadlines. That way you can know what he expects. Also, be inquisitive. Especially in a firm, new lawyers don’t want to look dumb and ask questions. But there is nothing wrong with asking questions. You are brand new. You don’t know anything. One of the best things to do is find the paralegals in your firm who have been there a long time and make best friends with them. They have lots of experience, and they’ll help you get up to speed pretty quick.
Q: How should you market yourself?
A: You have to realize that marketing is not something you just devote 20 percent of your time to every week or where you simply buy ads. Work is marketing. Everything you do for the client, every email you send to a client, every phone call is marketing your firm, and you’ve got to understand that everything you do communicates with your client. You can’t be sloppy or take things for granted. It’s a buyer’s market from a client’s perspective. There is such a glut of lawyers, they can always go somewhere for a competitive price or competitive work.
Q: Other than mentors, what can help you develop professionally?
A: You’ve got to stay abreast of your industry. You need to go to industry events, keep up with industry magazines in the area you focus on. The other thing have to do is read well and write well. You need to be reading challenging material, not just legal stuff. Read sophisticated books and magazines — stuff that comes across as clear communication so you can avoid writing like a lawyer all the time. When you email clients, you don’t want to write like a lawyer. You want to write in a more casual tone. To write well, you have to read well.
Q: Should you go for a niche legal market or be a general practitioner?
A: If you are hanging out your own shingle, at first you’ll start taking everything that comes through the door because you are hungry and desperate. Your first clients will probably be your Aunt Margaret and your best friend from second grade. It also depends upon where you are. If you are in rural Georgia, then you are a general practitioner just by the nature of geography. But in a larger metropolitan area, you should be looking to niche it down and find a narrower field of practice in which you can specialize because there are going to be so many lawyers. Also, if you specialize that gets you good referral relationships with other attorneys. If you are in family law and one of your clients gets in a DUI, you can say, “Well, I know a DUI lawyer” so you can refer the client. That will probably eventually result in some quid pro quo where the DUI lawyer will find that one of his DUI clients is getting a divorce.
