Staffing, Client Development and the Glob of Work

In this day and age, the economics of law firms requires that their constituent members/employees be fully deployed. Partners can only project their hiring needs to the extent that their clients themselves can predict their own business activities. Given today’s economic uncertainties, law firms are generally pretty cautious in hiring.  They hire permanent employees for client business which is in hand or immediately on the horizon and  at levels which they have every reason to believe will be sustained in, at least, the medium term.

Any one client matter  contains tasks calling for different levels of lawyering skill and experience.

 There are different constituents, internal and external, vying  at every experience level  where candidates are being hired to service, as opposed to originate,  some element of the client business, which I will call the “glob of work.”   

 At the top of the pyramid are the originating partners who bring in the client and its glob.  These folks usually have the most say in who, within a law firm, does the work.  For institutional clients, there might be a single or group of key partners charged with staffing a matter. 

The element of the glob which calls for the most junior level of skill and experience has the fewest kinds of lawyers competing for that work.  They are internal associates and prospective lateral associate hires.

For that element of the glob of work which calls for senior level experience and which is not being done by the originating partner, the landscape changes and becomes more competitive. You have internal senior associates, counsel, service partners and originating partners whose clients are having bad years, all competing internally for that work.

On the outside, as with more junior work,  at a senior level you have folks looking to be hired based upon the strength of their academics, skills and experience.  However, there is also another competitor.  There is the usually junior prospective lateral partner whose client base does not make her quite self supporting but who has the prospect of becoming so in the near future.

Take it as a given that the successful external candidates has to, first and foremost, be equipped to do their share of the glob, to have the appropriate academics, skills and experience.  However, bringing in of client business is seen as strong evidence of excellence, of partnership material. It demonstrates that the candidate understands the business of law firm practice in the present day. 

In most circumstances, the solid senior lawyer looking to be hired without evidence of client development interest or skill is in worst position of the outside contenders.  Most of the time, they will lose to the prospect who has demonstrated client development skills.

The better a case you can make for yourself that you are that entrepreneurial candidate who will become fully self supporting in the near to medium future, the easier time you  will have to be hired at a senior level.

It’s never the season for inside baseball

To Company/Government/Big Organization Lifers Looking to Move On


I’ve seen a great many long time employees of large employers—government, UN-type organizations, corporations.  Often resumes contain mindnumbing detail about work environments which do nothing to  advance their case with new prospective employers.

If you have been with a single large employer for a bunch of years, you have probably had shifting responsibilities, different titles and reporting lines.

In describing a long career with a single employer, candidates often get bogged down in the minutiae of internal politics.  That is, in looking at the resume, the relationships between various committees and departments  is meaningful only if you intended to look for a job elsewhere in the same organization. 

 To the rest of us, it’s inside baseball and not terribly informative.

In addition, for the more senior candidate, getting bogged down can be deadly.  It raises the question of whether the candidate is flexible enough to adapt to a different organization or operational structure.  It’s the question whether you are steeped in nostalgia for the halcyon days of your professional youth or whether you have absorbed lessons and are flexible and nimble enough to move forward.

Step back and extract from these relationships the significance and state that, for example, if you found yourself at different points working with different kinds of players within an organizations, pull out from it that you had the flexibility to deal with different kinds of corporate constituents and parties.  Or that moving from x to y within the organization meant that you were only one hop away from the C-suite instead of three.   Or that the change in committee role meant you got to control more $, people, decisions, etc.

Also, look to last week's entry about helping people to understand what your title(s) within the organization mean.

Another argument against minutiae is that a resume is not meant to be exhaustive.  It is meant to convey enough about your experience to show the interviewer that you can do the job for which you have submitted your resume and that you will do it cheerfully and reliably. It's meant to get you the interview. So, list your most impressive achievements and summarize, as tightly as you can, the less impressive recurring day-to-day responsibilities.  Edit and focus what you write about your past. 

Your Place in the In-House Hierarchy

There are certain key differences in the structure of in house environments versus that of law firms.

In a law firm hierarchy, junior associates report to senior associates and/ or counsel or partners. 

Each in house corporate structure has its own organizational chart. In one, there may only be three lawyers, in others there may be layers of lawyers with different kinds of titles—senior, assistant, deputy, associate, vice president, senior vice president. 

How do you expect the prospective employer to know what your title means?

Help the reader to understand where you are in your own company’s particular universe. How many people do you supervise? What kinds of people-- lawyers, investigators, patent prosecutors, assistant counsel, etc.Who do you report to? Do you have dual reporting responsibilities—ex., an attorney supporting sales might be embedded in an operations division and report to both the head of the operations and someone in legal. If you are one of only a handful of people with your status, say so—i.e., “ Sole Deputy GC.  Direct Report to the General Counsel.”

In-house Job Entries

Context and "I Love Me" are Key


You need to give context for the business, what you do in the business and underscore that you understand that you hook into business realities as opposed to living in the land of abstract legal principles which is where many in the business community generally think law firm lawyers reside. We know how important lawyers are and you, in particular, are to the prosperity of your company.  You need to let the reader, your prospective employer, know how your actions contribute to the fiscal well being of the company.

Below the name of the employer, title and dates of employment, you should help give the reader some context .  If the enterprise is not a household name, a phrase which states its size, business niche and the size of the legal department to help accomplish that goal. 

       Ex:  Karate Chop Cooking, Inc., New York, NY  Assistant General Counsel , / /  to present

        Member of a six lawyer legal department of a publicly traded manufacturer of cooking implements

You should state the kinds of legal and business related subject matter with which you work and the activities in which you engage.  


It goes without saying that you describe the substance of what you do-- negotiate, supervise, draft, oversee, devise, review, implement, etc. Cite legal regimes with which you work-- FMLA, HIPPA, Investment Advisor Act, etc.

Businesses exist to make profit from the goods or services they manufacture/distribute/broker/provide. In a law firm resume, you have the luxury to just talk about the law that you practice because your business is the practice of law.

As in-house lawyers, you more closely further the business.  Attorneys enhance and facilitate the activities of the business and protect the business against legal liability. One of the unfortunate aspects of in-house practice, however, is that your actions rarely inure directly to the bottom line.  This can make you vulnerable to downturns in lean times when the bean counters want to cut expenses.

Another danger an in house lawyer faces is to be seen as the “no” person rather than the facilitator who moves the deal or activity along with the long and short term interests of the business in mind.

Accordingly, attorneys need to justify their keep and show that they are attuned to the business they support.  You should identify, in business terms, how your actions tie into to the business of the company, its goods and services and help it prosper. Yes, you are taking some credit for what the business side accomplishes.

If you supported a sales force, mention the number of salespeople you supported and the dollar value of widgets sold.

If you directed litigation, describe big matters and the prayers for relief.

If you negotiated a big lease, mention the square feet.

If there is a quantitative measurement to an outcome for anything you do, mention it.  So, the $ saved from instituting some cost cutting measure you documented, is important.  If you managed to save $ by eliminating employee redundancies, indicate numbers and $.

If you negotiated an acquisition, financing, or IPO, state the $ value.

If your role is in more of a compliance function, state the size of the operation you support in dollar terms, if possible, or in number of employees, offices, or by reference to a business regime that  flags same. Ex., “such and such for a NYSE Euronext listed manufacturer of widgets.”