Why I Believe BCG Attorney Search is the Greatest Legal Recruiting Firm in the World

BCG Attorney Search

“The Nation’s Standard in Attorney Search and Placement”

The very foundations of BCG Attorney Search are built upon the ever-present need to constantly improve. This is evident in several aspects of how this business is run. I personally feel that BCG Attorney Search is the greatest recruiting firm in the world. The reasons for this are described below.

First, we only do law firm placements and have not diluted this important fundamental by having several different and diverting focuses at any one time. This means that when an attorney approaches us, they are dealing with experts because we are dealing with and studying the same law firms day in and day out. Through geographically segmenting our efforts, we have assured that each recruiter in every area we serve has the best possible understanding of their law firm clients. We have made the decision not to do in-house placements because we know that in-house placements will only serve to widely disperse our efforts and never make us an expert in anything.

This strategy has also allowed us to emerge as the search firm with the most law firm positions in the world. This is something the market notices and attracts a great deal of candidates.

Second, we stress an extremely high work product here. No search firm produces a better work product than us. The quality of our work product communicates to the firms who review our submissions that we know what we are doing. It also allows us to consistently learn more about candidates—and the market in general—than our competitors do. In addition, by producing such an outstanding work product, the firms we are dealing with take our efforts seriously. Everyday, our recruiters are being pushed to produce a better and better work product.

Third, through our website, we communicate a great deal of information. This communication draws traffic to our site and establishes us as experts in our chosen field. Our website is probably the most widely viewed web site in the permanent law firm placement field in the world.

Fourth, we use technology in radical ways that are years ahead of our competition. Through mass email, the distribution of our jobs to thousands of subscribers each day, the personal response we provide to each submission we receive and more, we are consistently communicating with a greater and greater audience than our competitors. By building a substantial community of people who are aware of our abilities, we are reinforcing the message that we are better than our competition hundreds of times each day.

Fifth, we have a super group of people who are committed to our mission and communicate our mission to everyone in this organization and the outside world. By consistently communicating our mission and unique organization goals and differences, we are spreading the word that we are, in fact, much better than our competition.

Sixth, we make efforts geared towards improving the legal community as a whole. Through our annual publication, The BCG Attorney Search Guide to Class Ranking and Law Review at America’s Top Law Schools, we are driving home a message about our expertise as researchers and attorneys to a diverse audience that includes (1) law schools, (2) law students, (3) practicing attorneys, and (4) law firms. The levels we go to service the legal community through this and our other written efforts are unparalleled by any other American legal search firm.

Seventh, through aggressive advertising and a well conceived branding strategy, we are driving our name home to everyone in the legal community. In addition, we ensure that our advertising is as timely as possible. There are few practicing attorneys in the United States who have not heard of our firm. We probably do more advertising than any other permanent attorney placement firm in the United States.

Eighth, we have uniform standards for our work. Every recruiter who works in our firm is expected to do a similar amount of work each week and produce a consistently good work product. By ensuring that we are all operating at similar production levels, we can ensure the orderly growth of our company through consistent revenue generation.

Ninth, we are a team. Through our weekly teleconferences, our BCG College, our weekly goals and our constant exchange of information, we are the most formidable team in the American legal recruiting field. No group tries harder to achieve each others goals. No group wants more than anything to see its other members succeed. By lessening competition, ensuring that we are consistently helping one another, we experience market domination.

Each and every day we come to work we are thinking of how we intend to raise the bar that day. Every idea we have, every innovation we make, is something that raises the bar and takes us more into the realm of being much better than we were before.

Do One Thing and Do it Well

When you are focused you get results.

At BCG Attorney Search all we do is place associate and partner-level attorneys in law firms.  We do not do not make placements in corporations or with in-house legal departments.  We do not place contract attorneys.  We do not work with secretaries or paralegals.

A BCG Attorney Search recruiter could not tell you the first thing about how to get a job with an in-house legal department, as a contract attorney, paralegal or legal secretary.

But for the type of attorneys who use BCG Attorney Search, this level of focus is exactly what they expect and are entitled to.  Over 80% of the attorneys we work with are graduates of top 25 law schools and coming from AmLaw 100 law firms.  And our law firm clients also know the typical BCG Attorney Search candidate is also focused enough that they cannot imagine working in any place other than a law firm .  As a consequence,

Simply put, BCG Attorney Search candidates want to deal with experts in the legal marketplace and believe their recruiter cannot truly know they market when they are doing several different things at once.

In your life and career it is also crucial that you do one thing and do it well.

A light at the end of the (litigation) tunnel?

I’ve been taking stock of the current market in Texas and we are finally seeing a strong trend towards litigation work. After wide-sweeping tort reform in 2003, litigation attorneys have been in much less demand state-wide. Last week, we visited with firms in Dallas, and uniformly across the board the firms were telling us that their litigation practice groups were extremely busy. This is something we have not heard in years.

While it’s easy to focus on lay-offs, we’ve seen what amounts to great news for litigation attorneys in recent weeks. The National Law Journal predicts an onslaught of lawsuits on ballot initiatives on issues like Gay Marriage. They also recently reported on an increase in construction litigation related to failed real estate projects.

Fulbright & Jaworski recently released their 2008 Litigation Trends Survey predicting a litigation and regulatory work spike in 2008. According to Sheri Qualters of the National Law Journal:

Companies’ worries about lawsuits varied according to the company’s size, region and whether the firm is public or private.

Smaller companies, for example, indicated more concern about securities, insurance and real estate litigation than middle-market companies or companies with at least a billion dollars in revenue. Private companies worry more about contract, labor and personal injury lawsuits than public companies.

Lawsuit fears also vary across the United States: California companies have qualms about employment cases; Northeastern companies worry about environmental cases; and Southern companies expressed concerned about class actions and products liability lawsuits.

Litigators, rev your engines.

A Hot Practice Area for the Economic Downturn

On a meeting with our BCG Attorney Search recruiters earlier this week we discussed the candidates who were getting the most interviews. Without a doubt the “hot” market right now is for associates is labor and employment. I also had dinner earlier this week with the recruiting director of a large national law firm here in Atlanta. He said that labor and employment is so out of control in terms of its business it is incredible.

The great thing about the legal market is that the work moves around. When one practice area is experiencing issues another starts to get better. This is what is happening with labor and employment.

When people get laid off some file lawsuits against their employer. This is making labor and employment firms busier and busier. In addition, when companies andlaw firms prepare for large scale layoffs they hire labor and employment attorneys to assess the situation. Given the dire predictions for the 2009 calendar year and the increasing layoff in the market, I think this is going to be a great year for labor and employment attorneys.

What does this mean for you?

If you are in general commercial litigation do your best to get some labor and employment cases under your belt asap–this will make you more marketable. If you are a law student you should press for jobs in this field.

Labor and employment is going gangbusters. This is great news for labor and employment attorneys because you are now very, very marketable.

How Valuable is an LLM in Increasing Marketability?

How valuable is earning an LL.M. in a particular field (such as International Business and Trade law, or Intellectual Property law just to cite two examples) in improving an entry level lawyer’s marketability?

There is no question that an LLM degree in a particular discipline can be quite prestigious, but let’s tackle the issue of whether obtaining one will meaningfully increase your chances of obtaining a better position.

LLM degrees are not for everyone.   But they can be beneficial to some attorneys.  For foreign lawyers who have obtained their law degrees in other countries, obtaining an LLM degree may be the only way that they will be able to get licensed in certain states.  We have seen a marked increase in the number of foreign attorneys who have come to the United States hoping to find meaningful work opportunities here once they have received their LLM and passed the bar in a particular state.  Sadly, not all of these attorneys have fared well in the job market here.  However, without question, if they are interested in returning to their native country with their US LLM in hand, these attorneys are likely to be highly regarded and may even have a strong shot at being hired by a US firm doing business with an office in their own country.

For attorneys in this country, an LLM degree may or may not be a suitable choice, depending upon the practice area.  For instance, an experienced civil and white-collar criminal trial lawyer without a technical undergraduate degree may not benefit from obtaining an LLM in Intellectual Property law.  Intellectual property law in the areas of copyright and trademark, as well as technology and licensing have recently been badly hit by the collapse of the tech sector, and consequently, many attorneys in this area have been hard pressed to find work, despite their strong credentials and expertise in this practice area.    For recent law school graduates, particularly those with little to no practical hands-on work experience in the area of Intellectual Property law, obtaining an LLM may not be a suitable choice at this juncture in their career.

Not all LLM degrees are created equal.  One of the most respected LLM to receive is in the area of tax law.    Indeed, many firms make it almost a prerequisite that their tax attorneys have also gone on at some point in their career to obtain an LLM in tax, regardless of whether their practice area is corporate and partnership tax, international tax, or even ERISA and employee benefits.  Consequently, many graduating law students, particularly in this market and especially if they are not graduating from a top tier law school, may find it useful to go right on for an extra year of study in order to have the added cache and prestige of an LLM in tax.

Tax law is obviously not for everyone.  But it is a specialty that will always be in demand and many tax lawyers are capable of handling a number of transactional business matters in addition to their tax counseling and advisory work.  Very few corporate transactional lawyers can say the same for being able to also do the quite complicated tax aspects of a business deal.  In the areas of ERISA and employee benefits law, so few lawyers have this expertise, that the added cache of an LLM makes them an attractive candidate to virtually any quality law firm, even if the attorney did not originally graduate from a top tier law school.

The same cannot necessarily be said of other practice areas.  While there is no question that an extra year of specialized law studies in a particular practice area, whether it be International law or Intellectual Property, or healthcare law, will certainly enhance one’s resume, it is unlikely that an LL.M. will in and of itself make the difference in your job search.

Not all LLM programs are created equal. US News and World Report publishes a yearly report on the best law schools in the United States.  Resources such as these are available to help you research what law school excels both across the board, and with respect to certain specialties.  In considering an LLM program, do your due diligence and speak with the school’s placement office and find out the number of recent graduates who received job offers upon completion of their studies.  Find out which law firms came on campus to the school to actually recruit for attorneys from the program.  Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, bear in mind that, with the exception of a few truly top ranked law schools such as Columbia or N.Y.U. which probably have a number of law firms from several parts of the country recruiting on campus, most LL.M. programs only attract indigenous law firms.  Consequently, if you want to practice as a healthcare attorney in Florida, don’t go for an LLM in healthcare law in Ohio.  No matter how successful that particular school’s placement record is in Ohio, there is little chance a Florida firm will be knocking on your door.

Conclusion. While an LLM can be a prestigious credential for some attorneys, it is not a panacea, even in a poor economy, for recent law school graduates with little to no work experience in that practice area.  The most notable exception to this is in the tax arena.  For experienced attorneys seeking to jump-start their careers or change practice areas, an LLM may prove useful, provided the practice area is in demand and provided the school they choose has a good track record.