What’s wrong with me?

I suppose it’s possible that I haven’t had enough caffeine today, and it’s making me cranky, but after I read this story about the e-mail flame sent by an NYU B-school professor, I found myself siding with the professor.

http://deadspin.com/5477230/nyu-business-school-professor-has-mastered-the-art-of-email-flaming

A student apparently complained to the professor by e-mail–upset that he wasn’t able to attend a class after arriving late–around an hour late.  But, since it was the first class of the semester, and he was visiting all of the course he was considering that met during that time slot, he should have been allowed to sit in on the balance of the first class.

The professor responded by e-mail.  “…get your s**t together.”  The professor challenged his assumptions about whether it was appropriate (even on the first day of classes) to walk in an hour late.  The professor suggested that just because the student couldn’t have known the professor’s policy regarding lateness, he was still expected to conduct himself according to certain standards.  The professor pointed out that though he has no stated policies with respect to urinating on desks, for instance, there is still no tolerance for it.

I sort of hate to admit I come out pro-professor on this one.  His response e-mail was a little harsh–but also right on, in my opinion.  I hate to be such a stickler for decorum, but the professor is right–professionals should be responsible for their behavior and shouldn’t complain about the lack of consideration when they were–admittedly–terribly late.

I received 9 e-mails from lawyers on Saturday asking to be considered for jobs.  Well, 9 resumes attached to e-mails.  One included a brief cover letter that addressed me specifically.  That was nice.  Several just had sentence fragments.  Two had no text whatsoever.  I don’t need a fancy cover letter when potential candidates approach me.  Even so, it is nice to see a concise and pleasant greeting.  “Thank you for your consideration” goes a long way.  I don’t ignore resumes from any potential candidate, but the way a person introduces themselves to me does make a difference in my overall evaluation.  To paraphrase our NYU professor, there are lots of things that are hard to manage in a career.  Politeness and decorum isn’t one of them, so it’s important to get that right.

The good news and the bad news

The most frequent question I’ve been getting is:  “are things better out there?”

The answer is mixed.  First, there isn’t yet one easy response that applies to all cities, all practices areas, and all lawyers.  For instance, there is good partner level movement–a tremendous amount in fact.  The associate market is changing–which is fantastic–but not quickly and not across the board.

Second, the beginnings of a recovery in the marketplace doesn’t immediately mean that everyone will instantly get re-absorbed into the workforce.  What we see here in New York is a definite upswing in work, which is fantastic news for lots of folks in the legal market.  For example, a lot of firms are doing a tremendous amount of securities work, both transactional and compliance, and our current needs reflect that trend.  The bad news is that the hiring higher-ups have their pulse on the market, and they suspect that in lateral hiring, they can be particularly choosy.

And they are.

The changes in the marketplace are not so simple as whether the economy is failing or whether it’s in recovery.  We are still in an environment where those with the ability to hire new lawyers are testing the market to see the type of the talent they can get.  How selective a firm can be will change depending on how much competition they have in the market.  As the overall work-flow increases in a particular practice and region, job opportunities will expand more meaningfully.

How Do Women Succeed in Law Firms?

Last week’s Economist (www.economist.com, subscription required) discusses the causes and effects of an every growing female workforce.  Women do currently populate equal or greater-than-equal proportions in our universities and workforces at large, and there is much to be said and written about how this apparent equality is changing industry and economy.

From my law firm lens, however, there is still a great deal of progress left to be made, especially among partnership ranks.  One of the articles in the Economist stood out.  In the opinion piece Womenomics:  Feminist Management Theorists are Flirting with some Dangerous Arguments, the author discusses whether women will be more successful running corporations by being like men, or by waiting until corporate culture evolves to recognize those leadership qualities that play more to female strengths (for example, consensus seeking).  In the end, the author encourages women to stick to the former.  Women are well-advised to take a harder edge, like Margaret Thatcher.

In the law firm setting, it’s easy to point out examples of successful female partners who have risen through the ranks without taking on the traditionally ‘hard edge’ associated with old school male leadership.  Having said that, there are a few Margaret Thatchers out there as well.  But in order to see more women successful, must we choose one path or the other?  I find it depressing to think that the only way we’ll see women in law firm partnerships approaching 50% is for all female lawyers to do their best approximation of a tough-and-tumble men.  Is that really what it’s going to take?

Holiday Frustrations and your Job Search

For those who are taking advantage of the end-of-the-year lull to focus on a job search, this can be a difficult time of year. It’s sometimes a good moment to get people on the phone. I myself am enjoying a quiet moment of catch-up in the office and am able to connect with folks without a lot of distraction. Having said that, tomorrow I’ll be in full holiday mode, and not so easy to reach. For those job-seekers out there who are working hard, they may not be able to see much response or movement until after the holiday season. That can be incredibly frustrating.

If you want to take this time to look for something new, by all means. But manage your expectations about how soon you’ll be hearing back from people. One way to combat the frustration of sending out queries without response is to spend some time also just reconnecting with folks. It’s a logical time of the year to reach out to past colleagues and just wish them a happy holiday season and a nice New Year. I’ve gotten several warm notes from folks just saying hello–I’m sure those are the people that will be at the top of my list when the new year starts to hit its stride.

Focus for the remainder of the year on what you are sending out, and don’t worry about what comes back in, at least for now. Enjoy the holidays, and wish someone else a happy holiday season.

How Aggressively Should Firms Re-Hire?

JP Morgan recently announced plans to hire 1200 to staff up its real estate lending capabilities. This is as aggressive a hedge on the recovering market as I’ve seen, in an economy where we still see nothing but mixed signals.

Banks aren’t law firms, of course, but the two industries have a great many parallels. The bursting of the real estate bubble had marked effects on both banks and then law firms, and we’ve seen significant downsizing in both industries. JP Morgan’s bullish hiring makes me wonder: are there law firms who might aggressively start hiring in anticipation of a healthy economic rebound?

I suspect we will see a great deal more reluctance within law firms to over-hire than we might see in other industries. I do see firms trying to predict the perfect time to hire opportunistically before the hiring market becomes competitive again. When we look back, who will be the firms that timed the market right?

Litigators See Light

A couple of months ago, I suggested that the recession ’skipped’ over the litigation uptick that usually occurs as more transactional practices struggle. The American Lawyer confirms that 2009 did not provide the wealth of litigation work that we expected to see.

http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2009/10/new-litigation-trends.html

Citing Fulbright & Jaworski’s litigation trend report, the American Lawyer notes that the forecast looks much more promising for litigation work. The good news is that patience will be rewarded, as the 2010 litigation budgets may very well be expanding.

Extreme Interviewing?

There’s setting yourself apart, and then there’s stalking. CNN is running an interesting story about the difference between a memorable candidate and a menacing one:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/10/05/cb.out.of.box.tactics/index.html

Of course, the law firm world isn’t necessarily quite so creative–I’m not sure I’d recommend to any of my candidates that they show up for an interview with musical accompaniment. It’s a good lesson, though. How do you stand out without freaking someone out?

Collecting Your Thoughts

I get a lot of calls from job seekers. For obvious reasons, there have been more calls from lawyers who are truly struggling with the market than I’m used to in a good economy. Though we are seeing the signs of recovery, no one who is in the market can afford to start getting sloppy in the way that they conduct themselves as they search for a job. Specifically, I get a lot of calls from folks who sound, well, panicked. You may *be* panicked, but take whatever time you need to collect your thoughts.

For example, I get voicemails where people forget to identify themselves. I get long rambling messages. I talk to people who sound out of breath because they saw a job they thought looked interesting and ran out of their office to call me from the street so they wouldn’t be found out. My personal pet peeve is a five minute message where someone talks a long stream of consciousness, and then speeds through their phone number so I have to listen to the message 3 more times to be able to decipher their contact information.

I’m not someone to stand on formality, but i do feel like more and more lawyers out there are sounding quite frenzied. A gentleman called me a couple of weeks ago and was very literally yelling about the fact that he had contacted other recruiters and they weren’t getting back to him. I understand why he’s frustrated, but yelling to a complete stranger isn’t really a job search strategy, is it?

I suggest that before you pick up the phone to pursue a job or a search, take 30 seconds to collect yourself and very briefly think through what it is you want to convey. It’s ok to feel desperate or frustrated or anxious about your job search, but don’t let that infect your presentation. I heard a judge give some amazing speech to lawyers recently. The gist of it was to be honest, be funny, and be brief. Amen.

Leaving Employers off your resume

There seems to be some difference of opinion about whether its appropriate to leave an employer off your resume.  I’ve seen two resumes this week where I noticed a gap in the “work experience” chronology.  On further follow-up, I learned that the lawyer left off an employer from their resume.  In one case, the lawyer omitted that part of their legal experience at the advice of a professional resume writing company.

I am really surprised that anyone is advising lawyers to do this.

In my opinion, your resume should always identify every place where you’ve worked–in the case of lawyers–every single employer since you’ve graduated.  “I don’t want it to look like I’ve worked for too many firms” isn’t an excuse, unfortunately.  Your resume should put your experience in the best possible light, but you have to be totally accurate about what that experience is and when it occurred.

There are lawyers who believe that omitting an employer is nothing short of lying on your resume.  I’m not this militant about it.  I don’t think that most people are trying to be deceitful when they do it–but it’s still a bad idea.  There is no tricking a potential employer into thinking you’ve worked at fewer firms than you actually have–best just to deal with the issue head on.

I look at resumes all day–I can pick out a gap in employment in an instant.  Hiring partners and other hiring professionals inside firms can too.  Instead of obscuring how many times you’ve changed jobs, omitting your tenure at a firm may actually shine a brighter light on the issue.  You don’t want your candidacy for a job to be obscured by a discussion about whether you’ve withheld relevant employment information.

20 years for Marc Dreier?

Judge Rakoff (United States Federal District Court) in Manhattan sentenced Marc Dreier to 20 years in prison yesterday.  Marc Dreier, the sole equity and name partner of his now defunct law firm, plead guilty to a myriad of theft and fraud charges earlier this year.  Dreier’s own lawyer summed up his client’s behavior as a fraud “of epic proportions.”

While the judge didn’t appear to take pity on Dreier, he did note that Dreier’s wrongdoing did not rise nearly to the level of Bernard Madoff’s (who received 150 year sentence only recently).  It’s hard not to compare these two formerly wealthy, powerful New Yorkers whose fraud was uncovered only months apart.  However, does all punishment have to measured now on the Madoff scale?  Would Dreier have received a harsher sentence if he were not sentenced on the heels of Madoff?  I wonder whether the enormity of Madoff’s scheme paled Dreier’s crimes in comparison.  Does Marc Dreier owe Bernie Madoff a thank you note?