Category: Uncategorized

In the continued attempt to network my way into a job, this week I ended up at a legal organization Christmas party. Nothing says festive quite like a bunch of lawyers in suits. It was actually more a lunch than a party. There was a very nice string quartet which almost no one paid any attention to and seemed to spur people to talk louder as opposed to listen to them. One of the few positives of showing up to these things is I get to see the nicer / swankier restaurants around this city. And I also find out which are actually good and which are just overpriced. Sadly, this one was just overpriced and the food and service was really lackluster. I have a feeling they didn’t make many friends in the legal community with this lunch.

The obligatory mingling happened before the lunch, and as with previous networking events, the actual number of attorneys in the room was at best only 50% of the attendees. There were a half dozen law students, but by far the bulk of the people mingling were ‘consultants’ or headhunters. The consultants moved through the room like lampreys hooking onto a shark (an apt simile I suppose). Most were primarily touting themselves as valuation consultants (litigation financial damages guesswork). They would wander over and make a quick introduction, and their eyes would flick down quickly to my nametag seeking the firm or business name to give them an idea of whether I was worth their time. As my tag was blank where the employer should have been, they almost immediately asked who I worked for, and most often once I mentioned I was an attorney looking for work their eyes glazed over and they quickly wandered away to someone else. No money = no interest in talking to you.

People started sitting down for the lunch and as I am surveying the room, an older middle aged woman starts talking to me and then says, “wait… I’ve met you before.” My mind quickly raced through the interviews I’ve had and I couldn’t place her. But she mentioned a few key facts about me from memory so I had definitely met her somewhere. Then it dawned on me. Holy crap. This was the nutty lady from the Happy Hour. She looked different in the light of day, and not half drunk, and not slurring out conspiracy theories. She surveyed the room and said “where do you want to sit?” All I could think was — ‘damnit… Not with you!’ As if by some minor divine intervention, someone a few feet away waved at her and she went to shake their hand and exchange pleasantries. I took the opportunity to head over to a table with only a single chair open, and I sat down next to a nice older gentleman in a tweed jacket. It was probably the best choice I made all day.

It turned out he was a retired general counsel who was now teaching. We started talking about various law school topics. He personally knew several of the professors I had, and the conversation ranged from his distaste of laptops in the classroom to exam material. He held a gravitas such that when he addressed the table, everyone stopped talking and everyone listened. He had been a fixture in the area for a really, really long time and everyone knew him. As I am compelled to do, I had a brief sojourn onto the topic of employment and specifically ‘me seeking employment’. (I am a whore, I’m not too proud it admit it…)

He shot a surreptitious glance over to the kids table that had the half dozen law students, and a few unlucky random individuals, and then started talking about the job market. He obviously felt bad about the situation but also didn’t want any students who might be in one of his classes to hear this. He had been a general counsel of a rather large former Fortune 100 corporation. In his own words, circa 2000, if a student came to him for job advice he could pick up the phone and effectively get the person an interview minimally, and sometime a job just with a phone call. He rather wistfully said, but that is all in the past now. He told me that starting around 2002 everything started to taper off, then by 2008 there was nothing. He basically said he had no chance of getting anyone a job at this point.

Worse, he leaned in and told me one of the most depressing things I’ve heard in a long time. He said “I was having a conversation with someone at one of the big big firms. Think Jones Day.” He then noticed that the person next to us was from Jones Day, and he clarified “not Jones Day, but on par.” And he asked them, “How many summer associates do you have this year?” The attorney told him “zero”. He said “what? None?” And the attorney told him ‘We ended our summer associate program some time ago… I thought you knew.” He then asked, “Well how many law grads did you pick up then.” The attorney answered again – ‘Zero.’ They only hired laterals. Exclusively. 

So quite literally, the model being developed for law is this: Corporations only hire from law firms. Law firms only hire laterals from each other. Neither corporations nor law firms train their attorneys anymore. The only avenue open to newer lawyers are small firms. And they are the only place to gain practical experience and training. And they are the least able to financially absorb training costs, and don’t want to expend much money because they feel that if they do, you will just take that training and go to a higher paying firm once you are trained. So now, you are required to work for free at an internship; then get a badly paying job at a tiny firm. All with the hope that you can port those skills at some point in the distant future to a better paying job; all the while deferring your exorbitant loans until you potentially get a decently paying job. Even though this wasn’t how the situation was setup for those who are now enforcing this regime on us. That’s right. They got the benefits and then rolled up the carpet behind them.

The professor had about as rosy an opinion about the future of the legal industry as I do. And he had the benefit of much greater experience and a very connected career behind his words.

The lunch wound down and I ended up talking to a guy who I had thought was an associate at a large firm. The consultants nearly flocked to him when he walked in the room giving the impression that his firm must be leaking money. I had seen him around previously but hadn’t had the opportunity to talk before. I assumed he was with a big firm based on the attention he was getting, but as it turned out, he was a litigation guy from a small 4 person firm. Apparently the consultants had done research and marked out who was more likely to want litigation support and who didn’t. He had graduated at the same time as me and had a startlingly similar story in relation to not finding work. The only real difference was that he hadn’t moved all over the damn country like I have. It was only this year that he had gotten work with the small firm through some previous contract lit work for them. He gave me a bit of insight from the happier side of actually finding work.

I wandered back to my car generally depressed. I don’t think I am going to show up to these lunches anymore; they aren’t good for my psychological health.

I admit, sometimes I am slow on the uptake. I’ve obviously had a lot of time to consider why I’m not getting offers, and why at least some people out there are getting them over me.

Something I realized after the last interview was a bit of a revelation to me, although it probably shouldn’t have been. Law firms, and law departments are monocultures.

A single person often directly holds sway over who gets hired. A law firm’s managing partner; the District Attorney; the General Counsel of a corporation. Each of them is the ultimate decision maker over which attorney gets hired for any given position.

The same could be said for any business unit which has the ability to oversee the hiring into itself. Human resources does not get nearly as much say about who gets hired into the law department as the lead attorney does; and we want to keep it that way. It makes sense. Those who are most knowledgeable about the field should be the ones making the hiring decisions.

The obvious problem is that it creates a cult of personality, centered around a single person’s concept of what they think makes a good employee. The department takes on the flavor of the person who holds the hiring power.  This is also borne out in the interview process. The singular person decides on how the interview should be conducted and what the questions should be… and interestingly they are also the final arbiter of what constitutes a correct answer.

The gaming commission was setup from the ground up by the crazy lead attorney. It made sense that the people who had been hired and survived in that environment were themselves odd and crazy. He only hired from the 4th tier and he only hired people he got along with. Vis a vis – crazy. The most recent DA interview was filled with true believers because the DA only wanted his office to have true believers working in it. Your passion for social justice had to burn with a righteous zealotry to make it into that office. On a more subtle tone, the multi-position interview went badly because the office was effectively built around many attorneys working independently on their own projects and not bothering other people with their work. But this meant no one communicated to form a bigger picture, built in institutional blindness.

The firms and legal departments mirror their originators because that is who hired in other attorneys who fit the same mold. They become monocultures by unconscious design; or maybe better termed egotistic natural selection.

This concept begins to break down the larger the firm / department becomes. The singular personality can no longer exert full influence over who gets hired. A multi-state firm begins instead to behave more like a corporation with several hiring individuals and a rough homogenizing edict, but the variety begins to seep in over time. It’s an interesting concept which I don’t think I have given much thought to prior to the latest interview.

Minor follow-up to the Boiler Room interview. Today I got a weird follow up phone call. The last interview ended with them telling me they were going to get in touch with me within about 2 days, and then never did. The phone call started out normal enough.                (AH = Angry Headhunter)

AH: “Hey is this Azrael?”

Me: “Yes, speaking.”

AH: (in a very snarky tone) “Hi, this is Tracy with (Angry Headhunters Inc.) You were supposed to send me your resume through email a long time ago.”

Me: “Uhm.. what?”

AH: “You were supposed to send me a resume so I could setup an interview with you.”

Me: (pause…) “yeeeah… I already did both of those things.”

AH: “What?”

Me: “I already sent in a resume, and I showed up there and had an interview with you guys.”

AH: “WHAT!” (Tracy was now noticeably angry) “Who did you have an interview with?”

Me: “I don’t remember her name, but it was a black woman…”

AH: (cutting me off) “A tall black woman?”

Me: “Uhm. I guess so, but I am pretty tall so I don’t usually notice such..” <click> “Hello?….”

So apparently the place which didn’t seem to know where they put my resume, or have any idea I was showing up for the interview they scheduled; also forgot that I ever showed up. It sounded somewhat like someone was trying to steal clients within the headhunter group and there is some bitter infighting. But I am just guessing.

I had a roommate in college — his uncle was a white guy from West Virginia. In the early 80’s, his uncle had been a facilitator of a consortium of corporations making inroads into China. Basically, he was a fixer. If a company wanted something done in China, he smoothed things over and tried to get the government to do it. He was one of the people responsible for the construction of a large swath of interstate highways in China, and had also paved the way for Coca Cola to enter China and setup shop there. The uncle was killed in a car accident on the interstate he helped build, in a collision involving a Coca Cola semi-truck. The extended family often joked that he had committed suicide in a very circuitous way.

—–

So I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what went wrong with this interview. It had gone amazingly well and I had been told point blank they wanted me. After replaying the interview in my mind as I am want to do, I realized what happened.

Anyway, with my copious amounts of free time I finally hooked myself in with a legal aid situation wherein I actually have some pro-bono work. It took far more wrangling than should truly be necessary to volunteer, but I persevered. I had been trying for a while now to get into a legal aid organization so I could actually do something meaningful with my free time and growing pile of licenses and certifications. I’m not going to get into specifics, but the legal air organization is religiously affiliated; to the point that there are nuns (in habits) roaming the hallways of the legal aid office. (Several of them are attorneys too!) It’s well funded and well known and everyone universally agrees it is a great organization.

So as I had mentioned in the original posting, at one point in the interview, I was asked if I voted for Obama. Fantastically illegal, but it was thrown out there. I deflected the question, but to some people’s minds that is proof one way or the other. A little later I was asked if I had any outstanding cases, and I admitted that I only had one connected to a pro-bono representation. Now, I never really thought doing pro-bono work was considered a ‘liberal’ passtime. What you don’t know apparently can hurt you.

One interviewer in particular became a bit too interested. I told them it was completely unconnected, legal specialty-wise, to the position I was applying for, so there was no cross over or conflict. I was pressed a bit more. (Other attorneys might note that one attorney pressing for information about another attorney’s case is considered very poor form, as they are effectively asking you at the minimum to bend privilege for them.) I was then asked if I would be willing to drop the case. This again, is a very very weird question. There is no bar association in the United States which doesn’t laud the merits of doing pro-bono work. To have an interviewer try to convince you to drop a case you have already filed appearance for, in addition to the fact that it was a legal aid case connected to a well known organization full of adorable nuns… It should have hit my warning bells harder than it did. I told them I would rather not drop it if possible, but if it was really deemed necessary I would.

The issue seemed to be dropped, until the end of the interview when the ‘concerned’ attorney handed me a conflicts sheet and asked for the pertinent details of the case. This was being attached to my resume which was being ‘sent up’ as the candidate of choice.

I got the rejection almost 3 weeks later. No reason given. I tried to contact the managing attorney to find out what happened, but to no avail. As if by some cosmic joke, I was driving in my car and a news story came on NPR. It was the head attorney for this state office… he described his job as “waking up everyday trying to find new ways to sue Obama.” My application had to be rubber stamped directly by this man. Suddenly my rejection made sense. I had been rejected because I had taken a pro-bono case which was politically adverse to this man’s politics. He was a rabid republican. I was just trying to find something substantive to do with my free time… I am not politically motivated. But it didn’t matter. I was determined to be ‘too liberal’ for the office.

I talked to another attorney who verified the state office was rabidly partisan. Much like my roommates uncle, I was my own undoing. My unemployment led me to try to do something legally related while waiting for work, and that endeavor ultimately led them to reject me from actually getting work. I literally can’t win.

I generally post my ramblings and horrible things that happen to me in my professional life on here. So I figured, for once… I would share a funny (albeit still sorta horrible) story for a change.

A bit of background is in order however. When you work at a legal summer internship, the firm you work for will usually also attempt to pay homage to the whole “work life balance” joke that is often bandied about in most firms’ propaganda; and they setup a handful of outings for the interns. The popular one is everyone goes to a baseball game.. or something of that sort. Some of the higher priced firms go all out in an effort to engender envy among peers back at law school and attempt to create mystique through the retelling of the amazing events put on for the benefit of their interns. These fun outings are always limited to the summer months when the greatest number of interns are churning.

As I worked at a government office, there was no money for fun (or fun outings….Or nearly anything else for that matter). They setup a few events, usually by calling around to other government offices where they could call in a favor and get a tour of somewhere interesting; and if you think about everywhere that has government money invested in it… well, some of the tours were actually pretty cool. Others… well one was going to a Medical Examiners office for an autopsy. Bets were always made about which new intern would puke first.

Other invitations to the interns were weird. I got invited to come to a softball game where my office was playing in an all lawyer intramural league made up of a bunch of the other firms in the city. Now, most people would think that this means they wanted me to play; maybe I read too much into the invitation of “Hey Azrael… you definitely need to come out to the softball game tonight.” I showed up and awkwardly sat watching the game for about 40 minutes, made all the more akward by the fact that I was classmates with several of the interns on the other team (whose firm I guess wanted them to play…) Ultimately I wandered off and left wondering why I had been asked to show up.

But that’s not this story. No. This is the story of the meatcake. Towards the end of the summer, the wrangler-of-interns pops their head in and tells us that there is a lunch in our honor with the mayor in about a week, and that we have to make sure to be presentable on the day of. This wasn’t a big issue since most of us were in and out of court on a regular basis and therefore always in suits. So the day rolls around and the couple of legal interns in our department join up with the handful of legal interns in a related department and we head off to City Hall for our lunch with the mayor.

There were only about a dozen legal interns. I will tell you honestly… I thought we were going to be going out to a restaurant to thank us for working for free all summer and we would have a nice lunch with the mayor. We show up at city hall and are met at the door by the attorney whose job it had been to setup most of the internship program and activities. We’re ushered inside to see that the main foyer of city hall had been filled with round tables and chairs, and at the other end had been setup a serving table for food. All of us were slightly confused. There had to be about 300 chairs… our keen intellect told us something was a bit off.

So our group of a dozen or so soon-to-be attorneys wend out way to a middle table and sit down. The atrium is empty except for us. Within a few minutes, the main doors open and a veritable flood of young teenagers come in and start sitting down. They’re wearing your usual jeans / T-shirt that you would expect. It was at this point that we knew something was definitely off. The intern wrangler walks over and talks to someone by a podium for a minute and then walks back and sits down with us again, at which point she says…

“I think I’ve made a mistake. I saw the lunch for interns on the calendar and thought it was for us, so I signed all of you up. Although it is for interns, it was more geared to the high school programs.” The crowd started to settle down, and someone started walking to the podium. And with that the intern wrangler stood up. She then looked at us at added… “I’m going to leave. But you all have to stay…. Sorry.” At which point she veritably sprinted away from what she had wrought upon us. It may have been more fitting if she cackled hysterically as she retreated.

So there we were. A table of much older, nicely dressed law students; sitting in a sea of high schoolers. To say we stood out was putting it mildly. We sat through several (thankfully) short speeches thanking us for our volunteer efforts, and then we were invited to go get food from the serving table.

None of us are horribly happy about how things are turning out, but as I mention many times before… free food is free food, and I am not one to say no to such a thing. So I eventually get to the front of the line and I am greeted with a large, white frosted sheet cake. I’m slightly confused, because I thought we were having lunch, but whatever. Cake is good too. I then notice something odd about the cake… what I had initially mistaken for colored frosting piping on top were actually very thin strips of bell peppers. Before I could ask “what is that?” the server plops a large piece on my plate. I look at it for a moment somewhat confused, but the line is moving so I take my cake, a handful of potato chips, and a dixie cup of red fruit punch back to the table.

I no sooner sit down than 3 people say “Don’t eat the cake.” This obviously piques my interest. Someone has already figured out what the mystery cake is… So I ask “So… what is the cake? And why shouldn’t I eat it?” I prod it slightly with my spork trying to figure out what I am looking at. The answer was horrifying.

The cake was a 3 layer cake. The filling of each layer was a different lunch-meat-salad– tuna salad, chicken salad, and chipped ham… uhm.. salad (is that even a thing?). Each layer was separated by an extra thick piece of bread. This whole pseudo-sandwich was then frosted (as you would a sheet cake) with mayonnaise. And more mayo was randomly thrown in as a binding agent wherever they felt it necessary. I’m not sure who came up with this idea, but hell has a special place just for them.

As with any group, there was one person at the table (not me) who decided to be the human garbage disposal and voiced his opinion that it wasn’t half bad between bites of this mayonnaise monstrosity. No one else ate it.

We waited an acceptable amount of time and then got the hell out. I will admit, before we left, several of us availed ourselves of one of the more amusing attractions of the luncheon. If you wanted, the mayor was taking pictures with anyone who was willing and they would send you the photo. About 3 weeks after the luncheon, I got a mailer to the department containing a lovely autographed photo of me and the mayor.

I still have it. Framed no less. And I smile and think of the meatcake every time I see it.

Throughout law school and continuing into your professional career, you will be invited to random “Happy Hour’ events. The ones in law school usually are just a way for social (to heavy) drinkers to find one another and if you get anything for free, it will usually only be one free well drink. Professional Happy Hours are a bit more rangy. If it is just a professional organization get together, it is likely a networking event and nothing is free. But every once in awhile, you get to go to one sponsored by someone… And those can be fantastic.

So I went to a sponsored Happy Hour recently; again in pursuit of my quest to network across every individual in the legal field within a 50 mile radius of me. Twas glorious. The sponsor of this wonderful free event put a wristband on each person and we were allowed full range of anything the bar had. Anything. There were a few people constantly moving through crowd asking if we wanted more to drink, and there was a never-ending table of food.

Seeing as I drove alone and was trying to professionally smooze, I only had one drink, which was half empty most of the night so it appeared I was actually drinking without actually drinking. I appreciated the completely open bar, but sadly really could not use it to its full advantage.  The event was sponsored by a headhunting company. You might see the utility of getting a lot of lawyers drunk to find out office gossip and see who is leaving and moving where, and who might be dissatisfied and want to be plied with potential opportunities.

I had quite a few conversations wherein I dropped the obvious “looking for work” but had relatively few takers. My venial knowledge of sports was quickly surpassed in several conversations I ended up in when people starting asking about in depth statistics questions. I did end up talking to a 1L (just 2 months in) as the invitation had been extended to a select group of the local law schools. They introduced themselves and mentioned they were 2 months in, and I told them my advice was “Get out now.” I passed on a good 10-15 min. of things that might help them, but I pretty much said that they didn’t have credentials that hit near the mark of anyone in the room and nowhere near mine, and look where I am. Harsh reality, but true. They really didn’t appreciate the sentiment, as many people who don’t hear what they want, I am sure they discounted what I told them and thought I was an outlier. I felt the plight of Cassandra as I watched them wander off.

I had a wonderful conversation with a family law attorney who happened to be attending as a +1 of one of the invited attorneys. They were absolutely delightful to talk to, and unusually social and intelligent (a surprisingly absent talent among many in the legal field as I have found out). Our conversation however was cut short as the invited attorney walked over, relatively drunk, and decided the drunker louder part of their brain needed to be expressed to us both.

At some point I was cornered by an uncomfortably close-talking paralegal looking for work, who was really quite … uhm, well… vapid. Nice enough person, but damn there was not a great deal going on upstairs.

I extricated myself to a table of attorneys and had possibly the most hilarious conversation that I wasn’t allowed to laugh at. There was a blonde woman attorney on the other side of the table. And she was at least past the halfway mark to drunk. She was the absolute walking embodiment of the Fox News talking points. And not just one, oh no. I am not sure how it started. But my attention was inexorably drawn when she started ranting about Obama, and how she personally didn’t think he was born here. Then it went to Obamacare and how it was bankrupting the US. Then onto immigration. And then how black people were ruining the country.

This continued for probably 20-ish minutes. I maintained a judicious and bemused detachment to the whole affair. You never know who you are talking to and who their friends are… in the legal realm it is best not to make enemies out of hand. Although I did at one point add some point to the conversation about looking for work. She told me I was quite handsome and said I had lots of strong points so she was sure I would find work. I told her I personally felt one of my strongest points in interviews has been a good poker face, because I have had to deal with some absolutely crazy people and you have to make sure not to show any reaction. Inside I was quaking with laughter — outside I was chatting amicably with a crazy person.

Her ranting finally reached a lull in which I asked where she was working. My old prejudice was played out right before my eyes as she told me she was a solo. Solos are usually solo for a reason… be it they are crazy, or a curmudgeon, or maybe just don’t know any better. I still couldn’t say anything though, because you never know who they are friends with. It was at this point that a waitress showed up and wanted to know if she could remove the huge plate of food as the event was starting to wind down. The crazy solo looked around, and said no. Then as soon as the waitress left she started wrapping the food up in napkins and stuffing it in her purse. She looked over at me and said “well if no one is going to eat it, I’ll take it home…. for .. my dog.” The hesitation made my bemusement at her crazy turn a bit to pity.

The party had wound down. I talked to the headhunter, they wanted me to call and chat. We’ll see where it goes, but I am never horribly hopeful regarding headhunters.

minor update: Well, my opinion hasn’t changed significantly. This headhunter was by far the most civil and friendly of the bunch that I’ve talked to, so that’s a plus to their firm. Unfortunately they also started off by saying that I was relatively worthless to them from a business sense and wouldn’t offer any representation. On the flip side, they offered some advice on my resume and dropped me the names of a few places which might be interested in me and even offered to contact one directly on my behalf (for free); so I count that as a net benefit.

(from craigslist, I wish I had captured the screenshot… sorry) Heavy litigation caseload comprising civil, family, and criminal cases. The candidate MUST have an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University.

Sooo… You are required to be from a specific fringe religious sect to work here. You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but… as it turns out it’s actually required. My bad.

---

Potential? Is this Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle as applied to workforce Economics? Maybe they are merely using the term as opposed to kinetic jobs.

---

I imagine a 65 year old Chinese man writing this… the strange passive aggressive phrasing and request for mandarin speakers make it sound almost like Engrish.

---

Work 5 days a week, plus Saturdays. Experience required, but not necessary. (?)

---

 

Sweet! An internship paying nothing for licensed attorneys? Where do I sign up?

---

 

That’s a pretty high bar you’ve got to pass for this job… (yes this was in relation to an attorney position).

---

 

Another unpaid internship for licensed attorneys. But wait! You are also listed on par with current college students. Oh happy day! 

---

 

As I have mentioned previously, I am nothing if not a connoisseur of free lunches; and with my recent foray into the art of networking how could I say no to a free Bar Association event which was called a “networking luncheon.”

I have been showing up to pretty much any and all free CLE and legal meetings you can imagine in my geographic area. I think I am CLE compliant for my next 2 reporting periods at this point. A fair number of them involve free food which is obviously a nice draw for me personally.

Before I go further, I want to explain to the uninitiated how the listing of CLEs and Bar meetings are arranged. The bar assoc. is composed of the huge main organization and within it there are multiple subcommittees which you often have to pay an additional fee to be a member. So for example the criminal law section of a local bar association often has private section organizational meetings and also private CLEs which are only free to the Criminal Law Section members, but which other attorneys can show up to by paying a small fee for the CLE. This information is always listed and you can usually tell which are the public meetings by the listing of a fee for non-section members and also by how it is described on the master calendar.

Anyway, the Bar Assoc. calendar of events listed a networking luncheon being presented BY the women in law society. This is important, because often subsections of the Bar will put on a public CLE every so often to drum up membership in their section. The listing stated no fee and said it had open registration. You can probably see where this is headed.

I showed up to the luncheon and sat down with a nice boxed lunch I was handed at the door. I look up at the projector screen to see the presentation title “Something Legally Related and Very Boring, presented TO the Women in Law Society Section.” I turned over the change in preposition in my mind and how it was a rather large distinction. I turned around from where I was sitting to quickly scan the room and saw I was the only guy in the room of about 50+ women. Yes… the only one. I considered this for a moment. It was too late to leave as the talk had already begun, and I already had my food. So I inwardly shrugged, ate my lunch and left without talking to anyone.

Not my best networking attempt.