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One of the major determinants for how an associate’s year-end review is going to go is how much money she made the firm. There are other things too, like how an associate is developing client and case management skills and whether the associate is developing her own book of business. But when everything is boiled down to its rawest form, partners at most firms want to know how profitable the associate is. Since an associate’s profitability is the most important thing to her employer, she should make it a priority to know this information herself. But I recommend that she not only know the information for a year-end meeting, but monitor it throughout the year.

Keeping track of your billable hours

Most of us have a pretty good idea of what our billable requirements are. But do you know how much that translates to in actual dollars? Do you know your hourly rates? Do you know what your share of the overhead is so that you can determine how profitable you are? Does your firm allow you access to this information? Since I started practicing in 2012, I have always kept thorough track of my billable time entries on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. I’m a sucker for spreadsheets, so I created a spreadsheet that would help me keep up with my time on an ongoing basis. Only recently did I realize I was missing an important column. The money column. I was not keeping track of how much money those billable hours translated to. This is important because time entries don’t always tell the whole picture.

Monitoring the value of your billable hours

Some firms allow you to write down time for attending CLEs or marketing events. If you go to an all-day CLE, you may get to write down 7.0 hours for this day. Or if you travel to Chicago to pitch a new client or building your relationship with an existing client, you write down 18.0 hours for your travel/meeting time. Your monthly hours total will still look great. But while those are essential tasks, the hours you spend doing those tasks did not earn the firm any revenue.

If you are only keeping up with your time entries, like I was, you are going to miss a vital piece of information. You don’t know how much money your cumulative time is worth. In a meeting with one of the partners at my firm, we were talking about larger goals for the futures of the firm and myself, and how billables affected those things. He recommended that rather than shooting for an hourly goal each day, I have a goal to bill a particular amount of money each day. Doing so would put me in a better position to reach my goals.

Because I already had a spreadsheet for my time entries, all I had to do was add a column to my spreadsheet and plug in an easy formula that would allow me every day as I entered my time to see how much money my time entries amounted to each day. [Note: Time entries and billable rate are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect actual events].

As you can see, this is a straightforward spreadsheet. There are only five columns. The first two identify the file number and name. The third indicates the work I performed. Column D enumerates the increments of time each task took. Column E is the new column — it shows the monetary value of each task. If you’re not proficient with Microsoft Excel, here’s what the formula looks like to derive that value: =sum([insert cell value here]*[insert hourly rate here]). Here’s the sample: =sum(d4*200).

The importance of knowing your revenue generation

Your value to your firm is directly tied to how much revenue you generate. I assure you that your firm knows how much money you’re making them. If you want to be on equal footing at your year-end meeting or if you want to advocate for a raise, you need documentation to substantiate your position.

You may be like me and be at a firm that treats you well and have people around you who are interested in your well-being, but that comfort level is not a good reason to be unknowledgeable about the business side of things. If your firm has goals for you or you have goals for yourself, the best way to make sure you are moving toward accomplishing those goals is to regularly monitor your progress. Keeping track of the monetary value of your billable hours is one of the most effective ways to monitor your profitability and position yourself for success within your firm.

Photo by Andy Simmons.

Because in our line of work, time is money, I keep close track of my billable hours. I write my time entries down after each billable event. When I hear about lawyers not writing down time for a couple of days and having to go back and recreate it, I shudder. People are generally lousy judges of how long things have taken to accomplish tasks. When lawyers go back and recreate time, they are sure to overbill clients for some tasks while underbilling clients for different tasks. Not to mention the things they’ve done and forgotten about in the last 24-48 hours. Regardless of how it turns out, someone is getting cheated out of time or money.

Have a system for documenting time entries

Since my first day of practice, I have used the same method of recording my time entries. I keep a yellow 5×8 steno pad to the right of my mouse and write down every billable task as I do it. During the week, my notepad goes with me nearly everywhere, or at least anywhere I’ll be long enough to check email, answer a phone call, or write notes down. Later I enter those time entries into an Excel spreadsheet (more on that next week). My assistant then takes those spreadsheets and drops those time entries into our billing software.

While redundant, my system has the benefit of having one hard copy of my billable time in case something tragic happens to our computer systems (I have every notepad that I’ve filled out dating back to 2012, and they’re moldering in some desk drawer — I feel oddly sentimental about them), as well as two digital copies of those same time entries – one in Excel and another in the billing software.

There are many effective methods of keeping track of time, and I’m not advocating that mine is the best. There are new programs that will sync Siri or Alexa to billing software and allow you to dictate your time entries directly into the software. One of my partners keeps his billing software open all day on a second monitor and types up his time entries as he goes along. My point is that regardless of what method you use to record your billable time, you need to have a system you abide by that doesn’t allow you to lose unrecorded time or force you to recreate it sometime later.

Managing your to-do lists

Because my practice involves a large volume of personal auto cases, I have a lot of cases going at once. Most of these cases involve many of the same tasks in each case with little variation. I’ve written before about the spreadsheet I use for case management purposes. I use a color-coded system to identify what tasks have yet to be done, are pending, or still need to be done.

For example, if I haven’t issued discovery requests yet, I’ll have a red marker over that cell. Once the discovery requests have been filed but before I received the responses, the cell will be yellow or orange (once the responses are overdue). When the written discovery is completed, those cells will be green. But there are plenty of tasks that arise that fall outside the scope of my case management spreadsheet. For these things, I have a to-do list. And I love to-do lists, mostly because I really enjoy crossing things off to-do lists. In fact, I’ve been known to put an item on a to-do list so that moments later when I complete the task, I can have the joy of crossing it off the list.

I write my to-do lists on a white 5×8 steno notepad that is the sibling of the yellow notepad for time entries. Again, this is the same method I’ve used since I started practicing. As with recording billable hours, there are many methods for making to-do lists. You can use Evernote, an app on your phone, or practice management software. As technology progresses, your options for systematically managing your to-do list will also increase.

However you choose to keep up with the tasks you need to accomplish to keep your practice in order, make sure to be organized and consistent. The more consistently you implement the systems you have in place to manage your practice, the more efficient you’re going to be and the less likely you are to allow important events to fall through the cracks. Your systems can be, but do not have to be, complicated — they can be as simple as having two different color notebooks that you keep attached to your hip.

Photo by Gene Wilburn.

In January of 2018, in the middle of the college football national championship game, Nick Saban substituted out his quarterback Jalen Hurts, who had led Alabama to its second consecutive national title game. Saban sent in his true freshman QB Tua Tagovailoa, who by all accounts was expected to be the next great quarterback. In the final moments of the game with Alabama trailing, Tua delivered a strike to his wide receiver for the game-winning touchdown. For the next eight months, something of a quarterback controversy brewed in Tuscaloosa. For the 2018 season, would Alabama’s quarterback be the junior who had lead the team for two years or the young QB who had won the hearts and imaginations of fans over the course of two quarters of football? And it was this question that hounded Nick Saban in every interview he gave over that time. Ultimately, Tagovailoa started the season opener in 2018 and again led Alabama to a victory, this time over Louisville. After the game, sideline reporter Maria Taylor asked Saban what he had learned about his quarterback situation. He responded poorly: “Well, I still like both guys. I think both guys are good players. I think both guys can help our team, alright? So why do you continually try to get me to say something that doesn’t respect one of them? I’m not going to. So quit askin’!” A short time later, Saban called Taylor and apologized for his bad behavior. Then he addressed at his press conference and took ownership for his inappropriate response. This is an example of exactly what should happen when you behave badly. You show contrition and offer an apology to the person toward whom your words or actions were directed. What you should not do is make excuses for your bad acts.

Do not excuse your bad behavior

I was at a docket call recently with a judge whose assistant is notorious for sending nasty emails and cussing lawyers who don’t do things the way she likes it. Before the judge entered the courtroom, she made us all be quiet and listen to describe, then excuse her own bad behavior. She told the room full of lawyers the reason she acted as she does is because she wants to “mentor” lawyers. Not every lawyer has someone to show them the way, so she has put that mantle upon herself. She said she knows people forward her emails to each other and talk about her behind her back, but this only serves to make her stronger and “want to help you more.” Honestly, she sounded like an abusive parent who tells the child, “I’m doing this for your own good,” or “You made me do it.” This is not the appropriate response when you act out. Making excuses for your bad acts will build resentment and preclude any possibility of a good relationship.

Apologizing makes all the difference

It’s a veritable certainty there will be occasions that you behave badly. And when you do, you need to have the humility to recognize your wrongdoing and be quick with an apology. Often the longer you wait to apologize, the harder it gets to do so.

Here’s a story that fellow lawyer @frozensooner shared on Twitter:

Two days ago, had a phone call with [opposing counsel] that, well, didn’t go like he’d expected. I didn’t agree with him on his interpretation of the contract, and I didn’t agree with his characterization of my client’s actions. He got fairly heated, and when I said, “It was nice talking to you,” he responded “I wish I could say the same.” This is someone who’s a junior partner at a fairly large firm. Not Latham, but definitely at least a major player in several states. I was taken somewhat aback. 10 minutes later, he emailed an apology. Honestly, that’s all it took. I appreciated that he did that. We all get hot under the collar and say things we regret. An apology isn’t necessarily as good as just not doing it, but it gives a look at your character. It takes a big person to apologize sometimes.

What makes for a good apology?

Let’s start with what does not make for a good apology – “I’m sorry if you were offended by what I said.” This is not an apology. It is nothing. Actually, it’s not nothing, because it’s likely to fuel the fire you kindled when you acted like a jerk, rather than squelch it.

A good apology has two components: contrition and specificity. When you apologize for bad behavior, you should address specifically what you said or did wrong. And your apology should reflect remorse for your deeds.

We all exhibit bad behavior sometimes. It’s just going to happen. But the next time you offend opposing counsel or your assistant or your spouse, be quick to recognize your misstep and apologize.

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Photo by Honza Sterba.

Good goals are a beacon to let you know you’re headed in the right direction. They enable you throughout the course of a year to review your list to affirm whether you are taking actions to help you achieve the goals you’ve set. Without goals, you are a boat adrift at sea. You can paddle as hard as you’re able, for as long as you can, in whatever direction you see fit. But without a specific destination in mind and a beacon to guide you, there is no correct direction for you to travel. Your efforts become flitting and circular. More often though, if you do not set your own goals, someone else will impose his own goals on you. Your efforts then will be achieving someone else’s agenda. Not growing your own business. Not building your own practice. Not seeking what is in your own best interest. Instead, you will be a cog in another’s machine. And that’s the best case scenario. The other alternative is that you go nowhere at all. A body at rest tends to stay at rest unless some other force acts upon it. Without goals to guide you, you may just sit in stagnant doldrums toiling away, accomplishing nothing.

Setting Goals Has Real Effects

I started setting goals three years ago. Now, as the leaves start to turn, my mind also turns to ruminating on the upcoming year and what I want to accomplish in the next 12-month cycle.  I’ll start scribbling things down, and eventually, I’ll formalize a list as December rolls around. This method has served me well. It enables me to know what actions I need to take throughout the year to accomplish what I’ve set out to do. There is a system I like to use for setting goals: S.M.A.R.T. Goals. These are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused, and Time-bound. The University of Virginia provides the following helpful definitions:

Specific: Goals should be simplistically written and clearly define what you are going to do. Measurable: Goals should be measurable so that you have tangible evidence that you have accomplished the goal. Usually, the entire goal statement is a measure for the project, but there are usually several short-term or smaller measurements built into the goal. Achievable: Goals should be achievable; they should stretch you slightly so you feel challenged, but defined well enough so that you can achieve them. You must possess the appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to achieve the goal. Results-focused: Goals should measure outcomes, not activities. Time-bound: Goals should be linked to a timeframe that creates a practical sense of urgency, or results in tension between the current reality and the vision of the goal. Without such tension, the goal is unlikely to produce a relevant outcome.

You May Not Achieve All Your Goals

I can tell you now that by the time 2018 draws to a close, I will not have accomplished all the goals I set for myself, but I will still have moved the ball forward. I will be in a better position in 2019 to reset and achieve those goals, than if I had never set them. There are other goals I have accomplished. In 2017, I set out to publish my first book this year. I signed a book contract in late November 2017, but there was still a long row to hoe before the book could enter the world. Lots of writing and rewriting. Working with the good folks at the ABA. Then in June, days before my second kiddo was born, my book Building a Better Law Practice was sitting on virtual bookshelves.

Setting Goals for Your Law Practice

As it related to my practice for my 2018 goals, I wanted to strengthen and develop my relationships with a few specific clients. Keeping that in mind helped me do things throughout the year that would continue to build our business relationship through trust and collaborative processes. To help you keep your goals in mind, I recommend you put your list somewhere they are visible to you. A constant reminder to take affirmative steps and make strategic decisions toward achieving those goals. I’ve seen people frame their list of goals and hang it on the wall. Others have made their lists the backgrounds on phones and monitors. However you choose to do it, now is the time to start thinking about next year’s goals. Setting goals is your opportunity to take control of your future and work toward the practice you want for yourself, rather than the future someone else will impose on you if you do not fill that void yourself.

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Photo by Josh Beam.

When I look at my traffic on the blog every month, the same few articles are at the top of the heap every time: Objecting to Discovery Requests under the new FRCP 34; Beware of Bogus Requests for Admission; Your Client Died during the Case – How about a Suggestion of Death?; and What Is a Party’s Duty to Supplement Discovery? The trouble (if you can call it that) is these aren’t the types of articles I most enjoy writing. But they are the issues I and other lawyers are encountering on a regular basis and frequently have questions about. They are the types of things lawyers are going to Google to find more information about. These articles are a useful, practical resource for lawyers, and I’m proud of that. It’s just that there are other topics I like writing about more. So for my blog to have the furthest reach, I have to strike a balance between the things lawyers are searching for and the other things I want to write on. Your law practice may not be so different. Maybe your practice is almost exclusively workers’ comp defense but you really enjoy generally liability work. You do mostly family law but would rather do animal rights law. You’re known as a criminal defense lawyer but your passion is wills, estates, and trusts. So how do you get there?

Bridging the Gap to Your Passion

Your current practice is a land mass. The practice you want to have is a separate land mass. Running between them is a raging river of doubt, uncertainty, and — let’s be real — student loans and other monthly expenses. You could take a blind leap of faith. You could just stop taking criminal cases and hope some folks will call you to do their will. I could stop writing about discovery and the rules of civil procedure, and only write about practice and client management topics. For that matter, I could quit my job so I could have more time to write the five books that I’ve started either writing or planning. But the boom-or-bust method does not put you in a situation for the greatest likelihood of success. A better strategy is to build a bridge from the practice you have to the one you want. While continuing to do your family practice work and take new cases, you begin letting those clients know you can also handle animal rights or estate issues. You update your website. Send out an informational email to your subscriber list and perhaps to other lawyers in the area. Run some Facebook or Instagram ads. As you begin to develop the new line of business, you will begin to bridge the gap between the practice you have had and the practice you want to have. It won’t happen overnight and perhaps your work will never consist solely of the types of cases you most enjoy. But at a minimum, it will give you an outlet, something to look forward to in your caseload. The important thing is that you plan and make positive steps toward the transition. Toward the work your are passionate about. So that you can begin to pay the bills with the work that gives you more drive and inspiration.

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Photo by John Lloyd.

How many times have you heard something to this effect: “The key to getting clients is to just do great work.” Well, I’m here to tell you that’s a partial truth, at best.

Clients expect you to do great work.

Clients expect great work. That’s what happens when you pay upwards of $150/hour for someone’s services (and often 2-3 times that amount). There are built-in expectations. So for someone to tell you that if you just do great work, you’ll get more clients, is mostly inaccurate. Because the reality is, if you just do great work you’ll be … meeting expectations. And nobody refers their friends, family, and coworkers to businesses who just meet their expectations.

It is important that you be a good lawyer and do great work for your clients. But you cannot rely on doing great as a means of bringing in more business. Here are some lawyers who have had experience with the theory that all you need for business to come your way is to just do great work:

Nathan: I was at a midsized insurance defense firm at one point. They basically had this theory. 80% of work from one carrier. They did very well. Then the carrier did some internal shifts and they really had a decline in work and ended up scrambling to start marketing. While great work does help bring in clients, I don’t think it’s at an appreciable rate. It’s just luck at that point. You have to make sure you are on potential clients’ radars, and doing that at a low/moderate rate steadily is better than not at all and then if something goes south trying to play catch-up.

That firm imploded down from about 25 attorneys to 10, and I think they are back around 15 now over a 5-ish year period. And now their strategy includes regular marketing efforts. My current firm is very much “do great work and other work will come in,” but they also encourage marketing even if it’s small amounts. And they, from what I understand in my time here and the history, have not had the size/business fluctuation.

Matthew: It’s not great work that finds the clients. Its great work that results in good reviews, that results in word of mouth and SEO.

Kayla: In today’s day and age, law firm marketing is about as many people finding you as possible. It’s not about doing great work. I do great work, and those clients don’t write reviews. I do great work and I have random people demand their money back. I do okay work and they write 5 star reviews.

Combine great work with other marketing efforts

All of the lawyers above have expressed what is the whole truth about doing great work for your clients – if you combine that with other marketing efforts, you can leverage yourself into a better situation. For most corporate and insurance defense lawyers, clients aren’t going to come find you.

For all the work I’ve brought into my firm, none of it has been because some large insurance company came calling: “Hey, Jeremy, we heard you’re a good lawyer and you really make a priority of client communication and collaboration. And we’ve just got to add you as our panel counsel.” Nope. It might happen once in a while. But it’s not something you can count on.

You’ve got to find ways to meet people who could send you business. You have to begin to build up trust with those people and add value for them. Then perhaps when they have a need, they will think of you and send you work. And then the great work you’re doing will result in them continuing to send you work and continuing to be your client.

So here’s the truth about the axiom, “Just do great work”: Doing great work will help you maintain your existing clients, and it may result in those clients recommending you to others, but it is not to be relied upon as the core marketing strategy for your firm.

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Photo by Sarah-Rose.

I was involved in a multiparty email exchange about a pre-trial scheduling order. As sometimes happens in conversations among many lawyers about how much time to allot to discovery, expert disclosures, and dispositive motion deadlines, things went a little sideways. And since all this communication was occurring by email, no one could read anyone’s tone, and each inferred the worst from the other parties to the exchange.

Everyone was sitting in his or her own office getting progressively more frustrated. I got an email from one lawyer putting opposing counsel on blast. Just really letting him have it. The allegations were that he was bad at his job and his client would be best served by firing him. He was lazy and incompetent. And he was a total moron. But the language was much more harsh.

Then I noticed the contents of the To and CC boxes. The sender had hit REPLY ALL. Everyone in the email chain had the joy of reading his email and knowing he had unwittingly exposed his innermost loathing to everyone. There was a lot of schadenfreude involved in this part. You’ll not be surprised to learn that we didn’t succeed in agreeing to the proposed scheduling order.

REPLY ALL is an option, but shouldn’t be the default

You and I both know people who use REPLY ALL as their default email response. Usually it’s in response to a firmwide email for whom the original sender is the only person interested in the response. But it’s a terrible habit that can result in … unfortunate and unforeseen consequences. Don’t be that guy who uses REPLY ALL as your default email response.

That’s it. That’s all there is today. Just a gentle reminder that REPLY ALL should be the exception, not the rule, when it comes to responding to emails.

And one more thing. I’ve heard folks say, Never put anything in an email that you wouldn’t want read back to you by a judge. That’s a good rule to live by. Keep it in mind next time you want to send a nasty email. You likely don’t want that made an exhibit to a motion.

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Photo by Mark Robinson.

Before going to law school, I was a high school teacher. I stood in front of classrooms of kids all day. During the fall, I coached football. In the winter, I helped with the basketball program. In the spring, I went to a lot of baseball games. And when on summer break, I framed houses or hung gutter for friends of mine. I was active. I was in my 20s. It was easy to keep trim even though I didn’t do any real exercise.

Then I went to law school in 2009, where I became sedentary. I sat for seemingly endless hours, listening or reading. And the weight started to creep up. By Christmas, it was noticeable. I was self-conscious about it and unhappy. I started going to the gym with my wife to work out. It helped some, but I hated working out at the gym. After several months, my wife mentioned she wanted to run a 5K. Neither of us had ever done any running before, but I decided I’d run with her. Anything to be out of that gym.

Little did I know I had traded one form of misery for another. We printed off a couch-to-5K running regimen and began our training. Going from no cardio to running 3 times a week is hard. Even when those initial runs consist of little more than run for 1 minute, walk for 30 seconds; run for 2 minutes, walk for 1 minute; and so forth as you slowly, steadily building up your endurance. I did not enjoy learning to run … at all. But I did prefer being outside to being in that dreaded gym.

By the time I was able to run 3 miles, I had decided that I liked running. In fact I decided I wanted to run a half marathon. And 5 months later, I ran the Mercedes Half Marathon in Birmingham. Then I ran a few more races. The next year, my wife ran a half marathon with me at the Talladega Superspeedway. Running became an important part of my life over the next few years. Then we had a kid, and I haven’t run regularly since. But I learned some important things along the way.

Muscle memory is an asset

When you first start running or even when you stretch yourself to run new distances, you don’t know what to expect. You hold back somewhat on your tempo and exertion levels because you don’t know what 3 miles or 6 miles or 13 miles feels like. But eventually you do it enough that when you set out to run a particular distance, your body knows what’s coming. When I was conditioned well, I knew that running 3-4 miles at about an 8:00 minute mile would give me a pretty good workout. I could cruise through 6 miles miles at a 10:00/mi pace and feel good afterward. Even though I haven’t run in about a year (which I’m more than a little ashamed to admit), I could go out right now and run 3 miles because my body still knows what that would take.

Writing requires the same training. If you’d told me in 2016 at the outset of this blog, that I would write a 45,000 word book, I’d have found that hard to believe. But I didn’t have to write a 45,000 word book all at once. I had to write 800 words on one topic, 900 words on another topic for months on end. It took me a while to find my writing voice, but once I did, everything fell into place much more easily. I trained my brain how to think in a particular way so that now, when I sit down to write about a topic, I have muscle memory I can rely on.

Even on days when I’m not feeling particularly inspired or nothing seems to be falling into place well, I can push through the obstacles and get through the writing I need to do. This applies to legal writing, blogging, and creative writing. If you make a practice of writing regularly, you’ll find your brain is a more finely tuned muscle that’s able to respond upon demand.

Pacing yourself is the key

In 2012, I started running with my golden retriever. She loved it! Whenever she saw me getting my running shoes out of the closet, she would run around in circles, nipping at her tail, and barking at nothing. But for all her love of running, that dog was terrible at pacing herself. If we were going on a 4-miler, for the first half she was straining at the end of her leash, dragging me along with her. The second half of the run would find her lolling behind me, also at the end of her leash, but this time serving as an anchor rather than a propeller.

If you’ve got a big writing project ahead of you, whether it’s an appellate brief or an article for a trade journal, you need to allot plenty of time to get it done. Unless you’re well organized and in the regular practice of writing, you’re not going to be able to write multiple thousand words in a day like Jennifer Romig (of Emory Law School and Listen Like a Lawyer) did recently while working on her book.

Would like to announce: I wrote 7000 words today. #mybrainhurts

— Jennifer Romig (@JenniferMRomig) June 10, 2018

Similarly, when I proposed my book Building a Better Law Practice to the ABA (subscribe to this blog of a 20% discount), I pitched it as a 28,000 word book. They replied they were interested in the book and liked the format, but would only publish it if it were 40,000 words or more, and could I do that within the next four months? I replied of course I could do that. Never mind that it had taken me a year to come up with the first 28,000 words.

That conversation occurred on November 28. Knowing my January schedule was looking fairly rough, I figured out how frequently and how much I needed to write. Then in the early mornings on weekdays and during nap times on weekends, I wrote. I had plenty of ideas in my queue, where I drop ideas as they come to me. And I knew that my schedule does not allow large chunks for writing time, so I had to be prepared and organized. And I had to pace myself.

Not only was there the additional 12,000 words (that become 17,000 words) to write, but there was also proofreading, editing, and re-writing to do … multiple times. I had a long row to hoe, and if I didn’t pace myself appropriately, I’d be lolling at the end of my leash, but with no one to pull me along.

The next time you set about on a large writing project, you’ll find it much easier to accomplish if you’re already in the regular habit of writing and plan appropriately to get your writing accomplished.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a message on LinkedIn from a headhunter asking if she could talk to me about an available job with another firm in town. I’m happy where I’m at and not interested in moving, but I told her I would talk to her anyway. I’ve long tried to operate by a philosophy that I will not blindly turn away an opportunity.

The next day she called and told me all about the job opportunity. She then asked what it would take to get me away from my current firm. I told her what a difficult question that is because of all the things I like about my current situation: I bill a lot of hours, but I’m able to work with a lot of autonomy. My firm gives me the support I need to develop my own business. No one is taking roll every day to make sure I’m at my desk from 8:00-5:00; if I need to leave at 3:00 for childcare reasons, no one is going to harass me about that. I’m surrounded by good people who are good lawyers.

When I finished telling her about my firm, the recruiter sat silently on the other end of the phone for a minute before saying, “So you’re telling me it would take a unicorn.” The rest of our conversation was pretty short after that. The job she was calling about was just a regular workhorse. No horns or magical powers.

Why Should Lawyers Talk to Recruiters about Job Opportunities?

I think there are two reasons lawyers should talk to recruiters if called: networking and understanding your market value.

We should always be open to expanding our professional network. The legal job market can be volatile, and you never know when someone you’ve met along the way may be in a position to help you at a later time. It’s possible (God forbid) my situation at my current firm could change – a major client could leave resulting in insufficient work, or leadership could shift causing an unpleasant environment – and I could need a way out. If I haven’t taken the opportunity to meet people and hear their offers even when I was content with my situation, then I’m not going to have any resources available when I’m looking to make a change.

Understanding your market value can be tricky, especially as you become an older associate and near the practice length where you expect to receive a partnership offer. Hopefully, you’re at a place where there’s a clear path to partnership and open dialogue about what is necessary for your to make partner. But even if you are, no two firms are alike. And your value at one firm may not reflect what it would be at another. The best way to understand your worth is to have conversations with recruiters and headhunters who are in the business of fitting lawyers to job opportunities. They, more than anyone else, can aid you in self-evaluation of your skills to pair it with your appropriate place in the market.

How Should Firms Feel about their Lawyers Talking to Recruiters?

While I am advocating here that you should hear out folks who approach you with opportunities, that advice comes with the disclaimer that not all firms are going to appreciate you doing so. There are certainly firms that will put a lawyer on the curb who is audacious enough to hear out another job offer, so you should be mindful of that, if you’re at a firm likely to have those sentiments.

I firmly believe that law firms should not be averse to their lawyers talking to recruiters. First, a firm should be developing good lawyers, such that other firms recognize your firm as a breeding ground for talent. You want to be the kind of firm that other firms are trying to hire your lawyers away from you. There’s a maxim that’s been floating around for years with no clear source of attribution – a CFO comments to the CEO, “What happens if we train our employees and they leave?” The CEO replies, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?” You’ll receive no higher compliment about the people who work for you than knowing that others want them.

Secondly, if firms are developing good lawyers who they want to retain, they should have the environment and compensation structure to keep those lawyers around. There will always be some attrition. Some people are always looking for the next, best thing that they think is just beyond the horizon. But there are as many people who are reticent to leave a good situation. So a firm with a good atmosphere that pays its people fairly should be confident enough to allow its people to talk to recruiters and accept the compliment that they raised up another good attorney who is coveted by other firms.

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Photo by U.S. Army.

If you are a lawyer who’s been grinding away for a couple of years at a job that makes you miserable, a job you hate, you need to read this. You need to stop whatever you’re doing, to receive some hope and encouragement.

Maybe you don’t know there are other options. Perhaps you don’t think you’re good enough. Possibly, the money is too good to pass up where you’re at. Well, I’ll tell you this, and it’s the same thing I’ve been telling people since I started teaching high school in 2004: No amount of money is worth you being miserable at the thought of going to work every day.

If you are one of those lawyers unhappy with your situation, you don’t need the most vibrant personality or longest resume to start looking around for a different job. What you need is the fortitude to pursue what you want, the wherewithal to grab hold of an opportunity that presents itself to you, and (not to be underestimated) the ability to act appropriately and not present yourself like a total weirdo.

Leave the job you hate to find more fulfilling work.

Today, I’m going to share with you the experiences of lawyers who were unhappy in the job situation and took the initiative to find work that was more satisfying to them.

Grab hold of the opportunities you make.

Martha: I quit my first job after two years after accepting it wasn’t a great fit and I needed to find something else. My lease was also up and I have family in DC so they offered to let me come live with them while I figured it out, as “It’s a whole city of lawyers, there has to be SOMETHING!” I was now unemployed and living in a basement. Awesome.

After complaining on Twitter about rejections and starting over, someone DM’ed me to ask what I wanted to do. In undergrad I focused on war, strategy, and conflict, and I really wanted to work on defense issues. I went to law school thinking I’d learn the legal side and then go back to policy work, not appreciating the market was terrible (I started in 2009) and the practicalities of getting a job with a law degree.

Being in D.C. was my chance to do what I’d wanted to do from the beginning, so I told them as much. They happened to have a friend who did defense policy work. I had lunch with him and asked, “How do I do what YOU do?” It turned out his firm needed an intern. I started 6/1/15 and now I’m our director of operations and also have a few clients I handle.

Part of my work now is legislative research and drafting, along with drafting necessary memos and advocacy material. I could have done this job having gotten a master’s, but to be honest I’m glad I got a JD and very glad I practiced for a bit. The advocacy skills I developed as an attorney help me every day.

Never burn your bridges.

JD: I was a litigation associate for 6 years. Loved the firm and trial work. Hated the BS that comes with litigation and a lot of donkey cases that came my way for being low on the totem pole. I was stressed out and carrying work with me everywhere. You know how it is grinding in a firm as a litigation associate.

I switched to in-house at the end of last year and it has been night and day in terms of stress and life balance/happiness.  I am doing more transactional work and also managing outside counsel on litigation. I papered the city to death for about 1-2 years. Getting offers and also interviews. Turned the offers down because I didn’t like the “fit.” Landed this job thru networking via manager at my old job before law school.

I saw the posting and realized the manager had a connection with our chief legal officer. It got my foot in the door and I got the offer. My resume didn’t even make the cut initially and didn’t even land on her desk. If not for the connection, I would not have received an interview.

The message that I would share with readers is: Don’t get discouraged if you don’t land another offer right away. Keep applying and looking for new opportunities. Relationships are important too, so never burn bridges.

Weigh the risks and rewards.

Matt: I left the firm I was at for 5 years, joined two friends from school at their firm, and added my name on the door. I couldn’t be happier now. I do not advise people to do this without some planning. It is not as easy as I may make it sound. I’ll just say that I was in a fortunate position to be able to do that. I don’t have anyone depending on my income (kids) and I left my old firm with over 100 open cases and about 150 clients. I was in a fortunate position. If I had kids, I may not have done it. If I didn’t have all those open cases, I would have been super broke for a few months, maybe more.

Relationships are key to business success.

Kate: So when I was miserable I started reaching out to colleagues and older lawyers and kind of politely venting to see if what I was experiencing was just the pains of being a lawyer or if my problems were uniquely related to my firm. I wasn’t positive I wanted to leave my firm necessarily. I was actually thinking I needed to quit law because it wasn’t for me.

After a few lunches, I knew I was miserable because of my firm so I reached out to a few connections – partners at firms who I knew from mentoring or summer clerkships. Reaching out to people for advice kind of converted into job hunting when I realized I didn’t need to quit law.

The partner I had clerked under at large local firm had left and opened a new branch of a larger regional firm. I approached him mainly for the connections, hoping for an email intro to other firms in town that might be hiring. He ended up recruiting me to work for him.

Keep your connections fresh. Even though I was no-offered at large local firm, I still ended up being able to use that clerkship for something.

Do your homework and persevere through setbacks.

Elizabeth: I was working at a firm library – big for its market, but it was one large office in the state’s largest city and a tiny office in the state capital. It was really busy – it had just grown its IP practice (from one to seven attorneys, with more practice areas) and had instituted a new procedure for conflict checks that involved the library.

I had temp’ed there for a while and I liked the firm culture. It seemed stable and cohesive, and while there were definitely some attorneys people tiptoed around, all in all, people worked hard and were good to each other. However, that changed. It was subtle, with no one thing I could point to as illustration, but in general it became pretty tense and seemed less cohesive and I felt uncomfortable.

Plus, I wanted to teach and the local environment was trying to kill me (allergies). So, I decided that I needed to get out. The problem was that there were a lot fewer academic jobs there as there were here in the Bay Area. Step 1 became: ‘Get back to the Bay Area.’

I interviewed for a contracting job where I was hired 24 hours after the phone interview. I had a month to move between states, and a week of that would be spent out of town/the country. Did that, with a lot of help from my spouse. A month after my interview, I was at a new job in a different state.

After 4 months, I assessed whether I wanted to stay where I was and for how long. This firm didn’t have the tension of my old one, but it felt much less cohesive. And I still wanted to teach. So, I started looking around in terms of academia. The Bay Area has seven law schools. That was a benefit. But a drawback was that there is a particular set of skills that people tend to have when working in different parts of academic libraries. It’s very segmented and very deep, and I did not have THAT experience, despite working in an academic library before law school.

Luck came my way again – my law school alma mater was hiring, and the contact remembered me. I asked if I would be seriously considered if I applied, and she said yes. So I started preparing – DMing experts on Twitter, reading blogs, putting together outlines and resource binders. I got to the all day interview, powered through the flop sweat and dry mouth and 4 different interviews + a presentation and lunch with these people. And I didn’t get the job.

I couldn’t really blame them, as I didn’t have that exact experience that niche academic libraries typically look for. But now I had all of this research. And somehow, I parlayed it into doing an out-of-state CLE, and I started thinking about doing a podcast and building up my authority cred.

And then, I get a call offering me the job – the other candidate turned it down. So, luck again. And now I am here. In academia, about to teach my first course, and I like it so much. But to encapsulate – it took a fair bit of risk, a lot of family support, more than a little luck, and a readiness to pounce and prepare when risk and luck paid off.

Finding the right fit may take some effort.

I saved this one for last because you don’t want to miss it or skim through it. Bob really lays it all out there.

Bob: I’m an attorney with four years of experience who moved diagonally through several jobs to finally make it to one that fits me and uses my strengths. It can be done. My last job (and last few before that), I liked the work, but management was unresponsive at best and abusive at worst. Hundred-hour weeks, verbal abuse, unclear or inconsistent job expectations, lack of management support, a total lack of recourse, the whole schmear. It took enough of a toll on my physical and mental health that I knew I had to get a better job.

If all you want is a job, you can get a job. You probably have a job. The trick is getting one that suits you. Know what you want, know your strengths, and let other people know. The first two are necessary prerequisites.

I wanted a job with semi-predictable hours, with a reasonable salary and responsive management, that I could reasonably argue was serving a public good. I could litigate but strongly preferred not to. I’m flexible in terms of practice area—I’m not attached to a particular area, and I learn systems quickly, often quickly enough to teach others. I’m easy to work with and pretty personable; one of the benefits of having a lot of disparate work experience and hobbies is that you can talk to anyone about anything.

Once you know your strengths, take a look at your resume. It should tell a story that shows your achievements and trends over your career. This is important because you’re a lawyer—everyone has a doctorate, and all your first year’s experience are grunt work. Sorry. But by now, you know your strengths (see above!), so play them up, and give your resume that third dimension that helps you stand out. My resume shows that I’ve switched practice areas twice since being licensed, learned quick enough to get promoted to management positions, and improved performance metrics in several areas while delivering quality work.

After that, letting people know your wants and strengths is relatively straightforward. Choose who you let know. I got my current job by taking a broad but targeted and efficient approach to applications. Based on my wants and my strengths, I knew in-house was likely a good fit. I focused my applications on in-house and JD-advantage jobs, figuring that a good work environment would be an acceptable trade-off if I had to change fields again. I wallpapered the Internet with my resume and stalked LinkedIn to find connections who might be able to get my story in front of the right people. I also had friends I’d made through college, law school, Twitter, LawyerSmack, and relatives shopping my resume around. Since I’d given them targets and an easy narrative hook to sell me, it wasn’t a huge ask. I eventually got in a room with a few hiring managers, got an offer, and it’s been a great experience since.

Choosing who to let know is where things can really get interesting. I got an interview with a recruiting firm by drawing a guy on Twitter as a cartoon bird carrying a bazooka. (No kidding.) But that’s an example of someone finding out about my strengths (easy to work with, personable, committed to quality work) who got hooked into finding out more. Once I told him I was a lawyer looking for work, flexible, and quick to learn, he sent my resume to my area’s branch of his recruiting firm. It didn’t pan out, but not everything needs to. All you need is one.

And for the love of Mike, have savings. Folk wisdom has it that you should have six months’ worth of expenses saved for emergencies. A job sucking the life from you is an emergency. It takes time to find one that’s a good fit, and not having savings means you don’t have the leverage to reject a bad fit.

There are so many avenues for getting out of the job you hate and into the job you want. Everyone featured here used different methods of obtaining the satisfying work they’re in now. I want you to understand there are both traditional and out-of-the-box means of finding work and getting out of the job that’s making you miserable. It will take effort, perseverance, and using the connections you’ve made, but what you’re looking for is out there. And if it’s not, blaze a new path and create it.

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Photo by Christian Guthier.