Home Blog Page 4

The Jerry Rice Strategy: Part Three

In the first two parts of this blog series on resume writing techniques, we examined the “Jerry Rice” Strategy, which is based on the separation the greatest wide receiver in National Football League history was able to achieve from his defensive pursuers. We analogized this to the distance a legal resume drafter should aspire to create between himself/herself and the competition. To reiterate, separation should be the goal that you strive for when putting together a resume.

Achievements, Accomplishments, Outcomes, Results

In your resume Experience section, try to describe your background in terms of results.  Doing so will boost you ahead of your competitors who often will only list what amount to bland, boring position descriptions of their experience. Job descriptions are dreary to write and, worse, even drearier to read and thus are quickly forgotten. Results are far better because they include specifics― tangible details that stick in the reader’s mind.  Employers are generally more interested in outcomes than they are in process.

This advice goes beyond just your resume. Whenever in your application materials and the job search process (i.e., during a job interview or when motivating your references or communicating with your networking contacts) you need to describe what you did, try to do so in terms of your accomplishments. They make for both a livelier presentation and a much more compelling reason for an employer to keep you in the game and for your enablers to assist you with enthusiasm. This also forces you to think in achievement-oriented terms, which will help you both reconstruct your history and boost your self-confidence, as well as put you in the proper positive mindset for communicating with prospective references, contacts and employers.

The point here, like the others discussed in Parts One and Two of the Jerry Rice Strategy blogs, is to do something different, something to your advantage because you need an advantage to be seriously considered.

Storytelling through an Addendum

Everyone enjoys a good story.  While “enjoy” may not be exactly the reaction of most employers to the generally unwelcome and unpleasant task of reading through a stack of job applications, they will appreciate—and value—a candidate who makes an otherwise numbing task somewhat interesting, lively and entertaining.

One very effective way to tell a good story is to append a Highlights Addendum to your resume where you can devote a full page to relating how you tackled a specific problem and devised a solution, whether you did that on a job, in school, as a volunteer or elsewhere. Your highlight(s) does not necessarily have to be something legal or law-related if you don’t have anything along those lines to present. It just has to be something that demonstrates that you went above and beyond the call of duty in order to accomplish something of value.

This resume addendum strategy impresses upon an employer that you are a problem-solver and not just someone who goes through the motions. It also impresses because it shows that you have given considerable thought to what the employer really wants to learn about you.

An addendum is the best place prior to a job interview in which to tell your story, market yourself more effectively, brand yourself and imprint yourself in the employer’s mind when s/he finishes sifting through applicant resumes and has to winnow them down to those few candidates s/he wants to interview.

Make sure you direct the employer to your addendum in the body of your resume. The best way to do this is by referencing it in a parenthetical at the end of one of your resume bullet statements, e.g., (see Highlights Addendum, attached).

And don’t worry about exceeding anything you might have been told by your law school career services office or anyone else about exceeding some so-called “rule” about resume length. In three decades of advising legal job seekers, not a single employer ever complained about or rejected one of our clients’ resumes due to the appending of an addendum. Quite the contrary. They frequently applauded and rewarded the job seeker for so doing.

Every Job-Search Document is a Writing Sample

Attorneys spend more time and brain power writing documents for both internal and external consumption—

Opinions, pleadings, briefs, memoranda of law, contracts, leases, licenses, settlement agreements, regulations, regulatory comments, legislation, etc.—than they do on anything else. This is why legal employers put such a high premium on writing ability. You need to be sensitive to this when crafting all of your job-search documents.

Implicit in this fact of legal life is that typos, misspellings, poor syntax, bad grammar, mixed tenses, awkward usage, inconsistent structure, etc. are absolutely to be avoided. They are often the kiss of death to one’s job prospects. Make certain that (1) you have spell-checked your application, and (2) that someone whose English skills you trust also reviews your documents (in addition to your own proofreading) before they leave your possession. Because your writing ability looms so large in both the candidate consideration process and in law practice, legal employers generally have zero tolerance for even the smallest slip-up.

Maximize Reader-Friendliness

You need to spend time, energy, attention and sweat equity making certain that your job-search documents are as reader-friendly as possible. Again, put yourself in the employer’s shoes. What would you want to see (and not see)? A resume crammed full of type with minimal margins and lengthy paragraphs? Or one with plenty of white space and short succinct statements preceded by bullets?

Strive to make the employer’s reading experience as tolerable and pleasant as you can. You are awarded additional employer-points for how you go about organizing and presenting your information above and beyond the substance of the information you present. The pay-off can be huge.

Lasting Impressions: Imprint and Impress

What perception of you do you want an employer to retain when s/he finishes reading your resume?

First, you want to be memorable. Almost always, the person who wins the job offer is someone whom the employer remembers after wading through multiple resumes without having to go back through them to trigger his or her recollection. You want your resume to “imprint.”

Second, you want to leave the employer admiring the way in which you have distinguished yourself from other candidates competing for the position. In other words: separation.

Next: The Jerry Rice Strategy-Part Four: Imprinting and Impressing at the Job Interview

The Jerry Rice Strategy: Part Two–The Resume “Order of Battle”

In Part One of The Jerry Rice Strategy, we discussed the importance of separating yourself from your job-search competitors by making a great, immediate resume impression.

Your next key resume decision concerns how you will present the substantive material about yourself. This question encompasses both the order and manner of your presentation. Your decisions regarding these issues can make or break your job campaign.

These decisions will not be the same for every attorney. You will need to determine both (1) the placement of key information, and (2) what you will include in addition to your two principal resume sections. Education and Experience.

In true Jerry Rice fashion, the decisions you make about the order of battle are central to separating yourself from your competitors. Moreover, they send the employer a subliminal message about your judgment and organizational skills. Naturally, you want that message to enhance your candidacy.

What Comes First: Education or Experience?

This is one of these key choices where it is essential to put yourself in the employer’s shoes.  What would you, were you the employer, want to see first about you? This is almost always an easy decision if you are a 3L or recent law grad applying for your first job. Education would come first for most of you who fall into this category. Your legal work experience is, at this stage of your career, probably limited. Your legal education is likely to be the most important factor in how you are going to be judged.

But this is not invariably the case. If you have had extensive, strong, or very interesting work experience prior to or concurrent with law school, or work related to kind of position you seek, you may have to rethink the customary Education-first inclination.

You need to balance the significance of your work experience against your education. If you have great work experience, but performed exceptionally well in law school, this may not be a close question. You would likely want to put Education first because you want employers to be immediately impressed with your stellar legal academic credentials. If you were a less-than-outstanding law student, you may want to put your prior or contemporaneous work experience first.

Similarly, if you have great work experience and attended elite, highly selective schools but did not shine academically, you still may have more to gain by leading with Education. However, if your work experience bolsters your candidacy for the particular position for which you are applying, this becomes a no-brainer. In that case, Experience should appear first, before Education. Say, for example, that you were a licensed funeral director prior to entering law school and are applying to the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection for a position in which you would be participating in enforcing the agency’s Funeral Rule. That “hands-on” experience overwhelms any consideration regarding the order of battle. It should come first.

When weighing what should come first against the job(s) for which you are applying, don’t discount the “intangibles” you developed at work or elsewhere), e.g., “soft” skills such as teaming, multi-tasking, interpersonal communications skills, organizational skills, client development and retention skills, etc. While not directly related to the substance of your potential jobs, these are nevertheless skills that any employer would value.

 

Note: You may arrive at different order-of-battle decisions for different employers.

Where Do I Position My….

Bar Admission(s)? This information always needs to be included on your resume. If you are not yet a bar member, indicate when you expect to be admitted. If you are awaiting the results of the bar exam, say so. Mentioning this at the end of your Profile/Summary of Qualifications is as good a place as any to get this point out of the way.

Community or Volunteer Activities? These are valuable additions for three reasons: (1) They demonstrate that you have a life outside the law and are not just a tunnel-visioned grinder. (2) This is interesting information for an employer keen on evaluating your client development and client retention potential. (3) Activities, knowledge, skills and experience derived from such activities may serve to compensate for thin, paid work experience.

Honors and Awards? Include all of the legitimate ones. When you cite honors and awards, accompany them with a brief explanation of their significance unless, like Phi Beta Kappa, they are well-known to virtually everyone.

“Hybridizing” Your Presentation

This is a great way to separate yourself from competitors. This resume organizing technique takes a different approach than the traditional, reverse chronological tack; provided, of course, that you have a very good reason for deviating from the traditional format. The hybrid approach means subdividing your Experience section into two subsections: Employment History, under which you devote a single line to each of your employers, e.g.:

Associate, Smith & Jones LLC, Boston, MA, 2015-Present

…and Professional Experience, with headings and bullets that present your work experience according to what you did rather than when and for which of your employers you did it, e.g.:

Litigation

  • Four bench trials and one jury trial.
  • Settled numerous cases favorably to my clients.
  • Trained junior litigators.

Transactions

  • Successfully completed more than 10 deals worth in excess of $5 million.
  • Developed firm negotiations manual.

The hybrid resume approach also serves an important collateral purpose by impressing potential employers with your organizational skills as manifested in how you thoughtfully structured your resume.

Also, by addressing your employment history up top, you are allaying your prospective employer’s suspicions that “hybridizing” your resume is an attempt to hide a spotty employment record.

Next: The Jerry Rice Strategy: Part Three

The Jerry Rice Strategy: Part One

For those of you with short memories or who spend Sunday afternoons at High Tea instead of in front of your TV, Jerry Rice was the greatest wide receiver in National Football League history. This despite not being particularly fast, or big, strong or heralded while in college at obscure Mississippi Valley State.

So how did he come to set records that are the NFL equivalent of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak or Cal Ripken’s consecutive games played streak? Simple, but not so simple. Rice was the master of “separation,” the ability to distance himself from defensive backs plagued with trying to cover him.

Separation is a winning strategy that is not the exclusive preserve of NFL wide receivers. It is equally valuable for legal job seekers and career changers. Why? Because it is the best way to imprint yourself favorably on a prospective employer. Your goal should be to make yourself memorable when it comes to (1) culling interesting resumes that resonate and get you invited to job interviews, and (2) hiring decisions.

What is “Separation?”

As we all know, competition for legal jobs is fierce. Employers are overwhelmed with resumes whenever a job opportunity arises. In order for yours to stand out, you need to distance yourself from your competitors in a positive way. You need to make it clear to prospective employers that you are different from your competitors in as many important ways as possible. Putting some distance (separation) between you and other candidates elevates your candidacy and makes you special in the eyes of employers.

How to Separate Yourself

The following separation techniques are ones that experience and history show impress employers:

 First Impressions

First impressions are critically important in any interaction with anyone about anything, whether you are: submitting a resume and cover letter or transmittal email, face-to-face, speaking on the telephone, emailing, tweeting, Facebooking or otherwise communicating.  This is even more the case with respect to prospective employers, references or potential networking contacts.

Separation Via Your Resume

Resumes are often the very first impression that a prospective employer will get of you.  Naturally, you want your first impression to be the best one possible because it sets the tone for everything else that follows.

Identifying Information

This is one area where separating yourself from the norm can have a decidedly negative effect.

Your most important objective here needs to be getting the reader through this top-most information without leaving a bad taste. If you fail to do that, it is highly likely that the employer will obsess about your faux pas to the exclusion of processing the key selling information in your resume about you that you want him or her to notice, focus on and remember.

Avoidance Tactics

Don’t be cute. No nicknames. No witty, goofball or snarky email addresses. No over-the-top voicemail recording on your mobile or home phones. Cuteness is a major hiring turn-off.

Don’t be gender-ambiguous. If your name does not clearly identify your gender, add “Mr.” or “Ms.” Employers don’t like to guess. Moreover, they get annoyed easily by the little things. No point in starting their journey through your application with one strike against you.

Don’t be “incomplete.” Make it easy for the employer to contact you. Include your mailing address, phone numbers, and email address.

Don’t go overboard. Provide only one email address. Omit social network addresses, CB handles and ham radio call signs. If the employer wants to view your Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter pages, s/he will locate them without your help.

Don’t embarrass yourself or reveal too much. Employers increasingly look at social media websites to see what you have posted and what others post and say about you. Be discreet and professional about what you post about yourself. Be vigilant with respect to what others post on your social media pages and “cleanse” them frequently, to the extent possible.

Something Positive

While getting the employer through your identifying information without a glitch or hitch, there is something that you can add to it to enhance your competitive advantage. If you have a credential (an interesting or relevant undergraduate major, advanced degree or certificate, for example) in addition to your law degree that bolsters your candidacy, include it after your name and law degree, e.g., “Jane Doe, JD, LLM (Tax)” or “Jane Doe, JD, CPA,” for example. You will earn immediate positive points for separating yourself from your competition using this device.

The Early Separation Effect

Once you have managed to (1) avoid trouble and (2) distinguish yourself up top, an employer reading your resume will be more enthused to focus on what you have to say in the rest of the document.

Deciding What Comes Next

Your opportunity to make great a first impression does not end with the identifying information at the top of your resume. Once finished with this section, your next step is to decide what comes next. You have three options:

  • Moving directly to Education or Experience
  • A Career Objective
  • A Profile or Summary of Qualifications

 Moving Directly to Education or Experience

Don’t. Moving immediately to the heart of your resume misses the chance to gain some extra points and exploit an opportunity to impress an employer and differentiate yourself some more. You give up a great deal if you do not take advantage of this particular “separation opportunity,” especially one so close to the top of the resume when the employer is still alert and paying attention.

A Career Objective

You rarely need one.

Sticking with our football analogy, Woody Hayes, the legendary Ohio State coach, used to rage against the forward pass for reasons similar to the concerns you should have about a Career Objective: “When you pass the ball, only three things can happen (a catch, an incompletion or an interception); two of them are bad.” Here also, three things could occur, and two of them are negative: (1) it could be completely irrelevant and unnecessary, just take up valuable space and clutter your resume; (2) it could be so meaningless as to be off-putting to the employer and become one of those distractions that obsess him or her to the point where what you want to get across is lost in the process.

Many legal employers view a Career Objective with disdain bordering on contempt. Because they are usually unnecessary, most are just empty, inconsequential blather such as:

“To work for a dynamic, forward-looking organization where I can apply my talents to help it achieve its goals.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Employers come away from reading this nonsense angry that you wasted their time and skeptical of your candidacy, precisely the opposite of the impression you are striving to make.

There is one exception: If you are going in a new career direction, it is a good idea to inform the employer of that goal up front. You don’t want an employer reading your resume to wonder: “Why is this person applying to us?” If you are embarking on a major career change from mainstream law, your Career Objective should indicate your change of direction.

“After several years of honing my analytical skills as an attorney, I am now seeking to apply them to my new career goal of becoming a lion tamer.”

Profile or Qualifications Summary

Unless you are redirecting from mainstream law, what comes next should be a Profile or Qualifications Summary. This can do much to advance your cause. It is an extremely flexible device. You can use it to—

  • grab the employer’s attention immediately and entice him or her to read on.
  • bring key points that may be buried deep down in your resume up close to the beginning of the document where they will be seen early on in the examination process. Foreign language skills, for example. Or, announcing early that you attended prestigious academic institutions and/or performed brilliantly in school. This enables you to assure that the employer sees your important selling points at the outset.
  • imprint your distinctive qualifications on the reader, setting the scene for what follows.

Keep your Profile succinct. A few lines and sentences will do.

Avoid subjective statements that are difficult to verify. Employers demand that you “prove it.”

Next: The Resume “Order of Battle”

Juicing the Advocacy Sector

The Trump administration’s concerted assaults on climate change, the environment in general, and endangered species have resulted in modest legal staff turnover at federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Interior and Energy. There have been handful of terminations as well as attorneys who have left due to policy disagreements. In addition, lawyers who might have aspired to government service in these arenas have opted instead to look elsewhere for employment.

However, these same policies are invigorating legal hiring by advocacy nonprofits who are fighting these same policy reversals. Organizations such as the following selected ones are bolstering their legal staffs (and parallel offices that also employ lawyers in quasi-legal capacities):

This is by no means a complete list of advocacy organizations that are flexing their muscles today.

These entities are able to increase their professional staffs because they are flush with more funds than at any time in their history due to a huge increase in donations from both big donors and the general public fearful of Trump administration anti-environmental and anti-conservation efforts as well as its denial of climate change.

This kind of phenomenon happened once before. In the early 1980s, the newly arrived Reagan administration arrived in Washington, DC intent on rolling back the environmental movement that had begun in the 1960s and gained tremendous traction in the 1970s. Its two principal anti-environmental appointees, Interior Secretary James Watt and EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch (yes, the mother of the newest Supreme Court Justice) became lightning rods for the movement, which raised similarly large amounts of money from donors who opposed policies such as oil drilling on public lands. They were the avatars of Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt.

This could be a rare opportunity to dive into an exciting career that will surely carry over once the current disruption wanes.

Environmental and climate change advocacy is not the only arena where this phenomenon is taking place. Other public interest and advocacy organizations are experiencing similar donation surges and reinvigorated missions.

The Key to the Networking Mint

For the vast majority of job seekers, networking is the most distasteful part of the job-hunting ordeal. Asking others for their help makes you feel like a supplicant begging for alms. It is embarrassing. That’s why so many lawyers, not exactly a cohort of extroverts (Michael Avenatti aside), abhor networking and either don’t do it at all or are very tentative about it and, consequently, do not get the full benefit of what might have been.

Now there’s a solution. It’s called the Contacts Roadmap, an essential job-hunting tool my company developed over years of advising legal career transition clients.

If you want to maximize your networking contacts and feel confident while so doing, you need to present them with a clear and directed idea of your career aspirations. If you can do this, you substantially up your odds of energizing—and even enthusing—them to work vigorously on your behalf and connect you with job opportunities and their own contacts among prospective employers.

A resume alone doesn’t cut it. Networking contacts need something more. You are putting your future in the hands of people who may not know enough about you to be helpful, and/or may misinterpret who you are, what you can do, and where you want to go. You cannot rely on them to extract all of that and draw the right conclusions about you without clear guidance from you.

You need to educate them about how your background and interests translate into a new position or career direction. Without that grounding, they cannot be expected to exert themselves on your behalf. At best, they might feel that they have satisfied their duty to you by referring you to someone or to an organization for which you are completely unsuited. Alternatively, they are likely to misconstrue who you are professionally and send you off in wrong directions.

The Contacts Roadmap

The “Contacts Roadmap” is designed to overcome all the negative things that can occur between you and a networking contact. It provides your contacts with clarity and direction. It removes ambiguity and confusion that might negate their ability—or motivation—to serve as good conduits to both a wider circle of additional good contacts and actual job opportunities.

The Roadmap is a document you provide to your networking contacts so that they can –

(1)  zero in with precision on where you could – and would like to – work, given your background, interests and aspirations;

(2)  respond quickly and effectively to your request for advice and assistance because it minimizes their need to think long and hard, and perhaps incorrectly, about where you might fit; and

(3)  act with enthusiasm and energy about you and your candidacy.

Key Roadmap Elements

A Contacts Roadmap should contain the following four sections:

Section 1: Examples of specific positions that interest you. Include job titles and, if a job title is not sufficiently descriptive of a position, elaborate on it. Make sure to note that job titles are not necessarily the same from one employing organization to the next, so include as many alternative job titles that might describe the same or similar duties and responsibilities. For example, “General Counsel,” “Chief Counsel,” and “Chief Legal Officer.” Do not assume that a busy networking contact will make these “comparison leaps” on his or her own.

Section 2: Geographic Preferences (if any) where you would like to work. Do not be so specific that you unnecessarily limit your options and those of your contact. You don’t want to forego opportunities so enticing that you would reconsider your locational preferences if they were presented to you. If the position(s) you seek require you to be barred in a jurisdiction, note your bar status in the jurisdiction, e.g., “I am a member of the North Carolina bar,” or “I have taken the North Carolina bar examination and am awaiting the results.” Or “I am scheduled to take the North Carolina bar examination in July,” etc.

Section 3: Examples of specific employers where such positions are found. Again, do not be so specific that you misguide your contact into assuming that you only want to work for Jones Tool and Die Company and not other companies in the same industry. Emphasize that you are providing examples.

Section 4: Why it is logical for you to be interested in such positions. This is where you bring Sections 1 – 3 together by providing details of your background that qualify you for the positions, locations and employers you have included in the first three sections.

Collateral Benefits

The Roadmap has value in addition to the strong bonding relationship with a contact it can cement for you::

It can serve as your job search planning tool, clarifying your self-analysis and thinking about what you want to do and where you want to do it; focusing your networking strategies, allowing you to zero in on the precise people you need to approach for advice and transition assistance; and assisting you in building your resume(s) with sharper, more focused goals in mind.

It can serve a dual purpose by arming you with a powerful document to give to your references, which will not only impress and enthuse them, but also can be used by them for talking points when contacted by prospective employers.

It can keep you on track and away from digressing during your job search.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, it is a great confidence-builder, making it much easier to overcome your natural reluctance to ask for help.

The Subliminal Advantage

A Contacts Roadmap earns you “subliminal points” by sending a very positive message to your networking contacts about both your organizational skills and your strategic planning capabilities. These are characteristics that s/he may convey to prospective employers or his or her own referral contacts. It is by far the most user-friendly item that you could possibly provide to someone whose assistance you are seeking.

Don’t go job-searching without it.

 

 

Benefit Applications: A Legal Opportunity Bonanza

Administrative litigation practices are surging thanks to an aging population, significant changes to government benefits, and a prodigious increase in the number of people applying for benefits. The need for attorneys proficient in this area is acute. In addition, recent developments involving assistance programs have led to a surge of interest in disability and elder planning. The three administrative hearing forums with the largest increases in benefit applications and corresponding hearing backlogs are the Social Security Administration,  the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals, and the Board of Veterans Appeals:

Social Security Disability Income (SSDI)

The Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) program is supposed to provide a safety net for people unable to work due to injury or illness. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), almost 1 million people remain stuck in a hearing-decision backlog that averages 599 days (20 months). In some places, wait times are up to 772 days. In 2017, more than 10,000 people died waiting to hear if they would be awarded SSDI benefits.

The backlog has been at crisis levels for years, growing in number despite numerous efforts to bring it down. It has not helped that SSA has been without a Senate-confirmed administrator since 2013. Moreover, SSA lacks sufficient staff notwithstanding that it hired 600 Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) as well as legal support staff in the past three years.

Some of this may be alleviated by a provision in the massive spending bill recently passed by Congress. The bill provides $100 million for SSA to fix the backlog problem. Whether this will be enough is open to question. SSA predicts a dramatic rise in disability applications in 2018 and 2019.

In short, SSDI is a mess and anytime there is a mess in a major benefits program, that spells opportunity for attorneys.

Hearings are held in 160 venues nationwide as well as by teleconference and Skype.

Note: In addition to the many private sector legal jobs this inundation will create, look for SSA to up its hiring of ALJs and attorneys.

Medicare Appeals

As of June 2017, the Office of Medicare, Hearing and Appeals (OMHA) had 607,402 appeals pending with a current estimated wait time of three years to process a healthcare provider’s appeal. At this rate, the backlog is predicted to reach 950,000 appeals by the end of Fiscal Year 2021.

Like SSA, OMHA is under severe strain despite hiring a substantial number of ALJs and legal support staff in recent years. The system has been overwhelmed by a massive increase in the Medicare population resulting not only in an explosion of individual appeals, but also a surge in institutional appeals from hospitals and other healthcare providers regarding reimbursements. The appeals process for unfairly denied claims can take as long as 4.5 years to conclude, according to a 2017 study by the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Delayed payments put a severe financial strain on the healthcare provider community.

What does this mean for legal practitioners? There is a shortage of attorneys needed to represent both individuals and healthcare providers. The incentives, particularly with respect to providers, are enticing: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (HHS is the parent organization of OMHA) has found hospitals are successful in 72% of inpatient claims denial appeals. Some hospitals have experienced success rates over 95 percent.

Another incentive is a new settlement program announced recently by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an HHS subsidiary agency. This is designed to cut into the hearings backlog and allow for negotiated settlements of certain claims.

Veterans Disability Appeals

More than 50 percent of the more than 2 million Iran and Afghanistan war veterans are applying to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for disability benefits. The VA’s Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA) is being overwhelmed by applications on appeal. Its 91 Veterans Law Judges and 671 attorneys cannot handle the volume of work. BVA currently confronts a hearing backlog of around 500,000 cases.

The current BVA appeals process is complex and very different from other federal and judicial appeals processes. It is uniquely distinguished by a continuous open record that allows a veteran, survivor, or other appellant to submit new evidence and/or make new arguments at any point during the appeals process. Additionally, the duty to assist throughout the appeals process requires VA to develop further evidence on the veteran’s behalf and pursue new arguments and theories of entitlement. Each time new arguments or evidence are presented, VA generally must issue another decision considering that evidence, which extends the timeline for appellate resolution.

This unusual process opens the door to attorneys to jump into the appeal at any stage. Moreover, while the vast majority of appeals involve disability compensation claims, BVA also reviews appeals involving other types of veterans benefits, including insurance benefits, educational benefits, home loan guaranties, vocational rehabilitation, dependency and indemnity compensation, health care delivery, burial benefits, pension benefits, and fiduciary matters.

Veterans represented by attorneys prevail in over 90 percent of BVA appeals, a much higher rate than those who represent themselves or are represented by non-lawyers.

Another inducement to attorneys seeking an interesting and potentially lucrative practice is that we are now in a transition period from the existing appeals process to an entirely new one that will radically restructure the process and will be fully implemented by February 2019. The new appeals process is mandated by the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017, and is intended to reduce appeal resolution time from its current, unacceptable duration of 3-7 years.

This means that attorneys new to the appeals process will be far less disadvantaged by having to compete with experienced lawyers. Everyone will be confronted with a new learning curve.

It is no longer necessary to travel to BVA headquarters in Washington, DC for a hearing. The vast majority of hearings are conducted by traveling Veterans Law Judges in local VA offices or by video teleconference.

Further Information

National Board of Trial Advocacy

  • Social Security Disability Certificate (online)

National Business Institute

  • Social Security Disability Bootcamp (Onsite Seminars or Audio & Materials)
  • Social Security Disability Cases from Start to Finish (Video Webcast)
  • Social Security Disability: Hearing Tactics and Advanced Challenges (Teleconference)
  • Social Security Disability: Complex Cases (Video Webcast)
  • Handling a Social Security Disability Case (Onsite Seminars or Audio & Materials)
  • How to Cross-Examine Vocational Experts (Teleconference or Audio & Materials)
  • Social Security Disability Claims (Video Webcasts or Video and Materials)
  • Social Security Disability: Understanding the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) and Proving Cognitive Limitations (Teleconference or Audio & Materials)
  • Medicare Planning and Appeals: What You Need to Know NOW (Video DVD and Coursebook)
  • Obtaining Veterans Benefits (Audio Download and Coursebook)

National Board of Social Security Disability Advocacy

  • Social Security Disability Specialist

Department of Veterans Affairs  

  • Accredited Veterans Benefits Representative

AAPC

  • The Medicare Appeals Process

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Online Training Programs

  • Part C Appeals: Organization Determinations, Appeals & Grievances
  • Part D Coverage Determinations, Appeals & Grievances

National Veterans Legal Services Program

  • Basic Training Course for Veterans Benefits

Taking the Informational Interview to the Next Level

My law school friend, Mike, did something entirely off-the-charts when, as a 3L, it became time to focus on the job hunt. Our career services office dean kept hammering at us to do informational interviews, i.e., sitting down with prospective employers willing to take some time out of their busy days to tell us what their practices and work days were like. The whole ostensible point here was for the job seeker to elicit information about careers, employer types and corporate cultures while “pretending” that s/he was merely doing this to absorb information and was not actually seeking a job with the interviewee. Of course, both parties knew what was really going on. The unwritten hope was that during this conversation, the interviewee might actually take a professional interest in the student as a potential hire.

Mike, however, saw opportunity in the informational interview concept that did not fit the mold of this “mating” dance. He realized early on that the traditional informational interview was largely a waste of time. What he did instead amounted to an epiphany.

Instead of asking for time for such a conversation with prospective employers—law firms, corporate in-house counsel offices, government law offices—Mike first identified the legal employers he wanted to target and then identified their major clients. His innovation was to contact these clients and request informational interviews with them.

Quite a few were happy to oblige. When he sat down with them, he asked about their businesses and their major legal concerns. Only then did he process that information and approach prospective legal employers. At those more formal job interviews, Mike was able to demonstrate his drill-down knowledge of both the legal and business matters he learned from his informational interviews of the prospective employers’ clients. Employers were uniformly impressed with (1) Mike’s detailed knowledge of these legal and business issues, and (2) how he came about his knowledge. He received more job offers than could have been anticipated given his academic performance.

A collateral benefit of his client interviews was that, in one instance, a corporate client contacted its outside counsel and promoted Mike for a job with the firm.

Mike’s outside-the-box approach to the job hunt carried over into his law firm practice. When he was assigned a new or existing client, he visited the company and asked if he could “shadow” its production process from beginning to end so that by understanding the business, he would better represent its legal interests. For example, one of the firm’s clients was a Pacific Northwest company that manufactured and sold telephone poles to utilities. Mike went out with the lumberjacks to watch them select suitable trees, then observed the process of transforming those trees into telephone poles, followed by accompanying a salesman to a utility client, tagging along when the poles were delivered and, finally, observing how they were incorporated into the grid. The client company was so impressed that it directed Mike’s firm to make sure that he be involved with every legal matter for which advice or representation was required.  As an added benefit, no firm client with respect to which Mike did this ever left the firm for another outside counsel.

Even something as mundane and, frankly, unoriginal as the informational interview can be made both more dynamic and valuable. Who knows, it may even get you a great job and launch a terrific legal career.

 

What You Need to Know about Headhunters

The business of legal search, a.k.a. “headhunting,” is the most misunderstood area of job hunting insofar as attorneys are concerned. The confusion the term elicits causes more time wasted by job-seeking lawyers than any other element of the job-search process. This blog post intends to clear up any confusion about headhunters and their utility to you.

What is “Headhunting?”

A typical headhunting operation follows several prescribed steps:

An intermediary–a legal search firm is given a “job order” by a client (usually a major law firm) and asked to find an attorney to fit the client’s specified criteria. The relationship between client and headhunter is usually spelled out in a written contingent agreement covering such points as–

  • the fee to be paid to the headhunter if a successful placement is made (typically 20-30 percent of the first year’s salary or overall compensation);
  • what constitutes a successful placement (usually that the attorney remains with the employer for at least one year);
  • the headhunter’s obligations in the event the attorney does not “work out” (i.e., left of his or her own volition; was fired or terminated for other reasons; etc.). Headhunters traditionally were obligated to find a replacement for the attorney who did not work out, at no additional fee to the employer.

The headhunter then proceeds to research the pool of candidates who fit the client’s criteria and generates a list of names.

The headhunter contacts the attorneys on the list and asks if they might be interested in the opportunity.

After coming up with several suitable and interested candidates, the headhunter submits their resumes to the client.

If the client wishes, the headhunter conducts initial interviews and reports on the results to the client.

The headhunter might conduct resume verification and reference checks and provide written reports to the client.

The headhunter often acts as an intermediary in scheduling the interviews, and prepares the attorney for the interview.

The headhunter receives feedback from the client concerning the interview, assists in scheduling any subsequent interviews, and tries to resolve any issues or questions that may have arisen.

If the client hires one of the headhunter’s candidates, the fee is paid to the headhunter.

Note. A minority of headhunters operate on a “retained-search” basis, where they get paid, up-front, by the client, and keep the money regardless of the search results. In contrast to the “contingent” search described above, a headhunter operating under a retainer is given exclusivity regarding the search.

Who is the Headhunter’s Client?

The law firm, corporation, or other organization giving the headhunter the job order—and paying the legal search fee—is the client. the employer makes the rules governing the serach criteria. Don’t make the mistake of believing that you are the client. Unfortunately, some attorneys who are under this delusion come on so strong in their initial contact with a headhunter that they ruin whatever opportunities might have come their way via the headhunter, assuming s/he deemed them “placeable” candidates at all.

The relationship among the three parties to a legal search is analogous to a real estate transaction: The seller (i.e., the employer) “hires” the realtor (i.e., the headhunter) to find a buyer (i.e., the attorney candidate). The realtor’s client is the seller, not the buyer.

What Constitutes a “Placeable” Candidate?

A placeable candidate is one who fits the rigorous criteria imposed by the hiring organization. These criteria are usually very strict. It is a very rare candidate who meets these stringent qualifications…which is why a hefty fee is paid to the search firm that finds this perfect candidate.

What Are the Typical Qualification Criteria?

The following yardsticks govern almost all headhunter legal searches:

Associates

Graduation from a top law school (universally recognized as such);

Law review (preferably via grades/class rank as opposed to a writing competition), or some other exceptional law school honor, such as Order of the Coif;

Class rank in the top 20-25 percent of the law school class (with some occasional variances, e.g., a lower class rank if you went to a top-10 law school; higher class rank the lower your law school’s ranking)[see “Exceptions,” below];

At least one year of experience, preferably two years; and

Experience with a major law firm.

Partners

Significant, provable portable business. Law firms who take assertions of portable business on faith are often burned. Savvy firms seek detailed written verification before taking a chance on a lateral partner.

Exceptions

The regional exception to the top law school “rule.” Employers sometimes include the pre-eminent regional law school(s) along with the top schools in the country as a suitable source of attorney candidates. For example, law firms in Georgia may consider candidates from the top schools as well as Emory Law School.

The “arguable”-top-10-law-school exception. There is always debate about which schools are included in any top-10 list. Opinions vary once you get beyond the “consensus” schools like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, for example. There are about 15-20 schools that often appear on someone’s top-10 list.

The hot-practice-area exception. Certain practice areas in great demand sometimes compel employers to relax their otherwise strict criteria. During recessions, for example, commercial bankruptcy attorneys with good experience, but without stellar academic or professional credentials, are sometimes courted and successfully placed by headhunters. Certain intellectual property lawyers, for example, do not have to be academic superstars happily ensconced in a prestigious law firm to attract headhunter interest.

The very-top-of-the-class exception. Although the Pennsyltucky Night School of Law may not be among the top 100 in the U.S., it is likely that the handful of graduates at the very top of the class at Pennsyltucky will interest certain headhunters.

Where Do Headhunters Find Candidates Who Match These Criteria?

As the moniker “headhunter” implies, they hunt for them. They customarily come to the candidate; not the other way around. The ideal candidate is one who is currently employed in a major law firm and not actively seeking new employment. The headhunter uses all of his or her persuasive abilities to convince the happy attorney that the grass is truly greener elsewhere.

Rarely, superb resumes will come to the headhunter unsolicited. Most placements result from the headhunter’s initiative, not the candidate’s.

Are Headhunters Ever Interested in Third-Year Law Students or Recent Law School Graduates?

No. Don’t waste your time. This is a milieu where experience really counts.

What are the Economics of the Typical Legal Search Transaction?

Finding the “right” candidate is very important to employers. Consequently, they are willing to pay top dollar both to the candidate and for the candidate. Employers are willing to pay high fees only in return for being presented with candidates who meet the exacting criteria outlined above.

If the placed candidate does not “work out” (during the first 6-12 months or whatever other time period is agreed upon by the parties), the headhunter is usually obligated to replace the candidate with a new one satisfactory to the law firm, at no additional charge.

What Percentage of Attorneys Change Jobs Through Headhunting?

There are no precise statistics available. However, a reasonable, educated guess might be in the 5-percent range. The other 95 percent of job-changing lawyers transition from one position to another without the intermediation of a headhunter.

How Should You Approach a Headhunter If You Think You Are a Placeable Candidate?

Send the headhunter your resume. There is no need to call beforehand or follow-up. It is very much in the headhunter’s interests to contact you, determine your professional goals, and present your credentials to prospective employers. Headhunters do not like–and do not need–to be barraged with phone calls. Remember, you are not the client.

Of course, if you fall into the small percentage of truly placeable candidates, it is highly likely that you receive headhunting calls all the time. If you do not, that may be an important indicator that you should be seeking other paths to make a job change.

Do I Need To Worry About Having My Interest in Leaving My Current Job Revealed?

No. A legitimate headhunter (and it is very much in each headhunter’s interest to be legitimate, or s/he will soon be out of business) will not present your credentials to a client without your prior approval.

Where Can I Get a List of Headhunters in a Specific Geographic Area?

The National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC) maintains a searchable directory of its members. Here you can also identify headhunters who specialize in certain practice areas or certain employment sectors. NALSC members pledge to adhere to a code of ethics.

Do Corporations Ever Use Headhunters?

Yes, but not often for recruiting attorneys. Their HR and general counsel offices are typically inundated with resumes from qualified major law firm lawyers seeking greener grass in-house.

What about an Employment Agency?

In contrast to headhunters, employment agencies charge the job-seeker a fee. They do not earn fees for placing candidates.

There are no legitimate employment agencies that assist attorneys. If an organization tells you that it is able to (1) get you interviews; (2) get your resume to interested human resources offices; or (3) get you a job, take your money and run the other way. If you cannot obtain detailed evidence of the veracity of such claims (and it is highly likely that you cannot, since it does not exist), don’t throw your money away.

How Much Does Legal Search Cost?

Nothing. Not a cent. Search firms are compensated…totally, completely…by the client on whose behalf the search is being conducted.

Can I Work With More Than One Legal Search Firm at the Same Time?

Yes. You can work simultaneously with as many search firms as you like. However, since you will be responsible for giving specific approval concerning each law firm or corporation to which your resume is presented, you should keep a careful record of the names of these law firms or corporations so other (competing) search firms do not overlap efforts. This is one reason why law firms “date-stamp” each attorney’s resume they receive from a legal search firm. More than one search firm has lost search fees because a competitor was able to get an earlier “date-stamp” on the attorney-candidate’s resume.

Must Attorneys Work With Only Legal Search Firms?

No. The idea of attorneys interesting non-legal headhunters, such as insurance industry, employee benefits, compliance or economic development search firms is becoming quite interesting as the broader economy becomes more aware of attorney capabilities and fungibility. As more and more attorneys prove their worth in law-related professional environments, headhunter interest grows.

Some Final Words

The headhunter option is not for every attorney. In fact, it is limited to a very few.

Regardless of the quality of your academics and legal work experience, you should never rely exclusively on headhunting to find your next position. The primary reason for this final bit of advice is this: You are making a decision that will have long-term career implications. A headhunter, notwithstanding the most high-minded of motives, has a strong interest in filling a “job order” and placing you in an job as quickly as possible. Determining “fit” is something that you should never permit a third party to do without your own research.

How to Protect Yourself and Your Career

Congratulations! You’ve done it. You secured your first job out of law school. What now?

Your first order of business in the volatile legal job market that defines 21st century lawyering is to make sure you are valued and appreciated by your employer. Attorneys today, especially in the private sector (law firms and corporations) are at greater risk of job loss than at any time since the Great Recession. Competition is fiercer for law firms competing for corporate clients and for companies that now must compete globally with one another. Mergers and acquisitions in both the legal and corporate arenas are breaking numerical records every year. Legal process outsourcing of increasingly sophisticated legal work by firms and in-house counsel offices is escalating. Corporate clients are directing their outside counsel to refrain from assigning first- and even second-year associates to their matters. Corporations monitor their general counsel offices’ legal “spend” more closely than ever.

The consequence of all of this legal community upheaval is that attorneys need to put job security concerns at the top of their career management to-do lists. Below are some suggestions regarding how to do that, protect yourself, take effective counter measures, and keep your anxiety level within bounds.

Your goal should be to aspire to make yourself indispensable. While it is true that no one is truly indispensable, you can come close if you adhere to the following simple, common-sense rules and the practical work environment applications that follow from them:

The Three Rules of Indispensability…and a Corollary

The First Rule of Indispensability: Never Assume You Are Indispensable. Thinking of yourself as indispensable can lead to risky behavior, precisely because you have deluded yourself into thinking that, no matter what liberties you take, “they” would not dare let you go. Think again.

The Second Rule of Indispensability: Always Work At Becoming Even More Indispensable. You can never stop.  Getting to Indispensability takes effort.  Staying there also takes effort, albeit less effort because of the credibility you have banked on the way there.

The Third Rule of Indispensability: Indispensability Breeds Very High Expectations. This is closely related to the Second Rule.  You will not be permitted to rest on your laurels. The bar will be raised.  High expectations from you will become the new norm.  But that’s a good thing.

The Corollary to the Third Rule: A Mild Dose of Job Anxiety Is Healthy. Never, ever take your job for granted.  There is simply too much uncertainty out there to ever feel totally comfortable.  You are never home-free in the workplace. Striving for indispensability needs to be a way of life.

Begin Your Job on the Right Foot

Nothing beats a good beginning and a great first impression.  It sets the stage for everything that follows. Here’s what you need to think about in preparing for, and on, Day One:

  • Walk tall and exude confidence.
  • Observe – and exceed – the dress code
  • Get – and stay – in shape
  • Always be well groomed
  • Be positive and upbeat
  • Be friendly
  • Don’t act weird
  • Take it slow
  • Take nothing for granted
  • Think career…not just job
  • Expect the unexpected
  • Make lists
  • Learn as much as you can about the organization

Build Your Value to the Organization

Employers are skeptics. They want new employees to prove their worth and build credibility. Here’s how:

  • Study the employee handbook
  • Learn all the rules
  • Learn the organizational and industry “buzzwords”
  • Know the products and services
  • Identify the “soul” of the organization
  • Master the organizational structure
  • Determine who wields the real power
  • Study the organizational history
  • Understand enough to exploit the technology
  • Always be professional
  • Arrive early…and stay a little late
  • Work while you are at work
  • Keep your turf neat, clean, organized and looking good
  • Keep your cool
  • Assume nothing
  • Do some learning curve work at home
  • Hold yourself to a higher standard than your peers
  • Don’t be a recluse
  • Meet your deadlines
  • Always be on time for meetings
  • Respect the support staff
  • Hitch your wagon to a constellation of workplace stars
  • Be a trends analyst
  • Be an “intrapreneur”
  • Add value
  • Be a problem solver
  • Hit a home run with your first assignment
  • Treat every assignment as important

Lock-in Your Status

Once you have punched the aforementioned tickets, it’s time to “embed” your indispensability:

  • Focus on your current job.
  • Be cost conscious
  • Have a vision
  • Develop a plan designed to achieve your vision
  • Identify and command the “choke points”
  • Study the competition—both internal and industry-wide
  • Think globally
  • Seek synergies
  • Analyze, understand and improve systems
  • Challenge the conventional wisdom
  • If it ain’t broke…fix it anyway
  • Tinker at the margins
  • Be project oriented
  • Think long-term
  • Look for growth potential
  • Set quantifiable goals for yourself…then announce them and exceed them
  • Cultivate internal and external clients/customers
  • Learn from each client/customer
  • Concentrate on the important things
  • Set priorities…and constantly triage them
  • Try to pick up each piece of paper – and email – only once
  • Deliver on your promises
  • Always do it better the second time
  • Do it faster
  • Proofread your work before submitting it
  • Simplify

Relations with Superiors

Respect begats respect.

  • Pattern yourself after your boss’s positive traits
  • Ask your boss for advice
  • Don’t bother your boss with petty issues
  • Help your boss succeed
  • Don’t interrupt
  • Be a good listener
  • Practice telephone etiquette
  • Energy and enthusiasm
  • Remember the manners your mama taught you

Useful Add-Ons

  • Volunteer
  • Become an expert
  • Become the “Go-To” person
  • Help colleagues with their problems
  • Find new customers
  • Sell something else to an existing customer
  • Offer your services as a trainer
  • Keep up with technology
  • Propose at least one solid idea a month
  • Seek evaluations
  • Get credentialed in areas related to your career
  • Learn how to do more than one thing
  • Master a related job
  • Write your own job description
  • Write the procedures manual for your activity
  • Keep careful records
  • Keep detailed records of your accomplishments
  • Consider the worst case
  • Conduct periodic career audits

Final Thoughts

Most people don’t excel at their jobs.  They never achieve their full potential or 100 percent workplace production or efficiency.  Attorneys are no exception.  I cannot tell you how many hundreds of times I sat and listened to legal career counseling clients come into my office and tell me something along the lines of:  “They are letting me go because I did not meet my billable hour requirement last year.”  My response was always: What did you do to try to fill the hours? Did you go to other practice group heads, partners and senior associates and announce that you were available for assignments?  Did you dive into client development? Did you seek opportunities to speak to potential client audiences about legal issues that might impact them?  Almost always, the answer was: No.

For an extensive elaboration on making yourself indispensable, see my book, The Lawyer’s Guide to Job Security: How to Keep Your Job and Make the Most of It—in Good Times and Bad (Kaplan Publishing) at http://amazon.com.

The Importance of Fall-Back Planning

A True Story

Carl graduated from law school in the mid-1970s and went directly to work for the General Counsel’s office of thriving and highly profitable Carborundum Corporation in Niagara Falls, New York. It was something of a dream job. It was very rare for a new law grad to go directly into a large company’s in-house counsel office without a few years of seasoning in a major law firm. Carl felt like he had won the lottery.

Three years later, Carborundum was acquired by Kennecott Copper, an even larger company with its own in-house counsel office. The majority of Carborundum’s lawyers were let go, but Carl survived. He and his family had to move to Kennecott’s Stamford, Connecticut headquarters, a huge disruption to his family made more stressful by a considerably higher cost of living. Nevertheless, Carl was optimistic about his future with one of the largest resource companies in the world. What he did not know and had not researched was that Kennecott was experiencing financial problems.

Four years after Kennecott acquired Carborundum, Kennecott itself was acquired by Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio). Once again, the majority of the acquired company’s legal staff was let go. Carl once again survived (barely). For the second time in just a few years, he had to uproot his family and move, this time to Cleveland, Ohio.

Three years later, Sohio was acquired by British Petroleum. This time Carl was not so fortunate. Ten years out of law school, he was out of a job.

Merger Mania and Its Discontents

If anything, this story of how a series of presumably “apex” corporate predators took over smaller (but still very large) companies was an ominous portent of the stürm und drang that has roiled the legal world ever since and continues to do so today. The bottom line is that there are no companies too big to be acquired. And that means that no corporate legal job is safe.

Moreover, that same precept applies to organizations other than commercial corporations. Mergers among the largest law firms occur with increasing frequency. There were a record 102 in 2017 alone. According to Altman Weil, a legal consultancy, we can expect to see a continuation of the frenzied rate of law firm mergers moving forward.

Even nonprofits have become part of the merger mania. Some of the largest trade and professional associations have joined together in recent years.

The significance of all of this M & A activity for legal careers—and career planning—is profound. When two organizations unite, one of the compelling reasons for the combination is to save on back office and support operations. Legal staffs fall within those definitions. It is typically the case that a union of two organizations means that fewer attorneys will be needed.

Some Fall-Back Pointers

Don’t Assume Government Will Always Be There For You

In such a volatile environment, it is essential that you have a fall-back position, one that you have thoroughly researched and strategized. It is not enough to assume, as so many disappointed lawyers who viewed themselves as “high-flyers” did when the Great Recession hit, that there would always be a government agency eager for their services. That proved not to be the case for four reasons: (1) static government hiring, a truism now decades old, along with intermittent hiring freezes prompted by budgetary constraints; (2) a sense shared by many government legal hiring officials that attorneys with BigLaw or Fortune 1,000 in-house experience viewed lower-paying government jobs as mere temporary way-stations until they could move back into the private sector; (3) hiring officials’ conviction that private sector attorneys would quickly become disgruntled “problem” employees when they saw their first government paycheck; and (4) the “intimidation” factor, i.e., a reluctance to hire individuals with much better resumes than the hiring official.

Be Realistic About Pay Expectations

Experience tells us that attorneys abruptly terminated due to an acquisition are likely to see a reduction in their compensation in their next job. Reality often hits hard. In planning a fall-back position, it is important to factor this reality into your budgetary planning.

Document Your Transferable Skills

Do not assume that because you have spent your career in one practice area, that this focus limits you in seeking your next job. If you have, for example, mastered a highly complex discipline like securities law, make sure that your resume and networking contacts understand that the ability to master such a complex regulatory scheme means that you can come up the learning curve quickly with respect to other complex areas of law.

Expand Your Horizons

Don’t overlook the possibility of parlaying your experience and skill sets into a “JD Advantage” job/career where a law degree and legal experience might translate very well into a law-related area.