Career Center: Memo to New Associates - Welcome to Your Legal Career!

In today’s Career Center Tips Series, Lateral Link’s Frank Kimball, legal recruiter and former hiring partner, discusses the challenges that new attorneys face in today’s world.

No matter what the differences will be a decade from now, it is safe to say that young lawyers will always have similar personal and professional concerns as they jump the hurdle from education to practice. Those concerns will be similar without regard to the school attended, the corner of the profession chosen, whether you are the first or one of many lawyers in your extended family, and whether you are “going home” to the city where you were raised, or moving to a city you have never lived in before.

But that being said, this generation of law school graduates is quite different from my generation….

Among the notable differences are these:

  • There has been a profound demographic shift in the ethnic and gender composition of law school graduating classes (although much more needs to be done, and will be done, on both fronts).
  • The modern law firm has become a business, with all the attendant pressures of profitability, cost reduction, competition for clients, and long-term planning and strategic decisions.
  • The ability to raise rates to maintain profitability is over. Premium billing will become a rarity unless we encounter a boom like the amazing Eighties.
  • Issues like conflicts of interest, professional liability, and the like will arise more often than you think.

The pressure on lawyers to work harder and be more efficient will only increase, no matter whether you are on Wall Street, Amarillo, Portland, Topeka, Philadelphia, Chicago, or Los Angeles. This is not a random selection. The day I was married, I realized that all eight members of the wedding party were lawyers. These are the cities in which they practiced.

While most are trial lawyers, the group includes federal prosecutors, small firm partners, and partners in the nation’s largest firms. When we sit and chat about life, we all have the same concerns about family, spouse, time, practice, and professionalism. It’s a point worth remembering when you feel isolated in your earlier years. That we are not unique may be the most comforting fact of all.

For more pointers for new associates about to start their professional careers, click here for the rest of the article. Be sure to check out the Career Center for more helpful articles on career development, as well as the insider profiles of major law firms across the country.