Back In The Race: 4 Types Of Jobs That Will Hinder The Career Advancement Of New Attorneys

It's particularly sad that employers and recruiters look at these positions negatively, according to columnist Shannon Achimalbe.

resume girlThis week’s legal water-cooler discussion is Anna Alaburda’s lawsuit against her alma mater, Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Anna alleges that she attended TJSL in reliance on its creative employment statistics.

However, Anna is being criticized for turning down a legal job that paid $60,000 per year shortly after she graduated because it paid less than other non-legal positions. Her critics claim that she should have accepted the offer because the entry-level job is a stepping stone to another, better job, until eventually you obtain the job and the career path you desire.

In a perfectly fair world where law schools and firms didn’t obsess over tiers and hierarchy and rankings, I would agree. But we live in a different world, where some jobs are not likely to help with career advancement in law. In fact, some may even hurt it. Here are a few.

1. Document review. As most ATL readers know, doing doc review is about as helpful to your career advancement as waiting tables. It’s something you do to make some side money while you wait for your big break. It is also fairly lucrative if you know a foreign language. But because of the unstable nature of these positions and the increasing transition to computers, document review is not a reliable career path. And most law firms – large and small – do not recognize doc review as legal experience.

2. The short-term associate position. If you don’t make OCI in law school, you will have to search for jobs on Symplicity, LinkedIn or elsewhere. Once in a while, you will find what appears to be an opening for an associate position for a legitimate law firm. During the interview, you are promised periodic raises and eventually partnership along with all of the benefits that come with it.

Let’s say you get the job. You want to make a good first impression and show commitment. So you stay late in the office, even though your boss repeatedly assures you that you are working at a “lifestyle firm.” The management is pleased with your performance and sees a bright future for you. You get along with everyone (even the janitor) and you feel like you are fitting in.

But a few months later, your boss tells you that the firm no longer needs your services. He assures you that you are not being let go for performance reasons and gives you all kinds of excuses.

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The truth is, your boss knew this was going to happen all along.

Why do some firms make these lofty promises only to show you the door after a short period of time? I think it is for three reasons. First, they want to keep your spirits up. A happy employee tends to be a productive and motivated one. They don’t waste time on silly activities like depression and anxiety. Second, if people knew that their employment was essentially the equivalent of contract work, then they may demand more money. Finally, it makes financial sense for the firm. If the employee is salaried but finishes her work faster because of her working long hours, then the firm has an incentive to let her go immediately afterwards so they won’t have to pay her.

The problem with having a short-term associate position on your résumé is that that future employers and recruiters automatically and rigidly assume you were let go for performance reasons and the firm is just covering for you. They seem to have this irrational belief that if you are so good, the firm would have kept you (even if it meant losing money). This gets exponentially worse if you have taken multiple short-term positions because you may unfairly be seen as an unstable job hopper.

3. The mill. I covered mills in a previous post, but here’s a refresher: A mill is a firm that will sign on any client who is willing to pay regardless of whether the firm can help him or not. The potential client talks to a salesman (usually a non-attorney) who does the initial intake, collects the fee and then transfers the client’s file to the attorney.

Typically, these mills advertise openings anonymously on places like Craigslist. They typically hire new attorneys because they are cheap to hire and do not understand the nature of mill practice.

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What happens is that the attorney working the case finds out that some clients are not able to obtain the results that the salesman promised them. The clients, understandably upset, will turn to social media or leave bad reviews on internet complaint sites. Others will file a complaint to the state attorney general or a grievance with the state bar.

Some mill practices have protocols to protect their attorneys from ethics violations. But others do not, and the owners will tell the disgruntled client that it is the attorney’s fault, while conveniently firing the attorney at the same time.

So if you stay at one of these shadier mills long enough (and usually not by choice), you will have a bad Google footprint and possibly a bar complaint, even if you did nothing wrong. As potential employers will see this in an internet search, this will make transitioning to a legitimate job difficult at best.

4. The non-legal job. Some people have to work non-legal jobs to get by until they find a legal job. But the more time they spend preparing lattes, walking dogs, and giving yoga lessons, the less time they have to gain experience practicing law.

So Anna Alaburda is being labeled as an entitled special snowflake because she turned down a $60,000-per-year job. The fact that an honors graduate of Thomas Jefferson School of Law was offered only one job at $60,000 per year, after passing the brutal California bar and sending out hundreds of résumés, is telling. And I assume this position was in Southern California, where the cost of living is high and there is a tax for everything except breathing. And with her $150,000 student loan debt, I’m sure she will have days where she will have to decide whether to pay for food or rent.

Even though the jobs I described above are not ideal for new attorneys, lawyers will take them because they have no other choice or do not know any better. It’s particularly sad that employers and recruiters look at these positions negatively without looking at the whole story. It only shows that they don’t give a spit about grit.


Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at sachimalbe@excite.com and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.