Career Center Tip of the Day: Evaluating the Counteroffer — Should You Stay or Should You Go? (Part 3)

In the first and second parts of our Career Center “Tip of the Day” series, focused on how to evaluate a counteroffer, we covered the importance of re-evaluating your current employment situation and assessing what the new firm is offering you, to determine whether it addresses the issues/shortfalls of your current firm. Today we’ll discuss how to carefully analyze your firm’s counteroffer to see if it is really better than the new offer.

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Take some time to evaluate the counteroffer from your current firm and determine if it is really the best option for you. Does the counteroffer really fit in with your long-term goals (e.g., 5, 10, and 25 years down the road)? Don’t be short-sighted and only look at the dollar figures of the offers; view the entire offer at each firm as a package, and then determine which firm is a better opportunity. If the counteroffer is purely financial, add up all the negative features of your current firm and give it a price tag. Stay if the counteroffer really trumps your current offer; go to the new firm if it doesn’t.

Also, be sure to look at the context of the counteroffer from your current law firm’s perspective: you went behind their back and tried to get another job while working for them. While no one is expecting you to be loyal to one law firm for the rest of your life, your current firm has reason to question your loyalty in the near term.

So ask yourself whether this counteroffer is legitimate, or a stalling tactic. Is your current firm “playing nice” because it needs you to finish an important project? Will you be the first one out the door if your firm needs to conduct economic-based layoffs? Will partners trust you with sensitive or long-term projects now that they know you are a potential flight risk? There may be several other issues that are specific to your situation that you will need to assess before you accept a counteroffer.

These tips are provided by the experienced recruiters at Lateral Link. In addition to providing sound career advice, they can assist you with a lateral move to one of hundreds of law firms or in-house positions they have in their network.