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Breaking into regional markets is difficult without ties to the region.

But what constitutes a tie? How close does one have to be with said tie?

What makes ties significant enough for a regional law market? Quality? Quantity? Do they have to be law related to be relevant?

I think its a good question and I'd love to hear an answer from some of the more experienced posters here.

Is a "tie" going to undergrad/highschool in the region? Or is it more along the lines of like being friends with a hiring partner at a firm?

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It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

Samara wrote:It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

I really don't understand the "bolt" thing for certain markets. For example, why would anyone leave Seattle, Denver, Portland, or San Fransisco for New York? I live in Boston and really don't understand the concern. The quality of life is so much higher in those places. Leaving seems ridiculous.

I didn't think this was a "bolting" issue, I thought this was a networking issue.

Have I misunderstood the need for ties?

DrStudMuffin wrote:

Samara wrote:It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

I really don't understand the "bolt" thing for certain markets. For example, why would anyone leave Seattle, Denver, Portland, or San Fransisco for New York? I live in Boston and really don't understand the concern. The quality of life is so much higher in those places. Leaving seems ridiculous.

Nobody said bolting for NY -- they mean bolting to where you actually do have ties/hometown which is a lot more plausible...

DrStudMuffin wrote:

Samara wrote:It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

I really don't understand the "bolt" thing for certain markets. For example, why would anyone leave Seattle, Denver, Portland, or San Fransisco for New York? I live in Boston and really don't understand the concern. The quality of life is so much higher in those places. Leaving seems ridiculous.

It's more people leave those areas to go back to where they are from. No matter how much you hate "home" employers assume you want to go back there.

dextermorgan wrote:

DrStudMuffin wrote:

Samara wrote:It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

I really don't understand the "bolt" thing for certain markets. For example, why would anyone leave Seattle, Denver, Portland, or San Fransisco for New York? I live in Boston and really don't understand the concern. The quality of life is so much higher in those places. Leaving seems ridiculous.

It's more people leave those areas to go back to where they are from. No matter how much you hate "home" employers assume you want to go back there.

This. For example: People often leave non-"home" locations because they/their wife gets pregnant and wants to raise the kid around the kid's family/grandparents.

patrickd139 wrote:

dextermorgan wrote:

DrStudMuffin wrote:

Samara wrote:It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

I really don't understand the "bolt" thing for certain markets. For example, why would anyone leave Seattle, Denver, Portland, or San Fransisco for New York? I live in Boston and really don't understand the concern. The quality of life is so much higher in those places. Leaving seems ridiculous.

It's more people leave those areas to go back to where they are from. No matter how much you hate "home" employers assume you want to go back there.

This. For example: People often leave non-"home" locations because they/their wife gets pregnant and wants to raise the kid around the kid's family/grandparents.

It's also a way for firms to differentiate applicants. Every firm probably has ten qualified applicants for every open position. Firms need a tiebreaker if most applicants have similar stats and interview well.

Based on my experience, I think the reason ties are emphasized so much on TLS is that the vast majority of interviewers seem to ask why you are interested in a particular city.

DrStudMuffin wrote:

Samara wrote:It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

I really don't understand the "bolt" thing for certain markets. For example, why would anyone leave Seattle, Denver, Portland, or San Fransisco for New York? I live in Boston and really don't understand the concern. The quality of life is so much higher in those places. Leaving seems ridiculous.

+1 to the above posters. The thought process is that if you don't have any ties, you aren't really interested in the job and only are pursuing it because you struck out in the market where you actually want to work. It may not always be the case, but I'm sure it is more often than not.

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mb9113 wrote:Breaking into regional markets is difficult without ties to the region.

But what constitutes a tie? How close does one have to be with said tie?

What makes ties significant enough for a regional law market? Quality? Quantity? Do they have to be law related to be relevant?

It depends.

i've heard an easy way to do this is to not go somewhere else for summer jobs (eg. if you're from the north, and you go to school in georgia, don't go to new york for the summer - stick around Georgia) and network like crazy locally. if you have no ties at all to the area you go to school in, that's really the best you can do, short of buying a house or marrying a local.

I'm not going over ties again because there are several great threads on it already.

But maybe some of the confusion I am seeing is based on a lack of understanding of the extremely competitive and over saturated job market. Firms need criteria for deciding who to hire. There are many applicants for each job. And firms know that a local person is more likely to stay , so they get a preference. In some states people know the best high schools, even in New York City people know the best high schools, so they may know a bit about who you are and your connection to the community. Firms don't want to hire people who won't be happy, won't fit in, wont have connections, won't stay- all those things.

Try to think of firms in this market getting better qualified applicants than they have ever seen, they need reasons to hire you.

Ties are not just knowing someone. It is being able to convince them that you mean to stay. There was a post by a WUSTL who failed to convince firms his ties were sufficient even though he bought a house and enrolled his kids in school. I think it wasn't that his were insufficient, just that the competition for the local firm jobs had plenty of people with better connections. He couldn't compete with a person who had lived locally all their life and had local family.


Edit to add: ties aren't the only thing. But it is crucially important to understand the regional nature of hiring. This is more important than going to a higher ranked school that isn't in the area you want to practice, and then hoping you can get hired somewhere else. Firms don't hire that way. They aren't going to take a T20 person from
across the country over a local, slightly lower ranked school that has connections.

Regulus wrote:I think I'd also had a misconception of what "ties" are if the information in this thread thus far is true. I thought the word "ties" was synonymous with "network," and was important to get your foot in the door at someplace because you knew someone who could vouch for you. I had never considered "ties" as meaning "you are tied to the region."

Networking has to do with contacts. Ties has to do with geographic locality. You can have ties to a market without knowing a single lawyer or business person there.

I, for example, mostly have genuine, rock-solid ties to Oregon. I've lived there most of my life, went to undergrad there, worked there, have my only immediate family there, and own a condo there.

But you can sometimes spin ties out of less concrete connections:
I'm going to law school in Chicago and can speak enthusiastically about the city. That might convince an interviewer that I'd like to stay here (which is probably a lie).
I can also present some argument for having ties to Seattle (born there, spent early childhood there) by saying "I spent my childhood in the Puget Sound area and love it! I remember sailing in the San Juans and skiing at Crystal Mountain!"
I have family in the Bay Area, so I might be able to spin an argument about ties to SF or Palo Alto by saying "Both my parents' families are in the Bay Area and I've loved spending time there throughout my life!" even though I really haven't visited much as an adult.
We lived for a year in Denver when I was 4, so I might be able to convince an interviewer I'd like to live there by stressing that "we lived there when I was a kid! I love visiting close friends in Denver! I'm a huge snowboarder and I love camping and the Colorado lifestyle really suits me!"

Also relevant: where your significant other is from/has a job/has family, especially a wife's parents.

NYstate wrote:I'm not going over ties again because there are several great threads on it already.

But maybe some of the confusion I am seeing is based on a lack of understanding of the extremely competitive and over saturated job market. Firms need criteria for deciding who to hire. There are many applicants for each job. And firms know that a local person is more likely to stay , so they get a preference. In some states people know the best high schools, even in New York City people know the best high schools, so they may know a bit about who you are and your connection to the community. Firms don't want to hire people who won't be happy, won't fit in, wont have connections, won't stay- all those things.

Try to think of firms in this market getting better qualified applicants than they have ever seen, they need reasons to hire you.

Ties are not just knowing someone. It is being able to convince them that you mean to stay. There was a post by a WUSTL who failed to convince firms his ties were sufficient even though he bought a house and enrolled his kids in school. I think it wasn't that his were insufficient, just that the competition for the local firm jobs had plenty of people with better connections. He couldn't compete with a person who had lived locally all their life and had local family.


Edit to add: ties aren't the only thing. But it is crucially important to understand the regional nature of hiring. This is more important than going to a higher ranked school that isn't in the area you want to practice, and then hoping you can get hired somewhere else. Firms don't hire that way. They aren't going to take a T20 person from
across the country over a local, slightly lower ranked school that has connections.

This.

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Some of these questions get real, as in like "where did you go to high school," "what street does your family live on," "is your dad/grandfather such-and-so," etc.

Regulus wrote:I think the reason for my confusion was because of the bias I had doing interviews in a non-legal related field. I looked for qualifications, interest (and knowledge) in the company and what we do, easy-to-work-with personality, etc. If someone told me in an interview "my wife's mom lives nearby," I would've been like "ummm.... okay?" I guess I was almost surprised that such a thing "matters" for law firms, because in most interviews I've conducted or been an interviewee in, such a thing has not only never mattered, but it would have made the interviewee seem immature to bring up as a talking point. I could see such a thing mattering if it were a dangerous region (like Afghanistan or something), but... yeah. This has been interesting to learn about, to say the least.

Were you regularly interviewing out-of-town candidates (or being interviewed as one), though? A lot of T-14 students are applying for jobs nationally, not where they go to law school. It seems to me that's much less common in non-legal fields (e.g. if you live in Cleveland and you want to work in HR, you apply for HR jobs in Cleveland, not in Austin, Chicago, and NYC).

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DrStudMuffin wrote:

Samara wrote:It's basically convincing the firm you aren't going to bolt the first chance you get. There's no one answer to this as it varies by firm and by person. Growing up, having family or a spouse from the area is a strong one. They don't have to be law-related at all, it's more of a fit thing. Being able to talk convincingly about why you want to stay in that city is important.

I really don't understand the "bolt" thing for certain markets. For example, why would anyone leave Seattle, Denver, Portland, or San Fransisco for New York? I live in Boston and really don't understand the concern. The quality of life is so much higher in those places. Leaving seems ridiculous.

Actually some people who move to Seattle find the rain/overcast sky incredibly depressing and move or /self.

Regulus wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

Regulus wrote:I think the reason for my confusion was because of the bias I had doing interviews in a non-legal related field. I looked for qualifications, interest (and knowledge) in the company and what we do, easy-to-work-with personality, etc. If someone told me in an interview "my wife's mom lives nearby," I would've been like "ummm.... okay?" I guess I was almost surprised that such a thing "matters" for law firms, because in most interviews I've conducted or been an interviewee in, such a thing has not only never mattered, but it would have made the interviewee seem immature to bring up as a talking point. I could see such a thing mattering if it were a dangerous region (like Afghanistan or something), but... yeah. This has been interesting to learn about, to say the least.

Were you regularly interviewing out-of-town candidates (or being interviewed as one), though? A lot of T-14 students are applying for jobs nationally, not where they go to law school. It seems to me that's much less common in non-legal fields (e.g. if you live in Cleveland and you want to work in HR, you apply for HR jobs in Cleveland, not in Austin, Chicago, and NYC).

Kind of... I work at the North American headquarters of one of the largest companies in the world, but even so we tend to get a lot of applicants from mainly the East Coast. I previously worked for one of the Big 4 in Tokyo, Japan, and interviewed elsewhere in Tokyo and Boston, but I've never felt like locality played any sort of role in a decision.

Then I guess law is just weird.

ETA: It may be, too, that law firms are more fungible than, say, working for IBM or Google (just picking big companies at random). The more similar law firms look, the more you probably have to bring up other factors to make a convincing case that you want to work there.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

Regulus wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:

Regulus wrote:I think the reason for my confusion was because of the bias I had doing interviews in a non-legal related field. I looked for qualifications, interest (and knowledge) in the company and what we do, easy-to-work-with personality, etc. If someone told me in an interview "my wife's mom lives nearby," I would've been like "ummm.... okay?" I guess I was almost surprised that such a thing "matters" for law firms, because in most interviews I've conducted or been an interviewee in, such a thing has not only never mattered, but it would have made the interviewee seem immature to bring up as a talking point. I could see such a thing mattering if it were a dangerous region (like Afghanistan or something), but... yeah. This has been interesting to learn about, to say the least.

Were you regularly interviewing out-of-town candidates (or being interviewed as one), though? A lot of T-14 students are applying for jobs nationally, not where they go to law school. It seems to me that's much less common in non-legal fields (e.g. if you live in Cleveland and you want to work in HR, you apply for HR jobs in Cleveland, not in Austin, Chicago, and NYC).

Kind of... I work at the North American headquarters of one of the largest companies in the world, but even so we tend to get a lot of applicants from mainly the East Coast. I previously worked for one of the Big 4 in Tokyo, Japan, and interviewed elsewhere in Tokyo and Boston, but I've never felt like locality played any sort of role in a decision.

Then I guess law is just weird.

ETA: It may be, too, that law firms are more fungible than, say, working for IBM or Google (just picking big companies at random). The more similar law firms look, the more you probably have to bring up other factors to make a convincing case that you want to work there.

No at Google you are making them money from the onset...law firms have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and time training you.

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