Just Fired from Biglaw - need advice Forum

[Anonymous User]

You need to take a logical, calm road for this. Panic and anxiety will not help. You need to make searching for a job, a full 8 hour a day job. You will send most emails you can send within 1 week. After that period, assuming you devoted at least 40 hours, most legal directories, job boards, forums and other sources, should have been combed for potential offers. Afterwards, you can check them out twice per week.

Now comes the real real. You need to scourge LinkedIn for the persons you need to ask out for a coffee, call your colleagues, your professors and in general, engage your networks so that you are on their mints. Talk about gossip, not that you have just been fired. Tell them that you were terminated, but at least 6 weeks after talking to them, so that any potential offer from them, will come naturally, and not from them seeing you desperate.

For your very extended network, cold call CLOs, big law partners and also boutique partners, email them, send them a letter about a subject of your expertise (but not yet your resume). If applicable, also government.

You also need to invest in your personal branding. Engage a professional to redo all your social media, Google results, Linkedin and any other resource that would help you. Pay for a professional photo shoot, and also pay to build a cool, concise and brief personal website.

As for your limit to get a job, well, you are not going to get a job in 3 months, at least a good one. In-house offers take usually 4-6 months. Most jobs worth it will take months of calls, negotiations and waiting for answers. Cut your expenses immediately, and expect to be looking for a job at least 6 months, during which, you must invest in yourself and your image, along with the aforesaid activities, as if they were a full time job.

Do not just stay home, sending email after email. I have been there, once sending 80 emails per month for half a year, resulting in 3 interviews, and no offers. Depending on your age and career stage, 12 months without a job may stop or kill your career.

[nixy]

You also need to invest in your personal branding. Engage a professional to redo all your social media, Google results, Linkedin and any other resource that would help you. Pay for a professional photo shoot, and also pay to build a cool, concise and brief personal website.

I think a lot of the post is good advice but I really don't think you need to pay a professional to do your social media etc. Put your FB on private, make sure any twitter or IG are professional (or private), make sure your LinkedIn is professional, and don't build a personal website. What would you put on it? Unemployed lawyer? You don't have a law firm, and if you're still on your old firm's website (not sure if you are, but if so), having another website would be weird. Whatever professional presence you want to have out there you can use LinkedIn for. My reaction may come in part from the fact that I loathe personal branding for anyone who's not a public figure, but I don't think right now in the kinds of jobs you're likely looking for that some kind of professionally created brand is necessary. If you were going solo and setting up to attract clients that would be a different matter.

[QContinuum]

I think a lot of the post is good advice but I really don't think you need to pay a professional to do your social media etc. Put your FB on private, make sure any twitter or IG are professional (or private), make sure your LinkedIn is professional, and don't build a personal website. What would you put on it? Unemployed lawyer? You don't have a law firm, and if you're still on your old firm's website (not sure if you are, but if so), having another website would be weird. Whatever professional presence you want to have out there you can use LinkedIn for. My reaction may come in part from the fact that I loathe personal branding for anyone who's not a public figure, but I don't think right now in the kinds of jobs you're likely looking for that some kind of professionally created brand is necessary. If you were going solo and setting up to attract clients that would be a different matter.

Seconding the above. I'd only recommend hiring a professional if you had some unsavory search results or whatnot - for the run-of-the-mill BigLawyer, I can't imagine any reason to pay $ to optimize one's Google search results or build a Facebook page or whatnot.

In fact, as nixy says, don't even bother doing any of that yourself - just delete or set social media (excluding LinkedIn) to private, fix up the LinkedIn page, and you should be all set on the "branding" front.

[Anonymous User]

The axe has at last fell on my big law job. Now that I don't have much to do, I'm finding it really hard to approach job-searching a disciplined way. Can anyone who has successfully dealt with this give me some advice about what an action plan should look like? I have 3 months to find another job.

Right now I just wake up, go to a coffee shop, refine my resume, send it out to a few recruiters, and then head to the office to finish up my pro bono work. Then I go to the gym and watch TV in the evening. But I have this nagging feeling that I could be doing more, and that I'm not approaching this in a disciplined or organized way. Ideally I'd like to go to a litigation boutique.

Should I be aiming for a specific goal - like 3 networking emails a day, or 1 in-house/direct firm application a day or something?

Something else that's bothering me a bit is running into senior associates/partners who know my situation in the hallway. Though I'm at a giant firm, I do run into them occasionally, and they tend to either awkwardly wave hi, or flat out ignore me as if I'm not there. I don't know how to describe it, but it both hurts and makes me a bit angry. It's not like I ever did anything bad to them, and most people are pushed out eventually. Just because I'm pushed out now doesn't mean I won't be in a position to influence outside counsel hiring one day, so I don't understand why some people are so rude about it. A simple smile would have shown some basic courtesy. This is the mental cost of coming to the office when some people know my situation.

I'd be scouring linked in and firm websites looking for alumni of my law school and undergrad. Martindale is actually a great resource for smaller firms that don't have an easy search function for where their attorneys went to school. Then I would shoot them emails and try to schedule time to either talk on the phone or meet in person. I've gotten traction at lots of places doing this, even places way out of state in very small markets.

If I were you, I'd be using a recruiter on one hand for some of the big firms, firms that can afford and usually use them to recruit. This way you have interviews getting lined up, even if at places you aren't really interested in. Then network with firms in the V100 and down range and hit this hard. Email partner alumni and make a strong case for yourself. I would spend the mornings reaching out to these people since they can check email in the morning and during lunch. Then in the afternoon, work on in-house applications. This way you put in a full 8+ hours a day, you have a structure to the madness and you'll get hits here or there to keep going, whether its an alumni wanting to meet for lunch, or a recruiter getting you an interview.