“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin
The team at Burgess Paluch has spent the last few months chatting with lawyers and law firms about the current market and what the future will look like. Most law firms are predicting that they will take a conservative approach to recruitment in the months to come. For lawyers, this means that finding the “perfect” new job may be a marathon and not a sprint. In the current market, we are seeing many unemployed or stood-down lawyers, and there are only a few current vacancies at law firms or in-house. Interestingly, partners with client-followings are still in substantial demand. We have a number of law firm clients at premier boutique (with ex-top tier partners) and large/mid-tier level which have asked us to help them attract partners.
Once the pandemic dies down, more lawyers will begin searching for new roles. These may be lawyers who had either been already planning to move pre-pandemic and who had put things on hold, or who are unhappy with how their firm handled the pandemic. Therefore, vacancies will likely receive more applications and be filled more quickly than they might have been in the past. With this in mind, what can you be doing right now to prepare yourself for a new role in a few weeks or in a few months?
The first thing you should be doing is thinking about what exactly that “ideal” role looks like. Not that the ideal role necessarily exists. But it is a starting point. Do you want to switch areas of law? Do you see yourself working in a boutique, mid-tier, or top-tier firm or in house? Next, you need to make sure your CV is updated. Your CV should reflect the type of role you are looking for. If you are a construction lawyer that is looking to only or mainly do back-end work, make sure that your CV focusses on the back-end work you have done. Don’t fill the front page of the CV with examples of front-end work or other areas of law you have worked in (although most of the work you have done should be recorded somewhere in the CV).
Now is also a great time to be working on building your network. Update your LinkedIn profile, start connecting with other lawyers, and posting and commenting on or sharing other posts. Importantly, reach out to us at Burgess Paluch Legal Recruitment. We can help you start research into the firms you might be interested in. Look at the websites for firms as well as their LinkedIn pages. Look into the types of matters they have worked on, or big matters they have been a part of. Utilise the Burgess Paluch network. We have been speaking with partners from almost all good firms over the past 20 years, and it is unlikely anyone else can give you the holistic, umbrella view that we can.
We have our ears to the ground, and we make it our business to be first to hear about new vacancies, or about upcoming possible vacancies, or even about areas of law in which a particular firm may wish to develop. We can give you advice on salary expectations and firm culture, as well as helping you prepare a stand-out CV. Even if you are only thinking about making a move, give us a call to chat about your options, and for more advice on how to prepare yourself to be a stand-out candidate!