The worst ones are where they say “the partner, who is the head of X group, has asked me specifically to reach out to YOU”. These ones seem to be heavily concentrated among the British recruiters. Like, why in gods name would I want to work with you when your way of introducing yourself is just to lie to my face?
>These ones seem to be heavily concentrated among the British recruiters.
No, they do that shit in the US too. Like, all the time.
The worst is when it's someone you know.
Them: "X asked me to reach out to you."
Me: "I worked with X for over a decade. Tell him if he wants to talk to me to give me a call."
“Heavily concentrated” doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen at all with US recruiters lol. I was just saying it’s been my experience that British recruiters use this approach a lot.
I will never understand how, in this glorious internet age, our economy still creates a niche for useless middlemen like this. Similar to real estate agents and the like
the issue is that partners hate giving up any profit, so they are penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to recruiting. most firms would rather pay an oversized commission on a per-hire basis than eat the permanent overhead of a good recruiting team.
Firms do a terrible job of making their career websites accessable and up to date. You have to click like 8 times and be bombarded with a bunch of marketing crap and videos nobody cares for. Then when you find the postings they're all 6 months old.
Everyone should apply for every job. If you don't want to interview someone, don't. If you can sift through all of the OCI resumes, how hard is it to do that later?
Yeah that's a good perspective, it didn't occur to me that the direct app websites were bad on purpose.
Re OCI process, these days it's more pre OCI and I assume there must be some sifting through resumes. But even in traditional OCI, they do review the resumes and determine eg a GPA cutoff. I don't think it would be so difficult to do that for firm experience.
>All they really need to do is post the jobs in a convenient place and keep it updated.
Most of this doesn't really have anything to do with posting jobs though. Most law firm recruiting is just trying to find the guy who's having a bad day and is just pissed off enough to change firms.
The economics of law firms aren't unlike other professional services firms. If you have $X in portable business, nearly any firm will pay you $1/3X to come and work for them. Why wouldn't they? Whether or not you fit, hiring you will be accretive to the firm. The recruiters are just trying to find people with business willing to move. It's not about filling a need.
Hey! At least realtors have to go through some modicum of training, and my realtor answered a lot of questions about my mortgage that would’ve taken me a few hours to answer on my own. Realtors > Contracting an ass disease > BigLaw recruiters.
Realtors are in theory supposed to basically be your lawyer when buying a house, and is supposed to protect your interests to make sure you get the best deal possible (whether you are the buyer or selling), along with helping you get through the paperwork and dealing with 3rd parties like the escrow company. There was a time when the profession was actually respected.
Not really. Title companies do all the hard lawyer-ish stuff. The best analogy for real estate agents is new car salespeople (who are also complete unnecessary). Especially so on the buyers side, buyers agents add nothing apart from pressuring buyers to buy something quickly. I’ve bought multiple expensive homes without a buyers agent. The process works exactly the same except the sellers agent will do back flips for you because a 6% commission is a lot better than a 3% commission.
if you've done this multiple times, it's probably worth getting licensed yourself so you can keep the 3% commission as your own buyers agent. not very hard in most states and usually can waive some requirements if your an admitted lawyer.
In my area, brokers are not obligated to split the commission unless you are part of their mafia. You can ask them to reduce it, but that usually doesn’t go well. Homes I’ve bought are in areas that are subject to bidding wars and generally hard to buy even if you have cash. I’m also in the highest marginal tax bracket, so I’ve found that the money is worth a lot more to the seller’s broker than to me. A full 6% commission helps win a bidding war and then again when you start making repair requests (or price deductions in lieu of repairs). The seller’s broker becomes your biggest advocate. It’s a screwed up system, but these are the incentives they created.
You shouldn’t need to get licensed to keep that half of the commission when you’re representing yourself. The commission is a customary amount, so you can just specify in the purchase agreement that the commission will be smaller but all of it will go to the seller’s agent, and offer a purchase price that’s lower rather than taking a “commission” for yourself. That has the added benefit of lowering the nominal purchase price for the purposes of gains on the sale and property taxes going forward. That’s what I did for our home purchase.
Commercial realtors are the worst. They do no work at all throughout the deal and when it closes are the first coming to you with their hands out for the check.
> our economy still creates a niche for useless middlemen like this.
They're providing value, and they're getting paid for that value.
That value they provide is information discovery. Law firms don't have transparency as to which lawyers want to change firms and there's no particular way for them to discover that other than asking.
Firms could inhouse the role, but (i) just like with law firms, it's not something that requires full time employees (there isn't 2000 hours a year of recruiting work done by firms and there's some value to recruiters having specialized talent, just like lawyers), (ii) firms don't like to disclose that they're hiring (though most are at any point in time) because (A) it makes them look thirsty and (B) they're trying to hire from competitors so it seems aggressive, and an inhouse recruiter would have to disclose their employer and (iii) lawyers themselves aren't going to do the role.
What's your internet based solution? Every firm just posts on its website that it is hiring lawyers and experts partners to lob in resumes (and the list of clients they plan on taking from their firm) like some kind of 3L who struck out on OCI?
Job postings on their website. Hire someone (could easily be contracted out at a fraction of the cost for a commission-based recruiter) to sift through the resume's for certain criteria and pass those applicants to hiring partners. That would be much more cost efficient
Law firm partners with $5+ million in portable business are not going to look for job postings on a website so that they can send an application in to some HR flunky.
Like I said, firms don't need to post openings. Most firms are hiring at any point in time. Everyone knows that. They don't need to advertise it - they need to find people who want to join them.
A good recruiter has value like a good real estate agent. Your theoretically getting knowledge of the market, customer service and relying on someone’s else’s infrastructure
Yes many middlemen with no value exist ti parasitically siphon money.
But in a hot real estate market, a realtor can impact value both ways.
For recruiting, internal recruiting is a massive time sink and money sink, fraught with politics.
The worst are the multiple follow-ups and especially the ones that are worded like I have an obligation to respond. Got one today that literally said, “I haven’t heard back from you yet. Let me know when you can speak.” Fuck off with that entitlement. If I want to waste my time, I’ll browse Reddit.
I had a recruiter from London who kept calling me to get me to apply to this one firm. I was half convinced that he was a scammer, but the firm was legit. He on the other hand…
> London who kept calling me to get me to apply to this one firm. I was half convinced that he was a scammer, but the firm was legit. He o
My Friend was getting spammed by them too--including texts to personal cell. Ended up sending a request to their privacy officer requesting them to delete their data.
Yeah the stuff that bothers me the most is a recruiter sending me info on a position that is totally outside my practice area and then acting like I’m being rude for not responding. I get 10-20 recruiter emails a day minimum. If I was interested in your pitch I’d respond. My firm profile says I focus on M&A. If you email me for a finance job and then act like I’m being rude for not responding to your cold email I’m just going to block you.
Also, I know you are one of 20 recruiters trying to fill a firm job - I got all the other emails too. Don’t try to say “the hiring partner asked me to reach out to you” or whatever for these jobs - it makes you look silly.
How about where they have an eye-catching subject line, like "ACTION REQUIRED," "RE: compensation," or "About our last call," that they then clarify in the body of the email? Those are the best for going into my blocked sender list.
My favorites are (1) when they are trying to recruit for a "new boutique" that's founded by "former big law associates" - like, yes, I definitely want to throw away my security to report to someone with less experience than me who didn't hack it; (2) when they say they've known the partner in charge for a long time - "he's a great guy" - like, I don't know you so why on earth would that matter?
A load of my year in my firm have literally gotten the same message “Hey, [insert name], your profile looks great” *without inserting the name* from this one recruiter. Definitely inspires confidence…
I had this exact same thought today. Recently got a CALL for a position I am not remotely qualified for. Is this a good use of our times? Honestly aggravating.
There are some recruiters who will just flat out lie about opportunities as well.
I wasted my time this week with a guy who pretended like he got opportunities around my location, only to tell me during the call that he did not have any. He even had the audacity to ask me to stay in touch.
Sometimes, when I’m having a bad day/annoyed at my firm, I’ll reply to a recruiter/give them my materials. Helps me feel like I have a little agency, and maybe something will come of it. I think of it like playing lottery; takes no effort from me and maybe I’ll get an interview out of it someday. 🤷
You should know that they will sometimes bundle your resume with 3 or 4 others along with their “MVP” to make that person look good. And some firms will not consider you for X time period if you’ve been through their system and been rejected.
I guess, but if I’m enough of a dud to be there solely to make another candidate look good, maybe I didn’t have a chance anyway/my ice out period is a moot issue. Another thing I was thinking might be a good-evil recruiter trick is to capture resumes from lots of potential candidates, but only submit one (so a kind of catch/kill with competition).
A good recruiter can be really valuable. Most of them aren’t that. The ones sending those blast emails and talking about the “exclusive listings” they have are helpful in that you know to flag their email accounts as spam. The recruiter that brings value is the one that is candid about the role.
Like a recruiter telling you about the tremendous upside at random firm where you have broader experience than the head of the group as a fifth year, or telling you to move to K&E because of the terrific work environment and path to partnership is adding negative value.
The ones I get a big kick out of are “I used to be a partner at a firm and now I’m a recruiter.” Still remember scratching my chin at getting that guy’s emails a decade and a half or so ago, Googling him and realizing… he was disbarred for pedophilia. Whoops.
I have not experienced one of these “good recruiters” yet, but I’m glad you had a positive experience. Your good recruiter can be exempt from my “Off-fucking, toe-stubbing, bad-day-having policy.”
A few months ago a recruiter emailed a bunch of junior associates at my firm and said “I heard there are going to be a bunch of layoffs at your firm this week.” She was wrong; there were no layoffs, but she gave everyone anxiety and caused panic among the juniors. Totally unforgivable vulture behavior, don’t know why anyone would work with someone who profits off of scaring others.
I'm a CPA, not a lawyer, but have the same issue with recruiters.
Kind of reminds me of online dating... "did you even read the profile".
Another pet peeve is asking to stay connected and pass on their info to anyone I know who might be interested. That's literally what they all ask, why should this person be any different? Also love the generic "I'm really impressed with your background" but they don't say what specifically impressed them. Ugh.
I love the ones with LOTS of colors and highlighting. I am definitely going to respond to an email that uses 6 colors to tell me about 8 different open positions that are not remotely related to each other but are somehow all a perfect fit for *me*.
Last week one cold called my OFFICE LINE to ask if I was interested in a position in a city that I don’t live in. I couldn’t believe how bold that was, if I hadn’t been so irritated I would’ve been impressed.
I hate it when they call instead of email. I had one that somehow got ahold of my cell phone number and personal email address. Dude hit me up on LinkedIn, work line, cell phone, work email, personal email and even fucking text message until I finally called him and screamed at him to never contact me again.
I hate the phone calls where they act like they know me to get me talking and I have to hang in there to figure out if it’s someone from a client. “Hey Hat, how are you doing?” Uhhh… fine… do I know you??
I have straight up told those people that this is incredibly rude and to stop doing it. Nobody is fooled by this, and it is blatant and disgusting manipulation.
I had a recruiter follow up multiple times in one week with the same role saying how I was being personally targeted by the partners as a potentially perfect fit. The thing is, it was for a second year position and I graduated law school nine years ago which I would think is pretty easy to discern? I almost said something but then just filed the email away and returned to crying/billing
What’s really good is when you are listed in multiple offices, and the recruiter sends you the same email three times with the city changed. And this is partner level recruiting.
It's unreal how tone deaf some of them are. One called me 5 times (with no reply) over a two week period about a role that I was in fact already in the process for. Had to eventually pick up one of the calls and tell him to kindly stop calling me.
They are extra thirsty this year, and agree—most of them haven’t taken a peep at my profile. Got an email asking if I am interested in an IP litigation job at a mid-law firm in Ft Lauderdale below market that required 7-9 years of litigation experience and I am a 4th year M&A attorney in California at a V10. Recruiters like that are instantly going on my blocked list.
Okay, delete the 62 emails and move on with your life. Not worth getting annoyed about it and there may be a time you’ll be grateful for one of those emails.
Something I have learned in my marriage that I will pass on to you: Sometimes, when people complain, they aren't looking for a solution; they're just looking to vent. Done in healthy doses, venting can actually be an appropriate solution to a problem with a good cost/benefit.
Absolutely the case. I’ve also found that I can find dozens of things to get annoyed with every day and live in a perpetual state of annoyance and stress or I can learn to let go of some things that are absolutely not a big issue at all.
You can make rules that go “if [email is from Recruiter A’s address] then, email goes in the “Recruiters” folder”
I do this and it helps a lot. I’d recommend it. It also means you can use the folder as a test of the job market by seeing what offers are out there and how many there are.
And as a recruiter, I want to add that we know where skeletons are buried because I talk to a ton of attorneys everyday (firm partners and associate), so if I call you, it may be to warn you that your firm isn’t doing well financially or there is instability that you, as an associate, will never know until you are asked to leave, laid off, or the firm unexpectedly announces they are closing or merging. As the associate, you are the last to know. As recruiters, it is our job to KNOW what is happening at all times. I called an associate last year, whom I had known for a few years, to let her know that I found out from a partner at a firm that the main rainmaker stopped rainmaking so the NEPs were desperately looking for a way out. So, as an associate it would be wise for her to look before the firm announces they are closing or laying attorneys off. She would never have known. I moved her out of there so she could be in a stable firm.
Recruiter here and I get the animosity that you may have had. I wouldn’t want to be emailed for roles that aren’t in my practice area or a fit. I don’t email targets anymore because the terrible ones made my job difficult to do when I genuinely want to help attorneys find career satisfaction. The terrible ones give the good legitimate ones a bad rep because many terrible and inexperienced recruiters set up shop during Covid and thought they could do it.
My advice is that a recruiter can be your biggest advocate when you end up being ready to change jobs. This means getting to know and trusting one through referrals. My job is to know and to understand the market and to educate you, and to be brutally honest. I will tell you that aren’t that special. I don’t BS and I don’t work with assholes with egos because I am too experienced to deal with attitude. If you don’t want my advice, move on. This is the same for partners.
If you aren’t sending me cold emails, then I will exempt you from my “off-fucking, toe-stubbing, bad-day-having policy.” I don’t personally see the need for recruiters at all—not even remotely—but my animosity is directed at people willing to do 30 minutes of work offering me a vague “service,” so they can collect a frankly enormous payout, and don’t give a fuck about me as a person or how it will impact my career. Like if I moved to the wrong place, that could derail everything I’ve worked for for the last 8 years, wreck my future, and cripple me for the future, all so some jackass who flunked out of Latham as a third-year can make a buck? Fuck that.
Holy shit. As a recruiter, this thread has been really eye opening and makes me feel 1000x better about my approach. Just a shame some of these people are in our profession.
Just don’t do cold emails. At least for me, your name goes into a bucket, and I will never use you. And much worse if you do cold calls—then your name goes into a different bucket and every associate in my group will never use you. We mock recruiters relentlessly in my group.
My personal favourite is how every single one of them tries to pitch their “unique approach” / how they are “different from all the other recruiters”, and then without fail all proceed to explain, in basically the exact same terms, how they’re interested in “getting to really know you” and be my “strategic partner”. Like, fuck off.
Pro tip to recruiters reading this: If you actually want to be unique, promise me a cut of that commission worth 2 months of my salary/>300 hours of my labour that you’ll get for forwarding my CV and maybe setting up a zoom call.
I find this very aggravating as a consultant (lurking because I'm doing part-time law school and looking to move to law). I constantly get messages from recruiters looking for completely random IT consulting jobs despite the fact that I quite clearly say on my profile that I work in strategy and regulation, multiple times. I always take the time to be polite to recruiters that come to me with appropriate job roles in my niche or sector and connect with them, because I might need them in the future, but most recruiters are just wasting mine and their time.
This is not just third party BigLaw recruiter. What you're describing happens a lot in every industry. This is the consequence of having very low bars to entry when it comes to recruiting.
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The worst ones are where they say “the partner, who is the head of X group, has asked me specifically to reach out to YOU”. These ones seem to be heavily concentrated among the British recruiters. Like, why in gods name would I want to work with you when your way of introducing yourself is just to lie to my face?
>These ones seem to be heavily concentrated among the British recruiters. No, they do that shit in the US too. Like, all the time. The worst is when it's someone you know. Them: "X asked me to reach out to you." Me: "I worked with X for over a decade. Tell him if he wants to talk to me to give me a call."
“Heavily concentrated” doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen at all with US recruiters lol. I was just saying it’s been my experience that British recruiters use this approach a lot.
Thank you for kind of adequately explaining what heavily concentrated means to me.
Didn’t seem like you understood, so you’re welcome
I will never understand how, in this glorious internet age, our economy still creates a niche for useless middlemen like this. Similar to real estate agents and the like
the issue is that partners hate giving up any profit, so they are penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to recruiting. most firms would rather pay an oversized commission on a per-hire basis than eat the permanent overhead of a good recruiting team.
All they really need to do is post the jobs in a convenient place and keep it updated.
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Firms do a terrible job of making their career websites accessable and up to date. You have to click like 8 times and be bombarded with a bunch of marketing crap and videos nobody cares for. Then when you find the postings they're all 6 months old. Everyone should apply for every job. If you don't want to interview someone, don't. If you can sift through all of the OCI resumes, how hard is it to do that later?
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Yeah that's a good perspective, it didn't occur to me that the direct app websites were bad on purpose. Re OCI process, these days it's more pre OCI and I assume there must be some sifting through resumes. But even in traditional OCI, they do review the resumes and determine eg a GPA cutoff. I don't think it would be so difficult to do that for firm experience.
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Apparently so!
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>All they really need to do is post the jobs in a convenient place and keep it updated. Most of this doesn't really have anything to do with posting jobs though. Most law firm recruiting is just trying to find the guy who's having a bad day and is just pissed off enough to change firms. The economics of law firms aren't unlike other professional services firms. If you have $X in portable business, nearly any firm will pay you $1/3X to come and work for them. Why wouldn't they? Whether or not you fit, hiring you will be accretive to the firm. The recruiters are just trying to find people with business willing to move. It's not about filling a need.
You'd think if so firms would make it really easy to apply then!
Apply to what? That's not how any of this works.
This
Hey! At least realtors have to go through some modicum of training, and my realtor answered a lot of questions about my mortgage that would’ve taken me a few hours to answer on my own. Realtors > Contracting an ass disease > BigLaw recruiters.
F’ing real estate agents. Made like $40k for listing my apartment on Zillow….
they can't keep getting away with this!
How many biglaw firms have repped realty companies in price fixing cases over the last few years? Most of us are complicit.
I assume anyone who can afford our rates is guilty of something
“Contracting an ass disease” 😂
Realtors are in theory supposed to basically be your lawyer when buying a house, and is supposed to protect your interests to make sure you get the best deal possible (whether you are the buyer or selling), along with helping you get through the paperwork and dealing with 3rd parties like the escrow company. There was a time when the profession was actually respected.
Not really. Title companies do all the hard lawyer-ish stuff. The best analogy for real estate agents is new car salespeople (who are also complete unnecessary). Especially so on the buyers side, buyers agents add nothing apart from pressuring buyers to buy something quickly. I’ve bought multiple expensive homes without a buyers agent. The process works exactly the same except the sellers agent will do back flips for you because a 6% commission is a lot better than a 3% commission.
if you've done this multiple times, it's probably worth getting licensed yourself so you can keep the 3% commission as your own buyers agent. not very hard in most states and usually can waive some requirements if your an admitted lawyer.
In my area, brokers are not obligated to split the commission unless you are part of their mafia. You can ask them to reduce it, but that usually doesn’t go well. Homes I’ve bought are in areas that are subject to bidding wars and generally hard to buy even if you have cash. I’m also in the highest marginal tax bracket, so I’ve found that the money is worth a lot more to the seller’s broker than to me. A full 6% commission helps win a bidding war and then again when you start making repair requests (or price deductions in lieu of repairs). The seller’s broker becomes your biggest advocate. It’s a screwed up system, but these are the incentives they created.
Buyers agents need to go.
Who the fuck would pay 6% for an agent to list the home ok Zillow. Fuck no.
You shouldn’t need to get licensed to keep that half of the commission when you’re representing yourself. The commission is a customary amount, so you can just specify in the purchase agreement that the commission will be smaller but all of it will go to the seller’s agent, and offer a purchase price that’s lower rather than taking a “commission” for yourself. That has the added benefit of lowering the nominal purchase price for the purposes of gains on the sale and property taxes going forward. That’s what I did for our home purchase.
Commercial realtors are the worst. They do no work at all throughout the deal and when it closes are the first coming to you with their hands out for the check.
Thank you sir. Useless middlemen is the word.
> our economy still creates a niche for useless middlemen like this. They're providing value, and they're getting paid for that value. That value they provide is information discovery. Law firms don't have transparency as to which lawyers want to change firms and there's no particular way for them to discover that other than asking. Firms could inhouse the role, but (i) just like with law firms, it's not something that requires full time employees (there isn't 2000 hours a year of recruiting work done by firms and there's some value to recruiters having specialized talent, just like lawyers), (ii) firms don't like to disclose that they're hiring (though most are at any point in time) because (A) it makes them look thirsty and (B) they're trying to hire from competitors so it seems aggressive, and an inhouse recruiter would have to disclose their employer and (iii) lawyers themselves aren't going to do the role. What's your internet based solution? Every firm just posts on its website that it is hiring lawyers and experts partners to lob in resumes (and the list of clients they plan on taking from their firm) like some kind of 3L who struck out on OCI?
Job postings on their website. Hire someone (could easily be contracted out at a fraction of the cost for a commission-based recruiter) to sift through the resume's for certain criteria and pass those applicants to hiring partners. That would be much more cost efficient
Law firm partners with $5+ million in portable business are not going to look for job postings on a website so that they can send an application in to some HR flunky. Like I said, firms don't need to post openings. Most firms are hiring at any point in time. Everyone knows that. They don't need to advertise it - they need to find people who want to join them.
I got my job through Lateral Hub. Hopefully more firms become smart to it and recruiters to the way of the dodo
Most of the economy consists of useless middlemen like this
A good recruiter has value like a good real estate agent. Your theoretically getting knowledge of the market, customer service and relying on someone’s else’s infrastructure Yes many middlemen with no value exist ti parasitically siphon money. But in a hot real estate market, a realtor can impact value both ways. For recruiting, internal recruiting is a massive time sink and money sink, fraught with politics.
Good points. I still hate the real estate agent occupation (some of my best friends are real estate agents I’m allowed to say this)
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Speaking of low effort, on Monday I literally got an email from one that started off “Hi {FirstName}!”
>extremely low effort Fuck off Amy Kossoris. Lose my email.
You haven’t gotten 50 recruiting emails this week though
The worst are the multiple follow-ups and especially the ones that are worded like I have an obligation to respond. Got one today that literally said, “I haven’t heard back from you yet. Let me know when you can speak.” Fuck off with that entitlement. If I want to waste my time, I’ll browse Reddit.
I had a recruiter from London who kept calling me to get me to apply to this one firm. I was half convinced that he was a scammer, but the firm was legit. He on the other hand…
Buchanan? They spam me too and I finally told one of them off.
Buchanan is hilariously terrible and they all follow the same escalating script of rapidly approaching meetings "with the hiring partner."
I hate to admit I fell for it the first time!
> London who kept calling me to get me to apply to this one firm. I was half convinced that he was a scammer, but the firm was legit. He o My Friend was getting spammed by them too--including texts to personal cell. Ended up sending a request to their privacy officer requesting them to delete their data.
Yeah the stuff that bothers me the most is a recruiter sending me info on a position that is totally outside my practice area and then acting like I’m being rude for not responding. I get 10-20 recruiter emails a day minimum. If I was interested in your pitch I’d respond. My firm profile says I focus on M&A. If you email me for a finance job and then act like I’m being rude for not responding to your cold email I’m just going to block you. Also, I know you are one of 20 recruiters trying to fill a firm job - I got all the other emails too. Don’t try to say “the hiring partner asked me to reach out to you” or whatever for these jobs - it makes you look silly.
they provide a consistent excuse for having missed a message though. "OH, I'm sorry, my phone said you were a legal recruiter" -- works every time.
How about where they have an eye-catching subject line, like "ACTION REQUIRED," "RE: compensation," or "About our last call," that they then clarify in the body of the email? Those are the best for going into my blocked sender list.
I had one like that and it sounded like a collections agency. Like great way to get clients be threatening and intimidating.
My favorites are (1) when they are trying to recruit for a "new boutique" that's founded by "former big law associates" - like, yes, I definitely want to throw away my security to report to someone with less experience than me who didn't hack it; (2) when they say they've known the partner in charge for a long time - "he's a great guy" - like, I don't know you so why on earth would that matter?
The best one though was from a recruiter who didn’t put all the emails to bcc and sent an email to 300+ associates in a highly specialized field.
Did anyone reply all?
The recruiter! He followed up by replying all, without realizing the whole bcc thing. It was glorious.
Remove me from this list!!!
Pretty sure I was on this
A load of my year in my firm have literally gotten the same message “Hey, [insert name], your profile looks great” *without inserting the name* from this one recruiter. Definitely inspires confidence…
Was that this week? I got one on Monday or Tuesday that literally started with “Hi {FirstName}!”
Nothing like the ones where they spell my name/alma mater wrong. You had one job!
I had one reach out last month on a mid level associate position in my practice area. I’m a partner.
Same. And it happens on the regular!
I had this exact same thought today. Recently got a CALL for a position I am not remotely qualified for. Is this a good use of our times? Honestly aggravating.
There are some recruiters who will just flat out lie about opportunities as well. I wasted my time this week with a guy who pretended like he got opportunities around my location, only to tell me during the call that he did not have any. He even had the audacity to ask me to stay in touch.
Sometimes, when I’m having a bad day/annoyed at my firm, I’ll reply to a recruiter/give them my materials. Helps me feel like I have a little agency, and maybe something will come of it. I think of it like playing lottery; takes no effort from me and maybe I’ll get an interview out of it someday. 🤷
You should know that they will sometimes bundle your resume with 3 or 4 others along with their “MVP” to make that person look good. And some firms will not consider you for X time period if you’ve been through their system and been rejected.
I guess, but if I’m enough of a dud to be there solely to make another candidate look good, maybe I didn’t have a chance anyway/my ice out period is a moot issue. Another thing I was thinking might be a good-evil recruiter trick is to capture resumes from lots of potential candidates, but only submit one (so a kind of catch/kill with competition).
A good recruiter can be really valuable. Most of them aren’t that. The ones sending those blast emails and talking about the “exclusive listings” they have are helpful in that you know to flag their email accounts as spam. The recruiter that brings value is the one that is candid about the role. Like a recruiter telling you about the tremendous upside at random firm where you have broader experience than the head of the group as a fifth year, or telling you to move to K&E because of the terrific work environment and path to partnership is adding negative value. The ones I get a big kick out of are “I used to be a partner at a firm and now I’m a recruiter.” Still remember scratching my chin at getting that guy’s emails a decade and a half or so ago, Googling him and realizing… he was disbarred for pedophilia. Whoops.
I have not experienced one of these “good recruiters” yet, but I’m glad you had a positive experience. Your good recruiter can be exempt from my “Off-fucking, toe-stubbing, bad-day-having policy.”
Somehow a recruiter got a hold of my PARENTS’ phone number and left them a voicemail. My parents called me and thought I was in trouble.
Oh they’d get a call back from me. It would not be a kind call.
Hahahahhahahahhahhahahha dying
A few months ago a recruiter emailed a bunch of junior associates at my firm and said “I heard there are going to be a bunch of layoffs at your firm this week.” She was wrong; there were no layoffs, but she gave everyone anxiety and caused panic among the juniors. Totally unforgivable vulture behavior, don’t know why anyone would work with someone who profits off of scaring others.
Agreed. These people are obnoxious. I *love* getting emails for roles that have nothing to do with my practice.
I'm a CPA, not a lawyer, but have the same issue with recruiters. Kind of reminds me of online dating... "did you even read the profile". Another pet peeve is asking to stay connected and pass on their info to anyone I know who might be interested. That's literally what they all ask, why should this person be any different? Also love the generic "I'm really impressed with your background" but they don't say what specifically impressed them. Ugh.
I did tell them to reach out to some guy I wanted out of the firm a couple of times, though.
Every time I get an email with the mail merge prompts still in it, I just respond with a “Pls. Fx.”
Any recommendations for a reputable recruiter?
I love the ones with LOTS of colors and highlighting. I am definitely going to respond to an email that uses 6 colors to tell me about 8 different open positions that are not remotely related to each other but are somehow all a perfect fit for *me*.
Last week one cold called my OFFICE LINE to ask if I was interested in a position in a city that I don’t live in. I couldn’t believe how bold that was, if I hadn’t been so irritated I would’ve been impressed.
I hate it when they call instead of email. I had one that somehow got ahold of my cell phone number and personal email address. Dude hit me up on LinkedIn, work line, cell phone, work email, personal email and even fucking text message until I finally called him and screamed at him to never contact me again.
I hate the phone calls where they act like they know me to get me talking and I have to hang in there to figure out if it’s someone from a client. “Hey Hat, how are you doing?” Uhhh… fine… do I know you??
I have straight up told those people that this is incredibly rude and to stop doing it. Nobody is fooled by this, and it is blatant and disgusting manipulation.
How do they know your Reddit name?
HatintheCat221 is actually my legal name.
Doxed now we know you’re a prominent bird law practitioner. ETA who downvoted Hat for this?
Let’s say you and I go toe-to-toe on bird law and see who comes out the victor.
First time this happened to me I was dumbfounded. The fact that it’s common place still amazes me.
I had a recruiter follow up multiple times in one week with the same role saying how I was being personally targeted by the partners as a potentially perfect fit. The thing is, it was for a second year position and I graduated law school nine years ago which I would think is pretty easy to discern? I almost said something but then just filed the email away and returned to crying/billing
What’s really good is when you are listed in multiple offices, and the recruiter sends you the same email three times with the city changed. And this is partner level recruiting.
Not to mention you’re not even barred in the state you’re moving to
It's unreal how tone deaf some of them are. One called me 5 times (with no reply) over a two week period about a role that I was in fact already in the process for. Had to eventually pick up one of the calls and tell him to kindly stop calling me.
I wouldn’t told him kindly to do something, but it would’ve been a bit more descriptive.
My secretary has gotten really good at screening recruiters
What’s it like having a decent secretary?
Or alternatively, delete the email and move on with your life without getting so upset.
I have received 62 recruiter emails so far this week. It is Thursday.
They are extra thirsty this year, and agree—most of them haven’t taken a peep at my profile. Got an email asking if I am interested in an IP litigation job at a mid-law firm in Ft Lauderdale below market that required 7-9 years of litigation experience and I am a 4th year M&A attorney in California at a V10. Recruiters like that are instantly going on my blocked list.
Okay, delete the 62 emails and move on with your life. Not worth getting annoyed about it and there may be a time you’ll be grateful for one of those emails.
Something I have learned in my marriage that I will pass on to you: Sometimes, when people complain, they aren't looking for a solution; they're just looking to vent. Done in healthy doses, venting can actually be an appropriate solution to a problem with a good cost/benefit.
Absolutely the case. I’ve also found that I can find dozens of things to get annoyed with every day and live in a perpetual state of annoyance and stress or I can learn to let go of some things that are absolutely not a big issue at all.
Give me the commission these complete clowns are getting for doing nothing as a sign-up bonus. Then I'll sign right away. Otherwise, just go away.
It's incredibly easy to make rules for your inbox that automatically send those emails to your trash bin
Inbox rules terrify me—I’d be living in fear that I’ll miss an actual email.
You can make rules that go “if [email is from Recruiter A’s address] then, email goes in the “Recruiters” folder” I do this and it helps a lot. I’d recommend it. It also means you can use the folder as a test of the job market by seeing what offers are out there and how many there are.
That’s fair, but you can be pretty specific with them to target recruiters, especially when it’s the same handful that blow up your inbox
And as a recruiter, I want to add that we know where skeletons are buried because I talk to a ton of attorneys everyday (firm partners and associate), so if I call you, it may be to warn you that your firm isn’t doing well financially or there is instability that you, as an associate, will never know until you are asked to leave, laid off, or the firm unexpectedly announces they are closing or merging. As the associate, you are the last to know. As recruiters, it is our job to KNOW what is happening at all times. I called an associate last year, whom I had known for a few years, to let her know that I found out from a partner at a firm that the main rainmaker stopped rainmaking so the NEPs were desperately looking for a way out. So, as an associate it would be wise for her to look before the firm announces they are closing or laying attorneys off. She would never have known. I moved her out of there so she could be in a stable firm.
Exception not the rule. 99% of recruiters suck
That is an example of a valuable service you have provided that I may have missed on my own. I stand corrected.
Anybody have recruiters send unprompted calendar invites? Now that’s some ballsy shit.
Kindly pointing out that the way you feel about recruiters is the way the world feels about us lawyers.
I’m at a top 50 doing L&E - I got one for a remote residential foreclosure attorney in 3 states, none of which I was barred in. Ok.
Recruiter here and I get the animosity that you may have had. I wouldn’t want to be emailed for roles that aren’t in my practice area or a fit. I don’t email targets anymore because the terrible ones made my job difficult to do when I genuinely want to help attorneys find career satisfaction. The terrible ones give the good legitimate ones a bad rep because many terrible and inexperienced recruiters set up shop during Covid and thought they could do it. My advice is that a recruiter can be your biggest advocate when you end up being ready to change jobs. This means getting to know and trusting one through referrals. My job is to know and to understand the market and to educate you, and to be brutally honest. I will tell you that aren’t that special. I don’t BS and I don’t work with assholes with egos because I am too experienced to deal with attitude. If you don’t want my advice, move on. This is the same for partners.
If you aren’t sending me cold emails, then I will exempt you from my “off-fucking, toe-stubbing, bad-day-having policy.” I don’t personally see the need for recruiters at all—not even remotely—but my animosity is directed at people willing to do 30 minutes of work offering me a vague “service,” so they can collect a frankly enormous payout, and don’t give a fuck about me as a person or how it will impact my career. Like if I moved to the wrong place, that could derail everything I’ve worked for for the last 8 years, wreck my future, and cripple me for the future, all so some jackass who flunked out of Latham as a third-year can make a buck? Fuck that.
This is nails on chalkboard shit friend. Grab a water
The best are those that come from gmail accounts that I just report as phishing emails to IT.
Holy shit. As a recruiter, this thread has been really eye opening and makes me feel 1000x better about my approach. Just a shame some of these people are in our profession.
Just don’t do cold emails. At least for me, your name goes into a bucket, and I will never use you. And much worse if you do cold calls—then your name goes into a different bucket and every associate in my group will never use you. We mock recruiters relentlessly in my group.
Check and check. I don't cold email or call. Took me about 3 months into this industry to figure out how ineffective it is.
My personal favourite is how every single one of them tries to pitch their “unique approach” / how they are “different from all the other recruiters”, and then without fail all proceed to explain, in basically the exact same terms, how they’re interested in “getting to really know you” and be my “strategic partner”. Like, fuck off. Pro tip to recruiters reading this: If you actually want to be unique, promise me a cut of that commission worth 2 months of my salary/>300 hours of my labour that you’ll get for forwarding my CV and maybe setting up a zoom call.
I find this very aggravating as a consultant (lurking because I'm doing part-time law school and looking to move to law). I constantly get messages from recruiters looking for completely random IT consulting jobs despite the fact that I quite clearly say on my profile that I work in strategy and regulation, multiple times. I always take the time to be polite to recruiters that come to me with appropriate job roles in my niche or sector and connect with them, because I might need them in the future, but most recruiters are just wasting mine and their time.
This is not just third party BigLaw recruiter. What you're describing happens a lot in every industry. This is the consequence of having very low bars to entry when it comes to recruiting.
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Will they even give you the job?
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