China Law Blog

And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply So I tucked my hair up under my hat and I went in to ask him why He said you look like a fine upstanding young man, I think you'll do So I took off my hat I said imagine that, huh, me working for you

At least three times a week, I get emails from earnest young college and law students seeking advice on what they should do to become international (usually China) lawyers. My advice is pretty simple. Study hard, get killer grades, and learn your languages, both spoken and written. I should also tell them not to be a creep, but I figure either they are or they are not.

But even these things do not (especially these days) mean you will get hired and they certainly do not mean you will be effective. For that there are the intangibles.

My firm recently went through a massive interview process for a legal assistant and, though this may sound weird, that process is pretty much the same as what we go through in hiring our lawyers. So with an eye towards helping all earnest people out there, here is what we did and how we made our pick.

We began by running an ad in Craigslist, looking for someone with the following credentials:

"International law firm seeks legal assistant. Our firm is looking for a college graduate with excellent written and editorial skills. Legal experience is not necessary, but brains, desire and work ethic are. High GPA and foreign language skills are a plus. This job is perfect for someone contemplating a legal career."

This is the fourth time we have used this same ad and we have never failed to hire star-quality people with it. Two of our past hires are in law school (one is with us right now as a summer associate) and one heads up PR for a national quality museum in New York City. This time around, we got around 150 resumes and -- not kidding -- about half of these were really good. One of our staff broke them out into three piles: Yes, No, and Maybe. I quickly scanned the 40 or so resumes and cover letters in each of the Yes and Maybe piles and immediately determined that all of the "Maybes" had become Nos. I made this determination not on the basis that none of them would have worked, but that none of them were as good as the Yeses and we already had way too many yeses.

We then pored through the "Yes" pile and got it down to around 20, all superb. I then gave these 20 back to our departing legal assistant (off to law school) and asked her to get the number down to 12, with a one sentence explanation as to why she was rejecting the eight. She did that and all of her explanations made sense and so we went with them. We were now down to twelve and of this number, I correctly figured ten or so will still want to interview.

We interviewed the ten and, truthfully, we were convinced any one of them would have been more than fine. But we had a job to do and so we caucused and discussed who to ask back for another round. What did we see that we liked and what did we see that we did not like from those ten?

Likes and dislikes:

-- All ten had done incredibly well in college. And though we do not for a moment believe that grades are a perfect indicator of how someone will perform in their job, they are at least a very good indicator and when we are trying to figure out how to get 150 resumes down to ten, that is a very easy and logical way to start the reduction process. I know plenty of great lawyers who did not have top grades and plenty of not so great lawyers who did. But someone with high college grades is almost certainly smart, hard-working, and able to multi-task.

-- All ten came across as well spoken and personable in their initial interviews. This is very important to us. We are a small firm and it is essential that everyone get along. Everyone. I had a discussion the other day with a friend of mine with his own firm. He will not hire anyone unless he thinks he would enjoy going out with that person for a beer. I strongly disagree with that criteria for many reasons. First off, I virtually never go out for beers and I cannot remember the last time I went out for beers with an employee other than with a large chunk of the firm there. My criteria are that the person have a sense of humor and be someone with whom I would enjoy a lunch with the rest of the firm there. I am not hiring someone to be my friend, but I am seeking to hire someone with whom it will be fun (that is the word I meant to use) to work. Even more importantly, I do not want to favor someone necessarily because they think like me. I have a friend with a law firm and it seems like she is always hiring people just like her. I am a huge believer in diversity as a business proposition, and that includes diversity of views and personalities.

-- I like someone who is passionate about something. I do not car if it is car racing (ugh!) or basketball (yeah), just something. That shows me they have interests outside of just school and work. That matters because clients actually tend to like real people.

-- But it is absolutely critical the person we hire be someone who gets along well with others. This is critical both for internal firm morale and this is critical for interactions with clients and other outsiders. This person will be a face of our firm to the outside world and I do not want that face to say "jerk." Or as the What About Clients blog so aptly put it in its recent post, no creeps:"Whether or not you think your trial people (men or women) are capable of looking or acting like "creeps" and robots of war at any moment during the roller-coaster ride of a trial, explain to them in advance the importance of "maintaining" a demeanor which appears professional yet fair, friendly, amiable and genuinely good-hearted. Better yet, hire only those people to help you present your case to a jury."

--One interviewee was asked back because our receptionist insisted on it. She said this person was by far the most personable and polished and we believed her. One person did not get asked back (even though the lawyers really liked this person) strictly because one of our staff felt this person had spoken down to her.

-- All ten had something "international" about them.This means they spoke a foreign language well or had lived or studied overseas. This is important not so much because we need the language skills in our office (we are already covered on all of the languages in which we conduct business), but because we want someone who is comfortable with people from all over (see diversity above). We do not want someone to say to one of our clients "'Zhang,' that's too difficult for me to pronounce, do you mind if I just call you John like my American friends?"

-- We have a bias for those who seem to have made it on their own. By this we mean that we like those who appear to have had to work during college. We also like those with serious volunteer experience. Volunteering a few weeks here and a few weeks there for different organizations comes across as a resume pad and I see that as a negative. We also like those who have spent at least one year post-college in the real world. Our last two staff hires had, respectively, taught high school with Americorps and been a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. We figured if they could handle high school students and Vegas drunks, they could handle opposing counsel. And we were right.

-- We have a bias for those who are really enthusiastic about the job. If someone does not convey real interest, we feel a lot less guilty turning them down.

-- Proofreading is a critical function of the job. But not just proofreading, a desire to do everything perfectly. I am always saying (I know this is a cliche, but so what) that we need to strive for perfection. I do not expect to hit it, but if we do not strive for it, we won't even come close. Every document that leaves our office (from one paragraph letters to 150 page contracts) is a reflection on our firm. It is that face of the firm thing again. Wherever possible, we want two people to see any document before it leaves the office and on many of the shorter, less critical documents, the legal assistant is the last line of defense. In the end, the competition was so tight between three remaining people that we went back and reviewed the cover letters and resumes and picked the person we perceived as being the best writer.

How do you choose your lawyers? Young lawyers, what are you seeing out there?

UPDATE: So I got an email from a lawyer in California who asks: "Once you get such top (non lawyer) people on your staff, how do you keep them?" My answer is that we don't. We really can't. And here is the big issue faced by all law firms, particularly small ones. Working in a law firm as a non-lawyer has its limits and really top people do not want to be doing other people's work (drafting, editing, filing, calling, etc.) for the rest of their lives. My firm has made the conscious decision to go for superstars, short term, rather than go for someone content to be a small firm staff lifer. We tell our hires that we expect a one year commitment out of them and that if they do a good job and leave after one year, we will do whatever we can to help them in the next stage of their career. We have yet to have someone leave after less than a year and we have yet to have someone leave who does not come back to visit.

Now when it comes to lawyers, our view is very different. We view each of our lawyers as lifers and, in fact, none of our lawyers has left the firm since its inception. Not one.