Legal Career Advice & Counseling

West Career Counseling for Attorneys

You can benefit from our legal career transition counseling services if:

• You are having a difficult time finding a new legal or law-related job
• You are trying to determine where you best "fit"
• You are dissatisfied with your legal career path
• You feel trapped in your job or career
• You find yourself questioning your decision to become a lawyer
• You sense that your job might be in jeopardy
• You are curious about what else you could do with your law degree and legal skills
• You want to identify the hottest, most rapidly growing practice areas and alternative careers for lawyers
• You want to go out on your own and want to maximize your chances for success

For over 20 years, we have helped thousands of attorneys change jobs and careers, "reinvent" themselves, move into alternative careers where a legal background is an asset, gain "value-added" credentials, and otherwise resolve the full range of career issues confronting them. We specialize in:

• career analysis and "audits"
  skills assessment/realistic goal-setting
• legal and law-related education options
• career trends analysis
• exploring traditional practice options
• alternative legal careers and jobs
• identifying specific employers
• identifying specific job opportunities
• winning job-search strategies
• marketing yourself effectively
• interview skills training, including videotaping of practice interviews
• strengthening application documents (resumes, cover letters, Federal application forms, Administrative Law Judge applications, Senior Executive Service Qualification Statements, U.S. Magistrate Judge applications, KSAs, etc.)
• effective networking
• compensation and employment contract negotiation advice
• moving into solo practice
• practice-enhancement and client development ideas

Our legal career counselors are attorneys expert in all legal and law-related employment sectors (law firms, corporations, government at all levels, nonprofits, and others) and with extensive knowledge of all U.S. and international legal markets. They continuously monitor these developments nationwide, can help you assess and restructure your career, and will provide you with detailed, expert advice on how to position and present yourself in order to achieve your career goals.

Our experience and knowledge of legal markets nationwide and abroad is unmatched. Our synergy with our parent company, the provider of AttorneyJobs.com, gives us - and you - an enormous advantage.

Extensive career "outplacement" services are available to many attorneys who are being terminated by large law firms, Fortune 500 corporations, public agencies, and other large organizations. Among the clients for whom we provide outplacement assistance are some of the largest legal employers in the U.S. Unfortunately, the same quality services are generally unavailable to individual attorneys at an affordable price.

We believe that all attorneys, regardless of where they work, should have the same access to high-quality legal career counseling services. In addition, we firmly believe that such services should not be limited to attorneys who are being terminated by their employers, but should be available to all practitioners at all stages of their careers, regardless of the nature of their career concerns.

• Our counselors focus exclusively on attorneys, and have more legal career transition counseling experience than any other organization.
• All of our counselors are experienced attorneys who speak your language.
• Our link to our legal career publishing parent assures that you will receive the benefit of all of the legal career and specific job information we receive on a daily basis.
• Our team approach means you benefit from the collective expertise of all of our career counselors and legal career experts.

Confidential Career Counseling. All of our individual career counseling services are priced at $150/hour, with you controlling the agenda and the time spent on your concerns. The average counseling client spends approximately $700 total for our services.

Counselor Preparation Time. We will estimate our preparation time based on the information and materials you provide beforehand, and will advise you of - and bind ourselves to - our estimate before we proceed at your direction.

Application Document Evaluations and Suggestions for Improvement. When you ask us to review and critique your application documents (resumes, cover letters, Federal applications, Administrative Law Judge applications, etc.), we give you a firm estimate of the time (and corresponding cost) involved in evaluating your documents, and will obtain your authorization to proceed based upon the estimate before we begin critiquing your documents. Please Note: We will not evaluate and make suggestions regarding your documents if you do not specifically request this service.

"No-Shows" and Late Cancellations. There is a $50.00 late cancellation fee that will be applied if you do not keep a scheduled appointment or cancel less than 24 hours before the appointment.

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Individual counseling is available in person or by telephone. To make an appointment, or for further information, contact us at:

Attorney Jobs - Thomson West
West Career Counseling for Attorneys
1100 13th Street NW, 2nd Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Telephone: (202) 777-8511
E-mail: west.ajocareercounselor@thomson.com