West Legal Outplacement

Why Attorneys Need Outplacement Services

As the market for legal outplacement service grows, employers are beginning to appreciate the need for and value of offering displaced attorneys profession-specific, as compared to generic, career transition services. This need is supported by the following factors:

• The legal profession has unique qualities and characteristics. It has a language of its own. To assist attorneys effectively, the career consultant must have familiarity with the unique attributes of the profession and be able to communicate in the appropriate language.
• Through their education and professional experience, attorneys have available to them a broad range of legal and law-related career options. It is essential that the legal career consultant recognize, understand, and appreciate the numerous career directions and opportunities for advancement a displaced attorney can pursue. There are hundreds of employment options for attorneys other than working for a law firm or corporate law department.
• The legal employment market is both diverse and complex. The average attorney has a very limited understanding of the market. Special knowledge, information, and resources are required to educate and guide displaced attorneys to the numerous employment opportunities available to them.
• Even the "mainstream" legal employment market has critical nuances not found in the "general" job market for other professionals. For example, there are substantial differences between working as an attorney in a law firm, working in the same practice area in a corporate legal department, or working in a government general counsel office. To provide competent assistance to displaced attorneys, career consultants need to be familiar with these and similar subtleties in legal employment and account for them in advising candidates on how to apply and compete effectively for positions in different settings.
• Moreover, the legal employment market has undergone several paradigm shifts in recent years. For instance, a number of practice areas have dried up substantially or disappeared completely, others are in jeopardy, and entirely new practice areas have appeared. Displaced attorneys need to be advised of these changes, and their effects on the legal employment market, in order to plan their next career moves intelligently.
• Also, attorneys seeking new positions need profession-specific advice on how to complete the different legal employment application documents and accompanying material requested by employers to substantiate an attorney's professional qualifications. Generic directions appropriate to other professionals are insufficient in this context. For instance, standard, "one-size-fits-all" resumes are generally inappropriate and non-competitive in the legal job market.
• In addition, outplacement consultants advising attorneys should be familiar with the professional constraints that affect the lawyer's choice of position as well as geographic mobility , such as state bar membership requirements, malpractice insurance requirements, CLE mandates, etc.
• And, because of their professional training, attorneys relate better and accept career transition advice more readily from counselors who are themselves experienced attorneys , who speak the same language, and who, by virtue of their own work experience as lawyers, can more readily understand and empathize with the displaced attorney's situation.