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Episode 110
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Practice Management and Business Skills Professional Skills
Finding the Path: A Legal Recruitment Sherpa’s Guide to Job Hunting
Law as stated: 22 December 2023
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This episode was published and is accurate as at this date.
Legal recruitment extraordinaire Andrew Murdoch of Dovetail joins David in Curiosity to reveal the latest in the legal recruitment world. Touching on whether cover letters still hold value, the best time of year for job searching, and the importance of a career objective.
Practice Management and Business Skills
Professional Skills| What area(s) of law does this episode consider? | The recruitment process. |
| Why is this topic relevant? | As we’ve heard from many of our guests on the podcast, what we start out doing straight out of law school may not necessarily be where we end up – or even what we most enjoy. In many cases, what we end up doing inside or outside the profession is substantially different to what we thought we’d be doing. No surprises then that navigating the job market can be a challenge. Legal recruiters are often a vital part of success in the process of finding a job, so we thought we’d hash out what to expect when working with a recruiter as a young professional. Including how to effectively correspond with them, the significance of building a solid working relationship, and how recruiters can best assist young lawyers in their professional development. |
| What are the main points? |
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| What are the practical takeaways? |
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| Show notes |
DT = David Turner; AM = Andrew Murdoch
| 00:00:00 | DT | Hello and welcome to Hearsay The Legal Podcast, a CPD podcast that allows Australian lawyers to earn their CPD points on the go and at a time that suits them. I’m your host David Turner. Hearsay The Legal Podcast is proudly supported by Lext Australia. Lext’s mission is to improve user experiences in the law and legal services and Hearsay The Legal Podcast is how we’re improving the experience of CPD. Now, if you’ve listened to the podcast before, you’ll know that I ask most of my guests how they got into the job they’re doing now. And most of them say they haven’t ended up where they thought they would straight out of law school. In many cases, what we end up doing inside or outside the legal profession is substantially different to what we thought we would be doing. So, it’s no surprise then that navigating the legal job market can be a challenge. Legal recruiters are often a vital part of success in the process of finding a job. So, we thought we’d hash out what to expect when working with a recruiter as a young legal professional, including how to effectively correspond with them, the significance of building a good working relationship with your recruiter, and how recruiters can best assist young lawyers in their professional and career development. Our guest today is Andrew Murdoch, Managing Director at Dovetail, a legal secondee and recruitment firm. Andrew brings a wealth of experience to our discussion today with both 16 years of in-house legal recruitment experience and a background in legal practice. He has a deep understanding of the legal market and the intricacies of the recruitment process, making him the perfect guest to shed light on this critical aspect of the legal profession and a career in the law. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today on Hearsay. |
| 00:01:48 | AM | Thanks for having me, David. |
| 00:01:49 | DT | It’s wonderful to be here. Now before we dive into it, let’s talk a bit about your background. You were a lawyer and in fact, we were talking before the show, we were both the same kind of lawyer. |
| 00:01:57 | AM | Yes. I started as a lawyer. Just a little bit about my background, perhaps. So, I grew up in Tasmania and studied law there. And then when I finished law, I moved to Melbourne and worked as a lawyer in Melbourne for three, three and a half, years as an insolvency litigator in private practice for a mid-tier, top-tier law firm there. Having done that for three years, I decided to go and see the world and move to London, where again, I practiced in law, again in insolvency and litigation, but this time for the government. So, I was working for the United Kingdom government, UK government there. And then I moved over into recruitment while I was in London and have since been doing recruitment now for the past 16 years, specifically in-house recruitment. So, I recruit for companies. I don’t recruit for law firms, which is quite a niche recruitment market. |
| 00:02:43 | DT | And what led you to make the jump? |
| 00:02:45 | AM | I think being a lawyer was really cutting against the grain for me from day one, but I didn’t know any better. You step out into law and I worked hard at it and I enjoyed numerous aspects of being a lawyer. However, when I was in London, I had an epiphany and we’re in a lecture and the lecture was about changes to a certain legislative regime that was going to impact a number of cases we’re working on. And I was doing my level best not to fall asleep during this lecture and I found it incredibly boring. And afterwards, my colleagues and I met in the hallway and they were really enthused and excited about what some of these changes to the legislation could mean. And they were really into it and they were saying, “that’ll have an impact on this case and maybe we should amend the pleadings in another case“. And I just realised I had no interest in any of it and I was in the wrong spot. There were people that were interested in it. I had no interest whatsoever. I went home that evening and I said to my wife, I think, what I’ve known for a long time, “I need to leave the law“. I rang a friend who was outside the law at that time. He was in recruitment and he said, “look, while you work out what you’re going to do with your life, why don’t you try recruitment and then you can see whether or not you want to go back into law?“. As it turned out, I tried recruitment and I loved it and I haven’t looked back. |
| 00:04:05 | DT | What do you love about it? |
| 00:04:06 | AM | I like the fast-paced nature of recruitment. I like that you can work for win-win. When I was in litigation, litigation is typically a win-loss scenario. So, you have a winner in a case and a loser, which may be different from other areas of law, commercial law and M&A where you’re working for a win-win. But in litigation, I found that it was a win-loss and going into recruitment gave me the win. |
| 00:04:28 | DT | I used to hear people describe litigation as a zero-sum game, but I always said that’s wrong. It’s actually a negative-sum game because everyone ends up worse off, right? Even the winner is – in a best-case scenario – is incurring some unrecoverable legal costs. |
| 00:04:41 | AM | Yes. Looking back, I say that the best outcome in litigation is actually relief. It’s not, “wow, I’ve won that case“. It’s just relief that it’s over. That’s what clients typically felt when they got the best result they possibly could feel. And so, moving over to recruitment and having these lawyers that I placed into roles and then seeing the positive difference I could make to these lawyers’ lives, tangible difference, and also to these companies and their legal functions, really just brought about a joy that I perhaps didn’t experience while in litigation. |
| 00:05:10 | DT | I think that level of self-awareness about what actually interests you at work and what gets you going, what is intellectually stimulating, is something that – well, maybe you can tell me – but is something that I think a lot of lawyers don’t necessarily identify about themselves. I think sometimes it’s the identity of being a lawyer, that kind of path that they’ve started on through law school and they’ve chosen to remain on, out of a sense of identity rather than out of a sense of really enjoying the work. That’s often the reason we kind of stick with a particular role, isn’t it? |
| 00:05:43 | AM | Yes, and I felt that too. It was really hard to leave law and it wasn’t an easy decision to make. I’d been in law for five, six years by that stage and you work at something thinking that if you were to leave law, have I failed at law or is it just not for me? And the more I’ve done recruitment and just the older I’ve got, the more I realise it’s horses for courses and that you really need to listen to what brings you joy and follow that path. If I looked back and everything’s much better with hindsight, perhaps would I have gone in to become a lawyer in the first place? Perhaps not actually, but did law put me in a really good place to be able to achieve what I’ve done today? Most definitely. Could I have done today without having done that first six years of law? No. So, I’m grateful for it, but I think the lesson is if your interests guide you elsewhere, perhaps look at those. |
| 00:06:37 | DT | And you said you specialise in in-house recruitment. What led you to find that specialisation? working in that part of the recruitment field? |
| 00:06:45 | AM | So, for those that perhaps haven’t dealt with recruiters before, there are a number of different types of recruiters out there. So, you have internal recruiters and internal recruiters work within the organisations themselves. So, within a law firm, they’re the internal recruiters that will work for the large law firms and they’re employed by the law firms to go out and find people to come and work for them. And larger companies have some internal recruitment functions that have recruiters working for those companies to find people, including lawyers for those companies. And then on the other side you have agency recruiters and that’s what I am. And agency recruiters work for multiple different companies or law firms finding lawyers for those companies. So, I’m an agency legal recruiter and I specialise specifically in finding lawyers for companies. They’re called in-house lawyers. And I like recruiting lawyers for in-house roles because I love the different industries that are across the in-house and I love learning about different industries, say mining or resources or fast-moving consumer goods or pharmaceuticals. And each time I work for one of those clients, it requires me to know a little bit about those industries and I find that fascinating. But also, I didn’t have a wonderful experience. I didn’t really enjoy working in a law firm. There are people that will and that’s fine but personally I didn’t. And so, for me to place people within a law firm, I’d actually find it difficult to look someone in the eye and say, “look, this is a great profession for you,” when perhaps I didn’t enjoy it that much. |
| 00:08:15 | DT | That idea of having an opportunity to learn about a different industry or a different field through the client organisation is actually something that I remember really enjoying from legal practice. It’s quite similar, I suppose, in the sense that you get to have this brief deep dive into an area of human endeavour that you really didn’t know anything about and then you get to move on and do it with something else. |
| 00:08:39 | AM | Yeah, so I’ll go out and visit my clients and that’s just fascinating. So, you’ll go out and visit your clients and part of the reason I go out and visit my clients is to get a feel for the culture that they have within those organisations so that I can better align the person that’s going into that organisation. But some of those visits have been fantastic. I’ve gone and sat in massive tractors, I’ve gone to see iron foundries, I’ve seen massive recycling plants and gone out to pharmaceutical companies and it’s just fascinating to see how varied they are within each of those industries. |
| 00:09:14 | DT | Absolutely. Now we mentioned at the top of the episode that working with a recruiter, having a good relationship with a recruiter is really important not just for younger lawyers who are just starting out in their career but even more experienced ones looking to make a move. How many roles would you say on the legal services job market are offered through or by a recruiter rather than by the employer directly? |
| 00:09:37 | AM | That’s a really interesting question and one that I should know the answer to but I don’t. I think there’s a tendency to focus on what’s in front of us and what’s coming through and if I had the time, I’d really like to see the stats on that. But it’s a really difficult statistic to measure because what you see in the job market are the job ads for instance. But there’s also a lot going on in the job market that’s not seen and for instance we probably advertise one third of the jobs that we are working on at any one time and I think that’s probably maybe right across the industry. There’s a lot that’s not visible, it’s like a tip of the iceberg and so you don’t really know what’s underneath. |
| 00:10:15 | DT | I suppose that’s already drawn out an important reason to have a relationship with the recruiter which is that two thirds of the roles that are out there if you’re looking for a great in-house role in the industry that you’re interested in you might never actually see if you’re just going hunting for them yourself. |
| 00:10:31 | AM | Yeah definitely. As I mentioned one third, I’d say we advertise, the other two thirds we reach out to people that we know in the market and we have an extensive database of lawyers that we reach out to. But being known to the recruiters if you’re not known to them then they can’t reach out to you to tell you about those roles as they come up. Additionally, recruiters can also reverse engineer a role to some extent. So, if you have a particular skill set and you’re looking for a role then that recruiter can actually proactively approach clients on your behalf to let the companies know about your availability so they can actually create a role for you in some ways. |
| 00:11:07 | DT | Yeah, that’s interesting. Can you tell me about a time when you’ve done that with a candidate? I suppose I understand that conceptually that if you’ve got that great relationship with the employer and you’ve got that great relationship with the prospective employee or the candidate you can make that happen. But is it something that happens often? |
| 00:11:25 | AM | It all depends on the market and I suppose if we just take a step back it’s important, I think to understand the commercial dynamics of working with a recruiter and the recruitment industry because if you understand the commercial dynamics then you can work with that and help the recruiter help you. |
| 00:11:44 | DT | Absolutely. Let’s start with the basics. How does it all work? |
| 00:11:46 | AM | So, external recruiters in an agency role like myself we are paid by the company on successful placement of the lawyer. So, the lawyer actually has to start in the job and stay there for up to a year before we get fully paid. So, the understanding that; one, the lawyer doesn’t have to pay for our services. Because, initially, I’ve had really junior lawyers or students come to me and say – and it was an interesting question and I realised it hadn’t been answered – “do I have to pay for your services if I call you as a recruiter?”. And the answer is no. So, that’s really good. So, you essentially get these free services of a recruiter. But ultimately the client pays for that. And ultimately the recruiter always has to have in the back of their mind; how do they make money and how easily can they place you as a lawyer? So, to engage with a recruiter to make yourself as employable and easy to place as possible will really help the recruiter do their job. They’ll be grateful to you. It’ll increase the chances of you finding the job and increase the chances of the recruiter making money which ultimately, they need to put food on the table and a roof over their head. |
| 00:12:58 | DT | It’s not just the role of the recruiter to advertise and then interview the candidates who apply for the roles and then recommend one. You’ve got this matching role in that you’re contacting the people you already know about both on the employer and the employee side to try and make those matches and sometimes creating roles where there might not even be one already. |
| 00:13:19 | AM | Yes. So, depending on the market and where it is. So, sometimes it’s really useful to speak to a recruiter just to understand how the market is. The market is, just like financial markets, are a good time to buy and good time to sell. Sometimes we see a huge demand for a particular type of lawyer. For instance, a demand that we’ve seen recently; maybe, cyber security. Just with all the threats that companies have faced regarding cyber security. And so, if a lawyer has cyber security experience and knowing that we have a demand for those lawyers from companies we may well then approach those companies proactively rather than wait for them to come to us with a role for cyber security. But I have to say that’s probably less of the way we operate. We typically operate through instruction from clients, clients, companies coming to us and saying; “hi Andrew, I need a lawyer for short term, long term with these skills at this level” and then us going out and talking to those lawyers about that. |
| 00:14:19 | DT | You said earlier Andrew that the best thing that a young lawyer or I suppose any lawyer engaging a recruiter can do is make themselves as employable as possible so that they’re placed quickly. Because of course the commercial dynamic is it’s the employer, the happy employer, who receives the successful candidate who’s paying for the service. So, the more desirable to place you can be, the more likely you are to be placed. What are some of the things that you see candidates doing to put themselves in that position? |
| 00:14:48 | AM | One that I’m happy to provide because it will help anyone listening to this podcast interact not just with other recruiters but also hopefully with me. But the idea of putting together a really good CV and giving that some serious thought. And there’s some really good templates that you can look for to frame your CV. And there are YouTube clips and there are websites that will instruct people how to put together a CV. So, take your time and watch a YouTube clip, click on some websites. If you think spending a couple of hours doing a good CV could ultimately land you a job that you wouldn’t have otherwise got then that’s a really good use of your time in terms of spending that time putting together the CV. And then when the CV lands on my desk, you’ve made my job a lot easier because I can quickly see what skills you have, where you’ve worked, what you’re looking for. I can start thinking about what organisations and what clients I work with you’d work well with. Also having a clear picture about the type of job you’d like is really useful as a recruiter. When the CV is sent through and I’ll pick up the phone and I’ll speak with candidates and applicants and I’ll say; “what type of role is it that you’re looking for?”. And it can be a little frustrating when “look, I don’t know really what type of role I’m looking for at all. Just a role.” And that makes it really difficult trying to find a match on the other side. And there are things you can do again to educate yourself about what type of role you’re looking for so you can speak to people within industries so you become an informed consumer. Window shop, look at job ads, what excites you, what doesn’t. Some advice that was given to me that is really useful to determine that is if you look at job ads and you cut and paste those just little lines or snippets within job ads that excite you and then you put them together to create a Frankenstein job ad of your perfect role and then what you do is you create this perfect role and then you say; “okay, this is my perfect role”. And then when you’re speaking to a recruiter you can say; “look, I want to work four days a week, five days a week. I don’t want to have to commute for longer than 40 minutes. I want to work within a large team, small team”. And that gives the recruiter really good guidance in terms of what roles they should approach you about. |
| 00:17:07 | DT | That’s an interesting idea, this Frankenstein job description. I actually really like that. You mentioned that some people come to you and say; “well, I just want any role”. Is there maybe a misconception on the part of candidates that they feel the pressure? “I just I need a job. I don’t want to be too picky. I don’t want to express a preference because that might lead me to be ineligible for some other role”. |
| 00:17:27 | AM | I think that’s why they do that and it’s typically at the beginning of your career and I remember having the same discussion with a recruiter and the recruiter becoming frustrated with me because I wasn’t able to say what type of role that I like. Because I didn’t want to miss out on opportunities. God, give me a job. But, I think, although you’re trying to avoid answering that question because you think you may miss out on jobs. I think it’s better to actually have a view and express that and no doubt you have one. It’s just that you don’t want to necessarily communicate it for fear of missing out of things. But if you’ve got that view then and they run a job past you that you don’t like and ultimately you take that then it’s not going to work out long term for you. |
| 00:18:07 | DT | You’re probably more likely to miss out on more jobs the less preference you express, right? I mean if I am a candidate who says; “I really want to work in-house in technology companies. I’m really passionate about software and technology”. And there’s another candidate who says; “oh, I just want anything”. You’re more likely to put the person who’s expressed the preference up. And chances are there’s someone with a preference in all different sorts of industries and all different sorts of areas. |
| 00:18:29 | AM | Oh, spot on, David and it’s not that you have to express a preference for one sector either. So, you could say; “oh, look, I like IT and I also like industrial companies”. So, you don’t have to narrow yourself down. And even if you don’t have a view, necessarily, about the industry there are lots of other things you can have a view about. That would help. So, what salary do you want? Where do you want to work? Or, do you want to work in a large team? Do you want to work in a smaller team? Do you want to be managed by a mentor? Do you want to be left by yourself? So, there are lots of different things you can start to think about even if it’s not the industry but the industry really does help. |
| 00:19:05 | DT | On the topic of crafting a good CV, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a CV. What makes a good one? |
| 00:19:13 | AM | So, CVs and the way you design a CV change over time. If you look at a website from five years ago it’ll be very different from what that website looks like today and that’s the same with CVs. CVs have changed in the way they’re set out and the way they’re formatted and they’ve become a lot more of a marketing document than they have previously. So, if you think 10 years ago, 15 years ago, if you had a CV, you’d do it in black and white and it would be really set out. Essentially it was set out to be printed and so it would be printed on black and white. So, that’s why you kept it to black and white. Now it’s incredibly unlikely that the CV is going to be printed out at all. It’s going to be read on a screen and screens are interactive and they’re colourful. So, that means your CV can use colour to highlight points and you can also have hyperlinks. So, for each of the organisations that you’ve worked at or if you’ve done something somewhere with a voluntary organisation, you can put the hyperlink in the CV so people can click on it and then go through and see where you’ve worked. And that gives them context for the experience that you may have gained at that firm or company. The other thing that’s become increasingly important is people expect to find 85% of the information to make a decision on the first page. If you think when you go onto Google you really expect to find the answer on the first page. You don’t want to have to go to the second page and really that’s true for everything we do now. We want to find the answer with one glance. And so, the front page of the CV has become critically important – 85% of the decision as to whether or not the company is going to even turn the second page of your CV, or look to engage with you, or interview you is done on the first page of your CV. That needs to, instead of having a breakdown of your career and where you’ve worked over five pages, the career summary is really important. Additionally, we no longer use cover letters and so no cover letters. If you’re thinking about drafting a cover letter now. Stop. Put your pen down, get away from the keyboard. Cover letters have gone. |
| 00:21:16 | DT | Why is the cover… I’m sorry, I’m just surprised by this! |
| 00:21:18 | AM | No, no, that’s okay. So, cover letters have gone because they’re a subjective document. It’s not objective. So, every cover letter – when I do receive them now, and again, please don’t send me a cover letter. Every cover letter now will say the same thing; “I am an excellent communicator. I work well in a group. I work well autonomously. I’m empathetic. I’m self-aware. I’m a really good drafter of documents”. But that’s all subjective. That’s what you think about yourself. But what you’ve done in a job, and how you’ve worked, and what you’ve worked on, that’s more objective. And cover letters now have become so similar, that they fail to distinguish between people. But now you don’t have a cover letter, you have to include some components that you would have put in the cover letter within your CV. |
| 00:22:00 | DT | Yeah, right. |
| 00:22:00 | AM | And the most important component that you would have put in the cover letter that you now need to put in your CV, is your objective. What it is you’re looking for from your next role? And that’s typically three lines. And it’s right at the top and what it does, it provides context to why the person is even reading your CV in the first place; “I’m looking for a role that’s going to provide me with mentorship and learning. I’m looking for a role within the technology space. I’m looking for a role that’s going to give me leadership opportunities”. And that then provides in the context for why you’re looking for the role and everything else that they’re reading within your CV. |
| 00:22:36 | DT | Fascinating. I had no idea the cover letter was out! But it’s definitely a far cry from the CVS I remember drafting at the start of my career. Which are pretty prosaic of: his career history, his awards, and academic outcomes. And not talking about those things, that you’re right you would have typically seen in a cover letter; “this is what I want from my career”. This is a brief precis that describes me as a professional those sorts of things. |
| 00:23:00 | AM | Yeah, so, the front page of the CV has sort of melded that cover letter together with your experience and it’ll have your contact details, and it will use coloured subheadings, and it’ll be really clear. I can send you through perhaps a template CV after this David, and I can give you one that’s set out really nicely, and another one that’s sort of old fashioned. And from those two templates you can see pretty well much immediately, even from a distance, which one you’d prefer to read. But also, I think lawyers really need to think of their CV as an example of their drafting that’s true. |
| 00:23:39 | DT | Yeah. That’s true. |
| 00:23:39 | AM | So, this is how are you going to draft a contract? Are you going to make it accessible? Are you going to use flowery language that doesn’t take the reader anywhere? How well can you get across this information as quickly as possible to the audience, and if you can do that in a CV they’re thinking; “wow, if you can do that in this CV then you can also do it for a contract you’re drafting or any document for that matter”. |
| 00:24:01 | DT | I’ve heard this concept in contract drafting, speaking of, which that we drafted contracts for the A4 page in a time when we printed contracts out. A bit like you were saying we tended to draft an A4 black and white resume because we expected our resume to be printed out and left in a stack with all the other candidates. We did the same thing with contracts because that’s the paradigm in which they were going to be reviewed, signed, whatever. But now we tend to sign electronically we tend to review on screens and there’s this idea that well maybe we should use all the real estate on the screen. Have this five by four aspect ratio contract that uses everything that we can use in a web-based environment hyperlink clauses things that collapse in using different HTML elements. Have you seen resumes like that? What about these kind of creative approaches to CVs? I guess that’s a really roundabout way of me asking how important are the graphic design skills when it comes to the resume massive? |
| 00:24:57 | AM | I spend a lot of time helping people with their CVs and crafting their CVs to a point that they can use not only for applying for jobs through Dovetail, but online directly with organisations. And when I start crafting these CVs with people what I say is it typically three iterations for us to get the CV to a polished state. The first two iterations of formatting and the third iteration is content. So, the first two iterations are looking about how you put this all together – the framework, the skeleton – how everything is going to hang off and then the last one is just looking to really tighten up the content and the prose. |
| 00:25:36 | DT | I think that’s one of the things that a recruiter can really help with, because I know some people who have a real passion for graphic design and a real facility with it. I’m not necessarily one of those people, so having that outside feedback to help you get there I think would be really useful. And that kind of brings me on to the next thing I want to ask you about, Andrew. Which is I do think there’s this misconception for some people who haven’t used a recruiter or applied for a job through a recruiter before that the role is advertise the job on behalf of the employer. The candidate applies for the job. Through a public notice they’re considered against other candidates and then the recruiter makes a recommendation. Rather than having that kind of ongoing relationship do you see that most of your candidates are coming to your notice or you’re starting to work with them because they’ve applied for a particular job, or because they’ve approached you and said “I’m looking for a role but I don’t know where to find it”? |
| 00:26:28 | AM | I’d say it’s a mixture of both. I’d say it’s 50:50. I’d say you don’t necessarily need to wait for a job to come up to apply to approach your recruiter. I’d say a lot of lawyers that do approach me, approach me proactively outside any job ad. And I think that goes to what we’re talking about before in that I only advertise one-third of my jobs. So, if you know that you’ll think; “well even if they’re not advertising a role that’s suitable for me, I’m still going to approach them. But two-thirds of the jobs that are sitting there that I might be suitable for that they’re just not advertising”. So, definitely a proactive approach. But just going back to your comments about the CV. You don’t rely entirely on the recruiter to do your work for you; “oh, here’s my cv. I’ll leave it to you to do”. You know because there are lots of tools you can do before you even send through your CV. So, Microsoft word has templates and if you type in resume, don’t type CV because Word is an American program and say they use resume in the States. So, type in resume and it will bring up like 30 or 40 different templates that are really good and they change from and keep up to date with the styles. Additionally, Canva. |
| 00:27:35 | DT | I was about to say Canva. |
| 00:27:36 | AM | Canva has a whole suite of resumes that you can use. The only thing I would say about Canva is when you send through your CV to me and you you’d like me to amend it and mark it up. I can’t do that in Canva. So you could perhaps use Canva to stylistically see how you do it but ultimately when you send it through to me, I’d document just so I can mark it up. |
| 00:27:57 | DT | I suppose whether a candidate’s approached you because they’re applying for a specific job or they’re approached you because they want some help looking for their next role. Either way you end up having a longer relationship with that person than just the next engagement or the job that they applied for. |
| 00:28:12 | AM | Most definitely. So, I’ve been now doing this for 16 years and I’ve been working with people that I placed as junior lawyers and are now General Counsel. |
| 00:28:22 | DT | Yeah, wow. |
| 00:28:22 | AM | And I’ve worked with them throughout their entire career and helped them through their career, through moving jobs, and now I’m helping them find people for their teams. So, I’d say half the clients that I work with have at some point been lawyers that I’ve worked with to find jobs and there’s this ongoing relationship that I have with them and it’s wonderful. It’s one of the reasons I love my job to see this growth and advancement of people and see good people achieve good things. |
| 00:28:53 | DT | It’s so satisfying and I suppose that means that you do have that opportunity to help. We’ve talked about helping to craft a good CV or a good resume but a recruiter can really help you with more than just the CV that you need for your next role. You can provide some of that higher level career coaching or professional development advice. |
| 00:29:11 | AM | Yeah, so, a word of caution here. Just like any profession, whether it be doctors or accountants, there are good and there are bad people within the profession. So, there are people that aren’t going to give you what you’re looking for, and there are people that will. And so just be aware of that. So, you’re not going to get the same experience like going to any doctor. You’re not going to get the same experience across all. But yes, we can provide a lot more than just CV. So, what you’d be looking for, and with some questions you can actively ask a recruiter; “what is the market like for me at the moment?”. The employment market is very much like the financial markets there are good times to buy and good times to sell. There are times when there’s going to be a massive demand for lawyers and less so. And depending on when you make those changes in your career can really impact the long term of your career. If you move jobs when there’s a huge demand for your skill and you do that every time there’s a huge demand from your skill ultimately over a period of a career you can advance a lot faster than say someone that looks to move jobs at the downturn within their industry. So, finding out from a recruiter where the market sits and, also, “how have you seen the market change over the past year? How do you see it going over the next year?”. Because we have a view; “when are the good times to look for a job? When are the bad times?” For instance, the quietest time of the year for us is not December or January it’s August. And just knowing that, it’s July and August. So, it’s cyclical there are times when it’s… just even within the year, within a calendar year, when it’s good to look for a job and when it’s not. |
| 00:30:39 | DT | Why July and August? |
| 00:30:40 | AM | So, July is the end of the financial year. It coincides with school holidays. People have worked incredibly hard to drag themselves over the end of the financial year. It’s the middle of winter and also people are waiting for their bonuses before they look to move jobs. So, the job market goes into a hiatus. Everyone’s just tired. Everyone just says; “you know what? I’m just going to just take a deep breath here in the middle of the year before I go on. Budgets look to be reset for the next year in terms of recruitment. Can I employ more people, can’t I? How am I going to use my budgets?”. And so that all happens in mid-year. So, but December and January are really busy and I will be placing people right up until the day just before Christmas at six o’clock in the evening. |
| 00:31:26 | DT | I suppose one kind of tangible example of how a recruiter’s perspective on the industry whether it’s a good time to move what’s happening in particular parts of the legal industry can really help you with career direction. We were talking just before the show about our backgrounds in practice. I was an insolvency lawyer for many years and in the mid-2010s when interest rates were very low and property values were very high there wasn’t a huge amount of insolvency work. Easy to service a loan easy to make your loan repayments when interest rates are very low and the property that it’s secured against is worth a lot of money. So, I didn’t go to a recruiter and look for a different role but what I did do was pivot my practice a little bit to more of a private mergers and acquisitions type role. Using the distressed transaction experience I got from insolvency in non-distressed transactions. Now I noticed that because of what was happening in the market. But if you’re a junior lawyer who’s had a couple of years of experience in insolvency maybe you’re not picking up on those trends, a recruiter can really help you identify; “look there aren’t a heap of roles in this particular specialisation, but I know that your skills are transferable to this particular area where there’s a lot of work going on”. |
| 00:32:36 | AM | Yeah, spot on so they can give a helicopter view of the market and what’s going on and what’s in demand and what’s not. For instance, earlier this year when there was a bank over in the US that funded a lot of technology companies that collapsed. And that caused ripples throughout the whole tech sector and there are a number of tech lawyers that were made redundant because of what happened in the US. And that wouldn’t have been a good time for a tech lawyer to look to move because there was a surplus of technology lawyers looking at that time. So, it’s just understanding what’s going on and a recruiter really should be able to guide you in that. But I will say a couple of things that I wish I’d known in private practice really early on. There are a couple of things that don’t translate well over to finding a job in-house. There are three. One is litigation, secondly, corporate. And thirdly family and probate and that sort of work. So, the reason why is litigation and corporate? Very few companies are engaged in litigation on an ongoing basis regularly enough to warrant having a litigation lawyer internally. Unless you’re a massive company say like a Telstra or Qantas. And the same with corporate. Very few organisations have enough ongoing corporate activity to warrant having a corporate, in-house corporate team. So, if at some stage you’re thinking about moving to an in-house role and you’re in one of those sectors and I’d look to make the move within your firm over to an area like commercial, IT, that will then facilitate a move into in-house. But it’s understanding that early while you’re in private practice and it’s looking ahead to see how your skills can translate into different areas. |
| 00:34:17 | DT | That’s something that I’d be interested in hearing from you. As a specialist in the in-house recruitment sector, I feel like as private practice lawyers we’re encouraged to really specialise, and specialise quite early, so that even lawyers who are three to five years out are; “I’m an automotive private M&A lawyer”. Very specific focuses. And when you move in house you become a bit of a generalist, right? Your job is your specialisation is whatever comes through the door and you have to get on top of it pretty quick, because not every lawyer who wants to move in-house has the opportunity to find another role within their firm in a completely different practice area. So, how do you help to position that specialist skill set for a generalist role and put that spin on what they’ve done in the past in private practice to say; “well these are the transferable skills that work for any kind of legal issue that the recruiting business is facing”. |
| 00:35:11 | AM | So, if you’re in one of those areas you don’t think would transfer well over into an in-house environment and ask your recruiter if you’re in one, then you can look to make the move within your firm. But as you said you may not be able to make that move within your firm. Another way is to move firms to do that. So, you could look to say; “okay, well I’m in this firm and I’m in litigation but you know what? I know that other firms are looking for people with commercial experience and I can transfer my litigation”. So, you can do that within changing firms or the other way to do it is when you’re doing your CV, you really need to think about emphasising those skills and experience that is transferable across to the in-house. So, there’s a lot you would have learned that’s just general that’s useful. So, it’s just drafting emails, interacting professionally, communicating succinctly. So, they’re all skills that you learn and they may be more soft skills but they’re incredibly relevant in-house and really after about two or three years in private practice the in-house team they’re not looking for you to have a specialty. They’re really looking for those generalist skills. They’re not looking for you to be the pharmaceutical lawyer that’s going to be answering these high-level pharmaceutical questions, right? They really just want to know that you’ve got common sense, you have initiative, you can write well, you can work from the practical basics, you can go back and work from first principles. |
| 00:36:33 | DT | I suppose that’s an example of that kind of longer-term career advice the recruiter can help with in the sense that if you have that clearly articulated goal; “I want to be in-house in a technology company” then it’s not, “okay, well, let’s find the needle in a haystack because it’s a really bad time for technology companies and you don’t have the right skill set for in-house yet”. It’s; “well, let’s make a plan to get there. Let’s get you some experience that will transfer well to in-house on your resume. Let’s wait for the right moment to strike on the technology industry”. We’re talking before about the concern about articulating what you want out of a role locking you out of some of the other opportunities that you might be interested in. I think articulating that long-term goal gives the recruiter you’re working with the opportunity to say; “well, we might need to construct a path to get there. This role which actually doesn’t resemble what you’ve described is a great stepping stone on the way”. |
| 00:37:27 | AM | Exactly David. So, I give a presentation to a number of organisations on this and the presentation I give is one where I show a chess board and it’s a half-played chess game and you’ve got your white and your black chess pieces, and I say; “I want you to think over the next 30 seconds. I want you to make the next two moves on that chess game. And I want you to choose whether you’re black or choose whether you’re white. In the next 30 seconds I’m going to ask you where you’ve ended up”. And so, I wait for 30 seconds and at the end I said; “where did you end up?”. And that’s not the purpose of that exercise. The purpose is you’ve probably just given more thought, a more strategic thought, to a hypothetical chess game than what you have about your career and where your career is headed, than you have over the past six months. Because we just don’t sit down and actually take the time to think; “okay, where do I want my career to get to?”. We just focus on what’s the next one move. Well, let’s think three or four moves ahead. This is much more important than a hypothetical chess game. And once you start to plan it, then you can really start to think about; “okay, how long do I want to be in my next role? What does my next role end up? What are the stepping stones to ultimately get there?”. And a career is a long time. If you think if you start your career when you’re 25 and you’re going to finish at 65 that’s 40 years. So, that’s a lot of stepping stones. You’ve got to potentially make your move and you really want to be happy at what you’re doing because it’s a long time to be unhappy slogging it out. So, do give some thought. Like, a recruiter will be able to tell you those stepping stones. And it’s just the example we gave before it may well be making a move sideways moving to another firm and just understanding you’re going to have to do that for a year but then it will make a bigger much bigger jump once you’ve done that. So, maybe a sideways move and then double the move to get to your next position. |
| 00:39:10 | DT | We’ve talked a lot about how a recruiter can help you as a candidate or as a lawyer with your career progression everything from helping put together the CV for the next role, all the way to plotting the course to that long-term goal. Can you share a story about a young lawyer that you’ve helped in this way that you’ve had a big impact on their career? |
| 00:39:31 | AM | There are multiple examples I can think of but there’s one in particular. There’s a woman that I’m working with at the moment looking to find her next role. And they’re now an eighth-year lawyer but I remember them coming to me when she had been in private practice for two years. And she was deeply unhappy with where she was at that stage and she was actually in an area of law that we were talking about before either corporate, but this woman was in litigation. But she really had this enthusiasm and spark for the education sector because she had people that had worked there. She knew friends had worked in academia. I think her parents had also worked in the university sector. So, she had this burning desire to work within a university and you could see she had a lot of knowledge about the university sector. But it’s that desire to integrate and to be part of an industry that clients and companies want to see as well. They want that enthusiasm and although she didn’t have the experience that the universities would often look for, with IP. I thought this enthusiasm would come through if my clients in the university sector were to meet with her and so a role came up within the university. And I work with a lot of my clients over years. So, they trust my judgment in terms of the people that I recommend to them. And so, I picked up the phone and I said to my client there was a General Counsel at the university; “this person doesn’t have the experience that you’d typically expect when I give you their CV, and they don’t have the IP. But I think you’d meet with them, and I think you’ll see why I’ve sent them to you once you sit down and once you meet with them. Because I think they’ve got the eagerness I think they’ve got the transferable skills, and I think there may be an upskilling period for this person. But ultimately over the long term, if you spend three months teaching them it’s going to pay dividends for you when they’re with you for the next four years”. And sure enough, they met, and they did hit it off. And then that woman moved into that role with the university and after three years of being at a university they then stepped out into another role and they’ve been in that role now for four years. And now I’m working with them again to find their next role. And again, they’re using their transferable skills to move from one industry to another industry and they’re moving from an almost media sort of organisation over into it. And again, when I sent this person’s CV because I’ve been working with them for such a long time, I’ve got a lot of faith in the lawyer that I’m representing and I know because I’ve got feedback from my clients when I’ve placed them there and I know they’ve done a really good job for previous clients, and they’re going to do. So, I’ll recommend to a client “look, you need to meet with this person” and seldom that a client won’t say “okay”. |
| 00:42:11 | DT | That story draws out everything we’ve been talking about, doesn’t it? It shows one, the depth of the relationship that allows you to go in and go to bat for that person. Having a deeper understanding of their career journey and their skill set and what they’re good at than just a one-off interaction or receiving a CV. It demonstrates the value of that relationship with the employer as well, that you can call that person up and say “look, I know this person doesn’t perfectly meet the role description but you’ve got to trust me on this one”. And it also shows that you’ve got that perspective on the market perspective on what employers are looking for. To say we’ll reach for this role even if you don’t have what the role description says is essential because you can pick that sort of stuff up and what you really have that a lot of candidates lack is the things that you just can’t teach. So, it really demonstrates the value that you bring as a recruiter both for the candidate and for the employer and to career progression as well. |
| 00:43:12 | AM | That’s a really nice position to talk about what clients look for. Recruiting has changed significantly over the past 15 years from when I started law. And so, if you think about when someone’s looking to engage and recruit someone, they’re looking at three general factors. They’re looking at capability. And capability is really your mental horsepower, so your ability to synthesise information quickly. They look at your skills and experience. So, that’s really what you’ve done. So, have you worked in pharmaceutical companies before and are bringing that experience and the skills over to the new organisation? And that’s really what you learn on the job. And then there’s a cultural element and, how you communicate, how you get on with peers, how you relate to different stakeholders? Can you talk to the forklift truck driver and people on the shop floor? Can you talk to the CEO? Can you span that level of communication? And that’s cultural. Previously, before information was accessible as it is now through Google, and through having all the information available to you on site. Skills and experience trumped everything. Because you needed to have it all in your head. You couldn’t access it through just typing a few quick words into ChatGPT or into Google or into lexisnexis. You had to go up to the law firm library and actually research these. And so that was so prohibitive that the people that had the experience and the skills trumped everything. And that’s why the partners at law firms were seen as gods because they had this experience. They are a walking encyclopedia of law. Arguably that encyclopedia of law is now accessible to everyone. So, skills and experience, the importance has diminished somewhat. So, now what has become really important is capability. Your ability to be able to synthesise information quickly. The ability to be able to translate that. Ability to grab that complex information and translate into a simple message. And secondly, cultural, your ability to be able to communicate. The ability to be able to form rapport is now so much more important. But that bodes really well for people now looking to move from one industry sector to another because it’s the ability to synthesise cuts across different industries and the cultural thing cuts across different industries. So, the idea is I’m going to get someone that can learn quickly that has curiosity that can fit in well with my team and I can teach them the skills and experience they can look that stuff up. |
| 00:45:37 | DT | I love that. I mean I think listeners to this show will know that I am a big fan of the generalist skill set over the specialist skill set. I’d like to think I’ve cultivated that set of skills myself and I’d love to hear that in this increasingly complex world what we’re discovering is the really valuable skill set is the highly transferable generalist skill set of being able to navigate complexity. Of having that broader lens through which to look at a complex system and say; “okay, well, I might not understand every single moving piece in that but I can understand how I can take the specialist feedback from our outside counsel, from other sources of information, and I can translate it into something that’s actually actionable for the business”. |
| 00:46:18 | AM | Yeah, and increasingly so. And I think as AI really starts coming into this, we’re going to see more and more emphasis on the ability to be able to synthesise information. To be able to be the translator between complex issues and being able to deliver those to the business in really practical and applicable ways so the business can take that message and action. It rather than; “oh, this is the law and this is the theory”. Well, that just doesn’t mean anything to the business. It’s that ability to be able to culturally fit into an organisation particularly coming from a law firm, where you’re perhaps surrounded by lawyers. The lawyers on the other side that you’re dealing with in a transaction, they’re still lawyers. And so, you’re in this legal bubble and then you move into in-house and you’re dealing with this cross-section of society and the world. And it’s the ability then to adjust your communication to those different audiences and that’s something they look for. But interestingly time and time again what I see in job descriptions that are coming across my desk now from my clients. My clients will send me a job description and they’ve said; “look, Andrew, this is my wish list. This is what I want”. But time and time again what I’m seeing on those… curiosity. Time and time again. To be curious about a problem to look into and think; “what is really being asked here?”. The ability to synthesise information is another one. But initiative. Initiative and being able to not have to just work from a process but to look an initiative requires risk, right? Because initiative is taking one plus one and making three. It’s stepping outside of a process and going; “well, this can be improved” and lawyers are taught to look backwards. Lawyers work from a precedent system. They’re unaccustomed to using or to wanting to use initiative because initiative is stepping out from beyond precedent and doing something new for the first time. And taking risk. And so; it’s being comfortable in taking the initiative and taking the risk and the ability to make decisions. A lot of people will say; “well, here’s an opinion” and I say, “well, okay, what should I do, how should I action this?”. And it’s being able to say; “okay, do this”. But it’s also knowing when not to do that. So, be careful with that one and if you’re in any doubt please do, you know, speak to your manager. |
| 00:48:24 | DT | And you know we could talk for another hour on how artificial intelligence is going to accelerate that shift away from the core skill being knowing where to find information or how to recall specialist knowledge, towards making the right judgment calls with access to the right knowledge at your fingertips. But we don’t have another hour. We’ve only got a couple minutes. So, before we leave our listeners if there’s just one thing that you wanted to leave our listeners with today one key takeaway from our conversation what do you think it would be? |
| 00:48:58 | AM | Do not underestimate the importance and control that you have over your career. Your career and your job will impact your mental health. It will impact your physical health. It will impact your relationships. It will bring you up. It’ll bring you down. It can bring you joy. It can bring you sadness. Do not underestimate the importance, and then do not underestimate the control, that you have over your career to find those jobs and a career path that will bring you satisfaction and will bring you joy. And that is within your reach and within your control. It just takes a little bit of effort and a little bit of time and you need to set it aside and treat it like a project. And if you in any doubt about how to do that there’s a lot online. And then if you can’t if you still need some help reach out to your recruiter, reach out to me, and I’ll help you as much as I can. |
| 00:49:58 | DT | And we should say those CV templates Andrew mentioned earlier. They’ll be in the show notes for this episode in the materials off to the right there. So, take a look at those and some of the other materials we’ve got there for this episode. Andrew thank you so much for joining me today on hearsay. |
| 00:50:11 | AM | Thanks a lot, David, wonderful to be here. |
| 00:50:13 | DT | As always, you’ve been listening to Hearsay the Legal Podcast. I’d like to thank today’s guest, Andrew, for being a part of it. If you’re an Australian legal practitioner, you can claim one continuing professional development point for listening to this episode. Whether an activity entitles you to claim a CPD unit is, as you well know, self assessed, but we suggest this episode entitles you to claim a professional skills point. More information on claiming and tracking your points on Hearsay in all jurisdictions around Australia can be found on our website. Hearsay the Legal Podcast is brought to you by Lext Australia, a legal innovation company that makes the law easier to access and easier to practice, and that includes CPD. Hearsay is recorded in Sydney on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and we would like to pay our respects to Elders past and present. Thank you for listening, and see you all on the next episode of Hearsay. |
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