Job Seekers

Negotiating isn’t a specialized skill, but something we regularly do. Speakers on a panel at this year’s General Counsel Conference East agreed that negotiations occur daily. The panel, titled “Getting Out of Your Own Way: How to Negotiate Your Way to the Top” featured attorneys and professionals in the legal industry discussing how people negotiate in daily life.

Bryce Sanders, president of Perceptive Business Solutions Inc., provides HNW client acquisition training for the financial services industry. Sanders writes that lawyers on television series and movies often have clients seeking them out, but in real life, attorneys are expected to bring clients into private practice.

Recruitment attorney Mike Evers advises corporations to make use of LinkedIn’s newsfeed features. The platform’s newsfeed helps supplement networking and boosts awareness of an attorney’s profile to potential employers. Evers suggests that a company’s LinkedIn newsfeed should feature posts of positive news from the company, legal developments from the industry and helpful tips for the community.

Michael P. Maslanka, associate professor of law at UNT Dallas College of Law, advises that “everyone is an inherently effective public speaker given the right tools” and believes that a person can “embrace the authentic version of yourself, and step up to the podium.”

Joseph Froetschel, founding partner of Phillips Froetschel, represents injured individuals in medical malpractice and personal injury cases. When he’s not working as an attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Froetschel finds that using his vacation time to kayak during the summer taught him lessons that transfer into his trial lawyer life. 

Business development consultant Yuliya LaRoe is a former attorney who founded consulting firm LeadWise Group to assist law firms, in-house legal departments and corporations solve personnel issues before it affects the bottom line of their business. As CEO, LaRoe realizes that most businesses will strategize a blueprint for business development success, but encounter difficulty transforming that vision into reality. 

Adriana Paris, author of “The Chill Lawyer,” is a legal recruiter at Rissman in Florida but had practiced law for ten years prior to switching careers to work in professional development. Paris notes that while the legal profession is “plagued” with lawyers who are stressed and feeling stuck, there are ways for an attorney to ensure that they can create a career in law that they love. 

Steve Fretzin, host of the “Be That Lawyer” podcast and author of four books on legal business development, and Wayne Pollock, founder of Copo Strategies, and the Law Firm Editorial Service, offer advice to associates and partners on how to become a rainmaker in private practice by paying attention to the business development side of the legal industry.

Stacy Bratcher and M.C. Sungaila recently shared the top insights from their podcasts on succeeding in a career as an in-house attorney. Bratcher, general counsel of Cottage Health, hosts The Legal Department podcast and Sungaila, partner at Complex Appellate Litigation Group, hosts The Portia Project. Their top ten tips include:

Shannon Duffy Lombardo drives strategy for business development initiatives firmwide at Saul Ewing. As director of business development, she strives for growth in lateral attorney integration, attorney training, and other initiatives, and find that thought leadership helps effectively showcase a firm’s capabilities to a curated audience.