Dear Advy,
I'm a new-ish lawyer who articled during the pandemic. My articling firm was very small and let go all of its lawyers right in the thick of the court closures and such. Consequently, despite stellar law school grades and good references, it was very hard for me to find another job.
First, I worked at another small firm which was a complete nightmare, but my EI was about to run out. Ultimately we parted ways after 6 months. I had to threaten to sue in order to receive minimum wage from this employment. That's how bad it was. Then, finally, thanks to a friend who worked there, I was hired at a reputable mid-sized firm. I thought I had arrived! My colleagues were fantastic, smart, ethical lawyers. I loved my work and eagerly began to build my own practice. Then a major client went in-house and I was let go just before my 6-month probation ended.
I was so sad. I was told by everyone that it was a business decision. I asked for a reference letter, but it didn't mention that my termination was a business decision. When I asked for the letter to clarify this, I was told that performance issues were the actual motivation for my termination. No performance issue was ever brought to my attention, and we discussed, extensively, any shortfalls in my education or experience in my job interviews. I was hired with certain gaps in my experience (caused by the pandemic) and then told that those gaps were the reason for my termination.
In another, recent job interview, I described how I was let go after a major client went in-house, and I immediately realized that my former employer was actually just hoping to save face. That they used to have a reputation for letting people go on the vagaries of the work coming in through the door, and they don't want that reputation any longer.
The thing is, this has been totally crushing for me. I see my peers have reliable work and I don't know how I, with equal (and generally better) grades and a similar work ethic, cannot find secure employment. I'm so disheartened that I've been seen as totally disposable at every legal workplace I've experienced. At night, I have regular nightmares about my most recent employer. Like actual nightmares. It's awful. I don't know what kind of firm or experience I need to seek out to feel better and to find the sort of good job that I thought I could obtain with a law degree.
Please help.
Disheartened Job Seeker
Dear Disheartened Job Seeker,
You have had three terrible experiences; all within a short time period. Understandably, you’re looking for a pattern or common denominator and concluding that the common denominator is you. There are two other common threads in this pattern:
- The COVID-19 pandemic;
- Some pretty bad management techniques employed by law firms.
We’re all familiar with the havoc caused by the pandemic. Businesses, including law firms, have had enormous difficulty adjusting to a “new normal” that feels anything but normal. One side-effect that may not jump out at you is that due to the chaos and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, employment opportunities became rare. For the entire time you have been a lawyer the pool of available jobs for lawyers has been relatively small and competition for those positions intense. You have been forced to choose jobs and employers that you might have turned down had things been different.
This brings me to the second common feature in your three experiences: bad management. In fairness, your first firm may have been managed very well but it disappeared. You describe your second firm as a nightmare - only agreeing to work there because your EI was about to run out. When you are operating a business, you have to pay people for their work. Your third firm shows some equally poor business practices. Telling an employee one thing on termination and then something completely different later on is hardly consistent with running a successful firm. You say this firm has a history of doing this to other lawyers; so much so that it is trying to distance itself from this reputation. We don’t graduate from law school having learned to run a business yet running a law firm is certainly running a business. Many lawyers are also loathe to acknowledge they have shortcomings when it comes to managing human resources or other business decisions, and that denial can perpetuate poor practices. You had the bad luck of arriving in the profession just as this widespread phenomenon of poor business judgment ran up against a once-in-a-century crisis known as COVID.
What if this string of three bad employment experiences isn’t because of something being wrong with you? What if this is because of widespread bad business practices?
For a long time, the culture of law has seen individual lawyers as fungible; as interchangeable and eminently replaceable cogs in a machine. From the time we entered law school, we were told that only the best of us would make it through. It only intensifies when you reach the articling stage. That level of competition with your peers can sometimes bring out the best in you, sure. It also tends to reduce your life to a scorecard. It has to end.
Does any of that help you find a job right now? No it doesn’t. My point is that you shouldn’t accept the verdict that there is something wrong with you. Believing you are something less-than hampers your ability to find a new position. It leaves you vulnerable to accepting a job offer that raises red flags that it may be with another lousy employer. Also, to state the obvious, it makes you miserable.
You mention what you call gaps in your experience. If you do have gaps, then sit down and map out what those are and plan to fill them in. Consider speaking with a more senior lawyer to get some advice on how you can fill in those gaps - there may be volunteer opportunities, or self-directed study opportunities available. Importantly, start that conversation from the premise that you are not looking to this lawyer to hire you, or to fill in the gaps for you. What you are looking for is some objective advice about how to acquire skills you may be missing or if you are even missing them at all. Not to sound like a broken record: Please don’t do this if you still believe these gaps you speak of aren’t deficits in experience or skills but defects in you. This is about completing your training, not beating yourself up.
You are experiencing nightmares. I suspect that this problem may be deeper than your employment situation. I don’t know enough about your situation to say that with certainty, but this sort of problem needs the kind of help that an advice column won’t give. Don’t forget that your local lawyers’ assistance program can put you in touch with free counselling. If comparing yourself to your peers is adding to your distress, remember that what looks to you like steady employment and a perfectly happy life may not be all it seems. We’re familiar with the phenomenon of people putting their “best life” on social media websites. Don’t be fooled by the appearance of success in others. It may be an illusion.
I know some of this stress has its roots in being unemployed right now. I gave some tips for managing the stress of looking for a job in a previous column. I encourage you to read that answer to help you in the coming days.
I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but this time when you’re not working is a gift. Not being sure of where you’re going to end up working, and not being sure about how complete your skill set means you are open to possibilities that the employed and gap-free version of you wouldn’t even consider. Bertrand Russell wrote:
The whole problem with this world is that fools...are always so certain and the wiser so full of doubt.
Maybe having those gaps in your experience is just the thing to make you willing to learn. Complacency is the enemy of competence, and doubt is often the source of useful inquiry. Yes, a steady paycheque is also attractive, but this time may be setting you up for a better future if you decide to make creative use of that doubt.
Be well,
Advy