Posted on

5 Tips for Finding a Job (Part 1)

My favorite law student – my son Mitch – just completed his first year of law school at George Mason University. He and his classmates soon will be starting the ego-bruising experience of interviewing to find their first legal jobs.

I remember those days well.

My first semester of law school was, by far, the most challenging one. I knew I wasn’t the smartest person in my class (that much was obvious) and hoped that I would not be the dead weight at the bottom. My grades after that first semester weren’t bad, but I was, nonetheless, terribly disappointed in the results.

I concluded that I would redouble my efforts during my second semester. If my grades didn’t improve, I would resign myself to the fact that I was a slightly above average law student.

With the renewed effort to my studies, something clicked in my head during that second semester. My grades improved significantly and continued to rise each semester.

But prospective employers were not impressed. While many of my classmates entertained job offers from multiple prestigious law firms, I received dozens of rejection letters.

My confidence waned. I questioned why anyone would even want to hire me and worried that I never would find a job. I envisioned myself unemployed, destitute, and ostracized.

Fortunately, I worried for nothing.

I landed a summer clerkship with a great small firm near the end of my second year. That summer, I received offers for judicial clerkships from two of the state’s most respected judges on the court of appeals. It has not always been easy, but over the next 30 plus years, I have made a career for myself.

In the course of doing so, I have learned a few truths about finding a job and building a career. Though my experience is in the practice of law, these principles apply to any career.

This post is longer than most of my offerings, so I have broken it into a number of pieces that will be posted over the next few weeks.

No. 1: You will find a place where you can succeed.

This first point does not directly discuss how to find a job but instead addresses that nagging voice in the back of your head questioning whether you should have gone down this professional pathway.

If you have done the work required to qualify yourself for entry to the profession (and you have), you have the tools to succeed. Your path ultimately may differ from what you initially thought it would be, but if you are focused and persistent, you will succeed.

Be confident. You alone are responsible for your own career path and professional success. The sooner you accept responsibility for your career, the sooner you will begin to succeed.

Focus on your strengths. Learn everything you can about a narrow area of the profession and become an expert in that area. Make the area of expertise narrow. Being a family law attorney is better than being an “experienced, aggressive lawyer” who, among other things, handles family law cases. It’s even better to be a family law attorney who represents doctors in divorce and custody matter.

Being an expert does not mean that you know more about the area than everyone else. It means that you know more about the area than most.

If you continue to hone your craft throughout your professional life, you just might come to know more than anyone else about your narrow area of expertise. The sooner you start down the pathway to expertise, the further down the pathway you will go during your professional life.

Move forward with courage. You have the ability to succeed.

(To be continued)

Posted on

Strength Through Adversity

Life is a series of contrasts. Sickness helps us appreciate health, bitter defines sweet, and darkness explains light.

Muscles must be torn down before they can be built up. And so it is with women and men. To be truly happy, we must first experience setbacks and adversity and learn how to find joy in the journey.

Opposition and failure are part of every life. Embrace them as you would a dear friend and learn the lessons that come only after you wrestle with adversity. As Benjamin Disraeli noted, “There is no education like adversity.”

A human heart is a marvel of nature. Without rest, its four chambers work in harmony to pump oxygen-rich blood to the nethermost parts of your body and back again. Your heart does its job so well that you scarcely notice it, until it stops working properly.

Four valves separate the chambers of your heart. A normal heart valve has three flaps that look somewhat like a peace symbol. When your heart contracts, the flaps open to expel blood from the chamber; as your heart relaxes, the flaps quickly close to prevent blood from rushing back in.

I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, which means that two of the three flaps in my valve were fused together. I was unaware of this condition for more than 55 years. Over time, the valve became stiffer and failed to close completely, leading to a series of physical complications. My heart struggled to keep me alive.

On May 26, 2015, I had open heart surgery to replace the defective valve. The surgeon made an 8-inch incision in my chest, split my rib cage in half through the sternum, and replaced the defective valve with a pig valve.

The surgeon stopped my heart so that he could perform his miracle. While he worked, a bypass machine kept me alive, diverting my blood through its filters, removing carbon dioxide, oxygenating the blood, and returning the life-sustaining blood to my body.

I vaguely remember coming out of anesthesia in the ICU, then spent a week in the hospital. Four weeks after surgery, I returned to the office a few hours each day. Though I felt appreciably better each day, my recovery was slow. Even today, I cannot do many physical activities.

Some six months after surgery, I learned that my heart was shocked 19 times before it started beating regularly on its own. I struggled with arrhythmia for months.

My heart challenges have been significant. It is an experience that I would not have voluntarily chosen for myself. And yet I am profoundly grateful that I could go through this challenge.

Adversity makes you strong because being strong is your only option. It teaches you important lessons that cannot be learned through other means. My heart problems taught me great lessons about life and love and perspective.  Things that once bothered me intensely don’t seem nearly so important. My wife says that I have become “sappier.” (She’s right.) Life is good.

Lou Holtz has observed, “Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.”

Everyone experiences adversity. You can become consumed with your particular version of adversity and let it define your life. Or your adversity can school you, strengthen you, and inspire you to do something worthwhile. Learning how to overcome adversity is a recipe for success.

Posted on

Negotiating with Bullies (Part Two)

Bullies use various tactics to try to pressure you into an unfavorable deal. Some bullies try to “win” a negotiation through a series of increasingly more outrageous demands. In a variation of this theme, the bully gives you an unreasonably short time to consider his demand and notes that future demands will escalate dramatically.

Don’t let escalating demands control the timing or terms of the negotiation.

Photo by Veri Ivanova on Unsplash

To be sure, you should critically reexamine your strategy throughout the negotiation. Do your research. Challenge your assumptions. Reevaluate the pros and cons of the escalating demands. But unless extrinsic evidence convinces you that your strategy is flawed, don’t give in.

The person with the least amount of interest controls the negotiation. Holding fast to your reasonable position can help turn the tables on a bully.

Many years ago, I represented a man who had been sued by a classic bully. The bully claimed that my client — the former president of his company — was competing unfairly by starting a competing business after the bully fired him. The bully stopped making severance payments to my client and sought to crush his competition.

The bully had no basis for his claims. My client had not signed any restrictive covenants. He took no confidential information with him. And he had worked in the industry for many years before he joined the bully’s company. My client was legally authorized to use his skills and knowledge to compete fairly against the bully.

I reached out to the bully’s attorney, outlined the flaws in the bully’s claims, and noted that the bully owed my client four months of severance pay. We asked him to dismiss his claims and pay my client what he was owed.

The bully refused and tried to turn up the heat on my client. We ignored his increasing demands.

We took the deposition of the bully’s star witness, who had sworn that the allegations in the Complaint were true. At the end of his deposition, the witness acknowledged that he had no first-hand knowledge about anything in the Complaint. Rather, he conceded that the Complaint was based on “rumor and innuendo.”

We again asked the bully to dismiss his claims and pay my client what he was owed. The bully again refused and increased his demands.

Armed with the testimony of the star witness, we prepared four motions seeking to dismiss all of the bully’s claims. We again invited the bully to dismiss his claims and pay my client what he was owed. The bully again refused and, once again, increased his demands on my client.

I had great fun arguing the motions. The judge ruled from the bench and granted each of the motions in turn.

When the judge left the courtroom, the bully’s lawyer turned to me and frantically asked if our offer was still on the table. I assured him that it had expired, as we had warned it would.

We had turned the tables on the bully. Ultimately, my client recovered the monies he was entitled to receive plus his attorneys’ fees spent in defending the case.

Posted on

Negotiating with Bullies

Photo by Daniel Delle Donne on Unsplash

At some point in your business dealings, you will have to negotiate with a bully.

Bullies take many forms and employ different negotiating styles. The classic bully tries to intimidate you into doing what she wants. Her typical tactics are pressure and threats.

Other bullies are easy to get along with,  but try to gain power in the negotiation by taking extreme (and irrational) positions. They overreach, then try to get you to “split the difference” based on their initial unreasonable position.

Remember, the person with the least amount of interest controls the negotiation. So if you want to shift the power in the negotiation, you have to persuade the bully that you are willing to walk away from the negotiation. You have to become the person with the least amount of interest — or at least convince the bully that you are willing to walk away from the negotiating table.

Silence can be a valuable tactic in your negotiations with a bully.

A bully gains power by getting you to engage with him. He hopes that you will become stressed and frustrated, which will lead you to accept a bad deal with him. If you refuse to engage with the bully, he loses power over you. Your silence can help shift the balance of power.

Bullies thrive on conflict, the messier the better. They know that most people find conflict distressing. And, when thrust into a distressing situation, most people will do anything to relieve their discomfort, even if it means entering into a deal that they will regret once the conflict has ended.

When you refuse to engage with a bully, you switch the tables on him. You become the person with the least interest in the negotiation, which gives you control over the negotiation.

Silence — refusing to engage — can be a useful tactic in your negotiations with a bully.