In this email I will give you a tried and tested method used by hundreds of my students. It has never failed.
If you are interested, first of all note that this is an extremely achievable goal. Working in a corporate law firm does not require any extraordinary intelligence, but it requires extraordinary discipline and great deal of unwavering diligence.
Many people will tell you that unless you are from xyz law college you cannot get into corporate law. Don’t listen to them. None of the law colleges teach anything useful or significant about corporate law. You can learn enough in a year, if you just give 1-2 hours per day, that you can make the cut.
I will first tell you what not to do:
- Do not start by sending hundreds of applications to corporate law firms – they will be ignored
- Reading the company law bare act (although it’s a very useful exercise and you must do it anyway) will not help in this pursuit. You will learn a lot of company law but won’t even get an interview.
- Getting CS qualification will not solve your problem either
- Do not bombard linkedin and email ids of law firm partners with messages requesting to give you a chance
- Don’t do what everyone else is doing – you need a strategy that stands out
Here is what to do instead:
- Identify a narrow practice area that is growing fast. Corporate is an umbrella, you want to do a little deeper. Good options: banking & finance, M&A, Investment Law, Capital Markets, Projects, Corporate Litigation. There are many other super specialised areas too, such as funds, competition, but focusing on them is tricky unless you have true passion for them, since vacancies are fewer in such super specialised areas.
- In every area, assume that there are 20 common tasks that most lawyers have to do 80% of the time. You need to identify these tasks and learn to do them well, somehow anyhow. You do not have to be an expert about everything in that practice area, just reasonably good at those 20 tasks. If you can do this, you will be better than many of their existing associates already. 6-12 months should be given towards such learning. How to find these 20 tasks? Don’t worry, we will tell you what these 20 tasks are. We will give you practice area wise list, and even teach you how to do one or two tasks so you can figure out if this is your cup of tea.
- Unfortunately, even if you know these tasks, a law firm recruiter will not believe this normally. You are an anomaly at this point. Their own associates often struggle to do these tasks, it’s hard to believe you who never worked in a law firm, just doing litigation, can actually do such tasks. So what do you do? You have to build a track record.
- You need to find startups and SMEs, small orgs who will let you do such tasks, if required, even for free. But they will write you a testimonial so you can prove later that you have done such tasks. For example, one of our learners helped a startup to do their reverse due diligence for free. He helped draft an acquihire agreement for another company. Result? He was able to land a job at a tier 1 corporate law firm by impressing a partner with this track record.
- After track record comes outreach. Sending emails does not work. There are other powerful ways to get noticed by law firm partners.
Look, all law firm partners are desperate for fresh talent. Many of their current associates are burnt out, inefficient, ungrateful and failing to deliver the outcome they need.
The inefficiency of other people is your opportunity.
Yes, you need to get in front of the partners and appear as a better hire than their existing hires. You will get opportunities.
In my next post, I will teach you about informational interviews, a very powerful way to build a network with law firm partners in corporate law firms.