Talent Search Tactics & The Legal Job Market

Episode Notes

Transcript

Jared Correia: I’d like to take a moment to thank my mom for listening to every episode.  Now, my mom is the real reason you’re listening to this show right now, but the sponsors have a little something to do with it as well.  So I’d like to thank our sponsors to Clio, Nota, Scorpion, TimeSolv.

 

Imagine billing day being the happiest day of the month instead of the day you dread and nobody went to law school because they love drafting invoices for clients and chasing overdue bills.  At TimeSolv, our attorneys have the tools to achieve a 97% collection rate.  That means more revenue for the same work and turning billing day into happy day.  Learn more about how to get to your time and billing happy place at timesolv.com.

 

[Music]

 

Male: It’s the Legal Toolkit with Jared Correia.  With guest, Anna Sanders.  We play a round of work in it, and then this job is harder than it looks.  So I’ve negotiated a raise.  Two candy bars, an episode.  But first, your host, Jared Correia.

 

Jared Correia: It’s time for the Legal Toolkit podcast.  Sadly, we’re all out of (00:01:19), but we’re going to make this work anyway.  Yes, it’s still called the Legal Toolkit podcast even though I’ve never actually used the cartridge puller, although I have blown into my fair share of cartridges, Nintendo cartridges, that is.  I’m your host, Jared Correia.  You’re stuck with me because Jim Gray was unavailable.  He’s hiding in the bushes outside Tom Brady’s house.

 

I’m the CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting, a business management consulting service for attorneys and bar associations.  Find us online at redcavelegal.com.  I’m also the COO of Gideon Software, Inc.  We build chatbots so law firms can convert more leads and conversational document assembly tools so law firms can build documents faster and more accurately.  You can find out more about Gideon at gideonlegal.com.

 

Now, before we get to our interview today with Anna Sanders of VOYlegal, we’ve got a job to do.  So as our friend Anna will tell us in a second.  Anna, like the girl from Frozen, which I learned.

 

Job market is kind of a bitch right now.  At the start of the pandemic, everybody was cruising along, employers, I’m talking about.  Well, I guess nobody was cruising along at the start of the pandemic, right?  But it was much easier to hire at that point if you wanted to, because it was very much an employer friendly job market and that was the case for like the first year and a half, two years of the pandemic.  Now, all of a sudden, the job market has turned on its ear and it has become really hard to find talent.  Like really hard.  People are ghosting on interviews.  People are taking jobs and not showing up.  Employees, potential employees, are walking into businesses including law firms and saying, “What can you do for me?”  I talked to a lot of attorneys about this and older attorneys like myself.  Yes, I’ll lump myself into that category.  Will say things like, I remember when I was young and I had to really work at my job and if someone told me to do something, I would do it.  And if somebody made an offer, I would say, “Yes, sir” or if somebody asked me to go file something or made a stupid request, I would say, “Please, sir, may I have another.”  Job market is not like that anymore.  Employees now are super empowered as they should be, because it’s really hard to fill jobs.  And so if you’re an employee’s market, you should take advantage of it as the employee.

 

Now, I’m making the assumption here that most of our listeners here are actually business owners themselves.  Forgive me if I’m wrong.  Write in, send hate mail care of Evan Dicharry.  But in that case, isn’t that a great spot for you to be in?  You’re like somebody who’s looking for a house right now or trying to fill your tank full of gas, right?  Things are kind of wild right now.  Inflation is crazy.  Job market is insane.  It’s like the Jimmy Carter administration all over again.

 

So how do you go out and find talent in this market?  Well, as I mentioned, I talked to a lot of attorneys about this who are looking to fill roles, both administrative staff and attorney roles, and some of the stuff that’s traditionally worked is still working, some of which is underutilized and there are other things to try as well.  So Anna has got a lot of great information coming up in our interview session, and she’s a legal recruiter.

 

(00:05:00)

 

So what she does is match employees with law firms.  You should look into recruiters.  A lot of them do a really good job.  They’re also very skilled with this kind of thing.  Anna is going to talk about that.  So I’m not — if you’re a law firm that wants to go out on your own and find talent, here are some strategies that I think work.  First of all, best case scenario, finding someone through word of mouth or your network.  This is what I would call and Anna is going to talk about this as well sort of a serendipitous occurrence.  So you find somebody who just falls into your lap, and I should pause here because it’s going to seem like somebody falls into your lap, but you’ve done the work to get there.  You’ve made the contacts, you’ve met the person who’s going to say, “Hey, check out this person who just like my firm, or I know somebody who’s looking for a job that’s going to end up being a great fit for you.”  So ideally, if somebody falls into your lap or someone you trust highly recommend someone, that’s going to be a great fit for your law firm, that’s the best-case scenario.  Now, the problem with that is that’s not necessarily part of a process, and you may not have time to wait around.

 

And another issue I found there is, especially for attorneys who have been in practice for a while, who own law firms.  Let’s say you’re in your mid-40s, early 50s, and you’re looking for younger talent.  You may not necessarily cross paths with those folks anymore.  So if you’re looking for a late 20s, early 30s attorney to hire as an associate who may have some partnership potential, where are you going to find them?  Well, not in your traditional circles.  So maybe end up having to do some stuff out of your comfort zone, like go to anew lawyer section meeting at a bar association, or try to get more involved in groups of attorneys that you wouldn’t normally get involved with, interest areas that you may not have access before.  Basically, find out where those younger attorneys are and try to meet with them.  Some people don’t necessarily feel comfortable doing that because attorneys tend to box themselves in in terms of networking.  They try to find other lawyers who are around the same age, have the same interests that they have.  So that might be outside your comfort level a little bit, but if you’re trying to expand your network, that’s one great way to do it.

 

Now LinkedIn has also exploded ever since the pandemic hit.  LinkedIn usage has been crazy high because everybody was stuck at home in front of their computers for so long.  The activity on LinkedIn is out of bounds right now and has been for quite a while, to the point where I’ve shifted a lot of my marketing outreach to LinkedIn as well.  So I’ve seen law firms do a couple of things on LinkedIn.  What’s cool about LinkedIn is that you can add that little tab to your profile picture that says you’re either open to work or hiring and if you’re one of those, you should do that.  Because if you end up being a law firm that’s hiring or an attorney that’s hiring, folks may notice that on your profile picture and they will maybe reach out to you.  If somebody is looking for a job and you’re trolling around LinkedIn and searching for some candidates, you’ll be able to see whether they’re openly looking for a job or not.

 

Now, you don’t necessarily need to avoid contacting them if they’re not looking for a job, but some people don’t want to do that.  They view that as a party foul, whereas other attorneys will just look for appropriate candidates and reach out to them and be like, “Hey, want to leave your current job?”  I’ve seen that work too.  So in terms of LinkedIn, at the top left hand side of the page, when you get into your profile, there’s going to be a search button.  Click on that, type in like Paralegal Boston, Massachusetts and then you’ll find some other search criteria that you can add in as well.  If you’re looking for candidates, that’s a great way to look for candidates directly.  The other cool thing about LinkedIn is that they have a jobs feature where you can post a job or apply for a job.  In this case, we’re talking about posting a job and you do that for free.  And again, everybody’s on LinkedIn, so you should get some candidates through that.

 

Another sort of nontraditional tactic I see law firms leveraging pretty well is using the career development offices at law schools or if we’re talking about attorneys or at paralegal schools or undergraduate universities or colleges if you’re trying to find staff.  And believe it or not, if you can create a viable relationship with the people at the career development office of either a school you’ve gone to or a school in your locality, those folks are usually generally very good about talking over candidates with you.  They’ll help you learn how to post your job, and they may also recommend candidates to you as well.  I’ve seen that work out also.  I have attorneys who have really good relationships with local schools and they’re able to continuously source potential hires from that, even now when the job market is turned around significantly.  And then there are those traditional job posting sites.  Indeed, Monster, you’re going to post a job on there and you get a bunch of people who apply.  Vetting that heavy list can be problematic, but you may run at different problems which is maybe you’re not getting enough candidates.

 

(00:10:01)

 

If that’s the case, you can also boost any posts like that and you can also pay for a boost on LinkedIn too to get you in front of more people.  So, if you’re having trouble getting candidates, which is the reverse problem where will most people have, you can boost that as necessary.  As I said, like people are finding talented candidates as some of them aren’t bouncing before agreeing to anything, before coming to the interview, before starting their first day at work.  They quit like two days in like it’s unfair.  It’s a very fractured marketplace right now.  So, not only do you have to deal with the job of outsourcing candidates, you had to make sure they stay happy like right away.

 

So, the other thing I would say here is if you’re drafting a job post, what can be really useful is putting yourself in the position where that is a unique proposition.  So, most job posts are going to be pretty bland.  But if you got a great opening sentence, if you’re writing in a potentially cloaked wheel and interesting way, if you’re separating yourself from the pack just like you could do with your website or any other numbers, things you do in terms of marketing your firm.  And this is sort of an aspect of marketing your firm, which Anna will talk about.  That’s another way to try and source candidates.

 

Now, a couple other things to consider here as well or few other things under one overarching topic.  Before you go out and hire, the question you want to ask yourself is can you afford to hire?  Since I have a thesis on hiring for law firms and that is that each employee at a law firm should be a profit center.  I know that sounds callous, but a bunch of law firms hire too quickly, a bunch of law firms hire without the knowledge of whether or not they can actually afford that hire and for how long.  Basically, like you see a bunch of law firms hiring people with no idea about how they’re going to afford them.  So, figure out ahead of time what work do you have for this person, what can the firm build that out on, what is going to be the revenue that this person generates.

 

If you know that and it’s easier to figure out for attorneys than it is for staff in a lot of cases, but if you know that number, you can approximate that number.  You know how much you can pay somebody and you know you’re going to turn a profit on that person.  And if you can turn a profit on an employee in a certain job role, that’s something that you can replicate and you can turn a profit for any employee in that job role.  Now, one consideration is salary and benefits.  Another consideration is whether you want to pay commissions of some kind.  I know you’re going to pay your origination fees, so that a potential employee or lawyer in this case in all likelihood, a lawyer for all these scenarios usually I guess an origination fee for what they bring in.

 

You see that set of different levels and some people offer that to new attorneys on the hope that they’re not going to generate a lot of revenue, because generally speaking it’s hard to get cases through the door as new attorney.  I said that could be something you throw in the pile as well but again, you want to be able to run the math and make sure that that’s still profitable range from 40 if you’re paying out origination fees.  I see some law firms bonus people on a number of hours they work over a certain number of billable hours and I’ve seen law firms do some interesting things in terms of settlements like paying out commissions on settlements based on the period of time in which the settlement was achieved and also the value of a settlement.

 

So, lots of things you can do here.  So, first you need to know whether you can afford to hire, understand that each employee should be a profit center and then understand that in addition to salary and benefits, there may be other obligations that you tire yourself to with that employee, which is going to give you a fuller picture of what their financial commitment is going to look like.

 

So, yeah, just a few tips on hiring successfully, but before we get to our discussion on the state of the current job market with Anna Sanders of VOYlegal, I’ve got your first job assignment.  Listen to Joshua Lenon who asked you for this week’s edition of the Clio Legal Trends Report.

 

Joshua Lenon: Like it or not, remote client communications are here to stay.  In fact, more and more clients are demanding this over in-person office visits.  I’m Joshua Lenon, lawyer and resident at Clio, and this is just one finding form our recent Legal Trends Report.  It’s not surprising that at least 83% of law firms already have technology in place to communicate with clients virtually, because that’s what clients want.  When it comes to communication, our data shows that there is an increasing preference for video calls, email, secure client portals and other remote options, because they give clients the utmost flexibility to work with legal professionals.  So, why not give clients what they want?

 

For more information on how clients prefer to communicate with legal professionals, download Clio’s Legal Trends Report for free at clio.com/trends.  That’s Clio, spelled C-L-I-O-dot-com-/-trends.

 

(00:15:03)

 

Jared Correia: All right, let’s grab a big spoon and dive right into this big bowl of Brunswick stew.  It’s time to interview our guest.  My guest today is Anna Sanders, a senior director at VOYlegal.  Anna, how are you today?

 

Anna Sanders: I’m doing well.  Thanks.  How are you?

 

Jared Correia: I’m good.  We’re here to talk about the job market.  Some crazy shit going on the job market right now.

 

Anna Sanders: There is a lot.

 

Jared Correia: Things kind of turned on a dime like instantly.  I remember the start of pandemic like everybody was laid off, lost their jobs.  Employers were worried, because work dried out for like two months straight.  And then now, these lawyers who are like, “Hey, you’re lucky to have a job (00:15:53),” are now like, “Please, how may I make it viable for you to work in my business?”  That’s a big change for them.  So, like in your mind, how are lawyers dealing with this new environment capably or are they panicking?

 

Anna Sanders: I’m going to go with strategically.

 

Jared Correia: Very good.  Well done.

 

Anna Sanders: Obviously, there was a time for panic and March 2020 was really peak season for that.  But as the hiring markets picked right back up, the pendulum swung fully the other way.  How can we make this work for you?  It’s, “Please submit all of your signing bonus offers in a closed envelope.  Now, let’s show the end of the day where I’ll be joining.”  Everything went completely off the d-bend.  Signing bonuses, which we hadn’t seen since before the 2009 struggles became not just, “Is it part of the package we negotiate?”  It’s like, “Okay, we know that’s going to be a part of it.  It’s just how much,” and all kinds of other things, which I think you couldn’t really ask for with a straight face started being offered as just a matter of course.

 

Jared Correia: That’s interesting.  So, I like formed the question for you.  It’s like how are law firms dealing with.  I guess a better question from your perspective is like what should law firms are looking to high be doing?  Is it just like, “I’ll give you whatever you want?”  What’s the strategic approach here?

 

Anna Sanders: As with most things, if you start with a large bag of money, you’re off to a good start, but that is absolutely not the end of the story.  Because you know all the firms paying top of the market matching Middle Bank and Cravath, they’re doing well, but they’re not the only ones that are doing well.  And it has been a real question for firms looking around internally, calling up their friends in consultants outside to say, “Um, what’s going to move the needle, friends?”

 

Jared Correia: So, it’s money plus some other stuff, because the workers you’re hiring now are different than the worker you’re hiring before.  Not only are they more emboldened, but younger employees are looking for somewhat different things, right?

 

Anna Sanders: It’s true.  So, I think what I’ve seen be the most successful strategy always boils back down to flexibility and individuality.  There’ll be 10 firms sort of targeting a three-day a week in-person hybrid return-to-work plan, but it hits 10 different ways because at one firm that a memo went out, signed by the top dog that said, “Thou shalt return for low these three days and one of these days shall be Wednesday.”

 

Jared Correia: That’s very biblical.  I like that.

 

Anna Sanders: Yeah.  It comes from the top of the mountain and you receive the note and you’re like, “Well, okay.”  It’s a take it or leave it situation.  And others are in their smaller team and group meetings talking about, “Okay, what do we want to target?”  And so, they’re saying we are looking at, we are shooting for, we aspire to a three-day a week.  The same number of people are coming back into the office for the same number of hours, but it feels a little different when you have a voice in how it gets implemented.  If you say, “Okay, cool, but I run day camp out of my house on Tuesdays, so how about I don’t come in Tuesday?”

 

Jared Correia: Let me ask you that, because that’s an interesting question.  How are employees and employers dealing with this back to the office thing?  Because my whole deal is like in-office work is a boomer conspiracy.  You do not need to be in the office really for this kind of role if you’re a knowledge worker.  What’s it like out there right now?

 

Anna Sanders: So, I think that conversation is being had in the shadow of law firms having the most profitable year in the history of ever with all of their employees 100% remote.  So, it’s mixed and some places are really leaning and some firms have started completely remote offices.  They’re hiring into — they call it different things — but into a remote office but the idea that it will be 100% remote for forever.

 

(00:20:04)

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.

 

Anna Saunders: Are there ugly tax issues if you live in particular places?  Maybe.  But in turns out their law firms filled with lawyers.  Good if that’s kind of thing.  So some have just leaned in, they’re like, okay, for our in-office people we have one thing but we understand remote work is super, super popular.

 

Jared Correia: Right.

 

Anna Saunders: Especially with a certain demographic.  And the ones who leaned in fast scooped up a lot of really good talent.  And they didn’t have to pay top of the market.  I mean, that helps, it doesn’t hurt but —

 

Jared Correia: But you need to trade the flexibility a little bit.  Yeah.

 

Anna Saunders: And even just the firm commitment that you get from, we promise we’re not going to like in 12 weeks, surprise.  You come to work two days a week.

 

Jared Correia: Right.  Do you think that’s still a differentiator at this point or have firms done and make the move to virtual already done so?

 

Anna Saunders: No.  It’s still a differentiator and firms are still I think in some cases feeling out where they want to be.

 

Jared Correia: Aside from the office flexibility like where do you work and the bag of money that you talked about before.  What are like valuable components are you saying offered or are you saying people asking for this kind of moving the needle?

 

Anna Saunders: Flexibility and some other things.

 

Jared Correia: Okay.

 

Anna Saunders: There are — so because there’s so much movement. Top talent like got tossed in the Vitamix and rinsed about for a little bit.  Everybody made a move.  It opened up some opportunities for folks that didn’t have the experience or the great firms would be open to retooling someone who had a similar skillset but maybe not directly on point.

 

So it opened up all of these sort of new things where before you can make a career shift.  You can nudge your practice over a little bit.  You can’t just drop your entire practice and skip off into leverage finance.  But during the height of needing say corporate associates, there was a whole — the whole book of things you definitely cannot do got checked out the window and firm said, “Oh, I don’t know.  What do you got?  What do people want?”  And so, they would take a strong, somebody with a related skillset but again, if you try to make that move a year or two back, it would have been very, very difficult.

 

Jared Correia: That’s fair.  Now, so part of this is like conversations that law firms have with potential employees that are back channel conversations and then part of this is like, I think how do you look as a law firm in a public facing way to make a potential employee say, “I really want to work for that law firm.”  Do you see law firms making changes on that front as well?  Like their visibility has a hirer or as an employer?

 

Anna Saunders: Oh, yes.  And I think every time a firm comes upon a really good idea and they’re very smart to do it is to call someone like me up and say, “Look what we’ve done.”  Because if it’s really, really cool, people are interested in that information.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.

 

Anna Saunders: What is the cutting edge?  What are all the innovators up to these days?

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.  So what does it look like to be an innovative firm in this market place?  We’re talking about like just a static stuff like “Hey, we got a really big settlement” or is it more like this is how we employees, that kind of thing.  We don’t know we’re bow ties.

 

Anna Saunders: As we mentioned, the bag of money is a good place to start.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.

 

Anna Saunders: No, so in terms of like employee relations, there are firms that have — they have two tracks.  A higher billable target that’ll sort of get you look for partner in eight, nine years and then maybe a lower track where you can exceed expectations with a lot less work and it just lengthens the track.  It doesn’t take you off track.  Because that was a classic problem of people would get mommy track or it’s basically you take one step back in your career and you just get checked off the entire runway.  So firms finding ways of like, hey, that’s not great especially because a lot of people want to take a small step back and maybe that’s for a year or two or three.  They have family commitments or other commitments.

 

Jared Correia: Right, yeah.

 

Anna Saunders: So if we make sure that there’s a way for them to stay on a career track that they’re interested in, they’ll stay with us and it has by a large work incredibly well.

 

Jared Correia: Cool.  All right.  So other thing I’ve heard from law firms is they’re saying, “You know what, fuck it.”  Hiring seems like it’s really hard.  So what we’re going to do is lean in on keeping that good talent we have and we’re not going to bring anybody in.  We’re only going to hire if we absolutely have to.  Is that a decent strategy?  Do you totally ignore the job market or not?  Can that work?

 

Anna Saunders: It depends how hard you’re working at current associates.  One of the things that really moves the needle on loyalty.  Is my team, is my firm protecting me from unreasonable client demands, from the press of the Billable Hour because if you’re having to turn work away because you don’t have the capacity to do it, that’s bad.  You’re doing a bad job as law firm.  Don’t do that.

 

(00:25:05)

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.

 

Anna Saunders: So you absolutely have to bring on or retain I mean, and I’m all for retaining talents.  A lot more efficient to take the talent that you already have.

 

Jared Correia: Right.

 

Anna Saunders: But I think just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing and that is one of the ways that you show the people that you have, that look, we can anticipate needs, we know you’ll be going out on paternity leave sometime in October, we need to have some bandwidth.  It’s our job to find that.

 

Jared Correia: All right.  That’s great perspective on that.  Right.  Now here’s a $60,000 question.  Maybe with inflation it’s now a $90,000 question.  Should people be like locked into this model in the sense of like, it’s going to be really tough as an employer moving forward or things going to shift again.  Because we had two massive shifts in a short period of time.

 

Anna Saunders: I think the pendulum is coming back to the middle.

 

Jared Correia: Okay.  I’m sure people are happy to hear that.

 

Anna Saunders: So the markets are still really busy.  There’s a lot of demand but it is no longer blanket demand for every skill set at every level.  It’s more targeted and focused.  There are areas that are very, very, very hot.

 

Jared Correia: Oh, interesting.

 

Anna Saunders: But firms did a lot of the hiring that they were going to do in some areas.  So I think as the pendulum goes, I sort of in — I don’t have a crystal ball.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.

 

Anna Saunders: But it feels like we’re getting back towards like good busy but regaining a little touch of sanity.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.  Some level of nervously.  Well, that’s good.  That’s good.  I think people are probably breathing a sigh of relief right now.  How should potential law firm employees like attorneys or staff be approaching this market?  I know what I’d be doing.  I’d be making all these crazy demands.  I’d be like, where is my yacht?  But like, how much is too much?  How do you look at this like how do you value your current job versus a potential new job?

 

Anna Saunders: So there are couple of things that kind of have always influenced employee habits.  So I think my recommendation is to be as transparent as possible.  I wouldn’t stand your foot and demand your yacht but if someone ask you what color of pony do you want, you should tell them.  Somebody start to buy you a pony, make it the nice one.

 

Jared Correia: So as a potential employee as somebody who’s like looking to make their career move even a lateral one, how aggressive should people be being now about making that move?  (00:27:33) like there’s all this stuff we talked about and then I think I was reading an article the other day where they said like, “You’re leaving 7% additional income on the table by not moving jobs right now on average.”  And that seems about right to me.  So like even if you like your job right now, should you be aggressively looking for some notes just to see what’s out there?

 

Anna Saunders: I think you should be open to being made a compelling offer.  I wouldn’t look just to look.  I would look at what you have — I mean and this is obviously contrary to my professional interests.  But a lot of the conversations I have sometimes I just spoke — it was junior associate who is getting incredible varied work, has a ton of responsibility for his class year, gets direct client contact like there is nothing wrong and that type of experience that breath and that level of — honestly, it’s going to be hard to find somewhere else.  Is it possible?  Sure.  But there’s no reason to burn the social capital you have, the political capital you’ve invested in the place you are.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.  Especially as a young attorney.  I think like you got a lot of ways to go in your career too and there’s going to be more shifts in the future.

 

Anna Saunders: Wait until there’s something wrong.  Wait until there’s something to fix.  And this person has this huge runway in front of them.  They’re going to have marketable skills for the next four years.  Like there’s no rush to move just to move.

 

Jared Correia: Anna, I got one more question for you and then we’ll segue into our next segment.  But that’s — you talked a little bit about serendipity in job searching.

 

Anna Saunders: I do.

 

Jared Correia: Which is like, that was sort of an unexpected to me.  So like, I love the term like it’s a great word.  Like, how does that work in the job market and why do you value that?

 

Anna Saunders: Well, I used the word serendipity instead of dumb luck because serendipity is — it’s the like, actively pursued dumb luck, clever luck of making yourself available for interesting stuff.  You know, responding to the LinkedIn requests you get.  Going on podcasts for instance.  You meet interesting people.

 

Jared Correia: Great idea.

 

Anna Saunders: Getting yourself involved in things that are a little bit outside your normal production because it can be very tempting especially when you have a high pressure, high hour career to just do that.

 

Jared Correia: Sure, yeah.  Yes.

 

(00:30:00)

 

Anna Saunders: That’s very understandable.  Nothing wrong with keeping your head down and stay in sane, but as soon as you have a couple of extra spins in the career category, take on something that brings you into contact with some other people.  If you do a good job at that, people remember you.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.

 

Anna Saunders: I think every job I’ve gotten since I came of voting age it’s because somebody, someone more or less got it for me.  Recommended it, pointed me, connecting with the people who got me that job. 

 

Jared Correia: Right.  I think it’s a great point.  I think what a lot of people don’t understand who are entering the market is like, as you get older you don’t apply for jobs.  Jobs kind of find you or you find jobs through the people you know.

 

Anna Saunders: And if you’re intentional about putting out what is interesting to me, what would I be open to and you tell people, people will remember it.  And when they run across that weird thing they’ll be like, “Oh, get that fellow over there.”

 

Jared Correia: Anna, this has been great.  Will you come back for one final segment?

 

Anna Saunders: I will.  It’s been so much fun.

 

Jared Correia: Great.  All right.  We’ll take one final sponsor break so you can hear more about what our sponsors can do for your law practice.  Then, stay tune for the Rump Roast.  It’s even more supple than the roast beast.

 

[Music]

 

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Jared Correia: Welcome back everybody.  Here we are.  This is where we always end up at the rear end of the Legal Toolkit the Rump Roast.  It’s a grab bag or short form topics.  All of my choosing.  Why do I get to pick?  Because I’m the host.  Anna, we’re going to play a new game that I’ve been invented just for you, it’s called “Workin’ It”.  I’m going to describe some real jobs that people have, these are all real jobs, I want to see if you can guess the salary.

 

Anna Saunders: Oh my.  Let’s begin.

 

Jared Correia: And I’ll give you a little bumper here.  I’ll give you a little bit of a range.  We’ll bring in inflation, we’ll say, come within like 20% of the salary range will be good.  And this is outside of your field of expertise, I’m fairly certain.

 

Anna Saunders: Oh it sounds like.

 

Jared Correia: Let’s see how many of these we can get through.  I’m going to start off with master marijuana extractor.  This is a real job.  What do you think?

 

Anna Saunders: And I bet you need a degree for that something in chemistry.

 

Jared Correia: Oh let’s see, this is, I knew I was talking to the right person.  A master marijuana extractor processes marijuana to produce edibles, oils, concentrates, and other marijuana products.  You do need a degree in a related field to acquire this job, but once you have one, you can start earning a conservable salary right out of college.  So I am going off the national average salary just so you know, some are higher and some are lower.  So, what do you think?  Master marijuana extractor?

 

Anna Saunders: I think that is going to, a master marijuana extractor suggests that there’s some sort of internal or –.

 

Jared Correia: Apprentice marijuana extractor?

 

Anna Saunders: Apprentice level.  Yeah.  I’m going to say that’s going come in at around 64,000.

 

Jared Correia: Oh yes, I’m going to give that one to you.  I got 50K here and with our inflation range, you hit it.  We’re one for one.

 

Anna Saunders: Well that’s for New York.  It could be in Kentucky.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.  That’s in New York City average, yeah.  All right.  I got job number two for you, this is the Homer Simpson job, nuclear power reactor operator, which apparently in the real world require some level of education even though on the Simpson it doesn’t seem like much education is required at all.  Nuclear power reactor operator is responsible for operating and controlling nuclear reactors.  A normal day consists of adjusting control rods, monitoring reactors and responding to abnormalities.  I think that would be bad.  Nuclear power reactor operators typically need at least a high school diploma.

 

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Jared Correia: But there’s extensive on-the-job training needed to prepare for the USNRC licensing exam.  You have to pass a yearly exam as well to keep your license.

 

Anna Saunders: Because we don’t want you filling with those rods unless you’re really confident.

 

Jared Correia: Right.  Right.

 

Anna Saunders: Yes.  But a high school diploma is what’s required the rest.  They usually don’t compensate that well because the training they gave you, 42.

 

Jared Correia: Actually it’s 98.

 

Anna Saunders: Honestly, I’m glad to be wrong and that’s the direction I want.

 

Jared Correia: I know.  I’ve kind of happy that like people are making that much money.  I guess somewhere it makes more than I anticipate it.  All right.  So you’re one for two, I’d say that’s pretty good.  Online dating ghostwriter.  Now this sounds like it would be really fun job.  And this is a real job.

 

Anna Saunders: Yes, it does.  I am currently considering a side hustle.

 

Jared Correia: This is potentially descriptive enough on this right, but an online dating ghostwriter writes profile for people on dating websites.  This is a great job if you have the writing skilling to create witty dating profiles.  So online dating ghostwriter, what are we think in terms of salary?

 

Anna Saunders: I feel like this is not well paid.  I feel like you’d like, you’re going to get like five bucks of profile. 

 

Jared Correia: That should probably some.  Yes, probably not that well paid.

 

Anna Saunders: Yeah.  No I mean like, and if you like pumping out profiles all day long.

 

Jared Correia: Yeah.

 

Anna Saunders: I —

 

Jared Correia: I don’t know how creative you can be.

 

Anna Saunders: Let’s go with 35.

 

Jared Correia: It’s actually 54.

 

Anna Saunders: Are you kidding me?

 

Jared Correia: National average salary.  This is a —

 

Anna Saunders: That’s fun too.

 

Jared Correia: Yes.  It seems like a lot of fun.  So, I think I’m going to give that one to you for inflation, so we’re two for three.  Now this is a really good one which you may have heard before, a body part model.

 

Anna Saunders: Oh like hands models?

 

Jared Correia: Yes.  So we all know what a body part model is, like a hand model.  The question is what are they actually make?

 

Anna Saunders: I envision this as a high flying and glamorous career.

 

Jared Correia: Certainly is.

 

Anna Saunders: Yeah, this is going to be 85.

 

Jared Correia: Oh wow, you are on fire 75, that’s close.  I’m impressed.  All right, you got it.

 

Anna Saunders: The longer we do this, the better my grades are going.

 

Jared Correia: You’re getting really good.  I’m super impressed.  Let’s do two more and see how we do here.   Veterinary acupuncturist.  I don’t know if I need to describe this.  Basically, a someone who does acupuncture on animals which I didn’t know existed but is a real job.   This job requires you to have training and certification in acupuncture.  A love of animals is also important for succeeding in the role or maybe you just hate animals, you want to stick pins in them, I don’t know.  But this is real job.  Veterinary acupuncturist, what do you think the salary is?

 

Anna Saunders: I think you need probably significant veterinary training and also acupuncture training.  I mean, we’re not probably a doctor level but I’m going to go with 90.

 

Jared Correia: 90 is close.  It’s 70.  I’m going to give that one to you too.  All right.  Let’s see if you can bring this home.  This one’s going to be tough.  I save the toughest one for last and you may have heard of this job before because I think people refer to this job.  Golf ball diver.  Golf ball diver.  Considering the price of a new box of golf balls and how many brand-new golf balls that personally into the water, retrieving and reselling this white gold can be a pretty lucrative job, all right, I’m giving you a hint here.  As the name suggests, golf ball divers take to the many ponds across golf courses in this country to salvage, clean and recycle golf balls.  Probably need to be scuba certified but otherwise you just splashing around this dirty, muddy water.  How much is a golf ball diver make per year?

 

Anna Saunders: 60.

 

Jared Correia: 60.  So 60 is possible but you can make as much as a 150,000 dollars a year reselling golf balls.

 

Anna Saunders: That is the highest paid job on this entire list. 

 

Jared Correia: It is.  It is.  That’s why we saved it for last.

 

Anna Saunders: That is fantastic.

 

Jared Correia: Podcast testing for Legal Talk Network comes into the tidy zero dollars a year, so there we are.  Anna, thank you.

 

Anna Saunders: You make a compelling case for that.

 

Jared Correia: Yes, right.  Thank you for coming on.  This has been truly delightful.  Your knowledge of the job market, we’ve tested you, it’s truly legit.  We will definitely talk to you.

 

Anna Saunders: It’s been a real pleasure.

 

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Jared Correia: If you want find out more about Anna Saunders in VOYlegal, visit voylegal.com, that’s V-O-Y-L-E-G-A-L.com.  Like Boy with a V.  VoYlegal.

 

Now for those of you listening in Bumpass, Virginia, yeah, it’s a real place, we’ve got a great playlist for your listening pleasure.  The song is about the cold as heat waves ravaged the fucking world right now.

 

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I went to a minor league baseball game a couple weeks ago, it was 100 degrees.  It’s fucked up.  I’m about to close the show though because I need to get to the two 100 grand candy bars I now make for hosting each show.  So that will do it for another episode of the Legal Toolkit Podcast.  This is Jared Correia reminding you that there’s no “I” in job well fucking obviously.

 

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Sharon Nelson: As a lawyer keeping up with developments and information security, cyber threats and e-discovery is a never-ending process.  Fortunately, the Digital Detectives Podcast does the hard work for you.  I’m Sharon Nelson and together with John Simek, we bring on industry experts to discuss the latest tech developments that helped keep your data secure only on the Digital Detectives Podcast.

 

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