February 2009

Quite frankly, Legal Authority is not for everyone. And not everyone we speak with chooses to use Legal Authority. Legal Authority is the perfect example of the old adage, “You get what you pay for.”

For example, Legal Authority gives you the benefit of access to the largest database of legal employers in the world. Legal Authority actually GUARANTEES that they will reach every potential employer matching your interests. You are assigned your own personal attorney who will revise your resume and cover letter and provide you with as much personal attention as you require. A team of researchers will ensure that the hiring contacts inside each and every legal employer you are contacting are current before we even print a single letter for you.

An attorney will personally print and review each cover letter, resume, and envelope for you to ensure that they are perfectly formatted, that there are no typographical errors, and that you are making the best impression possible. We will then overnight mail these materials right to your front door. Included in these materials will be a list created especially for you containing the address and telephone number of each and every legal employer you are contacting so you can follow up with them.

After your targeted mailing, we will follow up with you to gauge your progress until you have found your perfect job. When you do begin receiving offers, we will be there to assist you in deciding which one to accept. In fact, throughout your relationship with Legal Authority, we will be here seven days a week to answer any questions you may have. We will literally be here for you seven days a week.

Obviously, a service like this is not for everyone and it is not something everyone can afford or can see the benefit in using. If you do not use Legal Authority, you could spend the next several months applying for attorney jobs in classified sections of legal newspapers, surfing Internet job posting boards, and maybe even researching the thousands of employers we investigate every day to make sure we have current and accurate information.

Or you can achieve everything this would accomplish — and much more — by choosing Legal Authority today. We don’t want to be dramatic and say, “If you do not use Legal Authority you will not find the perfect job.” We have found, however, that the people who choose to “think about it” are most often the same people who will still be looking for their perfect position a few months from now. By using Legal Authority, you will ensure that you (1) reach every employer matching your interests as quickly as possible, (2) get the best possible offer at the highest possible salary, and (3) find the best cultural “fit” for you. This is our job and something we can help you do!

Smart attorneys are naturally skeptical—and we sense you are. However, we’re afraid that you have passed up a very good opportunity to potentially make a meaningful difference in your career by not choosing Legal Authority for your job search. We are really hoping to make a significant difference in your future career prospects.

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Legal Authority’s Legal Outplacement Program is comprehensive and structured to meet the needs of employers looking to scale down particular members of their workforce and direct them into more efficient career directions. Whether your organization is restructuring, or responding to your perception of a particular employee’s needs in the marketplace, we can help.

Because we have the largest database of legal employers anywhere, we can be effective in helping attorneys transition into new roles within virtually any city in the country where they may need to seek alternative employment. Allowing Legal Authority to help manage your outplacement program can result in significant savings when you consider the value of goodwill from past employees and the moral advantages of ensuring that past employees locate meaningful positions.

Step One: Needs Analysis

The first step of our outplacement service involves analyzing the current needs of the employer we are consulting for. Generally, all initial contact with our offices involves exploring your particular outplacement needs and explaining the solutions we can provide. Our goal in the needs analysis stage is to explore the delicate issues surrounding your need for outplacement services. Once we have done this, we will be in a better position to understand the needs of the individuals within your organization we will be assisting with outplacement services. All information shared with Legal Authority is held in strict confidence and your particular needs are never discussed with the employers you will ask us to represent.

Step Two: Employee Assessment

We believe that one of the most useful things that attorneys can do when switching jobs is to take the time to understand where they are coming from and where their interests lie. Accordingly, we will generally conduct an in-depth telephone interview with each employee to determine exactly where their interests lie and their career objectives. Additionally, we have found the use of the Strong Campbell Interest Inventory and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests useful. We will generally offer this information to your employees and give them the option to complete this information and learn from its feedback. In initial discussions with a given employee, we will attempt to identify job sources they may not have considered initially such as current contacts and other sources of position.

Step Three: Allowing Employees to Learn from Assessment

Once we have had an initial discussion with your employee, we will generally send them several books which are tailored to their particular interests and career aspirations. At a time of change, we have found that many attorneys are hungry for information and this information can come from several sources—including us and other publications. In most instances, we will make an effort to get reading materials into an attorney’s hands within 48 hours of our initial contact with them.

Step Four: Resume and Cover Letter Creation

After our initial contact with an attorney, we will make an effort to work with them to craft and revise a cover letter. Depending upon the situation a given employee is coming from, we may prepare the resume and cover letter for them and allow them to revise additional drafts of the resume.

Step Five: Employer Identification

Using our database, we will work with each employee to help them approach employers in the given areas of the United States they are interested in. We can approach as few as one legal hiring organizations or as many as 500. Our job is to ensure that your given employee gets a new position through our efforts. Since we are not an attorney recruiting firm, our candidates benefit from the fact that no recruiter is involved in their job search and that our only objective is to provide support to help your employee find new work.

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Who We Are

Legal Authority confidentially services both individual attorneys and legal hiring organizations. We firmly believe there is no more cost effective means than Legal Authority for either (1) attorneys to find a new position, or (2) employers to conduct outplacement. With a full time staff of 10 researchers, five attorneys, and a database updated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Legal Authority is the largest portal of legal employment opportunities in the world, seamlessly bringing attorneys and employers together throughout their career cycle. With the largest database of legal employers anywhere, Legal Authority has contacts for over 750,000 legal employers in all 50 states and over 150 countries. We are an excellent source for individuals to take charge of their job search and employers to ensure that their attorneys and staff experience success in their outplacement.

We help law students, practicing attorneys, and legal staff apply directly to almost any legal employer anywhere, including law firms, corporations, judges, public interest organizations, public defender’s offices, prosecutor’s offices, state or federal governmental agencies, law schools — you name it. Our services are profoundly cost effective and, compared to most job search methods, we do not believe there is a better bargain anywhere.

What We Do

We work directly for attorneys and law students as their advocates in the legal marketplace.

The Short Story

Using our contacts, we provide you with customized letters, envelopes, and resumes for legal jobs, in every area of practice, in every city and every country any legal professional could ever want to work — whether they are interested in one employer or a thousand employers. Whether you want to go in-house, to a law firm, to a public interest organization, work for the federal or state government, be a prosecutor, a court clerk, or even a law professor, we can help you find the perfect employer.

Using what is arguably the world’s most sophisticated database of legal employers, we penetrate markets, enhance attorneys’ lives, and get you the exposure to employers that you need. No recruiters, no job posting boards, or classified ads can do what we do. The beauty of what we do is that we put you in control of your own destiny.

According to Bob Gerber, the author of An Easier Way to Change Jobs, “Job hunting success depends 70% on marketing and interviews and 30% on background and ability.” This translates into: (1) knowing where to direct your mailing and (2) mailing sufficient volume to achieve your desired results. Even the National Association of Law Placement is clear that most attorneys obtain jobs by directly contacting employers who do not solicit applications.

With facilities in both the United States and abroad, Legal Authority operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, updating information about legal employers throughout the world. You would be surprised at the number of law students, practicing attorneys, and legal professionals who use our service. They do so because it works. Our service is extremely effective due to the fact that very few legal employers ever advertise positions, most headhunters and job posting boards have a limited number of positions, and we have the resources to help legal professionals find any employer they want.

The Long Story

About Our Database

Our database contains more hiring department contacts than any database of which we are aware. Legal Authority maintains a database of more than 750,000 legal employers. This includes virtually every law firm, corporation, city, county, judge, public interest organization, prosecutor, public defender, law school, association, embassy, representative, congressman, or other organization that employs legal professionals in the United States. We also have several thousand international legal employers!

Our Relationship with You

A relationship with Legal Authority generally follows the following processes:

Step One: Initial Contact
Call us at our toll-free phone number, 1-800-283-3860, or fill out our online Sign Up form. This communication with Legal Authority, as well as all future communication with Legal Authority, is totally confidential. If you fill out our online form, we will contact you within the same business day (if possible) via the phone number you provide, to answer questions and discuss your options. If you call us directly, we can assist you immediately.

Step Two: Free Resume Critique and Market Evaluation
One of our consultants will interview you in depth to understand what type of legal employment you are seeking. We will provide a resume and cover letter critique, and provide you with suggestions to improve the impact of both. In addition, we will provide a market evaluation and give you an assessment of your overall marketability. The critique and market evaluation are absolutely free, and there is no obligation to continue to the application material preparation stage. We are committed to helping you find a job, whether you use our full services or not.

Step Three: Preparing Application Materials
After an interview with one of our consultants, we will prepare cover letters, resumes, and envelopes for the number of legal employers you specify. Most cover letters will be addressed to the hiring authority or department for each legal employer you are approaching. There are situations where the name of the Hiring Partner or General Counsel may be transitory or unclear, and the letters will be addressed directly to the Human Resources Department Head or Hiring Department Head. Legal Authority will laser print your resume, cover letter, and envelopes (with your return address) on high-quality bond paper and high-quality envelopes. Because you are applying for jobs - not us - we want you to sign each cover letter we prepare on your behalf.

The cost is up to you and it depends on how expansive you want your job search to be. There are no hidden charges. We charge a basic research fee that decreases depending on the expansiveness of your job hunt. The research fee allows us to continually update and expand our sophisticated database and covers the costs of our research time. The only other charge is a small charge to cover the production costs for every employer for whom we prepare resumes, cover letters, and envelopes. This charge also decreases depending on how expansive your job search will be. When you consider that each interview you receive will have an individual cost of less than the price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you can see that our service is worth every penny.

Step Four: Distribution Logistics
Once we have produced the product, your cover letters, resumes, and envelopes are assembled, packaged, and sent to you for your final review and local postmark. Confidentiality is a serious concern for any job seeker. That’s why we will provide you with the actual letters ready to be mailed but for your signature and a stamp. Accordingly, you will never be contacting a firm you do not want to contact — or worse — your own firm. We will provide you with the contacts and you can run your job search with the advice, letters, resumes, and envelopes we prepare on your behalf.

Step Five: Follow Up
Over the three months after your mailing, we will follow up with you frequently to gauge your progress. You need to remember that the numbers can work for or against your favor. The more employers you approach, the more likely you will be to receive interviews, and the better chance you will have at getting a position.

Because hiring personnel change frequently, companies and law firms move, any mass mailing of your resume may potentially result in some returned letters. If any of your letters are returned, we reissue you corrected letters or refund any fees you pay for the individual letter returned if we are unable to do so. In addition, if within thirty days after we send you your letters, you are not 100% satisfied with our services - if you feel that we did not try our best to give you the most exhaustive legal job search ever - we will refund 100% of your money less the cost of shipping. This is how confident we are that our services provide the best legal job search in the world.

Why It Works

In a given city, if a job exists that matches your interests, there is only one way to be sure that you find that opportunity. You must contact the specific employers that match your interests, and you will find every existent job. It is as simple as that. No job boards, classified sections, legal recruiters, on-campus interviewing programs, or job fairs have all of the jobs. In today’s job market, it is estimated that over 85% of all legal jobs are not advertised and recruiters fill less than 3% of all available positions. When jobs are advertised or when recruiters get involved, a legal employer may receive well over 1,000 applicants for one position. The fact is that many employers do not have jobs until they are presented with a candidate that is attractive to them. This is why self-initiated targeted mailing is the most effective means for finding a legal job.

If you are serious about getting the type of legal job you want, you have come to the right source. Legal Authority has the largest database of legal employers anywhere. In the 1996 edition of What Color is Your Parachute?, the author states that over 1,400 resumes are mailed for every one job secured. While a legal job can generally be found by mailing far fewer resumes, if you are sporadically applying to the occasional job via the Internet, classified ads, or through a recruiter, it may take you a long, long time to find the position you are seeking. Legal Authority can help you ferret out and apply to the legal hiring organizations you want. It is your choice: Either you can remain unhappy with your current employment situation, or you can find the job you want today.

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If you’re trying to find the perfect legal job, there’s probably something you don’t know. Before you start searching, you need to enlist the best legal job search tool in the world: Legal Authority.

Competitive law students and lawyers who have been successful in their job searches would never be willing to share this important secret with you; but I’ve made it my business to help attorneys get jobs, so I want you to have this key piece of information: More than 85% of all open legal positions are not published anywhere.

They’re not listed on job boards or in classified ads. You won’t read about them in attorney magazines, and you probably won’t even hear about them from a recruiter. Law firms and other organizations around the country are waiting to hear from you, and you don’t know who they are, where they’re located, or what kind of attorneys they need.

Legal Authority has developed a three-part method to help lawyers just like you get their ideal jobs quickly. Here’s how it works:

1. We find the perfect employer for you.

Our database contains more than 98% of all legal employers in the United States — altogether, more than half a million legal employers. We employ hundreds of researchers who work to identify legal employers and hiring contacts and then classify this information based on organization type, size, and geographic location. Developed at a cost of several million dollars, our database has a large scale and a degree of accuracy that is unmatched by the data available through law schools or other job-search companies.

2. We create the perfect legal resume for you.

Once we’ve identified your ideal types of positions and employers, we will assist you in crafting a flawless resume and cover letter that will show potential employers you’re the perfect fit for their organization. We employ dozens of skilled resume writers who will work with you personally to create for a resume that makes you stand out. A good resume is the critical starting point in your job search, and we design more successful legal resumes than any other company in the world.

3. We give you all the resources you need to apply to every position that fits.

Finally, once you’re fully satisfied with your new resume and cover letter, we will mail you as many copies as you need. You will receive your complete, printed, and customized application materials to forward to the employers you select. All you will need to do is sign your cover letters and stamp your envelopes.

If you used any other resource, you’d still be ruling out hundreds of job opportunities simply because you’d be starting with a limited scope. You’d be wasting your time and your money. When you use Legal Authority, you’ll be applying to every relevant organization; your job search will be as thorough, professional, and focused as possible.

No other method can compare with Legal Authority’s proven effectiveness. Go to LegalAuthority.com today to learn more about how to improve your job search and finally get the results you deserve.

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I am writing to tell you a secret you may not know. Thousands of law students just like you use Legal Authority to find positions each year. In fact, at some law schools, over 20% of the class uses Legal Authority to find positions. Your friends may not tell you about Legal Authority simply because law students are competitive by nature. Career services offices often do not talk about us that much either. If every law student used Legal Authority, then many career services offices would have very little to do.

The reason Legal Authority is so successful is simple. First, we will assist you in identifying every single employer that meets your specific interests in the area(s) of the United States you want to work in. Our database contains over 98% of all legal employers in the United States — over 750,000 legal employers. We employ over 25 people who do nothing but identify legal employers and hiring contacts inside these employers. They then classify this information based on type, size, and geographic location. Developed at a cost of several million dollars, no law school or other organization has a database that comes close.

Second, we will assist you in crafting a perfect resume and cover letter for the type(s) of summer or permanent positions you are seeking. We employ extremely skilled and trained professional resume writers who will spend the time to work with you personally to create for you a resume that makes you stand out. A good resume can make a tremendous difference in your job search. We craft more law student resumes than anyone in the world.

Third, we will provide you with complete printed and customized application materials to apply to the employers you select. All you will need to do is sign and stamp your application materials. The result of using Legal Authority is that your job search is as thorough, professional, and focused as it can be. There is nothing that can compare with our effectiveness. Some law students who have tried other job search methods without success and then used Legal Authority have gotten in excess of 20 interviews.

Legal Authority is the top means in the United States for law students like you to get jobs. If you use Legal Authority, you could be interviewing within the next few weeks.

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Legal Authority helps attorneys and law students manage their career moves more effectively and successfully. We are not a recruiting firm retained by a law firm or company to screen candidates for positions. Legal Authority is working on your behalf, helping you contact employers that meet your needs. By making more quality contacts, you can produce more phone calls, interviews, and job offers than you can by reaching employers through a recruiter and risking a price tag of 25%-50% of your salary affecting your chances negatively. This is accomplished through the design of high impact resumes and their targeted distribution in the marketplace.

Free Resume Critique and Marketability Assessment

If you would like to increase the impact of your resume and increase the effectiveness of your overall career marketing, let our Attorney Employment Advocates answer your questions about your career goals. We will also explain how Legal Authority’s services will be able to assist you in your search. You can call us at 1-800-283-3860 or wait for us to contact you to schedule your free critique. DELAY IS EXPENSIVE. Each month you remain under-employed or unemployed can cost you thousands of dollars. In addition, under-marketing yourself is the single most expensive thing you will do in your life. Put our resources to work for you. Just by registering, you have made a giant step in that direction. We look forward to helping you meet your career objectives.

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Quite frankly, Legal Authority is not something that every law student in the United States should be using. And not every law student Legal Authority works with gets a job using our service.

However, thousands of law students do get jobs using our service each year. We work with well over 100 law students per week who are seeking their first position. Our service is comprehensive: Our attorneys counsel law students about appropriate positions for them to apply to, rewrite their resume and cover letter, and provide them with professionally printed cover letters and envelopes to sign and mail. The average cost of our service is most often less than $500 for every law student we assist.

Our attorneys generally spend at least an hour talking with each individual law student and then several hours redoing their resumes and cover letters. In addition, we spend far in excess of $1 million each year maintaining a database that contains the information students need to apply for jobs: What type of practice areas is the student interested in? What type of employer does the student want to work for—a law firm, the federal or state government, a public interest organization, a corporation? Where does the student want to live? What size law firm does the student want to work for?

Certainly, on-campus interviewing, relationships with employers, and other means are good ways for students to get jobs—they always have been and always will be. However, we believe that our service is a profoundly effective way to ensure that law students find the precise job they are looking for when this job might not be available from more traditional sources. There is strength in numbers and because thousands of students use our service each year, we are able to offer a service far more effective than many law schools have the time, or the money, to offer.

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“Legal Authority assists more law students, at more law schools, get jobs than any other source.”

We’re How Attorneys Get Jobs

At Legal Authority, we are proud to say that our targeted mailing service helps more law students, recent law school graduates, and attorneys find employment than any other service in the world. Legal Authority was designed with you, the job seeker, in mind, and we are constantly evolving to meet every challenge that may be presented and present solutions to those hardest questions about your job search.

What Exactly Does Legal Authority Do?

Simply put, we grant you access to the largest legal employer database in the world. When you use Legal Authority, you will be interviewed by one of our attorneys who will take as long as it takes to understand exactly what you are seeking to do with your legal career. Legal Authority will perform searches for you based on your criteria (What practice areas interest you? What type of employer do you want to work for? Do you want a clerkship? How about in-house opportunities? Where do you want to live? What size firm would like to work for?), and develop a list that is targeted to your particular job search. We can even help you go abroad if you want to.

“The most common means of obtaining a job was a letter or other ’self initiated contact’ with the employer.”

-National Association of Law Placement

Legal Authority’s professional writers will review and revise your resume and create a cover letter for you that is tailored and created from scratch specifically for you. You will work with the writer — as a counselor, guide, and expert — to come up with a letter and resume that are perfect for you.

After we have a final resume and cover letter, Legal Authority will prepare a package of resumes, cover letters and envelopes, addressed to the hiring contact person inside each specific employer (not “To Whom It May Concern” or “Dear Hiring Partner”), with your return address and name on them. We Federal Express the package to you, and all you have to do is sign each letter, stuff each envelope, and put a stamp on each envelope.

Can I Do What Legal Authority Does Myself?

True. You could get subscriptions to over 50 legal directories, make over 500,000 inquiries per year, hire over 40 people to update your database 24 hours a day, hire a crew of attorneys to counsel and advise you of the most appropriate employers to apply to, hire a crew of professional writers to review and revise your resume and cover letter, and spend far in excess of $1,000,000 (just to maintain a database each year). This is what we do at Legal Authority. Because thousands of law students use our service, the cost is profoundly cheaper than it would be if you were to do the work yourself. Theoretically, this is something you could do yourself.

We speak with attorneys on a daily basis who believe they can do all of the work themselves. A lot of law students think they are smarter than us or somehow have everything figured out. Legal Authority is an expert at finding jobs for law students. It’s what we do all day, every day.

Most of the law students who use Legal Authority are spending far in excess of $100,000 to attend law school for three years. Presumably, one of the reasons for going to law school is to get the best job possible. Conversely, most law students who use Legal Authority spend less than $500 for our service. In most instances, the cost of using Legal Authority is around $2.00 per employer we help you contact and our search can be as expansive or as narrow as you choose. When you consider that thousands of law students each year get summer and permanent jobs paying several times more per week than our service costs, not using Legal Authority could be expensive.

“Legal Authority is, quite simply, the most effective way for law students to get the precise legal job they are seeking. Your first attorney job is already in our database.”

It is no secret that following the crowd and trying to find a job through your Career Services Office, networking, or applying sporadically to jobs on posting boards can be “hit or miss”. You can compete with every other student, at every other law school, trying the same tired old methods, going after the same job listings, or you can take action and call Legal Authority. Legal Authority is the only way to find and apply to every single employer that might be interested in you.

At Legal Authority, we have the resources to help more students find jobs than any other single organization we are aware of in the United States.

Our database contains contacts for virtually every law firm, corporation, and public interest organization in the United States (we can even help you go abroad). We will review and revise your resume and help you apply to any employer you choose—anywhere. Our service is also extremely inexpensive. Contact Legal Authority today and let our Attorney Employment Advocates speak with you about your job search and how we can get you your first job.

A Different Kind of Company

Legal Authority is different. We are specialists in getting attorneys and law students jobs. It is the only thing we do. Once you make the decision to work with Legal Authority, we will serve you with the enthusiasm, integrity and insight you are entitled to. We are proud to make that promise to each of the law students who work with Legal Authority.

Law students who have used Legal Authority know that we take our jobs extremely seriously. We are truly passionate about our work. It is not uncommon for many of our Employment Advocates and researchers to work as many as 16 hours a day, all week long. Sound familiar? As an organization founded by high-level attorneys, we know what it takes to succeed. Our firm has earned its reputation for decisive thinking and vigorous action. Legal Authority clients appreciate our honesty and upfront approach to assisting them with their job search. They realize that we live in a winner-takes-all environment where the stakes are always high.

Our goal is to help start careers that will lead to meaningful lives for our clients. We always give the law students who use Legal Authority an honest assessment of their prospects.

“With meaningful experience in virtually every facet of the legal industry, Legal Authority brings an unrivaled level of understanding to the job search requirements of law students.”

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