Posting a job isn't a recruitment strategy

Plus: The biggest legal tech conference takeaways | A podcast worth your time

If your last job posting attracted 200 underqualified applicants and zero right ones, you're not alone...and the fix is simpler than you think.

This week we're also recapping the two biggest legal tech conferences of the year, with the takeaways that actually matter for your practice. Plus a podcast worth clearing your schedule for—not commentators guessing where legal is headed, but the practitioners and operators actually steering it.

But first, meet the lawyer/pastor who successfully argued the social media addiction case.

“Do you think I’m stupid?”
That’s not a question you want to hear a judge ask. A Michigan woman who joined Zoom court while driving (but swore she was only a passenger) found that out the hard way.

Silence is golden.
Federal law typically limits jail time for contempt of court to 18 months, but a successful treasure hunter spent over a decade in prison for refusing to disclose the location of recovered loot.

It’s a Vogue eat Dogue world.
Condé Nast is suing a canine fashion magazine for trade infringement.

Speaking of fashion...Business Insider is looking for the best-dressed lawyers in New York City. “[O]nes who serve looks as well as they practice law.” Hopefully, this is a little more serious than the recent “Finest Boys in Finance” article.

“High” court indeed.
President Trump’s Supreme Court nominees may sicken him, but at least they aren’t being extradited to another country over drug trafficking charges.

Posting a job isn’t enough

If it seems like posting a job on LinkedIn (or any other online job board) leads to one of two results—you either hear nothing back or get swamped with applications from unqualified bots—legal staffing consultant Molly McGrath says it is easy to conclude that the talent market is broken.

McGrath says the real issue is simpler and more fixable: posting a job is not a recruitment strategy. It's a single tactic, and an increasingly ineffective one when used in isolation, because your job posting isn't competing with other job postings. It's competing with everything else in a distracted professional's life.

Why this matters: The best candidates are evaluating your firm's leadership quality and culture from the first interaction. A vague or generic job posting doesn't just fail to attract talent. It actively signals that the role is not one the firm cares much about. (Hiring & Empowering Solutions)

What's on tap in legal tech?

The big two legal tech conferences just wrapped up. Below is a recap of the biggest news coming out of them.

Legalweek

Legal tech is often future-focused, but Bryce Engelland of the Thomson Reuters Institute hammered this point home in his recap of the conference, focusing on how firms are grappling with the fact that adopting AI tools often means reducing opportunities to train the next generation of attorneys in traditional ways. Senior manager of legal intelligence and AI engagement at Relatively, Christine Porras, isn’t as concerned about the career paths of new associates after inviting two young lawyers to attend the conference with her. After seeing them interact with various vendors and products, she says, “the people coming into this profession carry intelligence about the future that those of us already in the room do not have.”

eDiscovery aficionado Michael Villarmia says a big thing he’s paying attention to after the conference is how much AI costs. He noted that as more features are included in basic subscriptions, a firm’s ability to charge for various work and the people who do that work diminishes.

ABA Techshow

There are a slew of articles from the Techshow floor in the ABA Journal. Don’t miss the ones on evaluating electronic evidence and wearable tech.

The Tech Savvy Lawyer, Michael D.J. Eisenberg, says the overall takeaway from this year’s event is that “Ignoring AI because it feels uncomfortable is no longer the safer option.”

Why this matters: We all know the profession is in a state of flux and AI is a big reason why. So what does it mean when the most talked-about sessions from the two biggest tech conferences were on decidedly non-techy topics? Legalweek invited a panel of judges to talk about the security threats members of the judiciary face. At Techshow, past, current and future ABA presidents took the stage to discuss the rule of law and how lawyers can protect it.

Your chance to be a fly on the wall

A lot of people describe themselves as “legal disrupters,” but Mary O’Carroll actually is one. She’s recognized across the legal industry as someone who pushes for the adoption of new processes or tech to get results. (She’s particularly well known for the 13 years she served as Director of Legal Operations at Google.)

Pearl’s On, Gloves Off is your opportunity to listen in as she has one-on-one conversations with legal thought leaders (like Mike Abbott, Head of the Thomson Reuters Institute) and the heads of some of the top-performing legal departments in the country (like Keir Gumbs, the Chief Legal Officer at Edward Jones). There’s also an interesting episode where O’Carroll has a conversation with an AI clone of herself to test whether legal knowledge can somehow be captured.

Why this matters: This isn’t just another podcast; it’s a professional development tool. O’Carroll and her guests don’t just speculate about where the legal industry is headed; they are leading it there. (Pearls On, Gloves Off)

Turn a conference into connections

Legal conferences can be a real slog if the only thing you are taking away from them is CLE credit. The real value of attending comes from the connections you make and the hallway conversations you have with a lateral candidate, a potential referral source, or the in-house attorney who just described the exact problem your practice solves. Conferences can compress months of relationship-building into a couple of days.

Sejal Patel of Sage Ivy Consulting has a whole series of articles chock full of tips on how to do this sort of relationship building and soft marketing at legal conferences.

Why this matters: Make the most of the next conference you attend by looking beyond the CLE sessions. Put in the work before, during and after you hit the convention hall, and the conference pays for itself. (Sage Ivy Consulting)

You're all caught up!

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Raise the Bar is written and curated by Emily Kelchen and edited by Bianca Prieto.