How To Roll With The Snakes

"Tom I enjoy your website I need some help from you - I am a recruiter for the legal industry I place contract and temp attorneys but I am having trouble getting into these law firms it sea{e}ms like it is a closed group that gets the job orders ..... do you have any insight or words of advice ....... "

As you can already tell, placing contract attorneys is a different kind of animal; any rules relating to decorum and professinalism are out the window; think mafioso. To compete with the big boys, my advice would be the following:

A. Find an initial pool of investment capital and start using it to hand out bribes. Better yet, create a complex private equity tax-emempt structure where ill-gotten "deflate the rate" contract attorney wage gains can be kicked back to the partners.

B. Hire a staff of female recruiters who are exclusively under 30, grils who aren't afraid to wear a cocktail dress on a Monday morning and who aren't afraid to set the women's movement back thirty years.

C. Open a Mumbai office, but do not publicize it on your website.

D. Find the most low rent, filthy, tinder-box of an urban workspace (think 21st century version of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory) and pack it with as many computers, wires, hardware, and contract attorneys as possible.

E. Employ the most psychotic, mentally instable person you can find (prefably someone who used to light small animals on fire) and make them team leader.

F. Crate a sophisticated database and fill it with the names of "troublemaker" employees. Be especially on the look out for anyone who has a tendancy to speak to fire marshalls and reporters.

G. Kick back a large portion of your profits to your equity biglaw partner clients.