Ann Israel is the legal profession's Dear Abby. A New York legal recruiter since 1979, Ann is a past president of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants. Advice for the Lawlorn is updated every week.

Q: This question is opposite to the one you received and answered about how to exit the legal profession after graduating from a low-tiered law school. I also graduated from a low-tiered law school, not because I wasn't smart enough to be accepted to a higher tiered school, but because it was what I could afford. I'm not looking to leave the legal profession, however.

I'm looking to get an in-house counsel position. In the interest of full disclosure, law is a second career for me. I graduated in May 2007 and passed both the Massachusetts and New York Bar Exams the same year. I have extensive professional experience working in in-house legal departments. But even with respected professional referrals, recommending me directly to other in-house legal departments as well as to law firms, I can't get an interview anywhere.

I am assuming this is because I didn't graduate from either a first- or second-tier school. The longer away I get from graduation without acquiring any legal experience, the less attractive I become to the legal marketplace. Any advice?

Dear Disclosed: First of all, I don't think the reason you are not getting any interviews with in-house opportunities is due to the fact that you went to a low-tiered law school (although this might contribute in some situations). I believe the stumbling blocks stopping you from becoming a viable candidate boil down to several things:

1. Here we go: "It's the economy, stupid." Well, it is. There just is not the plethora of lower-level jobs in the corporations right now that existed several years ago. As with law firms, corporations are running leaner and that pertains to their legal departments as well. Which leads me to ...

2. Even in the best of times, corporations rarely hired first-year attorneys. That's not what the in-house legal departments are all about. Sure, there are a few junior attorneys in some of the very large corporate legal in-house departments, but those jobs are far and few between, especially now.

Your in-house experience may be vast but please keep in mind that it is not experience that counts as an attorney. You haven't told us what you did for the in-house legal departments that you worked for, but perhaps you did paralegal work or something on that level. Granted, we all know that there are times that paralegals do more than the attorneys they work for, but when it comes to writing up your resume, no hiring attorney is going to admit that or accept it as work experience.

So, here is the problem -- there are very, very few in-house jobs out there for an attorney without any experience as an attorney, not to mention the fact that there are very few in-house jobs out there for junior attorneys to begin with.

Are you being too selective in terms of the industry within which you want to work? Are you looking at all industries? Are you looking at both Massachusetts and New York states? How great that you are admitted to both states -- take advantage of this!

Sadly, right now you have a job market filled with more competition than ever before and much of that competition has experience. There are many junior attorneys with one year of experience who are probably applying for those very same jobs that you once would have been interviewing for easily.

My best advice is to broaden the area where you are doing your job search and apply to every potential position out there. You need to get experience -- that is the most important thing for you to do because once you get that first job as an in-house attorney that will allow you to move to others down the road.

The other day I received a phone call from a recent grad from a 4th tier law school; he wanted to work at a law firm in Manhattan and was calling me for advice. His grades were not great and the law school was in a different state. I asked if his career services office was helping him and he told me that they were only interested in placing him in the state where the school was located.

My advice to him was to jump at any job they found for him and stay there for a year or two and get the best experience he could possibly get. With his low grades and coming from a 4th tier, out-of-state law school, his chances of getting a job at a New York law firm right now were dismal. But the very fact that his law school's career services office had job interviews for him that he was passing up was insane to me. Take whatever you can get right, I told him. Get a paycheck and the experience! Believe what they are saying in the newspapers and ride this out with a real job. Don't fantasize about some fabulous job at BigLaw because it just ain't gonna happen right now.

And so I say the same to you. Spread your resume thin. It's great to think that you are going to work in a dazzling legal department in the heart of midtown Manhattan or on Wall Street but perhaps that just isn't going to happen right now. Or maybe it will. But set your sights on getting job interviews and then getting a job to get the experience as an attorney. The market will come back and then, as you wrote, you will have acquired legal experience to move on to another perhaps better and bigger in-house legal department. Best wishes!

Sincerely,
Ann M. Israel
President, Ann Israel & Associates