Valerie A. Fontaine earned her JD from UC Hastings College of Law and her BA, Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, from UCLA. She was on the Editorial Board of COMM/ENT, a Journal of Communications and Entertainment Law. Valerie practiced law with a prominent Los Angeles law firm and entered the legal search profession in 1981. Valerie is Secretary to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC) and Chairs its Newsletter Committee.
The typical lawyer’s career track changed dramatically about 25 years ago. Until then, it was usual for a lawyer to join a firm upon graduation from law school, work hard as an associate for five to seven years, and then, in most cases, become an equity partner, staying until retirement or death. In the late…
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Once the legal profession accepted the concept of engaging contract attorneys to handle some of the more routine and repetitive tasks of law practice, outsourcing and offshoring could not be far behind. Outsourcing is the practice of paying a third-party vendor to do some aspects of your firm’s work, while offshoring is establishing your own…
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Law schools don’t teach you everything you need to know in order to succeed in today’s legal marketplace. As the legal profession increasingly becomes more business-oriented, successful lawyers need to know more than just the law. Business and management skills are becoming essential to advancement, whether you practice in a law firm or an in-house…
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Salary negotiations start when you first walk through the door to interview with a prospective employer. Although you should not discuss compensation in an initial interview, and should try to delay those discussions as long as possible during the interviewing process, from the very first meeting you should be working on proving your value to…
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