I'm always interested in hearing from people who might be interested in working with us. I hire people if I believe they can contribute to our enterprise, whether we have an "opening" or not. Most all of the work done in this office commingles several traditional job descriptions. Everybody types, everybody picks up the phone, everybody makes copies; in short, nobody's too important to turn on the dishwasher or too insignificant to fly off with me to work on a case.
I put high value on creativity and intelligence, original thinking and self-motivation. Discretion, the ability to keep confidences, and taking personal responsibility for the work you do and the promises you make are absolutely essential. I look for "live minds" who can work well in groups. The ability to task and manage oneself is a must. So is the recognition that you are joining a group of professionals to which I have entrusted a vision of what this enterprise is about, and a philosophy of how we organize around it.
Since I started this practice twenty five years ago, well over a hundred people have worked with me. Most lawyers and paralegals have been employed first in a contract capacity to participate in a particular case or project, and were then asked to stay on. We also maintain a short list of people whom we will call if a contract opportunity comes along, but that list is usually for special projects that may require particular skills, such as litigation support, trial evidence presentation, language fluency, and specific research abilities. We also allow really good talent to come along, thump us on the head and persuade us why we need to have them work here now.
Who will succeed here? This is not a practice or a work philosophy that suits everyone. The idea of working in an unusual office environment and doing very unique work in an open-ended way sounds exciting, but all those who gravitate to us as an alternative to more orthodox jobs are not necessarily built for our way of working.
This is not a money-centered practice. Folks who picture themselves successful because they take home a bigger check, have better benefits, a larger brass pot for their plant, a corner office, or a bigger expense account than the person next to them might as well not waste their time or ours sending in a resume. Nor should any lawyer, paralegal, or staff person apply who would feel less "professional" doing work unlike what they did at their last job, or what they were told in school to expect from a job. This is a concept shop, an office that is part law practice, part think tank, and part media enterprise. It is an experiment, not an institution. We get hired because we have good ideas and good ideas are always in demand. We know how to adjust quickly to changing circumstances; our operations need to be able to turn on a dime, to reinvent the master plan, and to crash and reboot a whole project without a tear being shed. We actually believe in the creativity of chaos and uncertainty. We pride ourselves on being different in what we do and how we do it. We operate more like a primitive hunting clan for whom dinner, much less a retirement income, is no sure thing. The difference here is that we hunt ideas.
To survive in a think jungle, in a law practice or any other enterprise going at Internet speed, seizing opportunities is oxygen. In order to see and then to seize every opportunity, we try to work together as an ensemble: listening and responding to each other's music, instead of all moving the bow across the string in the same direction. I don't work this way because it is trendy or more democratic, but because it allows good minds to move faster, and quick responses are the best competitive edge. I integrate visionary thinking, experimentation, intuition and creativity into this law practice not to transcend, but to succeed in a world of realpolitik trial law. The first and last credo is that we enter every case to win.
While I want to work with action-oriented people, the action is the motion of ideas and our ability to move with them; the action is in the information you bring to me, that I bring to you, or that we all go dig for to break the code of each new case. You have to be emotionally whole within yourself to do this job, since the demands (the ones I make as well as the ones dictated by events) can be mental, physical, and emotional challenges. The work I ask people to do is more literate, more analytical, more aesthetic, and more methodically scientific than most legal work. It also takes a far broader bandwidth of knowledge and intellectual curiosity than what it takes to follow the legal opinions that came down last week. People with broad interests or experience in the arts, science, technology, and current events tend to do better here than folks who have wanted to be lawyers since they were in utero. We look for the intellectually mature person who can work with discipline, somebody who can fathom the big picture but still focus on the small details.
I believe in managing people's time as a precious resource. There's a quiet urgency about everything, but my idea of what is time well spent is more ambitious than what's billable; testing new methods and ideas is seen as a wise time investment. Since we are in business to support ourselves, progress in the work we do for clients always takes priority; but, we try to press equally hard teaching ourselves how to do what we do better the next time. We try to think practically in the short term and strategically over the long term. We go for the art in the work. We are always up against the wall, but very calmly, and with no blindfold.
The rest of the web page content gives you a pretty fair idea of what our work is about. If this sounds like something you'd want to be a part of, please let me know. Email me at sam@guiberson.com.
