We offer you tools to be successful and teach you how to use them.
“You hit the nail on the head during our initial call when you mentioned the reflection that this process would engender.”
Look closely at the fine print for guarantees.
Often they are so gutted by conditions and limitations that they have little meaning.
Most individual clients are referred by past and current clients, hiring attorneys, legal recruiters, and other résumé writers and career industry professionals. Others find us through a simple internet search—Shauna Bryce and Bryce Legal are top-ranked by Google for many searches related to best professional legal career assistance, legal résumé writing, and career coaching for lawyers and law students. No matter how they find us, our clients understand the value career experts bring to the table—as well as the limitations of what we can do.
Many of our clients have been surprised by:
The speed at which they attained success
The level of success they achieved beyond their initial expectations
While we have unparalleled client testimonials about our effort, hard work, and positive impact, ultimately your individual success requires effort and hard work on your part too. There’s simply no substitute.
So let’s talk about why we don’t guarantee specific outcomes—and why we believe you should be suspicious of those who do.
You drive your career.
“I did like you said, Shauna—I figured out who the partners who would be making the decision were and I sent my materials to them. I got responses from both partners within 24 hours and now I have an interview set up.”
Our clients are serious about their careers, and understand the role our career advice and résumé writing can play in their success, advancement, and career satisfaction. They also understand our limitations.
Career advice and résumés are tools of success. They are not guarantees of success. They are not silver bullets. Many of the circumstances ultimately leading to success are largely within your control, not ours.
Imagine a lawyer who guarantees a win.
No ethical lawyer would do that.
Every client is different and has different, individual circumstances. As lawyers, Model Rule of Professional Conduct 7.1 and its equivalents remind us that individual results depend on individual circumstances, and that results can never be guaranteed.
“Everything you’re saying makes sense. It’s all logical. Just putting half of what you said into practice would go a long way to getting me ahead.”
Instead, we bring our best efforts and knowledge to the situation. Together, we can explore how your professional goals align with market conditions. We all are subject to changing markets conditions, as well as to the basic economic principles of supply and demand. Some practice areas, skill sets, and qualifications are more in-demand than others—and while we watch market trends over time, what’s in-demand can drastically change over the years or even overnight. There’s also variation among geographical areas. That means you may have to put in work to ensure you have what it takes to be in-demand and to tweak strategies and documents to meet individual circumstances.
“I used to do hiring for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and I reviewed thousands of résumés. And I can’t believe that I’ve made the very same mistakes on my own résumé.”
“I took your advice and built a relationship with a lawyer at [TV studio]. She’s now mentoring me and has talked about bringing me in-house.”
Even so, like outcomes in law practice, outcomes in legal hiring cannot be guaranteed. For example, even the best career advice is, at heart, an educated response to the limited information clients voluntarily share and provide during our time together—information that we cannot and do not verify. Even the best career advice cannot substitute for honest self-reflection, openness to new ideas and to change, and action. Even the best legal résumé cannot substitute for implementation of short-term strategies (like actively researching opportunities and preparing for interviews) or for long-term strategies (like increasing technical skill, gaining experience applicable to target goals, and building a robust professional network). Even the best attorney résumé cannot be effective if it is sent to the wrong employers, for the wrong positions, in the wrong format, or not sent out at all. Even the best legal résumé cannot fly through the sensibilities of each and every one of the 1.34 million U.S. lawyers, 304,000 members of the recruiting industry, 17,500 coaches, and 100+ applicant tracking systems (ATS) on the market (2018 data). Even the best LinkedIn profile cannot substitute for sound social media strategies.
Moreover, at the end of the day, we have no control over how clients choose to use—or choose not use—our advice and work.
And, of course, sometimes things just change—whether individual client circumstances or market conditions. (For more on guarantees, please see our Terms & Conditions.)
We are collaborative partners.
“This has been so helpful. 90% of what you’ve said are things I didn’t know, things I didn’t even think about. But it all makes so much sense.”
We are here to help. We are on your side and want you to be successful. But we can’t do it alone. We need you to work with us toward your success. It’s a partnership.
To be successful working with a career coach and résumé writer, you must be open to honest self-reflection and you must be willing to participate in the process—even though we may challenge your assumptions. It’s hard for us to help solve problems and position you toward the future unless we have the proper context and background. That means we will ask you a lot of straight-forward and exploratory questions, and sometimes those questions will take you outside your comfort zone. It’s all with the goal of moving you forward and building career narratives, résumés, LinkedIn profiles, and answers to interview questions that help you put your best foot forward.
“I’m just letting you know that I have a new job—with [association], no less. I’m over-the-moon thrilled. I will be the Director of HR at [association]… It is as if this job has every one of the elements I identified as ‘critical’ in the exercise you had me work on. Thanks so much for all your help. I really believe that our work together helped get my head in the right place—I was ready when this opportunity came along.”
Many Paths and Many Opinions
“Your résumé was amazing! I sent it to all my friends to ask their opinion and they all said it was amazing too. I would never have imagined to layout the résumé this way.”
One of the wonderful things about life and law is that there are many paths to success. There is no single “right way” to write a legal résumé or optimize a lawyer’s LinkedIn profile or to reach your career goals. This website provides a lot of information about our backgrounds, philosophies, and more so that you can understand how we arrive at the advice we give you. You can choose to use our advice and approach, to reject them, or to do something in-between.
The inherently subjective nature of our work means that we cannot guarantee that every person will agree with our advice and writing approach. Individual hiring attorneys, legal and executive recruiters, career coaches, résumé writers, and others can have radically different ideas, approaches, and opinions. And that’s okay. One expert’s approach does not necessarily invalidate another’s. Instead, we view them as data points for your career decision-making.
We can help offer, weigh, and evaluate different opinions; only you can decide what works best for you.
Build a Bridge to Your Future
We believe strongly that there is a job for every lawyer. We can work with you to identify potential employers, roles, and career paths that might be a good fit for you. We can also work with you to build a bridge from where you are today to where you want to go, outlining plans to strengthen soft spots in your candidacy so that over time you can become a stronger applicant for the roles you want.
While we work hard to help each lawyer present in the best light, we cannot help you appear to have qualifications that you do not have. We have, for example, been asked to include false, misleading, or exaggerated information in résumés. We will not knowingly help defraud employers or anyone else. Misrepresentations to secure job interviews and job offers are short-term job search strategies that set up all parties—including the individual candidate—for failure.
How Our Clients Succeed
Our most successful clients embrace reality (the good, the bad, and the ugly), take personal responsibility for their decision-making and their careers, and are willing to try alternatives to their ideas, assumptions, and tactics.
Before signing up with us, ask yourself if you’re ready, willing, and able to:
Discuss tough questions about your employment and professional history?
Examine the reasons for underemployment, unemployment, layoffs, sabbaticals, and other gaps?
Hear how employers may interpret (fairly or unfairly) your background?
Entrust us with the context we need to help craft positive career narratives?
Understand and address potential negative perceptions about your qualifications?
Reconsider strategies that haven’t worked for you?
Evaluate whether your goals, current skills, and market demands are misaligned?
Adjust to current, as well as anticipated, market and hiring conditions?
Build a multi-stage bridge to get you where you want to go?
Learn to leverage networks and relationships, as well as build new ones?
Put in the hard work it takes to be successful?
Be accountable for your role in your past and present?
Take charge of your future?
If you are hesitant on any of these questions, then we may not be the best resource for you at this time.
Take Care of Your Health First
If you have (or suspect you have) physical, mental, emotional, or other health concerns—including depression, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, and addiction—that may impact your career, then first and foremost please know you are not alone. These are major challenges in the legal profession that affect large numbers of attorneys and law school students. However, as coaches and writers, we are not positioned to diagnose or help navigate these particular issues; we simply do not have the training or resources. We are not medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, or mental health counselors.
Instead, we encourage you to work with your healthcare providers and / or lawyer assistance programs prior to investing in career development.
We’ll still be here when you’re ready.