Shots in the Dark

I bet I'm not the only person who has felt unprepared when an interviewer asked me about my salary requirements. Suggesting any particular amount is like a shot in the dark. I know how much my rent is and generally how much I spend on necessities like toothpaste, cat food and tequila, so I know what I need to get by every month. That knowledge is good for budgeting, but it's insufficient for negotiating.  When negotiating, you have to have in mind a goal, which is to find a job that's both satisfying and pays more than just the bare minimum needed to get by each month. You also need to have some sense of the other party's expectations and limitations.

The great mystery for most of us is knowing the value of certain work done in a certain place, by someone with a particular set of skills and experience.
How do you know what's a fair amount to expect someone to pay you? It's taboo to talk about these things, so comparing notes with other workers isn't generally done. You can research job listings in Craigslist and other job sites, but you won't be able to get an accurate impression of what people in the career really make. What employer would advertise the high end of the salary range, when they might be able to get someone to work for peanuts? In this scenario, the employer has all the power.

To regain some of the power in negotiating your salary, you need to do some research. In the past, I have used websites like salary.com to gain a general sense of what a fair wage would be. Those sites are helpful, but it's hard to gain a comprehensive picture of an industry from them. Enter the Robert Half Legal Salary Guide. This thing is ah-may-zing.

It starts out with an overview of hiring and management trends.  The 2016 guide says law firms are starting to hire more and more people since business is booming and they anticipate growth. This should be good news for all the new graduates from paralegal programs who have been having a hard time finding permanent positions. 

Not only does it talk about the number of jobs, the guide also talks about what jobs are considered "hot." Robert Half Legal surveyed 200 attorneys in the largest law firms across the company, and 71% of them said "blended or hybrid paralegal/legal secretary positions are more common today than they were two years ago." This is an interesting trend, indeed.  Given the fact that confusion about how to divvy up work between paralegals and legal assistants is endemic within law firms, it doesn't surprise me that some just gave up, blended the two positions and moved on.  Some people I have talked to said they liked this hybrid role, because they had less pressure put on them to meet  billable requirements and their tasks were more varied.  Others, who have struggled to push for higher level assignments, feel a mild alarm at this trend. It's much harder to dig deeply into a substantive assignment when constantly interrupted with requests to photocopy documents, transcribe dictation and answer phones.  Whether or not you like this trend, awareness of it can help you at the negotiating table. You can ask probing questions to determine if the job on offer is what you really want to be doing.

Getting back to the money, the salary guide includes an easy-to-read table of salaries from low to high for just about every position available in firms ranging from small to large.  Following this table is a listing of variance numbers for cities across the U.S., which you can use to calculate the salary ranges that are typical in your area. If you are negotiating your salary from a position of strength, i.e. excellent performance history and little to no competition, you can use this information to ask for compensation at the higher end of the range. If you've been unemployed for some time, or have little experience, and a number of other qualified candidates are fighting tooth and nail for the job, you may choose to ask for something on the lower end of the salary range just to get the offer, and then show them you're worth more with your hard work! Arming yourself with a little knowledge about hiring trends and compensation norms gives you the power to talk to prospective employers with confidence. Knowledge illuminates the darkness that has hampered us in the past.