Associate Attorney

Sterling Lawyers; Naperville (IL); On-site; USD 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A family law firm is seeking a passionate lawyer to join their team in Naperville, Illinois. The ideal candidate should have over three years of experience in family law or equivalent life experience that shows strong empathy skills. Excellent communication and a willingness to adapt to new technologies are essential. The firm emphasizes values like integrity and collaboration and expects team members to be proactive advocates for their clients. Attendance at team meetings is also essential.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of family legal practice or 5+ years of life experience in empathy.
• Must be an excellent oral and written communicator.
• Willingness to embrace technology and adapt.

Responsibilities

• Communicate effectively and promptly with clients.
• Advocate tirelessly for clients while adhering to firm values.
• Attend quarterly team meetings and participate in team culture.

Skills

Excellent communication skills

Empathy

Comfort with technology

Team collaboration

Job description

Sterling Lawyers, LLC is focused on family law and we obsess to achieve the goal of empowering family law clients. We need smart teammates who fit our culture and are passionate about helping families in a legal context. Our team is approaching the practice much differently than how law firms have been built over the past 150 years. We are highly innovative in how we serve our clients and add value to them.

What type of person are we looking for?

We want people who possess and model the following:

• Authentic integrity
• Warrior spirit
• Servant’s heart
• Constructive spirit of discontent
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Three plus years of practical, in-the-trenches family legal work – OR – five plus years of life experience developing strong empathy skills
• Open to embracing the power of technology

We strive to reject candidates with outsized egos and who don’t enjoy working with others in a team environment. If you are enamored with titles and seeing your name on a door, expect your own parking space, lack mental toughness, can’t take constructive feedback from a younger person or a non‑lawyer, then we are definitely not the place for you.

Furthermore, we are pushing technology limits in a law firm and experimenting with innovative legal services that clients are clamoring for. If you are comfortable with technology and willing to open your mind to new things, you will feel comfortable at Sterling. Conversely, if you are too set in your habits to learn new ways to serve clients using technology or if you love “pocket parts” in law books more than digital updates, let’s just be friends, not co‑workers.

Perticularly, every lawyer on our team must be an over‑communicator with clients. This cannot be overstressed. Nothing tells a client that you don’t care more than failure to communicate, return calls, return emails, etc. If you have a history of clients complaining about inadequate communication from you, please, please, please do not apply. Failure to communicate copiously is the fastest way to be fired from Sterling Lawyers, LLC.

What will be expected of me if I join the team?

We have five major expectations to be on our team:

First… …you must be an excellent communicator, both oral and written. Along with this, you must return phone calls and emails within a very fast reasonable amount of time.

Second… …you must be a relentless advocate for our clients. This does not mean you do everything they insist. Rather, it means bringing wise judgment to every interaction so that you tirelessly advocate for our clients within our team’s values.

Third… …you must embrace and live out our values. This is something you can’t fake. You either share these values or you don’t.

Fourth… …you must attend our quarterly meetings. They are announced weeks in advance. These are after business hours during the week. We cater in a nice dinner, eat together, recognize special effort, celebrate our accomplishments, review our failures, and describe our plan for the next quarter. These typically go from 5:00 to 8:30ish. They are a fun part of our culture.

Fifth… …you must adapt to our training and technology. If you are not coachable (meaning if you already know it all), you would not enjoy working on our team. If you are not emotionally flexible enough to learn new technology, you would not enjoy working on our team.

Core Values

• Finish with Integrity We strive to finish every matter, interaction, engagement, deal, etc. to conclusion with integrity. This means that we should always be able to tell the whole story and not leave out a detail because we are ashamed.
• Compete with a Warrior Spirit We are competitive, and we want to win in everything we do. We can’t always control the outcomes, but we can control our preparation and the intensity of how we compete. We do our best and take pride in the effort.
• Embrace and Drive Change We accept that one of the certainties in life is change. We anticipate change and enact it before we are forced to accept it.
• Lead by Serving The most effective leaders are servants first. We expect everyone on our team to model a spirit of humility and gratitude toward others. It’s only after we serve that we can expect to lead.

Conclusion

Sterling Lawyers, LLC is focused on serving family law clients. We target clients with a household income of between $60,000 and $250,000.

We are experts at growing consumer‑centered businesses, and we apply our expertise to family law. That is one of our competitive advantages. We have already built one sister company to $20+ million. Another sister company is an internet marketing ad agency with approximately 25 people on staff.

Our team is approaching the practice much differently than how law firms have been managed over the past 150 years. The time is right for a sea‑change of disruption in the family legal practice.

If you feel that you are capable of these challenges and also have the mental toughness to handle the rewards that come when we conquer them, then we would love to meet you.