Announcement as of April 2024
The law firm of Penner & Purves, located in Santa Barbara, California, is currently seeking job candidates for a full-time Associate Attorney position.
Specifically, but not exclusively, our firm is looking for recent law school graduates or candidates who have recently taken and/or passed the California bar exam. Note that we are willing to engage an initial hire as a 6+ month paralegal pending California bar exam results and licensing. In that event, our Employment Contract would state that the paralegal position would transition to Associate Attorney upon the candidate’s receiving a license from the bar.
This opportunity for professional growth and development is tailored to place the utmost value on you as a member of our team. Indeed, this Associate Attorney position is expressly designed for a small law firm that is looking for future partial owners of our firm. Think about these questions before applying with us: Who do you want to be? Do you intend for your work to be a part of your vocation? Do you want to work for a cause that has a bigger purpose than making money? What kind of law firm would you want to shape if you had the capacity to shape a law firm where you would be one of the business owners?
The first thing that every job candidate should know is that our law firm offers:
(1) The highest salaries for equivalent positions within the legal community for our area;
(2) Fully paid health insurance for you, your spouse, and your family if you are a full-time employee;
(3) At least twenty-seven paid days off in your first year (including holidays);
(4) Generous matching contributions for a 401(k) retirement plan;
(5) Paid training and education in professional development and personal growth;
(6) Complimentary YMCA gym membership; and
(7) Regular Socratic dialogue hours designed to sharpen your reasoning skills as a committed member of the legal profession.
The second thing you should know is that we are looking for a candidate who can be described as follows:
A highly-motivated, goal-driven planner with a clear vision for the future.
A positive, enthusiastic, self-starter who is capable of learning systems, following established systems independently, and reasoning from a set of principles and values to apply our firm’s style of solutions to client problems.
A self-aware problem-solver who understands the importance of the chain-of-command, of authority, of procedure, and of not reinventing the wheel.
Someone who is willing to stay at work late until the job is done, and who can commit to working occasional weekends or nights when needed to meet important deadlines.
Someone who is well-rounded, not a workaholic, and who has a life outside of the law office involving important commitments other than work.
A team member who is driven, who doesn’t need or want micromanaging, who is not afraid of making mistakes, and who won’t simply wait for the next job assignment but will instead proactively find the most important work to be accomplished.
A team member who does not believe in busywork or overuse of technology and who understands how to use email so as to decrease rather than increase the sheer number of emails needed in the workplace.
Someone who exudes a positive attitude and is grateful for the opportunity to transform the lives of our clients for the better. Our ideal candidates accept responsibility for their mistakes, love what they do, and are committed to our law firm’s core values.
We are looking for someone who is either classically educated, or who understands what a classical education is and is willing to make the effort to start acquiring one.
The third thing you should know is that our law firm’s core values are: (1) Diligence, (2) Clarity, (3) Empathy, (4) Prudence, (5) Family, (6) Virtue Ethics, (7) Reason, and (8) the Good. Our core values are the framework from which we make all of our decisions. Our core values are reflected in everything we do, including how we interact with each other, how we interact with our clients, and how we interact with opposing attorneys and parties.
The fourth thing you should know is that this position will require the attainment of mastery of the following:
Cultivating the time-honored study, tradition, craft, profession, and practice of law;
Being a leader and a motivator of our legal support staff;
Conducting client intake, case management, discovery procedure, trial preparation, settlement negotiation, trial tactics, trial strategy, and trial;
Researching, drafting, and arguing for law and motion practice;
Contributing to the life of the mind within the profession of law; and
Learning how to guide clients toward what serves both their good and the common good.
The last and ultimate thing that every job candidate should know is that we are a small private law firm, which, engaged in a countercultural mission, has successfully served our local community for the last 47 years. Therefore, the law firm of Penner & Purves currently has the following Mission Statement:
To build, to preserve, to pass down, and to provide systems of inheritance to all persons and families from every part of our community (See: Edmund Burke);
To be advocates and guardians of form within our legal system, for preexistent right, against the idea that “might makes right” (See: Abraham Lincoln);
To preserve and practice the craft of the old-world profession of law in opposition to today’s version of the Sophists (See: Socrates; Sir Thomas More; Harry V. Jaffa; Matthew Crawford; Cal Newport);
To advocate for the Common Law foundation of our legal system against an encroaching multiplicity of civil laws in order to protect the realities of liberty (See: Orestes Brownson; William F. Clarke; Robert Bork; D.C. Schindler);
To participate in continued development of the American legal system after our country’s first founding (1760s-1860s) and second founding (1860s-1960s), in order to contribute to our legal system’s becoming more consistent with its own first principles (See: John Adams; Alexander Hamilton; John Quincy Adams; Frederick Douglass; Ida B. Wells; Martin Luther King Jr.; Edgar Bodenheimer; Russell Kirk).
We currently live in a hyper-politicized culture that disregards the first principles of our legal system and is breaking down the “systems of inheritance” that Burke argued are so important to preserve the best of what past generations have to offer us. It is only by building legacies that preserve particular goods for the next generations that our children and our grandchildren will be given the opportunities necessary to thrive and prosper. This is what it means to practice self-government at the smallest level of the individual and the family.
We are looking for candidates who understand and care about these values and who believe in cultivating the virtues necessary for a legal professional to stand for these things even if they are sometimes unpopular within the surrounding community or culture. By working in our law firm, you will be a member of a carefully selected team within something of an old-world citadel, composed of like-minded professional realists who intend to side with Socrates against today’s versions of the Sophists (i.e., against the nominalists, positivists, and legal nihilists).
If you are interested in joining us in pursuit of this mission and the opportunity of committing to a law firm long-term in which you could become a part owner; and if you believe you would be a good fit for our team, please carefully follow the instructions below:
1) Submit your resume along with a cover letter to jpurves@pennerandpurves.com;
2) Title the subject line of your email: “Re: Associate Attorney Position: I’m Interested in Joining Your Law Firm’s Mission”;
3) Include the names, addresses, and phone numbers of three references in your resume, whom we will not contact without your express permission; and
4) Attach a cover letter that explains at least two reasons why our law firm’s Mission Statement appeals to you and why you would be a good fit for our firm.
Note:
~ Candidates who do not follow the above specific instructions will be automatically disqualified for lack of attention to detail.
~ Candidates with grammatical errors in their resume or cover letter will be automatically disqualified.
~ We will not accept phone calls or walk-ins in response to this advertisement.