This post by Jim Rhyner, worldwide lawyers professional liability insurance product manager, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, is one of a series of guest posts on CounseltoCounsel. Special thanks to Jim for his continued contributions.

As one of the professions hit hardest by the financial crisis, the legal industry presents a difficult employment environment for law graduates in the classes of 2009 and beyond. Their prospective employers face challenges too: many firms are financially unable to take on new associates, yet don’t want to lose out on gaining promising talent at the entry level. As a result, a number of new lawyers have been offered deferred employment – sometimes with a stipend to help make ends meet in the interim.

But what happens when that deferred start date arrives, and the firm still isn’t ready to pay new salaries? At several large practices, only a portion of deferred new hires have started on time as planned; others have been postponed, in some cases indefinitely – which could expose the firm to employment practices liability action (keeping in mind that the pool of potential claimants have a legal background).

As a result, law firms must be especially cautious when entering into deferred employment arrangements. The prudent firm will consider including contract provisions that exempt the hiring firm from any liability to or for the prospective employee during the deferment stage. In short, the prospective employee remains a “free agent” in the job market. While this may lead to a high-potential candidate finding another opportunity while waiting for his or her job to start – in the end, it is probably a better outcome to miss out on a newly-minted star attorney than to be sued by one.

How has your firm handled the entry-level recruiting process in the last year?

“BCC” is a useful e-mail tool. When you want to make sure that a group of individuals is kept in the loop about an event, a meeting, or a piece of information “bcc” is a way to get out your message without everyone having to see a long list of recipients. And sometimes, it is useful when you don’t want the recipients to know who else is on the list.

But “bcc” has a time and a place. For example, if you are using e-mail as a way to elicit feedback on something, a personally addressed e-mail to each individual is much more likely to get results. Using “bcc” is a way for every recipient to think that someone else might have more valuable contributions to make.

Similarly, if you are using e-mail as a relationship building tool, personally addressed e-mail messages (which are customized), are much more effective. They are much more likely to be read and they are much more likely to demonstrate to the reader that you were actually thinking of them.

Obviously, the trade off is time (though there are some very good e-mail services which enable you to customize e-mails that you send out–e.g. I use Vertical Response and I’ve heard good things about Constant Contact). But if you are trying to impress a general counsel with the fact that you are thinking about them, sending them an article that is directly relevant to what they do is much more effective than sending out a blast e-mail to everyone on your list.