Right staff for your law firm...

How Small Legal Firms Easily Find Experienced Legal Staff

One of the biggest challenges for small but growing law firms is finding good professional staff of the right experience...

Many are soaked up by the bigger competition...

It's important you don't appoint or keep those applicants that everyone else has rightly rejected.



A CV can look great...plenty of experience...wide range of jobs in firms bigger than yours...the sort of seniority you think will bring some street-wise and a good work ethic...

It's not always as it seems... a good CV is easy to prepare!

Very often such applicants have simply not been able to deliver well enough to stay where they have been previously.

Of course they will have for you well-developed and very plausible reasons why that was the case!

Such people will join you and gradually send you broke...with a lot of angst along the way. They won't follow your systems, or worse, will appear to do so, at least initially, because they think they know all the tricks...

Eventually after a long period of poor fees and emerging client complaints they'll leave and you'll be holding a big basket of problems.

Unfortunately over the years I've seen it first hand over and over...

Smaller firms often don't have proper systems to weed out these problem-children quickly...

Suggestions...

1. Check all references extensively and probe further where grey areas emerge...ensure every period of their career is properly explained.

2. Put people on a probation period...ignore their objections and stress it's your firm policy...if they won't agree let them go!

3. Get them a WorkPlan and insist that they record ALL activity ClientTime and FirmTime...

4. Make sure they do 3. from Day 1 and every day thereafter...

5. Monitor closely their Engagement Management...and insist they do it your way until they can prove they have a truly better way...

6. Ensure enough funds are collected up front...always...

7. Make sure all files are billed every month unless there is a reason you are totally satisfied with...billing is a big moment of truth for the lawyer-client relationship, and where a lawyer is not getting the work done or is doing far too much, and will not be able to get paid for that level of effort, early and regular billing flushes out problems for your early attention.

8. Be alert and wise...people who have been shown the door many times in their career become, as they say, "As cunning as a fox"...and have all the evasions and answers lined up ready to use on you...don't fall for it...listen hard, be persistent and practical, and drive hard after the truth until you flush it out.

This is not confrontation...nothing to be fearful of here! The inconvenience is far far less than you will face if you don't do it.

For help with attracting the right staff and getting full production from them, feel free to email me...

 KMSRightStaff@lawfirmprofit.com