Retaining good legal professional staff explained...

There is no doubt that generally people are more "mobile' these days, so any legal practice that is so fragile that it cannot handle reasonable staff turnover has real problems.

Let's be clear though, the issue isn't losing people...all firms do that, and some you should want to lose!

The real issue is losing people you don't want to lose or need to lose...

Lots of factors come into play in employee satisfaction (and of course they vary greatly between individuals) and generally getting these right will increase the propensity of people to remain longer in your organisation.

Of course it's not all about remuneration, but it's a solid component, so even if you have everything else about your culture right you still need to get it right on remuneration too...

Most of the Profession in Australasia is small firms, and owner/managers of small firms far too often incorrectly perceive that they can't compete with larger firms on remuneration.

My experience is that the perception is simply incorrect, but you need to do one really important thing to be able to pay your people exceptionally well.

You need to operate in a much better way than was traditional, so you get your employees generating more than enough Revenue to enable them to be exceptionally well remunerated and to make you a good profit at the same time.

To do this you need proven systems, including Marketing/Business Development systems that drive work in, and support team members having "healthy backlogs" of Client file work at all times.

You need to build into the core of your culture an expectation that every employee will give you at least a full day's work for a full day's pay...year in year out.

To do this you cannot start from the published or "understood" averages of what "billable hours" other firms require or achieve. Doing that will simply lock you in to the traditional paradigm that almost always guarantees low profit.

Underlying the culture should be a simple belief that it is not a big ask to expect good people to work an agreed full day as a minimum, and to use it in the manner directed by their employer.

The KMS experience of over 25 years is that anyone worth employing, and worth keeping, will happily subscribe to this culture. Those that don't are encouraged to move on to other pastures.

Split the day of each employee into KMSFirmTime and KMSClientTime, using common sense guidelines for what amount of FirmTime should be appropriate for the skill sets of the individual, and how you want them applied to your Business Plan.

You will in 99% of cases find that the actual quality contribution of FirmTime across desired categories such as Marketing, Supervision, CPD, Knowledge Management, IT, etc is far less than you would have imagined.

Unless that can be fixed promptly to your complete satisfaction your best way forward is to reduce the "ask" in FirmTime from the individual, and require the individual to invest more of each day they are paid for in the Client legal work they have been trained for.

Often outcomes described as "Win-Win" can be viewed with fully-warranted cynicism, but in this situation there is no need because the very significant extra revenue...that your peer firms simply do not generate...can be used partly to create exceptional remuneration for your team members, and partly to create the proper profits you deserve for managing your business in a much more effective way than most of the law firms you are competing directly with.

It is important to point out an age-old trap that many firms fall into in setting remuneration. It is vital that you do not remunerate employees with a percentage of their billed and collected fees, in all but the most exceptional cases.

You simply do not need to do that to pay exceptional remuneration well above general market levels, and demonstrate to your employees in a very tangible way that you value them greatly and can reward them better than their peers are rewarded, without asking them to do anything more than a basic good day's work.

Firms that want big profits need to manage well and keep good staff...but you can, and should, pay well as a result of excellent staff production, and benefit fully yourself from the extra profits that will certainly flow from your sound strategy and quality execution.