With 1.3 million lawyers in the United States, there are plenty of options for people looking for legal help. You would think there would be a large pool of candidates to ask when you need help managing your law firm. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
The legal field is competitive, and many lawyers are looking to start their own firms. That means you’ll need to put in some work to find help for your law firm.
Follow the advice below to learn how to hire legal staff that will help you run your law practice.
Determine Your Unique Needs
Knowing what your practice needs for legal staffing is the first part of finding the right help for your law practice. You won’t always need more lawyers in your firm. You’ll also needhelp managing your law business’s day-to-day administrative parts.
Look at your current operations to see what things you commonly do. Your goal is to find the administrative work like accounting and other tasks that you shouldn’t be doing.
Once you have this list, start looking for experienced talent to help. You want to remove yourself from as much of the business as possible to create more time to focus on providing legal help for your clients.
Once you remove much of that work and have too many cases to handle, you can start looking at other lawyers to hire.
Create a Set of Requirements
Now that you know the role you want to hire for, you need to create a set of requirements. Make a list of all the tasks you currently do and see how they compare to someone who handles the role full-time.
Once you have this list, you’re ready to create the requirements for your job listing. Here are some common things to consider:
• Educational requirements
• Certifications
• Time in industry
• Job history
If you aren’t sure what else to include, look at other similar listings on job sites. You can usually put together a good job listing by looking at what other law firms put on their postings.
Learn How to Interview
You may understand how to run a law firm and interview clients, but talking to potential employees is another matter. It takes work to learn how to ask the right questions, vet references, and ensure you hire the right person for the job.
It may not be possible to get this right the first time. Because of this, you need to research the best interview questions to ask when you speak with potential employees.
On top of vetting someone’s skill for the job, you also want to see if they’re a culture fit for your organization. The more people you bring on board, the harder it is to keep your culture right. Make sure you’ll enjoy working with a person because you’ll spend a lot of time dealing with the people you hire.
Create a Great Work Environment
Many people only take jobs because they want a paycheck. They may enjoy the work but wouldn’t do it if they didn’t need money to pay the bills.
However, that doesn’t mean people don’t want to enjoy where they work. If possible, many workers try to find a job where they can enjoy going into the office and feel like they’re making a difference. That means you can attract better talent if you create a great place to work.
Try to determine what people look for in jobs when looking for new positions. Create an environment that’s attractive to those people, and you’ll find more qualified employees applying for your position.
Advertise on the Right Platforms
Now that you have all the little details in order, it’s time to start searching for legal staff. To start, look at job boards online to see which offers the best candidate selection.
One common tactic is to use general job boards. Millions of people browse these boards for new jobs, so you will likely get many applications when posting your job. This is even more true if you advertise less-specialized work in your firm.
It may be worth looking for specialized job boards if you want to hire a lawyer or other specialized roles. Experienced lawyers know where to find these job boards, so you may be more likely to find great lawyers by advertising where fewer people look.
Think About Getting Help
It’s not surprising if you have trouble finding people to hire for your law firm. You may be a great lawyer. But finding great employees is another skill that some lawyers don’t have.
All they’ll do is waste time and energy hiring people that don’t fit the role they’re hiring for.
However, you do have options if you don’t want to handle this task yourself. There are many recruiting firms that will help you track down qualified legal staff for your team.
Whether you need administrative or legal help, look for a lawyer recruiter to handle the job. Recruiters keep a roster of qualified talent they can reach out to when they have open positions. This will open the door to more vetted candidates and reduce the work you must do to find new employees.
Staff Your Law Firm Carefully
You may be able to get by managing your law firm when you don’t have many clients. You don’t have many demands, so you can handle much of the administrative and casework yourself.
However, things change significantly as your law firm grows and you have more demands on your time. Make hiring lawyers and other administrative help a priority to free up your time to focus on building an amazing law practice.
Head back to the blog to find more tips that will help you grow your new law firm.
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