Question:
Our firm is a four attorney estate planning firm in Orlando, Florida. I am the owner of the firm and the other three attorneys are associates. We have three paralegals, a bookkeeper, and two administrative assistants. Approximately sixty percent of our practice is estate planning, thirty percent probate and trust administration, and ten percent elder law and special needs planning.
Our major challenge is finding and retaining paralegals. Over the years it has been our practice to hire experienced paralegals with three to five years experience. While this worked for us in the past we are currently experiencing high turnover, poor quality of work and performance, and high compensation cost resulting in our overhead getting totally out of control. What are other firms doing? Any suggestions and recommendation that you may have will be most appreciated.
Response:
These are tough times for finding, attracting and retaining paralegal and lawyer talent. Law firms are having difficulty hiring experienced paralegals at an affordable salary and then retaining them. You may want to consider growing your own and begin hiring recent graduates from paralegal programs at colleges, junior colleges, and paralegal schools. These schools offer bachelor degrees in legal/paralegal studies, two year associate degrees, and post bachelor graduate programs.
Small law firms generally do not have effective training programs and the training resources needed to do effective on the job training. This is the primary reason that small law firms hire experienced paralegals rather than growing their own. Larger firms have training resources such as paralegal supervisors, trainers, written procedural manuals, and other training tools. While a small firm such as yours can’t have all of these resources maybe it is time to begin to develop some of the following tools so you can grow your own.
- Write a procedure/training manual for each practice area:
- Estate Planning
- Probate and Trust Administration
- Elder Law
- Special Needs Planning
- Identify a paralegal in your firm to onboard and train new paralegals.
- Develop relationships with paralegal schools to help you identify the best graduates and candidates.
- Form relationships with school paralegal program and career center directors.
- Serve as a guest lecturer and make presentations to law clubs, classes, etc.
- Conduct on campus recruiting.
- Solicit referrals from program and career center directors.
- Implement a paralegal intern program.
Homegrown employees often prove to not only be less costly but in the long more committed to your culture and processes, more dedicated and loyal, and more likely to stay with your firm for many years.
Many of my law firm clients are telling me that finding clients is no longer their primary concern – their top strategic concern is now finding, hiring, and retaining lawyer and staff talent. During these times it is imperative that law firms get creative and think outside of the box. Flexibility is key. Here are a few things that some of my small law firm clients have done that has resulted in successful experienced paralegal and attorney hires:
- Paid for sponsoring with Indeed ad placements.
- LinkedIn ad.
- Took out a paid ad with their state bar association.
- Used a recruiter.
- Increased starting salary/bonuses.
- Added medical insurance as a benefit.
- Paid a signing bonus.
- Provided reimbursement for moving/relocation costs.
- Implemented a permanent remote work policy allowing all personnel to work at home a certain number of days per week.
- Increased number of vacation/personal time off days.
- Added 401k plan.
- Hiring offshore lawyers and paralegals.
Successful law firms must attract both clients and talent in order to be successful. All law firms are suffering and having a hard time attracting and retaining attorneys and staff. This also means that other law firms are desperate and may try to steal you lawyers and staff with better pay or other incentives. You need to review all of your benefits and policies as well as compensation to make sure that you are more that just competitive – you need to be on the cutting edge and ahead of the pack. Employees now expect more flexibility, remote work, etc. than ever before.
Click here for our blog on career management
Click here for our blog on human resources
Click here for articles on other topics
John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC
The post Law Firm Talent Management – Acquiring, Training and Retaining Paralegal Staff appeared first on Olmstead and Associates.