Staffing Your Law Firm

If you run a personal injury firm, a team of high-performing employees is expensive. But a team of low-performing employees is way more expensive.

I think we legal professionals sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that our attorney hires are the only ones that really matter. After all, if you’re running a law firm, your lawyers are the most important part of that, right? Wrong! As I’ve learned over the years, your non-attorney hires and staff are just as important as the lawyers your bring on to your team.

Good staff and employees allow you to focus on the tasks where you can add the highest value, they increase case value by doing great work, and they increase referrals by providing great customer service, resulting in clients leaving great reviews and making direct referrals.

On the other hand, low-performing employees are a distraction. They force you to spend time doing tasks and focusing on menial things that prevent you, the firm owner and a full-time lawyer, from working on higher-value tasks. They don’t add value to cases. They don’t get work done, so cases don’t get resolved, resulting in a backlog. They don’t provide great customer service, so you don’t get referrals or good reviews.

Employees are an investment, not a cost. If you make bad investments, they will cost you money, but if you make great investments, you’ll get great returns.

What do you think? Join the conversation with me on LinkedIn here to share your thoughts.