How to Develop a Rock Star Team in Your Firm

Service Analysis Best Practices

Your first step is to determine whom you should hire and when, using a service analysis worksheet. Below is an example of a trust-based estate plan to illustrate. This is simply a table inserted in a Word document. If you love Excel, you can program the math.

Warning: Don’t get distracted if your processes, times, or types of cases are different than those illustrated. The analysis works for all areas of practice, including litigation, flat fee, and contingency matters.

Bonus: As you use this worksheet, in addition to identifying whom to hire and when, you’ll also identify whether you’re billing appropriately, the team’s workload is on target, it’s advisable to invest in additional or less office space, work is being pushed down to the lowest-paid competent person, and you’ve documented efficient work flows.

                                                                                                      TOTAL: $4,838 

Complete the service analysis worksheet for each of your most common services. For example, if you have four common services in an estate-based firm, such as trust-based estate planning, simple will-based estate planning, probate, and trust administration, you will complete four service analysis worksheets—one for each service. Then focus on the following:

• List the big-picture tasks for each step to fulfill this service.
• Identify the lowest-paid competent role to complete each task.
• Jot down how long, on average, it takes the person in this role to fulfill the task. Yes, time tracking needs to be consistent in all firms.
• Add up the hours for the tasks of each role per month for each service.
• Multiply by the number of these same services you provide each month.
• Add the hour totals of all common services for each role.
• Observe where you need more support.

To keep it simple and as an example, if your firm does 15 trust-based estate plans on average per month with no other services, the paralegal role has 157.5 hours in one month. This is 39.36 hours per week, which is too high for one person with no room for growth.

Hot Tip: Hire way before you’re desperate and your current team is exhausted and ready to quit. Look to hire at least three months before you anticipate needing that help because it takes time to hire and train for the way you do things.

After reviewing your service analysis worksheet, make the decision to hire (because, in the above example, it’s time for another paralegal).

Advertising Process Best Practices Checklist

So you’ve decided to hire a paralegal; let’s announce to the world that you’re ready to hire! The following checklist will keep you from getting overwhelmed while making sure to include the necessities:

1. Advertise your firm’s culture to eliminate people who aren’t a good fit.
   
   For example, “Are you an independent Rock Star Paralegal who thrives in a fast-paced team environment with high standards and shifting priorities? Do you care about supporting and protecting immigrant families with comprehensive estate plans?” Make sure that you are listing qualities you want in your team member.
2. List required credentials.
3. Set high standards in your call to action giving specific instructions.
   
   For example, “To apply for this position, do not click the button; instead upload both your resume showing the word ‘ORANGE’ as your middle name on your resume and your video at lawfirmteambuilding.com.”
4. Request that applicants upload a video explaining why they’re excited to work at your firm.
5. Delete any applicants who don’t follow instructions exactly.
   
   How you do anything is how you do everything; if they won’t follow directions now, they won’t follow directions later.

Hiring Process Best Practices Checklist

This is cool; you’re on the verge of having the help you need to get you closer to where you want to be! Now it’s time to select the next member of your work family from qualified applicants.

The interview process. If you have a leader such as a chief operating officer, law firm administrator, or team lead, have that person conduct initial interviews of the applicants who meet the required qualifications and followed application instructions. Of course, that person needs first to be trained on how to do this; conducting effective interviews is a learned skill.

Hot Tip: A group interview is a great time-saver at the first step if there are many applicants.

Questions to ask. Ask questions that let you know whether candidates truly have experience doing what they say they have, such as “How would you fund a client’s retirement account?” (Hint: You don’t. Malpractice alert!)

You want to also be sure to ask questions that show whether candidates take responsibility for and learn from mistakes, such as “What would the person who liked you best at your previous position say is your worst quality?” and “What would the person who liked you least at your previous position say is your best quality?”

Hot Tip: If candidates in any way blame circumstances or people other than themselves for failures, it’s a red flag and the interview is over.

Find out how candidates adapt to shifting priorities with questions such as “How do you organize your work day?” followed up with “What do you do when you have to adjust those plans?”

Getting to know applicants. For the applicants who appear to be a good fit, have them take the Kolbe A or DiSC assessment tests so you can be sure they’re being authentic about how they work, as well as knowing the accuracy of their strengths and weaknesses. Paralegals and most support staff need to be worker bees who crank the wheel and do the same task over and over again.

Hot Tip: For a paralegal, you’d be looking for strong results of red and blue (which represent “fact finder” and “follow through”) on the Kolbe A. If using the DiSC test, look for SC (steadiness and compliance) personality types.

Testing the waters. In exchange for a per diem, have the final candidates do the job for a day. Set up tasks checking for specific attributes and knowledge, as well as grammar, punctuation, and communication skills. A full day provides a chance for your team to interact with the candidate and an opportunity for the candidate to do the actual job.

Making the final decision. Hiring team members with good judgment (and growing that judgment) is how your firm prospers. Focus on the four Cs when hiring: character, coachability, chemistry, competency. Remember, as the chief executive officer, you provide final approval.

1. Consider character to be the most important value. Do the candidate’s ethics, personality, and core align with your firm? If no, stop and dismiss that candidate. If yes, move on.
2. Look for people who take in feedback and adjust their behavior; they own their performance with no excuses. These people take self-responsibility and have coachability. If you don’t observe this, stop and dismiss that candidate. If you do observe it, move on.
3. The next most important factor is chemistry. Is this candidate a cultural fit that is right for the firm, team, and clients? If no, stop and dismiss that candidate. If yes, move on.
4. Is the candidate competent? Keeping in mind that you can train to fit your specific needs, does the candidate have the technical knowledge and does the candidate’s experience align for good judgment in the role you’re filling? If no, stop and dismiss that candidate. If yes, move on.

Onboarding and Training Process Best Practices

Start off on the right foot by being the leader and mentor you always wished to have. This can include having a welcome party for each new team member, or providing signs, coffee and donuts, balloons, flowers, desk gifts, a firm T-shirt, and all things fun. You are welcoming a human being into your work family and he or she will excel when he or she feels welcome, supported, and part of the team.

Training new employees is not just sitting down with your new hires to show them how to do things. Make sure that everything is ready before they walk in the door: onboarding and training schedule, equipment, supplies, desk, onboarding manual with basic firm knowledge and organizational chart with job descriptions, training materials (including video), performance scorecard, and discussions with team members to share the best way to work together.

Retaining Process Best Practices Checklist

You’ve got a winner, so give that person what he or she needs to be successful:

1. Continue training and investing in your employees. Your team needs to know you care about them and their careers.
2. Manage your team by providing priorities, guidance, feedback, and accountability. If you have trained team leaders, this is their job.
3. Set up monthly one-on-one growth coaching sessions with each team member. This is 30 minutes of one-on-one time with you monthly (or quarterly, if you have a large team) to share your vision for your team members’ career arc and to chat about their goals and what they need to be successful.
   
   For example, if your paralegal dreams of renting a house on the Outer Banks each summer, show her what she needs to do to make that happen, such as hitting benchmarks to earn bonuses to pay for the beach rental.
4. Measure and offer a bonus for the behaviors and actions you value.
   
   For example, if you want documents turned around in three business days, provide a cash bonus for every quarter the paralegal meets the three-day turnaround mark with 95 percent accuracy, 95 percent of the time.
5. Be a leader worth following. Focus on and share your blue-sky vision inviting your team to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Dedicate yourself to your own personal development, be specific and consistent, set high standards, and hold people to those standards. 

Conclusion

When you follow these checklists and best practices, you’ll have a stronger chance of getting the right person in the right seat with a much lower chance of hiring someone who will last only a few weeks or months. Bad hires can cost real money—typically about six months’ salary—so your investment in getting it right during the hiring process and keeping right has a strong return on investment in the long run. You can do this!

Wendy Witt serves as a law firm business strategist and small business/estates attorney in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

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