Staff: Valuing What Others Have to Offer

Published September 15, 2015

No law firm can successfully meet the challenges of a changing profession without the help of staff members who truly understand what their firms face and work to respond to the challenges. Lawyers come and go, but staff and administrators are the foundation on which the firm can build for the future. Thus, it is important to value these critical firm members—by giving proper recognition and by delegating responsibility.

Recognition can vary from the simple to the substantial. For example, including staff names on a website gives clients additional contacts to help them with nonlegal queries, which they may particularly like since these are people who wouldn’t be expected to issue a bill for the service, and it furthers the sense that the entire firm is a team. Similarly, printing business cards that recognize the existence of staff people and that they are part of the team enhances the morale of the entire firm. Inclusiveness will produce more harmony for all and boost productivity, thereby increasing the profitability of the firm.

At a higher level, recognition requires giving professional administrators the opportunity to do what they do better than lawyers can: manage the resources of the firm. Many lawyers are notoriously reluctant to delegate responsibility in their practices. In successfully managed law firms, however, lawyers allow administrators to administer and likewise allow assistants and other staff to do the work that they were hired to do so that the lawyers can focus on the work that only they can do—serving existing clients and marketing the practice to potential new ones. The arrangement only works, of course, when the right people are doing the work—staff people with the right congruency of skill, work ethic, and values.

Categorized in: Management

Audience type: Administrators, Associates, Large Law Firms, Small Law Firms, Sole Practitioners