‘A New Approach’

This may come as a surprise, but there’s a lot of bad advice on the internet. For example, last week I ran across an article called “A New Approach for Hiring Entry-Level Lawyers” that claimed a new approach is needed.

Why? Apparently, it’s because you can’t tell what kind of work a prospective employee is going to do with just an interview and resumé.

OK, that might be true, but here’s the astonishing advice to solve this problem: “The new approach for hiring entry-level lawyers is to incorporate project work into the hiring process . … Project work can improve the chances of firms hiring the right lawyers and lawyers accepting offers at the right firms for them.”

It can also improve the chances of the wrong lawyers messing up cases and the firms losing good prospects after seeing how awful the firm is.

Now imagine you’re a client and your case becomes a “project.”

Sometimes new approaches aren’t needed.

But the author does have a point: You really can’t tell how a new hire is going to work out. So what should you do?

The simple and obvious answer is not to hire entry-level lawyers. Just poach people who know what they’re doing from other firms.

This isn’t always feasible, however, and might spark some sort of war, so don’t do it unless you’re sure you can pay more than the other guys.

You’re still left with the problem of finding bodies who work cheap and can do the low-level grunt work without messing up too much. For that, I recommend giving extra work to your legal secretaries, librarians and clerks. They usually know more than lawyers anyway.

A really good legal secretary, by the way, can do a lot more than simply secretarial stuff. I didn’t realize just how much more until the other day, when a former legal secretary at a major law firm sued the firm. Here’s part of the what the complaint said:

“Plaintiff loved her job! Although plaintiff was a legal secretary, she ‘wore many hats. …’ She composed daily morning announcements which featured who was in and out of the office, photos submitted by the partners and staff and contests for the office staff which included challenges and fun prizes (‘Announcements’). Everyone loved the Announcements.”

Let me repeat here that this was a major national law firm — and it sounds an awful lot like elementary school. Clearly, this is the sort of good old-fashioned fun that makes a firm a successful and happy place.

Can you guess what went wrong?

Yep, the secretary got a new office manager.

According to the lawsuit: “Due to her fake personality and lack of care for the staff, the office morale started declining and employees were constantly angry, swearing and crying.”

Picture that scene. It’s tragic.

But that wasn’t the worst part: “In time, (the office manager) took away plaintiff’s Announcements and started doing them herself. It wasn’t the same, though. They were boring.”

Oh, the humanity …

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