I’ve hired lots of lawyers and staff over the years. I’ve employed a number of different philosophies about when to hire.
Having a plan for hiring is important. It’s especially important when business is booming (like it is for many family law practices right now) and time for good management thinking is limited. Making mistakes in hiring is a disaster for two reasons. First, it’s tricky to get rid of someone when you’ve hired wrong and you’re stuck with the person until you figure out how to offload him or her. Second, overspending on payroll quickly gets out of hand. It’s our biggest line item, and excess payroll can kill your bottom line.
At one point, I hired early. I was following the theory that by hiring early when we really didn’t need a person quite yet, we opened doors for other employees by creating time for them to invest in the firm. They would have time for more marketing, system building, and management.
The fact is that hiring early didn’t really work out as we expected. We didn’t get free time for investment. We quickly adapted to having excess capacity, and everyone worked a bit less and spread the work around.
People didn’t invest time in the future. They weren’t failing to market, manage, or build systems for lack of time. Rather, they weren’t doing those things due to lack of interest. Having free time didn’t have the impact we’d hoped for.
I’ve concluded that the better approach is to hire late. Let everyone max out (and then some) before you hire the next person. Make sure you really need the person before you bring him or her on. Once the new hire arrives, get him or her going by taking a bit of work from everyone and putting it on the new person’s plate. Get the new hire started with a substantial workload and let everyone else return to normal.
Like I said, I’ve tried it both ways, and hiring late will serve you well in the long term. Yes, for many of us, this is a very good year so far. Don’t let your excitement encourage you to make bad decisions that might affect you for a long time.
