Community Table: Hiring Your First Employee And A “Second In Command”

Episode Notes

Transcript

Speaker 1:

The Un-billable Hour Community Table where real lawyers from all around the country with real issues they’re dealing with right now meet together virtually to present their questions to Christopher T. Anderson lawyer and law firm management consultant. New questions every episode and none of it scripted. The real conversations happen here. Our first two segments today discuss who a Solo attorney should hire first and how to determine what you’re looking for in a candidate.

Speaker 2:

So my question has to do with hiring two-parter. One, who do you recommend if a small firm or a Solo is hiring, making their first hire? Who’s that hire? Is it an associate? Is it a legal assistant? Is it an office manager? So that’s one. Two, let’s assume you’re hiring an associate. How do you figure out how to, what you’re actually looking for in the candidate? And I’ll say for me, I’ve made a couple of hires that have not gone well and sometimes it’s skill. Well, it has always been a skill where the skill that I thought was represented in their resume didn’t actually align when they were doing the work. And so I’d really like to figure out a way to stop making the wrong hires.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Good luck with that. But there’s a way to do better. Is there a way to eliminate the risk? No, there’s not. First of all, excellent book who the A method for hiring who the A method of hiring by Jeff Smart, and that’s GEOF, smart and Randy Street. If you haven’t read that, that will really help you think about hiring in a better way. I’m going to go off on a little tangent that I’ll come back to your question, but I think the key to really understanding hiring, recruiting, and hiring is to think about it as being identical to marketing of your own services. Hiring is marketing period, end of story. You got to create channels for your hiring. So you don’t just go one route, you engage multiple channels, you have a clear picture of in marketing, you want to have a clear picture of your avatar for your a plus clients.

So you need to have a clear picture of your avatar for your a plus hire. And then you have to have screening mechanisms. And then that’s where the book really comes in handy as well. And I use a lot of the mechanisms in there to both attract good candidates, which is the most important, and then to screen them, which quite honestly is less important. If you read the book, you won’t think that’s true. But experience has taught me that screening that attracting quality candidates is far more important because if you have a pool of highly qualified candidates, it is much easier to separate the good and the best and choose the ones that really match. Whereas if you have a small pool of mediocre candidates and you need to hire, you’re going to hire and your chance of mishi goes up according to them. And other sources of mis-hire can cost between two and 12 times the salary to your business. So a bad hire is very, very expensive as most of us have learned. Alright, now back to your question. Your first question was, who should I hire first? I have to flip that around on you. I’m going out to eat tonight. What should I order?

Speaker 2:

What the mood for?

Christopher T. Anderson:

Well, yeah, right, that’s a good question. Or hey, how about what city are you in? What food preferences do you have generally speaking, and do you have any allergies and do you have any dietary restrictions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So anybody who’s willing to answer that question, you know what, I’m feeling ornery today, so I’m just coming out and saying stuff. Anybody who’s willing to answer that question’s a hack, and you should run away from any further advice that they’re willing to offer. The answer is the one that you need. You hire first, the role that you need. And I’m going to ask you a few questions here in a second, but I’m just going to say, so for many firms that might be an associate so that you can get away from some hours of practice and focus on working on your business, but for different practice areas, that might be a Paralegal because most of the work that you do actually doesn’t need an attorney in some practice areas or it might be a receptionist because you can’t get to work because people come into the door all the time. What is your pain? What are you trying to accomplish? So now I’m going to ask you specific questions to try to answer the question for you. That was more for just the listeners and how to think, but so for you, what practice area, what general region are you in?

Speaker 2:

So I work in the data privacy and security and healthcare information technology space. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that what I need is an associate. I am very fortunate to have more work than I have the capacity to do.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And most of that work is legal needs a lawyer work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Okay. I hope that’s not your elevator speech about what you do.

Speaker 2:

No, it’s not.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Give me your elevator speech about what you do.

Speaker 2:

I don’t know that I really have one, but I help companies protect information that’s critical to their business.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Perfect. Awesome. And if you put a comma and then a buy, and then three more words, you’ll be perfect. Just let people know by doing what, right? And make it not thorough, just enough of a tease. What you want is someone to say, tell me more. That’s the goal of it. Tell me more about that. Alright. And you’ve already decided that your main pain point is that your business could make a lot more money with another attorney, mostly legal work, and you’re swamped. Cool. So then that leads us to your second question, which I’ll ask Rob to speak to first. And your second question was, alright, so I need to hire an associate. What do I need to look for? And I think you put some possible criteria, you put skills, demeanor, I think you put out there, and I think you sort of stopped there and then started crying about your last hire that you had that didn’t go so well. So that’s right. So Rob, you want to speak to what hiring Rob hires all the associates for us, so he’s a good person to speak to on that. Rob, what should she be looking for in an associate?

Robert Leitner:

That’s a little bit of pressure there. Yeah, I know. First I would think about what tasks will the associate be handling? So I assume a lot of what you do will be dedicated to him or her. So I would start making a list. Second of all, think about on a daily basis, what would their day look like? What do you want them to handle on a daily basis? Yes, they have to fit the culture and they have to have the right temperament and all that stuff. That’s a little bit easier to quantify. So I’d want to know what tasks you’ll be delegating so you can increase your efficiency and scalability and increase revenue for the firm. So the first step starts with you. What do you want? What do you envision being the main duties and roles for this person

Speaker 2:

To that when you’re talking about what tasks, how specific is it something beyond I need them to negotiate this type of contract.

Robert Leitner:

I would go down the major functions. Do they have to do sales? Do they have to do intake? Are they doing consults? Are they doing just legal production? Are they doing file reviews? Are there any other employees at the firm that they have to manage? Are they responsible for origination

Christopher T. Anderson:

In addition to negotiating? Are they drafting? Are they reviewing? Are they editing? Yeah, all that.

Robert Leitner:

Only when you define the role will you be able to search for someone to fill it. Otherwise you’re just going to put some general BS bullet points out there and roll the dice

Christopher T. Anderson:

And then that’s what you’ll get back and you’ll be screening through a lot of Bs. People who tick off some of those boxes.

Speaker 2:

What does your ideal employee avatar mean?

Christopher T. Anderson:

Following on what Rob was asking, is this another you or is this a junior you or is this a senior you? What it means to have an avatar is think about out in the world, all the lawyers of all the lawyers, doesn’t matter if they’re dead or alive, doesn’t matter if they’re on the market or not because it’s not important for this exercise of all the lawyers who would be a lawyer to come alongside you and help in your firm and just like brainstorm it, write ’em down, just write ’em down, write ’em down, everyone you’ve ever met, ever seen speak, ever worked on the other side with blah blah, blah. Write ’em down, write ’em down, write ’em down. And when you write ’em down, you can make list or whatever. But when you’re done brainstorming, get an index card and put one name on each a pile of index cards and put one name on each index card and then on each index card, write down the key attributes of that person.

It’s okay to use any kind of attributes you want, just whatever it is, age where they live, what their actual practice area is, where do they go to law school, whatever, and then go through and then write down the attributes card by card, by card by card and see where the commonalities lie. And this is not for the purposes of discriminating against or for people in your pool. You build the avatar again, not so that you’re going to go out into the world looking for and then you should name them all like Joe, Bob, Javier, whatever you want to name ’em. And you go out into the world not looking for the avatar, you use the avatar to target your marketing copy to target where you will advertise. So if you have your card that says Javier, say, okay, where’s, what does Javier Reed publications does?

Javier, where does Javier hang out? Where does Javier drive? What radio station does Javier listen to? Blah blah, blah, blah, blah, like that. Once you have your avatar, you ask those questions and then you write the copy to, I mean, I used to keep the avatars on my desk and I would literally look at them as I was writing copy because as if I was talking to them. Because if you put that vibe out into the universe now you might get somebody who looks talks, acts completely different than Javier, but they will have been attracted to the core, meaning the core aspects that you liked about Javier and will be more likely to be a good fit for the role. So again, the avatar is not to screen. The avatar is to project to put out into the universe what you’re looking for so that it will come back to you and then whatever you do, don’t expect the person that comes in the door to look, act and speak like Javier could look, act and speak totally different, but it might be you’ll have a much better chance of them being an excellent candidate.

So you take what comes, but what comes will be much better. They will self screen. Yeah. Does that answer the question on avatar? It

Speaker 2:

Does. Thank you.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. A lot of people make mistakes with avatars. They think there’s a screening mechanism. They are not. They’re like, does this look like a heavier to you? You’ve even seen people in hiring reviews going like, yeah, that was more of a Mary. Like, no, no, no, no, we don’t do that. We’re done with the avatars now. We we’re measuring people on how closely they meet the criteria for the role, which was what Rob was talking about, the list of things that they’re supposed to do. Are they highly skilled at each and every one of ’em? Another thing I like to do for lawyer roles, quite honestly is if you can, and it sounds like you’re doing, it’s fairly transactional, bring them alongside on a contract, just give them a thing to do and see how it goes. You don’t have to hire them, give them a contract job

Speaker 2:

As part of the interview process, I have them provide a sample contract

Christopher T. Anderson:

BS don’t do it, it’s useless.

Speaker 2:

No, where they redline, where they provide their red lines. So it’s a contract that either they have drafted from scratch or that they redline where I can actually see their red lines or I have them do a revision. I just give them a project to do and say, Hey, I want you to rev. I want you to revise this document. I want to see what they do with it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Skip the first one. It’s useless for

Speaker 2:

Their samples.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, yeah, just skip it. You’re not familiar with that document. So it’s going to cost you an immense amount of time and energy. You’re going to have to get familiar with it to see how good their edits are. Everybody’s going to bring different ones and some will be more complex, some will be less complex, and now you’re going to be in the position of comparing things that can’t be compared. Whereas if you have a standard game that you play, you have a standard contract that you’ll have them review, you have a standard whatever that you want their input on, and you give the same one to everyone. Now it gets so easy to compare. People always let them play in your sandbox, not theirs,

Speaker 2:

Just for more experienced attorneys but have sample work product. They just kind of feel like it’s mean to ask them to.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, I have two words for them and buy. I get it. But come on, if I was applying for your role, I will go through my entire portfolio of crap work, find the one good thing I did and bring it to you and maybe I’ll polish it. I’ll take that turd home first, polish it up nice and keep that as my writing sample that I give people.

Speaker 2:

You would think people would do that. That has not been my experience.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Put some lipstick on that pig. No, no, no. You got to have people working inside your universe of things that you already know. Oh, you driving yourself crazy on the screening. And any attorney that says, don’t you know who I am? I’m so experienced, you shouldn’t put me through any of this, but bye. Because that’s going to repeat itself in your relation and your working relationship going forward. What else are they not willing to do?

Speaker 2:

Okay, thank you.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, what are you not willing to do in your business? Probably not much.

Speaker 5:

So actually just jumping off of what you had just told her, so I have the same fears so to speak, but I’m obviously trying to get over them. Christopher, I was wondering if it would be appropriate. We’re always up against industry standard, which I don’t even know who made the rule or how the expectation came to be, but it is what it is. So the candidate, let’s say it’s an experienced attorney. The candidate is expecting me to say, okay, send me a writing sample right now. Would it be okay if I said leaned into the expectation but added to it? Okay, well send me a writing sample which I’ll get and put aside, but there’s also another assessment I need you to do. So now I’m not offending them per se. They’re already in their head saying, of course she’s going to want to a writing sample. That’s how everyone does it. Now they’re giving it to me. And I’m just also saying, okay, but now here’s something else. I’m prepping them for it.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I gotcha. Listen, first of all, as you know better than anybody, you don’t have the capacity to offend anybody.

Speaker 5:

I just offend them.

Christopher T. Anderson:

That’s on them, not on you.

Speaker 5:

Oh, that’s true, that’s true.

Christopher T. Anderson:

However, I like what you’re saying. I think I believe in authenticity through the whole thing. Don’t be disingenuous. Don’t ask them to jump through a hoop. That doesn’t matter. So just come out and say, I want to prepare you that we do things very differently here and our hiring process is very streamlined and a little bit different. You might expect us to ask for a writing sample. That’s not what we do. Go ahead and lean into it and just take it head on so that you dealt with the expectation you do it in, you can do it in a fun way or a humorous way. And that kind of introduces them to the whole ethos of the firm. We are different. We play different. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. And rather than that, here’s what we’re going to ask you to do because we find that it’s as important that you feel that we’re a match for you as we feel that you’re a match for us. And this, we found that this way helps us to understand that a lot better. Boom. Here’s why. Here’s our acknowledgement that it ain’t everybody’s method and we’re asking you to do it.

Speaker 5:

Got it. And what time commitment do you think would be appropriate for this thing that I’m giving them because of my trauma? If I had my way, which is unreasonable, it’d be like a two hour fricking thing. But that’s a little overkill.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Not is it a little overkill, but as someone who you’ve asked to review these things that you’ve sent out to people from time to time, you’re setting yourself up for making this such an onerous task to review where you can learn what you need to learn in very, very short order. You give them a small task.

Speaker 5:

I can ask chat to devise one for me.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, you could. And then they’ll use chat to answer it, but you give them a small task or two and then get ’em on the phone and talk about it. You’ll have some critique and then see how they react to that. And then you know what you need to know.

Speaker 5:

Okay. You know what? You just triggered something. Yeah, like a consent order for family court. Something small parenting time was, here’s the situation, parenting time was settled, write a consent order.

Christopher T. Anderson:

I mean, think bar exam, right? Fact pattern. Do this and you’re expecting two to three pages of handwritten or whatever it would be equivalent typed, and that’s it. I mean, yeah, look good. I just aged myself. I bet. I don’t even know. Do people hand write the Bar exam anymore? I don’t even know. No. But yeah, that’s it. Just keep it short and sweet. Come on. If you can’t learn, if you can’t learn what you need to know, unless, what you need to know is, is this person willing to spend two hours doing stuff? And then quite honestly, what I think you’re screening for is desperation, and that’s not what we’re trying to screen for.

Speaker 5:

Good point.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Okay. Then once you decide what it is now, it doesn’t mean you can’t tweak it over time, but use the same thing over and over and over and over. So it’s so much easier to compare. I’ve got a suite of quizzes that I use for different roles, so easy for me to compare. I could read the answers to that in two minutes. I’m just looking for certain things.

Speaker 5:

What’s your cap on The number of questions, forget attorney might be slightly different, but let’s say a legal assistant or

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah, the farther down, take an attorney, 15, 20 minutes, Paralegal maybe 10, 15 minutes legal assistant, maybe 10 minutes reception. I mean, I would say,

Speaker 5:

Are they good on the phone?

Christopher T. Anderson:

I would call them. I’d say you’re going to get a phone call in five minutes from someone who’s interested in working with the firm. How at it, right? That’s why I designed the quiz for you, for your ea. I was like, you were like, I want to meet them for lunch. I was like, good. Have them set it up

Speaker 5:

Right. It actually worked perfectly. Yeah.

Christopher T. Anderson:

Yeah. They failed.

Speaker 5:

They failed. And her back was to the door at the restaurant. But that’s a whole nother.

Christopher T. Anderson:

But yeah, so keep it simple, keep it repeatable, keep it consistent, and then understand. I always remember, can’t remember if we were married or not. But anyway, my first wife, I think it was before we were married, wanted to go to Atlantic City and Gamble. I was a gambler. She wanted to play blackjack and she was a very, very smart person. And so before we went, she spent the entire two weeks before we went reading how to play blackjack and she really got it. She learned basic strategy and then we sat at the table and I watched her play. She played perfectly, lost all her money. And the point being that you can do all the things that we just talked about and still miss hire. So when you play perfect basic strategy on blackjack, you lose more slowly. And when you employ these techniques, you’ll hire badly less often, and you will be able to recognize the signs that you have sooner so you can cut bait and try again.

Speaker 6:

Got it. Okay.

Christopher T. Anderson:

And if anybody’s interested in a real pessimistic look at this, you can Google Malcolm Gladwell hiring nihilism. Fantastic read. He basically says, freaking just pick the first resume. You’ve got as good a chance. And statistically according to him, he’s right.

Speaker 1:

Our final segment today is Christopher’s answer to an attorney who wants to know how to introduce to their staff a new second in command.

Christopher T. Anderson:

But again, I’m going to just say that it’s a language problem. Your language was how do I introduce my second in command? The answer is you don’t. You introduce the command. This is the person in charge. If you introduce them as a second in command, then people are going to keep running to you on a ship. There is a role which is second in command theoretically, and usually rank of commander known as the xo, the executive officer. The XO runs the ship. There’s two people that run the ship, the XO and the COB XO is the executive officer, usually commander. And the COB is chief of the boat and is usually a non-com, very high ranking, but non-commissioned officer. Those two run the boat. The captain decides where the boat’s going, gets the missions from fleet headquarters, makes the strategic decisions about whatever signs the COB goes, the xo.

The XO comes the captain with their proposed orders for the next day, week, whatever. And the captain signs off on them, but nobody goes to the captain. If they do, they get their head spun by the xo. And I’m not a Navy guy. Everything. I’m talking to you, I’ve read from other books, I’ve never been in the military, so I don’t want to be appropri that. It’s just great examples of how to run a business. And you’ve reached a point in your business where you are wanting to and have taken time away from the business and wanting the business to run on its own without run better without you than with you. Well, it’s only going to do that if you introduce your first in command or your firm administrator’s direct support. Now, you said the role was a legal administrator. They’re probably only going to run the business side and not legal.

So you can do it that way, right? This is first in command for all business matters. I’m still in charge of legal, but I would just, this is the person in charge of physical plant of payroll, hr, office supplies, vacations, I don’t know. Whatever list you’ve got of the things that are on their plate. This is the person in charge. If you come to me, I will say, go to her or him. Someone came to me the other day and said, do we have the day after Christmas off? I don’t know. I used to know, but I don’t know anymore. Why? Because there’s someone else who knows and whose job it is to keep up with that stuff. And if I answer that, even when I do know, I’ve learned the hard way not to answer the damn question. Teach the PLA to not tell anybody I don’t know, or I’m going to go ask, make sure that they just say, good question.

I’m going to get back to you on that shortly. And then they can come ask you. But if they tell them that they’re coming to you, then people are just going to like, well, shit, I’ll just go directly. Why am I wasting my time? And if they say, I don’t know, they’re going to decrease confidence in them. It’s okay. People understand. I’ll get back to you in a minute. And then that’s what they do. So just teach them not to undermine themselves as many will in that role and let them know, man, you are my person. You’re going to sink or swim on your own. I’m going to support you every which way I can. But you’ve got to today, you are in this role. There’s no honeymoon. You’re in the role, and I have every faith in you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening. This has been the Un-billable Hour Community table on the Legal Talk Network.

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