Take Care Of Your Staff As Soon As You're Able

At a law firm, your staff members are everything -- so treat them as well as you can and, even in a new or growing law office, do so as quickly as you can.

This may be an obvious rule of management, but it’s followed painfully rarely. At a law firm, your staff members are everything. Treat them as well as you can and, even in a new or growing law office, do so as quickly as you can.

I started as a solo. When you are the entire law office (which is the case for about half of all private practitioners), you don’t worry about your staff since there are none. You worry about surviving. You worry not only about your brief deadline or status conference, but also about making sure there’s enough paper in the printer and that the phone works. And goodness knows you worry about making sure you have the money to pay for the research program to allow you to write that brief and the MetroCard to get you to court for that status conference (and for the printer and paper and phones).

But to do the kind of complex, long-term litigation that our firm does, you need to grow, as we did. Once there’s more than one staffer around, you have a firm. A firm can be three people. It can be, like ours, about 20.  Or a firm can number in the thousands around the world. But once there is a firm, the law firm manager has an absolute top priority of taking care of the staff.

Because the staff is the firm. That may seem obvious, but it’s frequently ignored. Yes, a law firm consists of its docket of cases, its reputation, even its location and branded materials and desks and workstations. But unlike car companies or computer manufacturers, and like doctors and architects and the like, our offices, our organizations, are our people. People come and go, but many people can stick around a long, long time in law firms. After all, we get to do this stuff forever. A now Second Circuit judge once told me that a great thing about our job is that, as he put it, unlike academics or athletes, we don’t peak early and can simply keep getting better and better until our minds fail us. You may have people in your firm for a long time.

And even if people change, your law office culture need not and probably should not. Law firm leaders need to develop a culture of how the office works, including, most relevant to this piece, how people are cultivated and treated.

So while balancing the myriad of tasks law firm managers much accomplish daily, in the forefront of managers’ minds should be treating staff as well as they can. Compensate them well. Train them. Provide good non-salary benefits. Ensure they are satisfied by the work.  This last one can be tough, since it is the obligation of the staff to learn that it is not their pleasure but the needs of the client and justice that determine priorities at the law office. But law firm managers nonetheless must make it their own priority to ensure that if someone does join the firm and such staffer is a good fit, such staffer (whatever her level) does work that challenges her and gives her a sense of accomplishment.

A key part of my advice is to do all of this absolutely as soon as you responsibly can. Don’t wait. As an example, our firm implemented a broad benefits program equal to that of the best Fortune 100 companies well before it was financially comfortable for us to do so. But it was nonetheless the sound move since it allowed us to take care of our staff that much sooner.

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And taking care of your staff allows you to do the best job you can since your staff will not only be happy but, I’ve seen, loyal and committed to the work and one another. Law is not an easy profession. It’s not just the long hours that sometimes come with it or the surprises. The kind of complex litigation work we do requires relying on a team, where each team member always has some autonomy and makes decisions on his or her own every day. If the staff feel taken care of and are loyal, they will have the pride in their work and the dedication to their colleagues always to do the best work they can.


John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

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