Lawyer Retention In Three Words: Automate The Crap

I recently had a chance to meet with several managing partners from primarily small litigation-oriented law firms. Almost to a person they bemoaned the shortage of lawyers to work on their matters, especially younger lawyers.

The concerns run from being unable to find lawyers in the first place to being able to retain them long enough to recoup the investment in them. Many complained that they spend years training younger lawyers. Only to then watch them walk out the door, either for a larger law firm or to do something else entirely. It’s a big problem.

The Scope of the Problem

The inability to retain talent is particularly nasty for smaller litigation-oriented firms. Litigation is hard, stressful work. Clients are demanding. Judges have schedules. Opposing counsel occasionally behave like escaped mental patients. Depositions happen. Trials happen. Emergencies happen. And none of them gives a damn that it’s your kid’s birthday. Just ask my family.

So many decide that if they’re going to have to put up with all this crap, they might as well do it at larger firms for more money. Firms with the administrative resources to alleviate some of the headaches. And that’s not just a lawyer problem. Many of the firms are also reporting a real struggle to find and retain administrative personnel.

Add to this the fact that it’s pretty easy these days to leave for greener pastures. Most consultants will tell you that legal jobs are relatively easy to find right now. And there is no stigma in leaving a firm. The ties that used to bind no longer exist.

As a result, everyone is short staffed. Everyone is looking for people. It’s a real mess that has all sorts of implications. Several of the lawyers even noted it has gotten to the point that they had turned away work because they just did not have the human capacity to do it. That’s anathema to a law firm, and its growth. Not to mention the fact that the client whose work you turned away may never come back.

And the lack of talent also doesn’t make for pleasant work environments. It creates tension within the firms. Underperforming associates are sometimes tolerated because management is terrified they’ll leave and replacing them will be difficult if not impossible. This creates resentment among the performing associates.

Clients aren’t helping either. As one lawyer put it, client demands these days are insane. They all want lower cost and higher quality. They all want and expect quick turnaround. 

All of which places added stress on law firms struggling to find talent. And all this fluidity in the market has an impact on client loyalty. Some clients admit they are reluctant to provide too much work to any one firm, even if they have been loyal to that firm for decades. 

We All Want to Retain Good People. But How?

So there are a whole lot of reasons why retaining the talent you have — both lawyers and administrative staff — is critical. But how? There is no easy answer, particularly for smaller firms that don’t have the resources larger firms do.

What most lawyers want more than anything is to spend their time doing meaningful work, work that matters. Work for which they were trained. Like everyone else, they also like to be in a workplace with people that they like, doing work that they enjoy. The office needs to be a place where they like to be. 

One thing is for sure: to have any chance of achieving these goals, firms need to be sure that their people are spending the minimum amount of time doing tasks on which their skills and time are wasted. Most lawyers I know didn’t spend three years in law school because of a deep personal passion for entering time, scheduling meetings, chasing unpaid invoices, and wrestling with administrative forms. Having lawyers and paralegals doing a lot of work they are overqualified to do inevitably leads to dissatisfaction and frustration. And dissatisfaction and frustration lead to looking for another job.

Certainly, small firms can’t easily afford a large administrative staff to reduce the amount of time lawyers and paralegals spend on admin work. But one thing they can do is to realize and take advantage of tools that can reliably automate a lot of this work. 

One lawyer at the meeting even went so far as to say her small firm doesn’t have anyone in their firm who doesn’t bill hours. Nobody. All the non-billable work that needs to be done, she claims, is automated and/or done by AI.

That may be a little too much for many firms, but her point is well taken. And there is ample evidence that a lot of small firms are not doing a very good job right-sourcing work, particularly administrative work. 

How Bad Is It?

How bad a job are a lot of firms doing in this regard? A recent study by the practice management provider, 8am, quantifies it. The study, appropriately entitled the Admin Misery Index, surveyed 1200 professionals in non-legal businesses and some 400 legal professionals — lawyers, paralegals, and administrative personnel. 

Here are the sad facts. Among the legal personnel, 73% felt at least slightly miserable due to administrative work demands. Slightly miserable sounds like a toothache that won’t go away. 82% believed they lost productive or billable time weekly to admin work. That’s time that can’t be spent on more meaningful work that everyone agrees is more rewarding — and profitable.

Almost 60% had to work extra hours outside normal work hours to keep up with admin work. And here’s one that got me: 80% experienced what 8am calls admin-driven Sunday “scaries” before the work week even started. These statistics don’t bode well for keeping anyone, lawyer or not, at a firm where they wake up Sunday morning wondering what fresh admin hell Monday morning will bring.

And here’s another depressing thought from 8am: 

Legal professionals report administrative strain on par with—or worse than— the broader workforce, despite carrying higher-stakes, compliance-heavy workloadswhere every hour lost has a direct line to billable revenue.

And I would add to worker satisfaction. Admin work, says 8am, is taking a toll on time, focus, and morale.

But It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

And it doesn’t have to. 8am and other vendors offer automated billing and invoicing tools, scheduling and calendar management platforms, payment collection tools, and client communication aids. All of these and more can remove from the plates of all who work in firms the scut work they hate and detest. I know. 

There was nothing worse than walking into the office with a full plate of work from demanding clients, only to have to waste a couple of hours revising incomprehensible billing entries of some partner or writing dunning letters to non-paying clients. It’s frustrating and infuriating. And I was at a large firm that had resources to help with some of this. Imagine being at a small firm without any resources to do these sorts of things. No one to help. You might pretty quickly start thinking about that LinkedIn resume.

So in the midst of all the highfalutin, not to mention expensive, ideas from consultants on how to retain people, think about something a little simpler. Make the office a place where lawyers spend more of their day being lawyers. Enhance the opportunity for your personnel to do meaningful work, look forward to coming to work, and be content when they get there. Make people’s jobs suck less.

Automate the crap. And don’t look back because something could be gaining on you.

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Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.