Why do growing law firms wait too long to hire?
Law firm owners often begin looking for help after they are already overloaded.
By that point, the problem has usually spread beyond the number of client matters on the desk. The owner may also be handling billing, payroll, client communication, team management, marketing, financial oversight, and routine administrative work.
Alay described the consequence clearly: when too many responsibilities remain with the owner, the firm becomes reactive.
The attorney spends the day responding to whatever requires attention next. There is less time to develop referral relationships, improve operations, pursue new opportunities, or think about where the firm should go next.
There is another problem with waiting.
A new employee needs training.
If the owner hires only after becoming overwhelmed, there may be little time left to properly onboard the person who was supposed to solve the capacity problem. Alay said he has seen firms struggle with retention because new employees received too little training and attention during their first several months.
The employee may feel underused one day and unprepared the next. The owner feels frustrated because the new hire is not becoming productive quickly enough. Eventually, the firm is back where it started, except it has spent months recruiting, hiring, and training along the way.
Hiring earlier gives the firm something that panic hiring does not: enough time to make a careful decision and help the new person succeed.
How can a law firm owner tell when it is time to hire?
Alay uses what he calls the 20-10-5 rule as a diagnostic for firm owners who want to grow.
The numbers represent how the owner spends a 35-hour workweek:
- About 20 hours on client work
- About 10 hours on marketing and business development
- No more than 5 hours on firm administration
These numbers are Alay’s guideline rather than a universal staffing formula. Their value is in showing where the owner’s time is going.
If an owner consistently spends more than 20 hours each week doing client work, there may be enough legal work to justify adding capacity.
If marketing and business development receive far less than 10 hours because client work consumes the week, another hire may create the time needed to bring in future business.
And if administration is taking 10, 15, or 20 hours every week, the owner is spending a large part of the workweek on tasks that could potentially move to someone else.
The question becomes less about whether the firm feels “busy enough” to hire and more about whether the owner is still doing the work that makes the best use of the owner’s time.
A growing firm also needs some room in the schedule for life outside the office. Alay specifically pointed to nights and weekends as time owners can reclaim when the right responsibilities move to other people.
Whom should a growing law firm hire first?
The right hire depends on which work is consuming the owner’s time.
That might mean an associate attorney, paralegal, legal secretary, receptionist, law clerk, executive assistant, contractor, or virtual assistant.
Alay encouraged owners to avoid assuming that every new position needs to be a traditional full-time employee. Some firms can add capacity through part-time employees or contractors first. He mentioned clients who have built teams that include multiple attorneys without relying entirely on full-time employment arrangements.
That flexibility can be especially useful for a firm making its first few hires. The owner can solve a specific capacity problem without automatically committing to the most expensive staffing model available.
The role still needs to match the actual bottleneck.
If the owner is buried in legal work, adding administrative support alone may leave the primary problem untouched. If the owner is spending hours every week on scheduling, correspondence, billing, and paperwork, another attorney may not remove enough of those responsibilities.
The hiring decision should start with the work that needs to leave the owner’s plate.
Should law firms prioritize billable hires?
For firms making their early hires, Alay generally favors people who can produce billable work because their economic contribution is easier to connect directly to revenue.
He encouraged owners to change how they think about payroll. A salary is a cash expense, but a productive hire can create additional capacity that allows the firm to serve more clients, bill more work, or free the owner to spend more time bringing in business.
The new employee may also produce revenue directly.
Alay offered a rough rule of thumb from his work with firms: for some attorney and paralegal roles, approximately 10 billable hours per week may be enough to cover the employee’s cost. The actual number will vary based on salary, billing rate, collections, benefits, overhead, and the economics of the individual firm.
His point was that an owner does not necessarily need 40 hours of immediately billable work before making a 40-hour hire.
Looking only at whether every hour of a new employee’s schedule is already filled can cause a firm to wait until capacity is exhausted.
There can also be value in giving administrative employees appropriate billable work. During the discussion, Alay mentioned tasks such as preparing letters, working from templates, drafting certain documents, and filing work where the role and billing arrangement allow it.
Even a limited amount of billable activity can change the economics of an administrative position.
Should the next hire be an attorney or a paralegal?
Billing structure can help a firm decide between an attorney and a paralegal.
Alay said firms that bill by the hour, such as many family law or litigation practices, may find that another attorney makes sense because the new lawyer can take on substantive client work and create additional billable capacity.
For flat-fee or contingency practices, a paralegal may sometimes be the stronger next hire because more of the work can be delegated without requiring another attorney at every stage.
There are plenty of exceptions.
Practice area, existing team structure, supervision requirements, matter complexity, billing arrangements, and the type of work currently being performed by the owner all affect the decision.
The useful question is more specific than “Do we need another lawyer?”
Ask which responsibilities need to move, which role can perform them well, and what happens to the owner’s time after those responsibilities are transferred.
Does an experienced attorney need to bring a book of business?
An experienced attorney does not necessarily need to arrive with clients if the firm already has enough demand to keep that attorney busy.
During the Q&A, Alay pointed out that a law firm may intentionally want an attorney who prefers practicing law over developing business. If the firm can consistently generate matters, an attorney who wants to concentrate on client work can be a good fit.
There can also be strategic value in that arrangement. An attorney who builds a substantial personal book of business gains greater mobility because those client relationships may give the lawyer options elsewhere.
For firms that do expect associates to participate in business development, expectations should reflect the attorney’s experience and practice area.
Alay said attorneys can sometimes begin handling prospective-client consultations fairly early in their careers when the leads are already being generated by the firm. Originating their own work may take considerably longer, and the timeline differs widely by practice area.
That distinction matters.
Conducting a consultation with a lead supplied by the firm is different from building relationships and generating new matters independently.
How should law firms find stronger candidates?
Strong firms treat recruiting as an ongoing business function rather than an activity that starts when somebody resigns.
Alay recommended maintaining what could be considered a dream-team list: people you would be interested in hiring if the right opportunity came up.
That does not require calling each person with a job offer.
A firm can stay connected with talented attorneys, paralegals, and other professionals and contact that network when a position opens. Instead of asking, “Do you want a job?” the owner can ask whether the person knows someone who might be interested.
Sometimes that produces a referral.
Sometimes the person being contacted becomes interested.
The approach gives a law firm a starting point before the first job advertisement goes live.
Alay shared a current example from a client firm that was hiring two paralegals, two attorneys, and an executive assistant. The firm was using recruiters, but some of its strongest attorney prospects were coming through its existing network.
The firm had spoken with current attorneys about the value of the new hires, provided talking points they could use with their contacts, and offered a hiring bonus.
Recruiters can still play an important role, particularly for hard-to-fill positions or when a firm needs more candidates than its network can produce. They also come at a cost. Building an internal recruiting network gives the firm another channel instead of depending entirely on paid recruiting every time a position opens.
Why is hiring too fast expensive?
A mediocre hire can consume more time than an empty position.
Firm owners under pressure sometimes accept a candidate who seems “good enough” because the workload needs attention immediately. Alay warned against sacrificing quality simply to make the vacancy disappear.
A poor hiring decision creates several costs.
The firm spends time interviewing and onboarding the person. Attorneys and staff spend additional time training them. A recruiter may have already received a fee. Clients may experience disruption. If the employee eventually has to leave the organization, the firm begins the search again.
Meanwhile, the work still needs to get done.
“You cannot build a great firm with mediocre employees” was one of Alay’s recurring points during the session.
The implication for firm owners is practical. A few more weeks spent finding the right person can be cheaper than months spent trying to turn the wrong person into the right one.
How much attention should law firm owners give recruiting?
Hiring deserves regular attention because a firm’s growth eventually depends on its available talent.
Alay argued that bringing in clients can become easier than finding enough good people to serve those clients. He sees firms approach growth initially concerned about generating new business, then reach the opposite problem after marketing starts working: they have clients but lack the staff to handle the work.
That changes the owner’s job.
Recruiting cannot remain an occasional administrative task handled only when the firm is desperate. Owners need to develop relationships with potential hires, ask employees for referrals, work with recruiters where appropriate, and continue watching for talented people even when every current position is filled.
Employees leave for reasons a firm cannot always control. Life changes. Families move. Career plans change.
An existing candidate pipeline gives the firm somewhere to start when that happens.
How useful are references when hiring?
References can reveal information that interviews and résumés miss.
During the session, Alay shared a story from his own career. While interviewing for a senior role around 2010, a prospective supervisor asked him for eight references. Four needed to be supervisors or peers, while another four needed to be people who had reported to him.
Even with a strong professional history, assembling that list was difficult.
Alay does not suggest every law firm automatically demand eight references. He said three meaningful references can provide useful information, especially when they come from people who supervised the candidate or people the candidate supervised.
For a senior position, four or five may be appropriate where employment rules and circumstances allow the firm to request them.
The exercise itself can be revealing. A candidate who has built strong working relationships over several roles may be able to identify former supervisors and direct reports who are willing to speak about the experience of working with them.
Reference practices and what former employers are permitted or willing to disclose vary, so law firms should make sure their process complies with the rules that apply to them.
How can a small law firm compete with larger firms for talent?
Small firms may lose some candidates on compensation or benefits, but they can compete on the experience of working there.
That starts with understanding that not every attorney wants the same career.
Some candidates are motivated by the compensation and prestige available at a large firm. A small firm will struggle to win those candidates by trying to imitate a much larger employer.
Other attorneys care deeply about workload, autonomy, responsibility, culture, flexibility, and the opportunity to advance.
Alay identified several areas where smaller firms may have something compelling to offer: more reasonable billable-hour requirements, closer working relationships, earlier responsibility on matters, greater autonomy, faster learning opportunities, a clear path toward partnership, hybrid or remote work, and a culture that feels more personal.
And, as he joked during the session, maybe the firm lets people bring their pets to work.
The underlying advice was serious.
Hiring is a sales process in the sense that a law firm needs to explain why a talented person should choose to work there.
A generic job description listing responsibilities and salary may do very little to answer that question.
The firm should be able to explain what working there will actually look like and why that experience fits the type of person it wants to hire.
What should law firm owners do before the next hiring emergency?
The best time to improve a hiring process is before the next position becomes urgent.
For a growing law firm, that can mean tracking the owner’s time against the 20-10-5 rule, identifying responsibilities that need to move off the owner’s desk, and deciding which role would create the most useful capacity.
It also means building relationships with potential hires before a vacancy appears.
Keep a list of people you would like to work with. Ask current employees who they know. Develop relationships with recruiters where they make sense. Decide what the firm can genuinely offer that matters to the type of candidate it wants.
And leave enough room to train the person after they arrive.
The hiring process is incomplete when an offer is accepted. A firm still needs the capacity to set expectations, teach its systems, give useful feedback, and help the new employee become someone the owner can trust with meaningful responsibility.
Key takeaways for law firm owners
1. Use the owner’s time as an early hiring signal
If client work consistently exceeds roughly 20 hours per week, business development is receiving far less than 10, or administration regularly exceeds five, Alay’s 20-10-5 rule suggests that the owner should examine whether another hire could create needed capacity.
2. Hire for the work that needs to move
Start with the responsibilities consuming the wrong person’s time. The answer could be an attorney, paralegal, administrative employee, contractor, or part-time hire.
3. Look at the economics of capacity, not payroll alone
A productive hire can create billable revenue, absorb work from the owner, make room for additional clients, or give the owner time to develop new business.
4. Start recruiting before the position becomes urgent
Maintain relationships with people you would like to hire and encourage the existing team to refer strong candidates. A ready network gives the firm more options when growth or an unexpected departure creates an opening.
5. Leave enough time for training
Waiting until everyone is overloaded makes onboarding harder. Hiring slightly earlier gives the firm enough capacity to teach the new employee how to succeed.
6. Do not lower the hiring standard because the firm is busy
The time saved by filling a position quickly can disappear if the firm spends the next six months managing a poor fit and restarting the search.
7. Give candidates a reason to choose a smaller firm
Compensation matters, but so do autonomy, workload, flexibility, responsibility, career progression, and culture. The firm needs to know which of those advantages it can genuinely offer.
Final takeaway
A law firm’s growth eventually depends on whether the team can handle the work the firm is capable of generating.
That makes hiring a growth function, not an emergency response.
Alay’s approach starts with the owner’s calendar. Look at where the hours are going. Decide which responsibilities should move to someone else. Choose the role that creates the right kind of capacity, then begin recruiting before the workload forces a rushed decision.
Finding the right person may take longer than finding another client.
For a firm that wants to keep growing without putting every new matter back on the owner’s shoulders, that time is worth spending.
