Law firm staff: Best employment practices

So, you’ve recently started your own law firm, and you’re ready to start bringing on employees. Congratulations! That’s a massive step in the growth of your law firm. 

As any business owner knows, people are a company’s most important asset.

This is why it’s crucial to hire the right people for your law firm staff — and entice them to stay.

One of the best ways to keep good staff is to take time to prepare and structure your employment practices to support your future law firm staff before you even hire your first employees.

In this article, we’ve compiled some of our top employment practices for law firms to help you foster a healthy and productive work environment. 

Tips for recruiting top talent to your law firm

Many small law firms don’t devote enough time to developing good practices for hiring and managing productive teams. As a result, finding the wrong person for your team could hinder your firm’s growth and overall culture, and also cost you financially. The average cost of one bad hire is nearly 30% of the employee’s annual salary. So, it’s beyond important to invest time and resources in hiring the right staff. 

Know when it’s time to hire

When you’re starting your law firm, there’s a good chance that for a while, the full-time staff roster will have just one name: yours. Many entrepreneurs go through a Jack/Jill-of-all-trades phase when they are starting, but it’s not sustainable long-term for your firm’s growth or your personal well-being. 

Knowing when to hire is vital for your firm’s success. If you hire too soon, there may not be enough cases to support the new positions, and you could run into financial problems. If you wait too long to bring someone on, you may end up hiring the wrong person out of desperation. 

Here are a few signs that it is time to make your first hires for your law firm staff:

•  You’re turning down clients because you’re too busy to take on more work.
•  You find yourself missing deadlines and failing to communicate with clients.
•  You don’t have time to keep on top of day-to-day administrative tasks.

Keep in mind that it takes 44 days to fill a position on average, so if you’re expecting a high volume of work, you should plan ahead of time.

Define and promote your law firm’s culture and values

We could easily write an entire novel on the importance of your firm’s culture, vision, and values. Defining what values your firm stands for helps to direct decision-making aspects of your business, from recruiting and hiring to marketing and client services. 

Of course, a candidate’s experience and skill set are essential for filling a position, but you can’t overlook the importance of finding people who fit in with what you are trying to achieve at your firm. 

What’s more, job seekers want to know about your firm’s culture. A recent study found that workplace culture is a deciding factor for 46% of prospective hires, and 88% of workers consider an organization’s culture before applying for a position.

The bottom line is that employees want to work for a company whose values align with their own and whose mission they can get behind. 

As you create job postings, make sure to articulate your law firm’s vision and values. Be specific about what your firm stands for. The more you talk about and promote your practice’s culture, the more likely you’ll have applicants who match your culture. 

Your firm’s culture will also go a long way in keeping talented individuals as part of your law firm staff. Nearly half (48%) of workers leave their job due to a poor company culture fit.

Commit to diversity and inclusion 

It’s no secret that prioritizing diversity and inclusion has numerous benefits, like improving employee engagement and bringing more diverse talent and opinions to a law firm. And more diverse teams make better decisions and perform better financially. A 2023 study found that companies with more than 30% female staff financially outperform those with less than 30% female representation.

According to the American Bar Association’s 2024 Profile of the Legal Profession, the U.S. legal field is gradually becoming more diverse, though disparities remain. As of 2024, approximately 78% of active attorneys are white, while lawyers of color make up 23% of the profession — a figure that has nearly doubled over the past decade. Women now make up 41% of all lawyers in the United States, an increase from 34% in 2014.

A 2024 survey found that nearly 90% of law firms reported clients requesting diversity data on legal matter staffing. Additionally, about one-third of firms acknowledged losing clients to competitors better aligned with the clients’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals. 

In short, your law firm’s commitment to diversity in hiring practices can affect both the talent you attract and the clients you’re able to work with.

It’s safe to say that when small law firms are building their workforce, they must take care to prioritize hiring a diverse team. A key step in this process is creating a standardized method to evaluate all applicants and eliminate bias. That ensures everyone who applies is assessed the same way. 

Make sure to use neutral language in job descriptions to avoid unintentional bias. For example, certain terms like “energetic” may deter older job seekers, while words associated with masculinity (e.g., “strong”) can discourage women from applying.

Retention and the employment relationship 

Once you’ve found the right people to join your law firm staff, you’ll want to do what you can to entice them to stay. Hiring and staffing are long and daunting processes that require tons of time and attention. And unless you want to repeat that process over and over and over again, retaining talented employees who are a perfect fit at your practice will become instrumental to your law firm’s longevity and success.

Consider this: 27% of U.S. employees voluntarily quit their jobs in 2023. That said, many of the reasons that employees leave are preventable. For example, limited opportunities for growth, poor management, lack of meaningful work, and toxic work environments consistently rank among the top drivers of turnover.

If you want your firm to grow, it’s essential to continuously focus on providing the type of workplace that your law firm staff are proud to be a part of. 

Invest in training and development

While training and development may not seem like something to prioritize in the early days of starting your firm, it’s a worthwhile investment. 

While your legal staff will likely already be bar-certified and have some experience, it’s always a good idea to provide some continued education to help them stay on top of the latest developments in law, technology, and practice management. Investing in extra upskilling beyond CLE requirements can provide additional opportunities that benefit your practice.

According to several studies, professional development contributes to job satisfaction and is a major factor in retention. At the end of the day, greater job satisfaction leads to more productivity, which leads to higher profits. In fact, organizations that invested considerably in employee development and training report 11% higher profit margins and double the employee retention rate.

Establish workplace policies

While it’s not absolutely necessary to have an employee handbook, creating one early on will be beneficial as your law firm grows. Your handbook is a one-stop shop that contains all your firm’s policies and values.

Employment policy manuals create certainty in workplace relationships, ensure consistent and fair treatment of all employees, and minimize burnout. The manual can help candidates determine if your firm is a good fit for them, as it will give them insight into how you operate before they accept a job offer. 

The handbook doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, but it’s a good idea to outline your firm’s mission, values, basic operational procedures, policies, employee benefits, and codes of conduct. At a minimum, you’ll want the manual to reference your firm’s anti-harassment policy and workplace equity policy. Essentially, you’ll want to mention any and all policies that back up your firm’s commitment to complying with federal and state employment laws, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act. 

Don’t worry about getting your employee handbook perfect right away. An employment policy manual is a document that will grow and adapt along with your law firm — you can simply update the manual as policies change.

Prioritize effective communication

Have you ever spent hours chasing down a response to a simple question? If this is the case, you’re already well aware of the effect of poor communication in the workplace.   

If your firm struggles to communicate effectively, it can jeopardize workplace relationships, productivity, and personal well-being for your employees. According to a 2025 survey by Project.co, 43% of workers suffered from increased stress, burnout, and fatigue due to poor workplace communication. Besides employee well-being, ineffective communication can also cost your firm dearly due to wasted time, missed deadlines, and damaged client relationships when expectations aren’t clearly set.

One of the most overlooked ways to motivate a team is through effective and meaningful communication, which helps workers feel more empowered and fuels workplace camaraderie. In addition, having open and honest communication policies will help develop trust between you and your law firm staff. In fact, 92% of employees consider trust in their leadership an essential factor in their workplace motivation.

A few techniques to maintain good communication at your law firm include:

• Use team communication tools to promote collaboration.
• Encourage feedback and ask for it regularly as a way to improve processes.
• Have an open-door policy by letting your law firm staff know they can come to you anytime with questions.
• Meet weekly as a team to just check in and let employees bring up any questions, concerns, or opinions.
• Be forthcoming and truthful with communications. 

Provide regular feedback

The annual performance review is an age-old staple in the world of business. However, the end-of-year evaluation that many of us are familiar with can actually do more harm than good. 

A trend of ditching performance reviews that started with large corporations such as Adobe, Deloitte, and GE has been gaining traction and has now caught on with medium and small businesses. More and more companies are throwing aside the old-school performance review process that heightens anxiety and stress for managers and employees but doesn’t actually contribute much to performance improvements. Instead, these companies are shifting toward continuous feedback models, which prioritize regular check-ins and conversations that focus on improvement rather than outdated performance metrics.

In fact, a 2024 poll shows that only 22% of employees believe their performance reviews are fair and transparent. Additionally, 64% of staff see these reviews as a waste of time.

It comes down to this: If performance feedback only occurs a few times, or, even worse, once a year, then it’s not going to be that meaningful. Instead of the end-of-year review, many companies are now taking a less-formal approach that emphasizes more frequent and impactful conversations about work expectations, goal setting, progress, and development, while encouraging more ongoing dialogue. It’s an approach that improves not only performance but also engagement. 

Best practices for interviewing candidates

Once you’ve pulled the standout candidates from the pool of applications, you’re ready to get to the business of interviewing.

Remember that you’re not the only person making a decision — applicants are also deciding whether they want to work for you. That means part of the interview process is about selling your firm to candidates. After all, your goal is for your preferred candidate to want to work at your firm. It’s important to highlight how your law firm stands out from others and showcase your workplace culture.

If you’re unsure what questions to ask a candidate, refer to the job description and tailor questions on the main topics in the write-up. We also recommend asking questions that draw out what’s important to the candidate, such as what they value in work and their personal life, or their ambition for advancement. 

As much as it’s crucial to ask the right questions, you also need to know what you should not ask during an interview. The following are examples of questions to avoid asking.

Questions to avoid in an interview

• Are you planning on having children?
• Are you married?
• What is your child care situation?
• What country are you from?
• What is your age?

Asking such questions runs you the risk of alienating the ideal candidate and tarnishing your firm’s reputation. It could also be considered evidence of intent to discriminate by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

Aligning your law firm for future success

While not the easiest process to tackle, hiring and staffing your law firm is a huge milestone worthy of celebration. After all, it means that your law firm is growing and is on its way to becoming a recognized and established business.

As your law firm grows, so does your responsibility to protect the people who help drive its success.

At Embroker, we tailor insurance solutions specifically for law firms, so you can focus on building your team with confidence. Get a custom quote today in minutes and protect your law firm from future claims!