Friday Five: Hiring Secretaries, Assistants and Paralegals
Posted: February 8th, 2008
By: Zach Heller
Category: Business Development Skills, Career Corner, Friday Five, Lawline.com, Opinion Corner

As an Online CLE provider, Lawline.com deals a lot with legal assistants and paralegals who are interested in our Continuing Legal Education programs.  That got us to thinking, what makes a good paralegal or personal assistant?  Attorneys, like any employer, should know the fundamental skills and talents they are looking for when they decide to hire.  A bad hire, whether it is a personal assistant, secretary, or paralegal, can cost you unnecessary time, money, and stress.  This week’s Friday Five is our guide to a successful hire.

TOP FIVE THINGS ATTORNEYS SHOULD LOOK FOR WHEN HIRING HELP

1. Communication Skills.  This is crucial.  The ability to communicate in person, on the phone, and through email is as important as any other skill.  To limit wasted time and effort on your part, you need to be able to rely on your assistants to communicate with clients and other personnel as if it was you the whole time.  The more they can do and say on their own, the less time you will have to spend clearing up mistakes or dealing with insignificant tasks.

2. Professionalism.  These people that you hire will be interacting with your clients on a daily basis.  In a way, they represent you and your practice just as much as you do.  You need to make sure that they appear professional and well-mannered at all times in order to give the people they see the right impression.  That all starts with how they dress and act on the initial interview, so pay attention.

3. Career Goals and Aspirations. This does not necessarily mean that they are using the job as a stepping stone to bigger and better things, but a good employee should be able to tell you about their goals.  If they have a clear vision of what they desire in a job and future positions, you know that they are confident and determined workers.  They will be more likely to put in the extra effort to get things done.

4. Proven Analytical Skills.  This is obviously very important in the legal profession.  Employees need to be detail oriented and willing to do some in depth research.  Even the smallest mistakes can be costly if you are working on a case, so make sure whoever you hire understands that.  This can be hard to identify in the interview process, but experience with some type of research is always a good thing to look for.

5. Experience/Interest in your Practice Area.  Experience in the legal profession is definitely preferred for the simple fact that is cuts down costly training.  The less you have to coach and train someone, the more you can get done.  Even better is if someone has experience in your particular practice area, because they will be familiar with certain types of cases, forms, procedures, etc.

In the end, it is not easy to say what makes a person a good employee.  A lot of employers use trial and error techniques, basically hoping that they get the type of worker they need.  Hopefully the tips above will give you a basic starting point to build off of.  But just like anything else, you learn from experience, and the more people you hire, the clearer it will be exactly what you are looking for.

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