Hiring and Retaining Top Talent in a Down Market

Law firms, corporations, vendors and the government are all competing for the same people.

Litigation support departments have evolved in the past few years. Several years ago, only a handful of elite law firms had an in-house litigation support group; today, nearly every major firm has an established litigation support department. Many of these departments are highly structured, streamlined and profitable. In the present economic downturn, litigation support is one of the few areas in the legal industry that is experiencing growth and hiring. However, despite over 10,000 newly unemployed legal employees, the talent pool of litigation support specialists is as tight as ever. People with backgrounds in real-estate, corporate finance, or administration lack the highly-specialized skill-set that makes litigation support such a valuable department in today’s economy. Hiring the Best and the Brightest while building litigation support departments from scratch is not easy, managing them is the hard part. Moreover, managing any department in a recession with deep budget cuts, layoffs and economic uncertainty is a Herculean task. Law firms, corporations, vendors and the government are all competing for the same people while talented employees are holding onto secure positions, further tightening an already candidate-driven labor market. Below are a few hiring strategies that can help you beef up your department and find the best personnel for your organization.

Assess Your Talent

One of the best ways to staff your department in a recessionary market is to assess your current pool of talent. Take a good look at the personalities and competencies in your department, train the best and replace the rest. Often, a well-oiled department is not about hiring additional bodies but about operating more efficiently. In staffing your department, Greg Chan, senior litigation technology manager (West Region) for Bingham McCutchen, LLP, suggests employing a variety of personnel with different skill-sets and backgrounds. “Sometimes managers tend to hire people who remind them of themselves but you need a variety of people coming from different viewpoints,“ he says. “Everyone’s going to add value and a different flavor to the group. In our group, we have a JD, grad school drop-outs, exparalegals and ex-vendors.” Stuart Hubbard, firm-wide e-discovery manager at Schiff Hardin LLP in Chicago, agrees with this diverse hiring strategy. “I like to see people with a varied background,” he says. “If someone has spent their entire career in a law firm, I’m less impressed than if I see they have spent time on the vendor side or have taken the initiative to acquire a technical degree.”

Rewrite Job Descriptions

As litigation support departments have expanded over the years, roles have evolved as well. The responsibilities and expectations of practice management and litigation support personnel today have changed over the years. Therefore, it is important to reassess those roles and rework past job descriptions to better suit your current needs and structure. Every position within your company should have a written, detailed job description. One of the biggest complaints employees express is being hired to do one job only to learn it’s not what they expected. You can prevent such misunderstandings by including the job description as part of the interview process with each candidate. The job description should clearly define the roles, responsibilities and competencies of each professional within your organization. When creating job descriptions, most managers consider the experience, skills and daily tasks required. However, the focus should be on the role and purpose of the position. Ask yourself and your team:

• What outcome do we want to achieve by hiring a person to fill a given position?
• What are we looking to accomplish with this new hire?
• What people, process and technology roles do we need to fill and what combinations of legal, technical and business process competencies do we require?
• What type of work culture do we espouse and what type of person would best fit into that culture? • What has changed since the last time we hired for this position?

Once you ask these questions, you may find that what you are seeking now is very different from the position when it was first created. In creating job descriptions, Hubbard works in concert with the human resources department to develop descriptions in accordance with established HR policies. “One tip [in drafting job descriptions] is to avoid making them too specific,” Hubbard advises. “Be comprehensive but don’t be so specific with regard to, say, software proficiencies that you limit the number of people in your potential hiring pool.” In addition to collaborating with human resources, you may also want to bring in an expert to help you rewrite your job descriptions. Good recruiters possess a deep understanding of the litigation support and e-discovery space as well as current salary levels and benefits in your region.

Hire Temp-to-Perm Contractors

Another hiring strategy in a down economy is the use of contractors and temporary-to-permanent hires. This strategy allows you to “try before you buy” by testing out the contractor’s skills and personality fit before making a permanent hiring decision. “[Temp-to-perm] is a happy compromise,” says Chan. “Bring them in as a temp, see how they do and if the relationship is not working out, you don’t have to hire them.” Temporary workers also help alleviate the workload without the need for formal hiring approval. “In today’s economy it’s not easy convincing attorneys or hiring committees to hire additional FTE staff,” Chan says. Temporary hiring is “a way to get around the FTE budget….You can hire a specialist that meets the needs of the operation or department and you’re not on the hook for a large salary plus benefits.”

Create Distinct Roles

Sometimes a search for the perfect candidate with the total package of legal, management and technical competencies can be expensive and time-consuming. Another cost-cutting hiring strategy is to create separate roles within the department and build staff out at different levels. “Find people who can fill specific roles in the department,” suggests Randal Girouard, manager of litigation support for Haynes and Boone, LLP, in Dallas. “I have project managers on staff who don’t have the technical experience that [hiring managers] looked for in past but can communicate well with attorneys and have enough technical acumen to converse with technical staff. This strategy has freed me to find the talent I need quickly rather than looking for someone with the total package.” If you are using a search firm to locate candidates, another cost-saving strategy is to ask your recruiter for a reduction in fees in exchange for exclusivity. Retaining the Best and the Brightest Here’s the kicker – the fewer available candidates in the market, the more actively your competitors will recruit your talent. The top two reasons litigation support personnel leave their employers are money and growth, Chan observes. How can you hold on to your best talent and keep them happy and motivated? In addition to competitive salary and benefits, you should invest in employees’ professional development, create a defined career path, and demonstrate a commitment to the litigation support function.

Invest in Training and Development

Most hiring managers agree that one of the best ways to retain top talent is by investing in their professional growth. Training is a winwin proposition: the training makes the employee more valuable within the organization while at the same time the employee has so much invested in the organization he doesn’t want to leave. Prioritizing your training dollars is essential. Start by making a list of mustkeep talent. Identify who is most valuable to you and the organization and who will benefit most from training. This is the staff that you should invest in. Most managers invest in the bottom tier of staff. However, you need to invest in the top – these are your essential staff and also the people most likely to actively mentor other members of their teams. Tough economic times also present an opportunity to partner with your vendors. Bringing in vendors to present CLEs and asking vendors for passes to local conferences are a few ways to invest in training on a budget. Training opportunities, both in-house and outside the organization, not only build employee skills and knowledge - making them more valuable - but also demonstrate the firm’s commitment to their success. “Litigation support specialists need to stay ahead of the game. When [employees] know the firm is committed to [professional development], they are more willing to stay,” Chan notes. In past years, when training dollars were plentiful, Chan’s firm flew all litigation support specialists to one location for a summit that involved two days of training and roundtables. With reduced training budgets, the firm has found less costly yet effective ways to train employees including webinars and in-house software training programs. The firm also maintains a library of e-discovery materials that is “one big Internet resource for the entire department,” Chan states. Conferences are also an excellent way to keep employees interested and motivated. Conferences provide a way to network with professionals and increase their knowledge. If your budget does not permit you to send staff to conferences in distant locations, employees can often gain the same skills through local opportunities without incurring the additional expense of traveling.

Career Pathing

Career pathing involves creating a road map for advancement within an organization and managing employees’ careers toward those goals. There are numerous ways to undertake career pathing for the employees in your organization. You can develop training programs and mentoring programs that promote advancement; articulate skill-standards, competencies and performance objectives necessary for progression; or create new job categories that provide additional levels of advancement. Creating this career map allows employees to see the road before them and what they need to accomplish in order to advance to the next level. Understanding the current salary levels in your area is an important strategy to career pathing. Talk to people in the industry and develop relationships with headhunters to gain an understanding of salaries in the region. It is also important to realize that not all litigation support personnel will want to advance up the career ladder in the same way. Career pathing is not always about a chain of successive positions but about creating an individual path that fits the needs of each employee. Managers may need to tailor the path to the needs of each individual within the department. “Because roles are so bifurcated… I leave career advancement open to the individual, assigning goals to push them in the right direction or allowing them to gain the technical skills to advance to a new level,” Girouard explains. Hubbard notes the not all personnel will even want to progress up the career path. “I’ve had people working for me who are fully satisfied with their position and have no interest in moving up the career ladder. I have to be sensitive to the fact that some people are in the right job at the right time and that they feel sufficiently challenged in their present role. That doesn’t mean they can’t continue to learn and grow in that position, but that they have as much responsibility as is comfortable for them.” Recognizing an employee’s preferences and customizing career paths to suit their needs will help keep them happy and motivated.

Get Creative

Managing a litigation support department in the face of budget cuts, layoffs, and economic uncertainty is a challenge. However, by demonstrating a commitment to the litigation support function and getting creative in your hiring strategies, you can forge a standout department and foster growth and strong relationships with your litigation support staff.

Contributor: Material for this article was contributed by David Cowen, founder and president of The Cowen Group, a search firm specializing in staffing and recruiting for litigation support, practice support and e-discovery. He is a subject matter expert in building and staffing critical legal support teams and lectures and writes extensively on “the war for talent.” For more information on The Cowen Group and the litigation support market, visit http://www.opportunityknocksblog.com.