Most lawyers are ill equipped to deal with practice management challenges. After all, law schools offer few courses on the topic and the emphasis in the CLE world is on substantive law and skills.
As a practice builds, most ultimately hire one or more staff members without having first developed either leadership or management expertise. Through trial and error, the team will plod along and may even succeed. However, could the firm have been more efficient (i.e. profitable) if the lawyer/entrepreneur/manager had been schooled in effective and practical leadership techniques?
At last, a book has been written that showcases the wisdom and experience of 25 attorneys and other legal professionals in the staffing arena. Edited by jennifer j. rose and published by the American Bar Association, Effectively Staffing Your Law Firm, 2d ed. is content rich, delving into topics such as whether to outsource work, how to utilize staff in a marketing initiative and how to handle a problem employee.
The ABA has authorized me to release the chapter that I contributed entitled
Delegation Dynamics. After you have read the material, please share with me your favorite delegation technique whether or not you are in the legal field. Together, we can continue expanding our collective knowledge basis.
In the meantime, if you are interested, find out more about
Effectively Staffing Your Law Firm. You will have the opportunity to check out the table of contents as well as the introduction.
