Setting Up Your Contract Attorney For Success

Whether it’s your first time hiring a legal freelancer or you’ve been contractor-curious for a while, you can benefit from a structured hiring and onboarding process for your adjunct team members. You may have a fully developed onboarding process for direct hires, but contract hires might catch you off guard. 

After over a decade of connecting lawyers with opportunities, and thousands of contract attorney placements, we’ve identified a process that vastly improves communication and outcomes for both the contractor and the law firm/legal department hiring them. 

Prep Before Posting the Job

• Identify the skill set you need and the tasks you can most easily outsource to a contract professional. Consider factors like whether they will need to interface with clients if the work can be completed asynchronously, or if they need to be responsive during work hours.
• Try to quantify the scope of work you need done in advance. It may be a moving target and that’s okay, but if you can estimate that you’ll need 5 hours/week on a slow week and 15 hours/week on a busy week that will help avoid frustration down the road.
• Define and establish your non-negotiables so that you know where you *can* be flexible, this will vastly improve the likelihood that you find a great fit.

Communicate Early and Often

• Those non-negotiables you already defined? Put them in your job posting and confirm with applicants that they’ve read, understood, and agreed to them. This will help you start off on the right foot with each applicant and also save you from wasting precious time.
• Time is limited and hiring may not be your main focus, but timely responses to candidates will establish good-will and increase the odds that you make a quality hire. Even just taking 15 seconds to shoot off a quick message with our in-app messaging tool that says, “In court all day today, will respond by EOD tomorrow”, will convey respect and responsiveness.
• Once you have hired someone, establish regular check-in's over their first few weeks/months so you can head off any issues before they become costly. Especially if you are generally not available during the day due to court appearances or client meetings, setting aside a window of time for questions and feedback will pay dividends.

Put It in Writing, Counselor!

• As an attorney or legal professional, you know how important it is to follow up verbal agreements with a written record! Sometimes this gets lost in the chaos of onboarding a contractor, especially if you are hiring due to overflow work. We know it can be tough to keep track of the details, so you can use our handy Project Outline template as a starting point.
• A quick summary email after each meeting or check-in is immensely helpful. The space between what you think you’ve said, and the other person thinks they heard can be shocking. Written summaries help keep everyone rowing together.

Honest Feedback is a Gift

• If you notice areas where a contract attorney can improve, it truly is a gift to honestly and kindly provide feedback. Each role is an opportunity to not just contribute, but also learn and grow. You may find it leads to a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship.
• If you’ve hired your contract attorney via Hire an Esquire, you’ll have an opportunity to leave feedback with us about your experience with that person. This helps other clients like yourself choose dependable contract attorneys and can help the contractor learn from their experience. It only takes a few minutes to invest in our community and the growth of the contractor.

Looking for more tips on hiring and managing legal contractors? We interviewed our amazing client, Adam Rose, and his advice was incredible. Check it out here!