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Solo and small-firm lawyers are exhausted by staff management and growth pressure
.25
Demand — how loud & how many (score)
Willing to payExplicit
Momentum (7d)▼ 1.2%
Cluster18 posts · 16 people
MarketplaceSmokeball Marketplace
Updated19d ago
The story
The pain
As a solo practitioner or small-firm owner, I'm constantly told that success means hiring more people, but managing staff is draining my energy and hurting my practice. Bringing on a senior lawyer was a disaster—they did little work and cost me a fortune to onboard and offboard. Even with a team of 5-6 lawyers, I'm working 12-14 hours a day, six days a week, and the stress of managing people is worse than the workload itself.
Evidence
What people said · 18 complaints, 16 people
I keep feeling as if I need to grow to be successful - this is reinforced by people seemingly being impressed by the more staff that you have. I continually need to remind myself that (a) I don’t have the personality or interest in training and managing staff and (b) it is very hard to maintain our quality standards with other lawyers and (c) I don’t really want to give anyone else access to our IP. I did bring on a senior lawyer who did very little actual work and yelled at a few clients. Onboarding and off boarding that person was a very expensive exercise.
I own a boutique family law firm with around 5-6 lawyers. I work around 12-14 hours a day, x6 days a week. Part of it is just keeping up with the work, the other part is an internal fear of going under my financial statement can never shake. Growth and more staff hasn’t assisted. My stress generally comes from managing staff.
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