Question on Hiring Admin Staff

[123]

For those of you in private practice who hired administrative staff, how did you find good people? Did you post on sites like indeed? Did you pay someone to help you find candidates? Is there a more targeted way to do a search? Aside from previous clerk/assistant work, what other kinds of candidate backgrounds have others looked for?

I've taken a couple of different people on short-term contracts, and they weren't able to do the kind of stuff I needed. I have a couple of very good people who I use for some tasks on an ad hoc, hourly basis, but they're overqualified and aren't going to commit to being a salaried clerk or assistant. A lot of lawyers I know haven't hired in years, and aren't a lot of help in terms of advice on this. Any pointers would be appreciated.

Edited October 28, 2022 by realpseudonym

[hiccups]

Almost every assistant at our firm was through a recruiter. My understanding is that most of them find new jobs through recruiters as well.

[Vizslaw]

We posted a law clerk position on Indeed.ca and shared that to FB groups and LinkedIn. We were pretty specific about what skills/tasks would be required so it was easy to filter out the bad applications. We ultimately hired a paralegal who was looking for a mix of admin and substantive work, which fit our needs perfectly. I was a little worried about a paralegal being over qualified, but we've been able to bill for some of their time and not just have it be an overhead expense, so things have worked out really well!  

 

[Aureliuse]

Referrals from existing staff/clerk - who you know is good etc. Ask a colleague.