Most firm owners make hiring decisions based on how things feel.
The caseload feels overwhelming, so they hire fast. Things feel slow, so they hold off.
Both of those instincts tend to land firms in the same two places — either scrambling to bring someone on too late or carrying overhead they cannot yet support.
We have been working on a better way to think about this at Sterling for years, and our CFO Todd Clauer, joined us recently to walk through how we approach it.
The core idea is straightforward. Take the feelings out of it as much as possible and replace them with a small set of numbers you actually trust.
Build a Model Before You Need One
What we use at Sterling is what our team calls a waterfall. It’s a running model that tracks cases coming in, how long they stay open, and how that flow affects the capacity of each attorney on staff.
The model does not tell us exactly when to hire. What it does is give us a much better-informed projection so that when the decision comes up, we are working from data rather than a gut read on how busy things seem.
The idea behind capacity utilization is simple enough. Every attorney can handle a certain number of cases.
Once you know that number and you can see what is flowing into the firm over the next few months, you can start to calculate when the current team is going to be stretched beyond what is healthy.
That is the window you are trying to plan around before it closes on you.
The Ramp-Up Problem Changes Everything
One thing that gets underestimated almost universally is how long it takes a new hire to actually contribute at full capacity.
A new attorney right out of law school might take a year or more before they are truly self-sufficient.
A senior associate with a book of business gets there faster but takes longer to find and recruit in the first place.
Both of those timelines have to be factored into when you pull the trigger on a hire.
If you wait until the team is already underwater before starting the search, you have already lost. The hire you make under pressure is rarely the best one and the person you bring on is walking into a firm that is already behind.
Our team plans the hire around when we expect capacity to tighten, not around when it already has.
Start Simple and Build From There
For a smaller firm that does not have years of data to draw from, our team’s advice was to start with just a few core numbers.
- How many cases can one attorney realistically carry at a time?
- How long do cases stay open on average?
- And how many leads and consults need to come through the door each month to keep that attorney productive?
Those three data points alone will give any firm owner a clearer picture than most are working from right now.
The model gets more refined over time. Sterling’s version today is far more sophisticated than where it started, with case scoring and tiered utilization rates built in.
But it started with raw case counts and a few simple projections. Getting started with an imperfect model is far more useful than waiting until you have a perfect one.
The Team Has to Understand It Too
The last thing worth noting is that the model only works if the people closest to the work can see it and trust it.
One of our managing partners recently came to leadership with a feeling that the firm should be hiring. Because of the model, that conversation could happen around actual numbers rather than around competing interpretations of how busy things seemed. That kind of clarity changes the whole dynamic.
People stop running on anxiety and start making decisions with some confidence behind them.
