Office Manual | law firms' office manual

Office Manual

Office Manual for Law Firms

In this paper, we will prepare a section of a law firms' office manual which will deal with the procedures the firm has set up for hiring and training of new employees, specifically the paralegal. We will take some references from other office procedure books as well but firstly let's focus on the hiring and training part.

Hiring and Training

The basic process of hiring and training in a law firm is much similar as compared to other occupations. Here, the initial application may come towards the candidates by newspaper, e-mail and so on. Experience matters a lot in this field, therefore the firm may give out priority to those individuals who are more experienced than others. Success is also a major factor, here the firm should go for those employees who are more successful in their cases as compared to others or which are more promising in the future.

Fresh graduates should also be allowed to have a chance to apply but strictly based on their merit. Discipline is one of the foremost principles which lead the law profession therefore every individual who applies for the firm should be given clear and concise overview of what the firm stands for and what they expect from their employees. Besides this, some other key factors which are included in the process of hiring are as follows. Interviewing candidates for hiring comes in among the foremost steps in the hiring process, the interviewer must be very clear on what it wants from the employee and what are the rules and regulations regarding the law firm. All other points such as salary range, additional benefits can be dealt here as a part of the interview.

Here, the credibility of the interviewer is also very important, always hire those individuals which have the best experience, the most knowledge and the best communication as well as negotiating skills for the interviewing process. After the selection, the candidate should be required to make a formal written job offer which includes the complete description of the job as well as salary. Besides these internal candidates, the firm should also search for external candidates,...

Online social media also plays a very important role in giving publicity to what the firm has to offer. The firm can use tools such as Twitter and LinkedIn.
Now, let's have a look at some of the training methods which can be adopted by the law firm. Here, there are five main points which should be noted and acted upon very clearly and accordingly to the needs of the firm itself. These five points are analyze, design, development of materials, implementation and evaluation. Let's focus on each one of these. The analyzing portion allows the "needs assessment" to be done, here it is very crucial for the law firm to identify the information which must be addressed within itself. The current or newly recruited employees can be asked of any significant course, procedures or anything else which they are unaware of and which is a necessity requirement by the firm. The law firm can then work on providing the required training based on the analysis.

The design phase is the part where we interlink all the needs assessment into the existing curricula. At this level all the assembling of information is done which is related to every program objective.

This is the phase in which the actual blueprints of training are drawn based on the received specifications. This phase also includes the process of operational considerations of entire program.

Next comes the development of materials phase, this includes creation of materials which can assist in fulfilling our training requirements. One main point here is that it should be noted the information organized earlier for the development of materials should be easy in understanding for everyone. Let's say the law firm wants to offer a program in which it would like every one of its new recruits to go through a survey, the development of materials needed for the conduction of this survey should be according to the budget as well as to the right quantity. "Quality should never be compromised and the firm should do everything in order to maintain its standards." (Muir, 1999).

Implementation is the next phase, this is where the actual training process takes place. Few…