A corporate law practice advises companies on deals, contracts, governance and disputes, with associates working long stretches around closings. Hours, review habits and the path to partner decide who stays.
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Share your requirementsA corporate lawyer's practice supports company clients through agreements, investments, restructurings, compliance advice and board matters. The team has a principal or partners, senior and junior associates who draft and review, paralegals who manage diligence and filings, a secretarial or document team and an accounts person for billing. Work arrives in bursts: a closing, a diligence request or a regulator query can take over several weeks. Time is recorded in hours and billed to clients, so how people note time matters. Associates compare titles and pay with larger firms and in-house teams, and many leave after two or three years. Partners often carry the client relationship alone. See also HR for professional services.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in corporate lawyers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Associates work late and through weekends to close a deal, then wait idle for the next, so effort is lumpy and quiet weeks feel unfair after hard ones.
Associates see only slices of the client, and cannot build their own standing, which makes outside offers more attractive.
Review comments contradict each other, with no one deciding which senior's view wins.
Hours are filled in on Friday evening, so billing is vague and workload data does not show who is overloaded.
They run diligence and filings for years with no change in title, and the best go to in-house teams.
Feedback comes once a year from whoever remembers, and promotion looks arbitrary.
Juniors learn by drafting live matters with little guidance and are told off for mistakes no one taught them to avoid.
Senior partners hold the clients and show no sign of sharing, so strong associates see no seat for themselves.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Career and Succession Management; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a corporate lawyers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
At the start of each matter, name the team, the expected peak and who takes over if someone falls ill.
At the start of each matter, name the team, the expected peak and who takes over if someone falls ill. The HR policy packages can set expectations on late hours and time in lieu.
A named senior whose comments are final after partner input, so juniors are not pulled in opposite directions.
A named senior whose comments are final after partner input, so juniors are not pulled in opposite directions.
A short time entry at the end of each day, which also shows who carries which load.
A short time entry at the end of each day, which also shows who carries which load. The attendance, shift and leave process can sit alongside.
Stages with the skills needed at each, and a route for strong paralegals.
Stages with the skills needed at each, and a route for strong paralegals. The learning and development process supports it.
A short conversation and a note at the end of every deal, feeding the yearly review in the performance management process.
A short conversation and a note at the end of every deal, feeding the yearly review in the performance management process.
Criteria, timing and what a senior associate must bring, even if the answer is that no seat is open yet.
Criteria, timing and what a senior associate must bring, even if the answer is that no seat is open yet.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Feedback after each matter and a yearly review that rests on evidence.
A first-year drafting path and a route for paralegals.
Pay bands by stage, so associates can see what grows with experience.
Time records and time in lieu that follow the deal rhythm.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
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A practical design for an IT services appraisal cycle: when to run it, how to rate fairly across projects, and how to explain hikes so they hold.
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A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
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What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Show the next stage, give them a share of client contact and make feedback regular. People tend to leave when growth is unclear, not just for pay.
Plan the peak at the start of a matter, rotate heavy duty and give time back soon after a closing. Leave it to be arranged on the spot and resentment builds.
Name one reviewing voice per matter. Others raise views with that person, who decides.
Yes if paralegals run diligence and filings. A clear route with new tasks and titles keeps experience in the practice.
Explain that it helps billing and workload, keep the form short and review it weekly. Use it to share load, not to punish.
Commonly the deal staffing habit, feedback after matters, the associate and paralegal ladders and partner-track clarity. We start by hearing how recent matters ran. Scope, timing and fees are put in writing.
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