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Hiring an Associate Lawyer in Myrtle Beach

I'm getting close to the point where I need to bring on another attorney. My options are:

• Associate Straight out of School
• Associate with 2–3 years experience
• Journeyman attorney with 5–10 years experience that doesn’t want to be a partner
• Partner

I’m leaning towards hiring an associate. When settling a workers comp case last week, I was talking to a senior partner of a firm that had about 20 lawyers. I asked him what recommendations he had in hiring an associate. These were his thoughts:

• Grades – Didn’t have to be top notch, but you wanted someone with decent grades. You don’t want to hire someone at the bottom of their class or with terrible grades.
• Work Ethic – This is something that people have, or they don’t have and you don’t train them in or not. His recommendation was to hire two people to clerk for one permanent position and you’ll know relatively easy which on you want to work for you.
• Personality – Once they get their feet on the ground, you’ll want them to be able to bring in business. They won’t be able to do that without a personality. They need to be pleasant, decent to work with, nice people and able to talk to, shmooze and bring in business.

That’s a pretty good list and something I will be looking for towards. Does anyone else have any ideas or thoughts about hiring an associate?

Full post as published by South Carolina Trial Law Blog on September 21, 2008 (boomark / email).