The Problem:
Small law firms need to hire clerks, secretaries, and other personnel. Often, they have too much to do and don’t spend enough time hiring well. Even larger law firms, who pay big dollars for clerks (hoping to turn them into future lawyers) don’t spend enough time analyzing actual work product. We all know that hiring wrong is incredibly costly.
The Business
An outsourced service, over the web, that helps law firms hire well. When I was running a small law firm, we put together a competition for a group of interns to decide who to hire. Two of the lawyers graded the work blind, so no previous bias would come into play. The result? We hired the strongest intern. She has since, from what I understand, turned into one of the strongest clerks. She performs on a level that many attorneys do not.
This service would be expensive, and you would need a decent size pool of people to compete for the job. In theory, you could make the same competition apply to multiple clients and competitors.
The problem is it would be expensive. There is no way, at this point, to have a machine properly grade this competition. Much of it has to be writing, and that writing needs a human looking at it. You are probably talking $500-2500 for each position hired. And that’s if a pre-screened pool of people come without work to find them. I think that number is cheap, but tell a small law firm that number is cheap and you will be met with a different reaction.
Doableness
You need lawyers that know how to design this competiton and grade the competition. Besides that, you need a website, technology, relationships with law schools and, of course, clients. This project gets off the ground with a team of four and $50K.
My Thoughts
There is a lot of specialized knowledge in this project. Truthfully, I didn’t have a lot of time today to come up with the idea. I have meetings all day. So what did I do? I thought of something I did for a business I worked with – that was outside the core competency of the business – that worked. Chances are, that will produce a business idea.