I have a confession: our firm’s top paralegal has not worked a single day in our office. Our amazing paralegal, Kelly Gonnelly, works from home in Tennessee. But that’s not all: many of our firm’s team members work from home and we rarely, if ever, see them in our office.
Law firms look very different today compared to just a few years ago. Remote work has fast become the norm and law firms are embracing a remote workforce. Embrace change or die. It’s that simple.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Many law firms are working with remote workers (a/k/a team members) throughout the world. Lawyers from Mexico, Central and South America and Asia are working for your competitors and with the exception of meeting remotely via Slack or Microsoft Teams, the workplace is virtually unchanged.
The Path to Becoming a Global Law Firm
Candidates for your law firm used to be limited to the geographic region where your law office is located. If a candidate lives more than 30 miles away, they usually are not interested in traveling to your office and hence, they are disqualified. That is no longer a problem.
With a remote workforce, the pool of talent for your law firm has no boundaries. You can hire a world-class litigation paralegal who lives halfway across the country or the world. But how do you know that the remote team member will do the work? Trust, by monitoring their work remotely through ActivTrak.com.
Once you’ve expanded your remote team within other parts of the U.S., it’s time to off-load administrative tasks to a foreign team member.
4 Benefits of a Foreign Team Member
Foreign remote team members offer advantages that are not available to your law firm in your local market.
Benefit #1: Cheap Labor
You can hire a foreign remote worker/lawyer for $12/$15 per hour. You can’t beat the price and your remote worker will be grateful for the work. Your pay rate is often more than what the foreign remote worker/lawyer would earn in their country.
Benefit #2: Easy to Hire and Fire
You can hire a foreign remote worker on Upwork and if they don’t work out, terminating their employment is quick and easy.
Benefit #3: No Administrative Costs or Benefits
When you hire a foreign employee as an independent contractor, you will not be responsible for the foreign remote worker’s benefits, such as health insurance, paid time off, etc. You will save on having to pay insurance and taxes. However, some countries may require that you withhold taxes from a foreign employee’s paycheck.
Benefit #4: Higher Education & Proficient in English
Remote workers in foreign countries can be well-educated lawyers who are proficient in speaking English with no accent. Do you realize how much it would cost to hire a new team member with these credentials in the U.S.?
6 Tips for Working Seamlessly with a Foreign Team Member
The interaction with a foreign team member is almost identical to those working in-house at your law firm. Just like any team member, you need to follow a documented hiring process and monitor their work. You need to share your expectations with the foreign team member (our firm uses a “Position Contract” to lay out the duties of the position and our expectations).
Tip #1: Set the Criteria for Hiring
The remote worker must be proficient in English with no obvious accent. You might want to hire a remote foreign team member who is a licensed lawyer in their country and has experience in personal injury. With Upwork.com, you can see the candidate’s reviews and the type of work that they’ve done for other law firms.
Be specific about what you want and weave your firm’s core values into the hiring decision. For example, the “candidate must be a licensed attorney in their native country with 3-5 years of experience in personal injury law and proficient in English. The candidate must be fluent in English and speak with a limited trace of an accent. The candidate must be passionate about the rights of the disabled and be grateful for the opportunity to serve the disabled.”
Tip #2: Put the Candidates through a Shadow Day
Before you hire the candidate, you need to confirm that they have the skills for the position. Have the candidate do a shadow day, where you can test their skills. You might quickly find out that the candidate has typing skills or does not like working with your case management software. As with any job candidate, check their references and do a background check.
Try hiring 2-3 remote team members. One might work out, while the others don’t. Don’t give up just if one fails. Just like the secretaries and paralegals working in-house at your firm, you will have some home runs and a few trainwrecks.
Tip #3: Monitor their Work
ActivTrak.com can be used to monitor the keystrokes of your remote team members and ensure that they are in fact productive (thank you, Seth Price, Esq., for this tip!). Ship a laptop to new team members and monitor their work using ActivTrak. You should create a clear policy document for team members to sign, and enter as they onboard or when you start monitoring.
Have the manager monitor the virtual lawyer’s work via ActivTrak every day. The manager can monitor their email usage, website usage, working hours and productivity, and workload levels. You will receive daily insights into your team’s productivity and see how your remote lawyer is spending their time. Employee monitoring dashboards provide weekly and monthly trends of your team member’s productivity.
Tip #4: Communicate Via Slack or Microsoft Teams
Your foreign remote team member will communicate with your team during working hours through Slack or Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is a great tool for communication, document sharing, and collaboration.
Using ActivTrak, you will receive daily updates on the number of hours that the remote team member worked and when they began and ended work. If there are significant gaps in the time of their work, you will know with the data from ActivTrak.
Have the candidate do a speed test for their internet connection, so you can determine whether they will need a faster internet connection. Your foreign team member may have bandwidth and connection speed issues with their internet connection. Research the country’s local internet access before making a remote hire.
Tip #5: Identify Specific Tasks for the Remote Worker
Identify specific tasks and job descriptions for virtual lawyers. You want to off-load as many administrative tasks as possible, such as:
- Travel and meeting coordinator.
- Scheduling depositions.
- Following up with new prospective clients about the status of the case evaluation.
- Managing your calendar.
- Retrieving medical records.
- After-hours intake.
There is no limit to the administrative tasks that you can off-load from your in-house team.
Tip #6: How to Comply with Requiring Tax Filings for a Foreign Employee
The Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding, known as the W-8BEN Form, is the only compulsory document an employer requires when hiring foreign team members. This form has two purposes: (1) ensures that the foreign worker pays the correct taxes in their home country; (2) exempts the employer from withholding U.S. taxes on any payments made to the foreign worker.
If you partner with a remote hiring agency, they will take care of any mandatory filings for you. If concerned about compliance with benefits in the native country, there are companies, such as Deel.com, that take care of the employment requirements in the team member’s native country.
Various services make it easy to pay foreign team members remotely. Platforms, such as Deel, Multiplier, and Provider, allow you to quickly and securely pay your international staff without requiring expensive or complicated wire transfers. With these services, you can set up payment methods for your remote employees in multiple currencies, including U.S. dollars and euros.
Nearshore versus Offshore
“Nearshore” refers to countries close in geographic proximity to the U.S., such as Mexico and Central America.
Remote team members in Mexico or Central America will be more proficient in English and American culture and labor customs. Mexico offers time zones similar to the U.S. and this makes it easier to interact and collaborate with your foreign team member.
Delegating Your Way to Freedom
“Get Staff Up” (GetStaffedUp.com) has foreign lawyers, paralegals, and secretaries who speak fluent English. All legal staff have at least 2-5 years of legal experience and some are law school graduates. Get Staffed Up will send resumes to you and a pre-recorded video of each candidate. If you like a candidate, you can schedule an interview.
The remote workers work on a month-to-month basis and there are no long-term contracts. If a remote team member does not work out, Get Staffed Up will replace them.
Go Global or Become Extinct
The future isn’t what it used to be. Personal injury law firms are going global for their workforce. With foreign team members, you will have lower costs, a wider pool of specialized talent, and a seamless hiring process.
So, what do you think? Your law firm’s future may depend on what you do next.
