Divorce Practice -- Staff Issues.

• Author: Barson, Kalman A.

This is the third and final article in a series on divorce practice engagement issues.

Unless you are an absolute purist, sooner or later, as with virtually any other service you provide, when doing divorce work, you need to accept the fact that you will increase the volume of what you do and improve your personal efficiency if you bring staff into the equation. Using staff is one of those love/hate relationships, and often we just do not have acceptable alternatives. However, if you want to do more of this work and make more money than is possible just on your own personal labors, you need to take advantage of the capitalist system and make a profit by hiring staff.

There are many issues involving hiring and using staff, ranging from the conceptual, to the practical, to the absurd. To have that staff work as meaningfully and as profitably for you as possible, you need to invest time and effort in that staff, and you need to make sure that they understand some of the truly interesting and difficult nuances of this type of work, as opposed to normal client servicing. This brings into play such issues as experience, personality, personal presence, and discretion. In no particular order, allow me to present you with what I consider to be several of the key issues to be addressed in managing staff in a divorce practice.

Experience level

I know of some of my peers who have hired accountants fresh out of school (the way some of them look nowadays, I think it's from junior high school) and with no experience, make them dedicated to the litigation department. I personally believe that is a mistake--an accountant is much more effective in litigation work (particularly divorce work) when that person already has had a few years experience getting to understand businesses from the business owner's perspective rather than the other side. It helps to spend serious time working with business owners to shelter income, to give staff a true appreciation of what is involved, the accounting systems, some of the games that are played, and where to look for the family jewels. How can someone with no experience do a thorough job investigating a business and uncovering perquisites, let alone unreported income?

When doing a classic audit, you probably have the lowest junior handle the bank reconciliation and petty cash; you step up the level of experience for someone to test receivables; and then perhaps go real heavy when it comes to an area like inventory. That kind of stratification is usually not easily accommodated in divorce work. There are certainly many times when you will want to make use of a junior-level person, assuming that there is a lot of basic accounting...