Paying people to NOT work is infuriating to me.

But what if it’s cheaper in the long run?

The holidays are a very slow time for our intake people. They sit and wait for the phone to ring. In the period immediately before Christmas, there are days when our phones sit silent. It’s in these very quiet periods that I focus on the paying-people-not-to-work issue.

We have a couple of intake people. We used to have just one.

Do we need two people in that role? Sometimes yes, but much of the time no. The calls come in batches (the moon phase?). Then the intake people twiddle their thumbs (which must be really sore by now).

Sometimes one of the intake people gets sick, takes a vacation, or gets so drunk the night before that he can’t make it in (just kidding on the drinking…kinda).

The Cost of a Substitute

In the old days, when we had one intake person and that person couldn’t work, we’d have a problem. Someone would have to fill in.

A substitute intake person was less than ideal for a variety of reasons:

• The substitute wasn’t well trained and experienced at intake.
• The substitute was distracted from intake due to other responsibilities that made him or her less effective.
• The substitute was nearly always a more expensive employee, costing us more money than usual to fill the role.
• The substitute was usually less effective than the specialist.
• The substitute could have been doing something more lucrative (like billing for legal services in the case of an attorney/substitute).

Bottom line: having a substitute intake person is almost always more expensive and less effective, and it results in a substantial loss from both the top and bottom lines.

For us in our market, the annual cost of an extra intake person is about $50,000. How much do we lose if we’re using a substitute for a few weeks a year? A lot more than the cost of a second person. And, realistically, we’re going to use a substitute for at least four weeks a year due to vacation and sick days. We’ll likely use a substitute for even more days due to unexpected issues.

It’s hard to argue against our having a second intake person sitting there ready to go when you break out the dollars.

You should think about this issue if you have an intake person. You should think about it even harder if you don’t yet have an intake person. It’s a hugely important position even in the smallest of firms.

Look carefully at what it costs you when you use your paralegal or assistant as the intake person. What are you losing when that person is distracted, busy, and less effective than a full-time intake person? The numbers can be substantial.

Most lawyers, hearing my twiddling thumbs story, react with ideas about how to keep those folks busy during slow periods. They’d like to use those extra hours for something that needs doing.

I agree; however, my experience is that the tasks assigned to an intake person tend to take priority over the calls. Why? I don’t know. It’s like a law of nature or something. Maybe it’s because the callers are annoying when you listen to them all day?

So, here’s the deal: while it drives me crazy to have employees sit around waiting for the phone to ring, it’s the most effective use of our money. Yes, it’s annoying, but it’s profitable. In the long run, it’s cheaper to pay people not to work.