Should a solo lawyer hire staff, use vendors or use a managed service?

At some point, most solo lawyers run into the same question: do I keep doing the business-side work myself, hire someone, outsource individual functions, or hand more of it to one operating partner?

There is no single answer that fits every stage of a practice. A newly established firm with modest volume may be able to operate efficiently with the attorney doing much of the work. A busy practice may benefit from a strong employee. Another may need specialized help across accounting, marketing, technology and operations that no single employee can reasonably provide.

The mistake is comparing the options only by what appears on an invoice or payroll register. The better comparison is the total cost of running the business side of the practice, including the owner's time required to do the work, manage it and connect the pieces.

There are four common ways to cover the business side

Most solo practices use some combination of four models.

Model	How it works	Usually fits when
Owner does it	Lawyer handles most operations	Volume is low or cash is limited
Employee	One person handles many functions	Workload is steady and role is clear
Specialist vendors	Separate providers handle functions	Needs are specific and manageable
Managed service	One team coordinates multiple functions	The business side spans several disciplines

These models are not mutually exclusive. A firm might employ a legal assistant, use an outside CPA for taxes and rely on another provider for technology. Another might retain an employee for client-facing work while using a managed service for accounting, marketing, technology and performance management.

The objective is not to force every practice into one model. It is to understand what each model actually costs and how much responsibility remains with the owner.

Option 1: The owner does it

This is how many solo practices begin. The attorney answers inquiries, manages the calendar, sends bills, follows up on payments, deals with vendors, handles marketing decisions and keeps an eye on the books.

The obvious advantage is cash cost. There may be little incremental expense, and the attorney maintains direct control over almost everything. For a new or low-volume practice, that can be completely rational.

The cost appears when the practice gets busier. An hour spent resolving a billing problem, updating a website or reviewing bookkeeping is still an hour of owner capacity. It may not create a payroll expense, but it is not free. That is why the relevant question becomes:

If the attorney could use that hour for legal work, business development, managing important client relationships or simply reclaiming personal time, performing the task personally carries an opportunity cost even when no check is written.

This is one reason low utilization can coexist with very long workdays. The attorney may be working constantly while dividing the day between practicing law and operating the business.

Owner-led operations tend to make the most sense when the workload is still small, the processes are simple and preserving cash matters more than preserving owner time.

Option 2: Hire an employee

The traditional next step is to hire someone. For many practices, that is the right answer.

A capable legal secretary, administrative assistant, paralegal or office manager can become deeply familiar with the attorney, the clients and the firm's workflows. The employee is available every day, works inside the firm's systems and can take ownership of recurring responsibilities.

The cost varies materially depending on the role the firm is trying to fill.

In May 2025, the national mean annual wage for legal secretaries and administrative assistants was approximately $60,620. A more supervisory role carries a higher cost: the national mean annual wage for first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers, a useful proxy for an office-manager role, was approximately $73,490.¹

For private employers with fewer than 50 workers, benefits represented approximately 25.9% of total compensation costs in June 2026.²

Using those national figures only as an illustration, the $60,620 support-role wage translates to roughly $82,000 in total compensation, while the $73,490 supervisory-role wage translates to roughly $99,000, before considering recruiting, equipment, software, training or the owner's management time.

That is not an argument against hiring. It is an argument for comparing both the real cost and the level of capability the firm is hiring.

An employee also creates something outside providers may have difficulty replicating: daily continuity inside the firm. If the practice has enough consistent work for one role, requires frequent client interaction or benefits from someone who knows the day-to-day details of the practice, an employee can be extremely valuable.

The limitation is breadth. One person who is excellent at client service and matter administration is not necessarily also an accountant, marketer, technology administrator and business analyst. A solo owner can therefore hire a very strong employee and still remain responsible for managing several other business functions.

Option 3: Use specialist vendors

Instead of hiring one generalist, a firm can buy expertise function by function. One provider may handle bookkeeping. Another may handle marketing. Another may support technology. Another may answer phones or manage a website.

This model has an important advantage: the firm can access specialized capability without employing a full-time specialist in every discipline. That often makes economic sense for a small practice.

The cost that is easy to overlook is coordination. Each provider has its own relationship, contract, system, point of contact, cadence and view of the firm.

The marketing provider may know how many leads were generated but not what happened after intake. The bookkeeper may know receivables are increasing but not why matters are taking longer to bill. The technology provider may manage systems but have little visibility into the workflows those systems are supporting.

None of that means the vendors are performing poorly. It means each provider sees a piece of the business. The owner is often still the person connecting those pieces.

So a point-vendor model can move meaningful work away from the attorney, but it may only moderately reduce the owner's overall operating burden because the attorney remains responsible for coordination, handoffs and decisions across providers. That distinction becomes more important as the number of vendors grows.

Specialist vendors tend to work best when the owner has a limited number of clearly defined needs and is comfortable remaining the coordinator.

Option 4: Use a managed service

The fourth model combines multiple business-side functions under a more integrated operating structure. Instead of separately managing several providers, the firm engages one organization to coordinate some or all of the work around the practice.

The exact scope varies by provider, but it may include functions such as practice operations, accounting and finance, marketing, technology, reporting and administrative workflows.

The potential advantage is not simply having fewer vendors. The larger advantage is that the functions can operate from a shared view of the practice rather than as separate services.

• Marketing can be connected to intake and new matters.
• Matter workflow can be connected to billing.
• Billing and receivables can be viewed alongside cash flow.
• Technology decisions can reflect how the practice actually operates.
• Performance reporting can show the owner where work, money or capacity is getting stuck across the firm rather than within one isolated function.

That cross-functional view is difficult to create when each provider sees only its own part of the practice. A managed service can also reduce the owner's role as the person who notices problems, coordinates responses and makes sure work moves between functions.

The tradeoff is cost. An integrated managed model will generally cost more than one narrow point service and more than continuing to do the work personally. It also requires the attorney to be comfortable delegating meaningful operating responsibility and working within defined processes.

A newly established or low-volume practice may not need that level of support. But once the business side of the practice spans several disciplines, the question begins to change from "Who can perform this task?" to:

That is a different problem.

Compare total cost, not just the monthly fee

The cleanest way to compare the four models is to look beyond direct expense. A useful framework is:

Each component matters.

• Direct expense is the obvious part: payroll, benefits, vendor fees and software.
• Owner time is the time the attorney personally spends doing work that could otherwise move elsewhere.
• Management effort is the time spent hiring, training, reviewing, coordinating and resolving issues across employees and providers.
• Cost of gaps includes important work that is delayed, missed or inconsistently followed through because responsibility is unclear.

That last category should not be used to invent hypothetical lost revenue. It simply recognizes that an operating model should be evaluated on whether important work reliably gets done, not only on what it costs.

A simple way to compare the four models

Question	Owner	Employee	Vendors	Managed
Lowest cash cost	Strong	Low	Moderate	Moderate
Preserves owner time	Low	Strong	Moderate	Strong
Specialist depth	Low	Moderate	Strong	Strong
Daily firm continuity	Strong	Strong	Moderate	Strong
Cross-functional visibility	Low	Moderate	Low	Strong
Reduces owner coordination	Low	Moderate	Low	Strong
Easy to scale gradually	Moderate	Low	Moderate	Strong

The table is not intended to suggest that every firm should make the same choice. Each model solves a different problem. The owner-led model protects cash. An employee creates daily continuity. Specialist vendors provide access to deeper expertise without requiring full-time hires.

A managed model combines several of those advantages. It provides access to multiple disciplines, reduces the owner's coordination burden and creates a broader view of how the business side of the practice is performing as a whole.

That does not make it the right model for every firm. A newly established or low-volume practice may not need that level of support. But as a practice becomes more established and its operating burden spreads across multiple functions, an integrated managed model can provide the strongest overall combination of capability, visibility and owner-time relief.

When does hiring an employee make the most sense?

Hiring becomes more attractive when the firm has a consistent body of work that one person can own. If there is enough ongoing administrative, client-service or matter-support work to keep someone productively engaged, a dedicated employee may provide better continuity than an outside service. Hiring can also make sense when the work requires frequent interaction with the attorney or clients.

The key is defining the role before hiring the person. A common problem in small firms is hiring a broadly capable person and gradually assigning every business-side responsibility to them. The title may become "office manager," but the actual job can expand to include intake, billing, bookkeeping, technology, marketing, HR, client service and matter administration. Those are several different disciplines.

The question is not whether one talented person can do many things. It is whether the firm is asking one person to own more functions than one role can reasonably support.

When do individual vendors make the most sense?

Point solutions are attractive when the problem is narrow. If the practice needs bookkeeping, hire a bookkeeper. If it needs technology support, hire an IT provider. If it needs a new website, hire someone who builds websites. There is no reason to buy a broader operating model when the actual need is one clearly defined function.

The economics can also work well when demand is intermittent. A firm that needs only a few hours of specialist expertise each month generally does not need to hire that expertise full time.

The model becomes less efficient when the number of point solutions grows and the owner becomes responsible for integrating all of them. At that point, the issue is no longer access to expertise. It is coordination.

When does a managed model make the most sense?

A managed model becomes more relevant when the firm has moved beyond a handful of isolated administrative tasks. The signs are usually operational:

• The attorney is spending too much time coordinating people and systems.
• Information lives in several places.
• The owner has to notice when something is falling behind.
• Different providers operate independently.
• The practice has enough volume to need real operating discipline, but not enough scale to justify building a full internal management team across several specialties.

In that situation, the advantage of the managed model is not simply that somebody else performs tasks. It is that someone other than the attorney becomes responsible for helping the business side operate as a connected system. That is where an integrated model begins to look very different from adding another employee or another vendor.

Most firms will still use a hybrid

Even with a managed model, the practical answer for many solo firms will be a combination of resources. A practice may have an employee who handles client-facing work and active matters, an outside CPA who handles taxes, and a managed operating provider responsible for other business functions. Another may retain its own bookkeeper while using outside support for operations, marketing and technology.

The objective is not organizational purity. It is to create a model where:

• the right work is handled by the right resource
• responsibility is clear
• the attorney can see what is happening
• business functions connect to one another
• the owner is not unnecessarily serving as the connection point for everything

Start with the constraint, then choose the model

Before hiring someone or signing another vendor, identify the problem you are actually trying to solve.

If cash is limited and operating demands are still modest, the owner may reasonably continue doing much of the work. If the practice has a consistent body of work that one person can own, an employee may be the right answer. If the need is isolated to one or two specialized functions, individual vendors may be enough.

But once the business side spans several functions and the owner is becoming the person responsible for connecting all of them, a managed model offers a different advantage: one operating view across the practice, specialist capability across disciplines and less dependence on the attorney to hold everything together.