Practice Pointers
Is It Time to Scale Up? Find Out at Practice 360°.
September 02, 2026
This year at Practice 360°, the D.C. Bar's annual event delivering tools and guidance for lawyers to run a more efficient, ethical, and profitable firm, attorneys can get insight into staffing considerations during the session "When to Hire, Why Not to Hire, and How to Keep a Firm Profitable."
In this panel, Ned Daze, technical director and cofounder of the Rosen Institute, will leverage his experience as a law firm consultant with more than two decades of experience helping hundreds of lawyers build, scale, manage, and market their practices. Daze will also address one of the thorniest questions facing solo and small firm practitioners today.
"A lot of people want a magic number … what's the kind of revenue at which it makes sense to hire an administrative assistant or another associate," Daze says. "I'll give some input on what that number is, but I'll also discuss the other considerations that go into the decision."
Adding staff can be demanding, and training and managing employees can involve a significant investment of time and attention. For a small business, even a few employees can increase business expenses dramatically. However, Daze cautions solo and small firm practitioners against rushing into hiring assistance to replicate the large firm and government offices they are familiar with. Boutique practices and emerging technologies offer compelling and profitable alternatives, he says.
Daze also commonly encounters situations in which lawyers growing a practice look to expand without analyzing their price structure. "A lot of people are already selling their work at a discount," he says. "They're very afraid of raising their prices, or they're giving away their work too cheaply, and it becomes surprisingly easy to scale an unprofitable practice when there are other levers they could have pulled. It is very easy to get out over your skis."
Attendees will leave Daze's session with some principal considerations in mind, a methodology that will help them assess their business goals to make a more sophisticated decision about when and how to scale, as well as information that can help them consider how alternative business models and fee structures, marketing, and technology can offer substitutes for added headcount.
"The idea is to make a firm that works better for you, and to avoid locking yourself into the old way of doing things," Daze says. "I want lawyers to have a little more control over the direction in which they build their businesses. In terms of raw number and income, some of our highest grossing attorneys are solos or solos with staff, simply because of the practice area and the structure of their business, and that sort of thing is even more feasible now than it was in the past."
Held virtually on October 7, Practice 360° will offer a full day of sessions on topics such as AI, legal ethics, law firm management, marketing, resilience, and professional growth.
