Legal
Cultural fit
How to create the work environment you want
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Tampa Bay | March 2009
Page 1 of 2
William ‘Chip’ Merlin
president, Merlin Law Group PA
William “Chip” Merlin
wants to be honest
with potential employees to make sure they know if
they will fit in at Merlin Law
Group PA.
“There are many people
looking for a job, but they are
not going to fulfill their
dreams and their passions
with us if we don’t have something in common with that
individual,” says the founder
and president of the 50-employee law firm. “As we are
growing more and more and
more, I’m pushing toward that
in terms of hiring just so there
is no misunderstanding
upfront with the attorneys in
the firm.”
Smart Business spoke with
Merlin about how to develop a
company culture and find the
people to fit it.
Q. How do you establish a
company culture?
The leaders within the
organization themselves have
to first define that, and I say,
‘leaders’ in my business; it’s
not just me [but] our whole
management team ... better be
on the same page on what we
are trying to do.
Typically, I see the best
organizations, whether it be
small or large, trying to fit individuals into that culture that
they’ve got. Otherwise, you
just run into problems with
trying to move round pegs into
square holes, and it’s extraordinarily difficult. That takes a
lot more leadership and abilities with respect to human
resource management than
what many individuals and
many companies want to do.
Recently, within our firm, we
tried to delineate those types
of characters in terms of you
don’t have to be a perfect
pedigree. But, instead, you’ve
got to be a person that is of
the type of character that we
have — entrepreneurial, a
person that has basic intelligence, a person with significant drive and desire to succeed with respect to those
goals, and they have something in their background that
has demonstrated that. An
example is one of the attorneys we’ve recently hired ... a
person that worked through
undergraduate school and
then worked through law
school.
(That’s) not necessarily a person that went to
the top law school with
the top grades and all
that but had enough
desire, and then worked
as an insurance adjuster
while doing all this. So
they have some background in what we’ve
done but, at the same
time, wanted to better
themselves and took
responsibility to do
that, rather than have it
given to them.
Q. What advice would
you have for someone
who wants to find an
employee who fits
within the company?
Ask, ‘What are your
dreams? What type of person
do you see yourself as?’
Even this weekend, I spent
some time trying to put pen
to paper as to, should we
revise our interview format
upfront with respect to attorneys and with respect to
staff by asking specific questions?
With the attorneys, we are
more interested in those that
really have a passion and
desire to take care of the
clients, that people will like
them. I know it’s kind of a
crazy thing, but likability in
what we do for a living with
respect to each attorney is as
absolutely important as the
ability of the attorney to produce.
That’s probably true, I
would imagine, in most
industries. People would
rather deal with others that
would like them if you are
providing a service, rather
than jerks.
