I spend a lot of my time talking to the people who allocate work at mid-sized law firms and most often it’s the senior associates, resourcing managers, practice group leaders, or even your senior secretaries. In any case, it’s the people who sit between the partners generating work and the lawyers doing it.

Everyone is trying to keep things even and moving at the same time, but most are working with partial information and a full inbox. Here are a few habits I've seen genuinely help, and a note on where they tend to run out of road. 

1. Work with your partners to find the right person, not just a good person 

A short, consistent set of questions when a new matter comes in makes a real difference: who has the right skills, sufficient capacity, and would benefit from this opportunity. Thirty seconds up front saves a much longer conversation later. 

2. Build a capacity conversation into the team's rhythm 

A quick weekly check-in, even five minutes, surfaces who's stretched before it turns into a problem. Ask the team directly rather than guessing from who seems quiet or relying on last week’s spreadsheet. 

3. Expand who is considered for new work 

Defaulting to the same one or two names is an easy habit to fall into, usually because they're the fastest to reach. Deliberately widening who gets considered first spreads opportunity, improves engagement, and surfaces capacity you might otherwise miss. 

4. Build in a fairness check before finalizing a tough call 

Before confirming a staffing decision, take a step back and ask whether this person is truly the best choice for the work. Associates are often reluctant to turn work down, even when they're at capacity or unsure they have the right expertise. A quick fairness check helps avoid overloading high performers and improves the chances of work being completed efficiently and to the expected standard. The goal isn't to allocate work equally. It's to allocate it fairly, considering workload, skills, experience, development needs, and client requirements. 

5. Say something when the balance shifts 

If someone on the team seems to be carrying more than their share, raise it early and directly rather than letting it become the norm. Most resourcing problems are easier to fix in week two than in week eight. Creating clear escalation points enables these conversations to happen consistently rather than only when someone feels confident enough to raise a concern. 

Where these habits run out of road 

These are good disciplines, and worth building regardless of what tools sit behind them. Chances are most work allocators will already be doing some of them, subconsciously or otherwise. 

Their limit is that they depend entirely on someone holding a constantly shifting picture together in their head, question by question, conversation by conversation. That works within a small team a manager can watch closely. It gets harder fast across a practice group of thirty-plus. Fairness is one consideration, but so is utilisation, development opportunities, specialist expertise, client expectations, and delivery risk. As teams grow, balancing all of that becomes increasingly difficult. 

BigHand's Legal Talent and Resourcing Report found that 42% of mid-sized firms cite partners selecting resource based on personal preference as a key challenge, which tracks with how often "someone good" becomes "someone I already know is free." Good habits reduce that tendency but they can’t remove it, because memory and instinct only stretch so far. 

A dedicated legal work allocation tool takes the same principles behind these habits, asking the right questions, checking for balance, staying deliberate about who gets considered. You’ll gain something firmer to stand on: live visibility into skills, workload, and availability across the whole team. The weekly check-in becomes grounded in current numbers. The fairness check becomes a better-informed decision rather than a best guess. 

Join Dave Cook, Global Director of Resource Management, for more practical tips on moving mid-sized firms from scattered spreadsheets to a shared view of workload, skills, and availability.