The Sterling Family Law Show

Predictive Index: The Law Firm Hiring Assessment That Changed Everything - #185

• Jeff Sterling Hughes

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Law firm hiring assessment systems filter 50% of bad candidates before you waste interview time. Here's the 33% rule.


Assessment tools like Predictive Index Culture Assessment predict behavioral fit so you hire right the first time. In this episode, we breakdown how we use this tool as a filter as it holds 33% of our decision making process for hiring a talent.


Match profiles to role stage. Baseline your team before adding anyone new. This assessment framework predicts culture fit and cuts turnover before it bleeds your firm dry.


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📄 CHAPTERS  


0:00 - Law Firm Hiring Assessment: Why Culture Fit Decides Growth 

1:54 - The Real Cost When Hiring Goes Wrong 

2:55 - What Predictive Index Actually Measures 

4:05 - The 33% Rule: Assessment as Decision Framework 

5:13 - Attorney Profile Matching: Builders vs. Stabilizers 

8:07 - The 48-Hour Filter That Screens 25% of Applicants 

10:03 - Match Threshold Scoring: Why 6-7 Is the Cutoff 

11:13 - Tailoring Interview Questions From Assessment Data 

14:33 - Stage-Role Fit: First Branch Hire vs. Team Hire 

16:31 - Cognitive Test: Predicting Attorney Ramp Time 

18:25 - Building Complementary Attorney-Paralegal Pairs 

20:43 - Baseline Your Existing Team Before Any New Hire 

22:06 - Retention ROI: The 12-Month Turnover Problem Solved


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SPEAKER_02:

Do you know if your team members are truly aligned with your company culture? In today's competitive job market, understanding whether a candidate fits your firm's culture is just as important as their skill set. In this episode, we'll dive into how the predictive index culture assessments can transform your hiring process and help you build cohesive, high-performing teams. Welcome back to the Sterling Family Law Show, your go-to resource for family law firm owners who are looking to optimize the operations of their firm and boost profitability. I am your host, Tyler Dolph. I'm also the CEO of our law firm-only marketing agency called RocketClicks that was born out of our own family law firm called Sterling Lawyers that has grown to over 27 attorneys. Today I am joined with the co-founder of our law firm, Sterling Lawyers, Tony Carls. He's also the president of RocketClix, as well as JP Vanderlinen, who heads up our people operations department. Today we're going to explore how the predictive index culture assessment can help you determine if a candidate is a great cultural fit for your firm. We're going to break down the science behind the tool, why you need to use it both in the hiring process as well as your existing team members and teammates, so that you can improve the hiring of new team members as well as the retention of current team members. I really hope you enjoy it. All right, gentlemen, we are back and we are talking about hiring. We are talking about personality tests. We leverage the PI test here at Rocket Cliques and as well as at Sterling Lawyers. But JP, I want to come to you first. Why would an organization even want to use something like this in the first place?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, the the short version here is hiring done wrong costs your company a lot of money. Um it costs a lot of time, a lot of energy, um, which ultimately just detracts from your ability to do great work. Um, and there's nothing worse than like bringing that person on, being so excited for them. You get three, six, nine months in, and you're like, ah, I gotta go do all that over again. And I just lost those two three quarters. So getting ahead of it, being intentional with your process and knowing what to look for is incredibly important for choosing the right team members and building effective teams.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, 100%. I think anyone can be anyone they want for an hour or two during an interview, but the more you can understand and find out who they actually are, the better chances you have to make the right hire. So I mentioned we use PI. Tony, tell us what the heck PI is and what it does.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, it's uh so it's it's a assessment we use in the hiring process that and there's a lot of lot of different ones. So uh before I answer kind of the PI question, you know, uh Disk R3 is one, culture index is one, predictive index is the one we use. Um it's it's really a tool to help uh guide your interviewing and decision-making process because it's gonna predict behaviors of a person, um, and it give it will arm you with really good questions to ask person ask someone in the interview process, as well as give you a sense of is if this is a really detail-oriented job, is this a detail-oriented type of person? If is this something is this a job, is the job I'm posting for, do they need more independence and self-drive because I'm building a new department or building a new team, and like that's this first person I'm hiring needs to look more like that. Um, so it really helps you identify like what their uh particular tendencies might look like. Um, it shouldn't be used as a uh Bible in terms of like if it says this, then X. So this isn't a pass fail, um, but it is a directionally accurate and very informative piece of information as it pertains to making hiring decisions. So when we when we went through and got trained and certified on PI, the uh the way the the way that we uh were taught is it should it should make up about 33% of your decision making. So it should give you a whole bunch of information to um ask questions and dig deeper, uh both in terms of how they work and how they interact with the team. But it should not be 100% of what you do. It shouldn't be 100% of your decision-making process. So if you're using it like that, you're probably using it wrong. Um as it pertains to family law, you know, I'll just talk to the attorney side. Um, there are profiles we look like, we look for. So, you know, one of them that is important is as you're starting a starting a firm or you're starting a new branch or metro area that you're you want to dominate, there's a certain type of attorney that you're gonna want to hire there. They're gonna because they're building, they're they are your first builder. So they're gonna need to be more independent. Um, and they're gonna need to be uh someone that can sell future hires as well as clients into the firm. Um so you know, they're gonna be they're they're they're typically gonna come from the analytical profile section. Um so and analyzers, controllers, uh, strategists are typically what we look for in that role. All three of our branches that we opened, we didn't we we found this out by experience. We didn't know it beforehand. But there's a big difference between the first first person that you hire and everybody else that you hire on the team. Um, and where we saw success is when we put those types of roles in first, it went really, really well. When we when we started with the um kind of the roles that would come after, which are more your stabilizing type roles, so they're gonna work better better with teams. Um they're uh more collaborative, um, and they're gonna they're gonna mother hen the heck out of your clients and love on them like you've never like you've always wanted. So like the altruist is kind of the ideal profile, but there's a whole bunch of profiles um that are in the social styles that are basically they lean to lean to collaboration versus independence, they lean to social ability versus introversion, um, and they're very detail-oriented people that can work with multiple things at a time. So those types of folks are they're wired very differently than the first section, and like building with one of those people, you're gonna struggle in the consultation room at the beginning because you don't have anybody feeding them clients. Those people can get good at at the consultation room, but it it takes more effort because that's not what their strengths are. So there's some uh particular things that we look for as it pertains to how we do recruiting uh specifically for attorneys, and like what type what what are we hiring for? Is this someone that needs to lead and grow and build a team or department or branch, or is this someone that I need to bring in that's gonna love on clients and uh help improve the overall reputation and uh balance of the firm?

SPEAKER_02:

So if I'm listening to this and I'm a firm owner, step one, use a personality test. We're we've tried a lot of them and we prefer the you know the PI test, but uh that doesn't mean that others aren't great too. So explore those. Um JP, talk to us about the logistically, how do we leverage it? Do we wait till the final interview? Do we do it right away? Uh when do we actually use uh our PI tests?

SPEAKER_01:

So we actually use it super early in the process, and it's a twofold, um, a two-fold process. So the first is literally um in the first like days after somebody applies, and we've validated that they um generally kind of pass the sniff test, right? From like a like a resume application standpoint. There's nothing glaring there. Uh after they pass that, like we're gonna get this to them really fast. And there's the first thing is do you do it? Which seems like table stakes, but a number of people, you'll send them the assessment and then they won't do it or they won't do it promptly. We literally require the test to be done within 48 hours. Because if you're serious about working here, that should be zero problem for you. It's a it's a 15-minute test. You can't find 15 minutes in two days. You don't actually want this job. You don't actually want to work with us. So that's thing one. You don't do it or you don't do it promptly.

SPEAKER_03:

And what what's the what's the drop-off rate there, JP? Because it's not, it's not like 5%. It's like, I think it's greater than 50% of people that just they applied for the job, but they don't really want the job clearly because they can't follow directions email.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's a number of things we do in there. Um, we're obviously a remote company, and so that has an impact. We have a video component that we use, but the total cumulative impact of that is greater than 50%. I think on the assessment alone, it's close to 25% of folks who don't even take it. They literally just don't respond. One to four doors are like, eh, work. I don't feel like it. Great. Don't want to work with those folks. There's probably a place they'd be awesome. So that's test one is literally do they do it? Can they follow directions? Um, and then thing two, and I I love that Tony called this out, is that it's not a um, it's not the Bible, it's directional. And so there's a scale of like how closely they match what we need in the job, which should be tailored to where you are in the process. Do you need someone who's like driven, future oriented, building, gonna like play great in blank space, or do you need someone who's like gonna follow process, execute, stay within the lines, highly like cool, tailor to that. How closely do they match that? It's like a 10 out of 10 or like a seven out of 10 are both fine. Like that's enough where it'd be like, all right, you're you're directionally close enough, right? And so, like, as long as you're above like a certain range that for us it's like six or seven, depending on the role, you're gonna move forward in the process. If you're below that, what this is really telling us is not that you're a bad person, is not that you're a bad applicant. It's that this role and what we need out of this role counters your natural tendency. And as a result, it's gonna take a lot of effort for you to be good in this seat. And there's probably a seat that's better for you or a company stage that's better for you. And so thing one is do they pass it uh just from like, do they do the work? Thing two is directionally, is this a role where we're working with their natural tendencies and strengths and they have a good percentage likelihood of being successful in the seat? Um, so that's kind of logistically how we use it. One other component I'll mention, and this kind of gets to the later phases, is as we're doing later stage interviews, um, we tailor the questions and the follow-ups and the pressure we apply based on the answers that we get, because these are tendencies. And so if we see that somebody, because so there's no right or wrong, right? Are you more precise or are you more flexible? Both are fine. But if I know your tendency, I'm gonna pressure into that to find out what's that gonna look like when I actually put you in front of my customers, when I actually put you over a team, when I actually put you under pressure, how are you gonna respond? And I want to find that out in this process because I don't want to get nine months down the line and find out that you crack under pressure. When I could have found out here, ooh, yeah, you're probably not a person who I want to like put on the big project with the with the tight deadline. Like you're not gonna shine there. So that's that's kind of a couple of ways we put it in practice. Two kind of like pass fail portions of like, do they do the work and do they align directionally? And then the third piece of like informing the rest of the process of like what is their behavioral tendency and how can we push into that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I love the point around leveraging it as a filter one. You know, are they gonna are they even gonna take the test? And then having the results so that you can leverage those results in the final interview to really lean in.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. I I would I would also add like the you'll you'll find times when the the match of the person applying and the ideal profile, they're not they're not matched, they're you know four or five, four or five. And the in terms of like you know, match closeness, ten is the highest, one is the lowest. Um the biggest thing that uh uh changes a team member's ability to flex into those different roles is typically experience and maturity. So like the more experienced and mature you are, the more self-aware you are of these things, the more you're gonna be able to, the more you've been uh the experienced in compensating for something that you may not naturally do well, but you know you need to do it, so you do it well. So like part of what we're what we're looking for in those questions is like, okay, here's your natural tendency. Tell me about your tell me about your experience and how you handle these situations, because that's where I can dig in and see like, all right, where's the maturity and experience and self-awareness on the things that are um clearly present here? Because we all have natural tendencies that we come with. We're all wired a little bit differently, uh, but we all also have experience and we all have a will and skills that we uh leverage in our workday. So we can overcome some of our deficiencies, and like part of what we're doing in this process is identifying what those might be and the questioning setting on those in the interview process. So like you know, I'm just trying to hammer home on this is not a this is not a pass or fail. This is a like this is information to use and leverage so that you can identify whether or not someone will be a good, good candidate. And like it's also from a team perspective. So I mentioned before certain roles that we want to start with in a firm. Well, if I come across an attorney in an area that I'm trying to grow uh grow, but they're not super experienced yet, but they're gonna be a killer in terms of getting new clients, but they're not the leader. Okay, great. And then I have a more experienced, you know, person that's gonna motherhand the heck out of our clients and make them feel all good. Great, that's the leader, because that that individual, she is gonna be more prone to lead the team well and put this, you know, young, hungry um uh person that's gonna chase chase deals and sales and bring revenue to the firm in the right position to succeed. And like, so it doesn't have to be like, oh, Tony said this on new hires. No, like it's it's about ideal. So like you need these different components for the for the team. How do you put them in a position to be successful is really important. So, like, if you're starting a new branch, you're gonna want someone that looks like that. They might not be your leader, though. You might have somebody else who's more experienced and been in the field a really long time, but they don't maybe they don't like sales, maybe they maybe they really don't like the pitching and all of those things. Fantastic. How do you pair these people together so that you can grow your firm?

SPEAKER_02:

Do you want to grow your law firm, but you can't predict next month's revenue? Do you hire an attorney without knowing if you can actually afford it? I hear you. We have a planning system that forces us to focus. It's built on these three key principles. We are teaching this entire framework in a free 45-minute webinar called the 2026 Annual Planning Live. Let's make next year the one that actually changes everything. Yeah, I think you said some really great things there. And just as a reminder, like, this is not an IQ test, right? I used to joke people would be like, oh, what profile are you? And I was like, the best one. You know, but there's not, there's not a best one. There's not a winner or loser here. It is all about understanding the unique qualities of these individuals and then placing them in situations for them to be successful.

SPEAKER_01:

There is one caveat I will add to that, Tyler. Uh, one thing I really like that predictive index offers, and and some of them do, again, we're not affiliated, we're not sponsored, there's no, you know, no Lincoln bio for this. But like uh one element of predictive index I do like is they have a they have a function to it called the cognitive test. And contrary to what you might believe, it's not an IQ test. It is a test of speed to learn new concepts. And again, go back to our first point that Tony made. You need to pick the right person for the stage of the role, not just the role itself. Certain roles have a lot of change. And you need someone in that seat whose ability to consume new information quickly and then like put it back out is very high. And there's some cases where it's like, no, we've got this all documented, we've got this all processed, we know how to execute. I don't really need this person to be able to like learn a bunch of new stuff. We're gonna be fine. And so, like, again, tailoring not just behavioral tendencies, but also like learning style tendencies of like, is this person gonna be like learns things quick, or is this person like, nah, they're gonna need a few reps, they're gonna need some time, and like just putting him in a position to win and set your team up for success. So there is that component to it, but like it's not an IQ test, don't use it the wrong way.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and it's a really good, it's a really good predictor of ramp time. Like, how long is it gonna take this person to ramp and be uh a contributing person? So, like that very much has a lot to do with like where where are you from a business perspective in in the journey of growth? Because if you're if you have the ability to mentor to mentor someone up, you're gonna have the advantage of bringing someone in that's gonna be cheaper and you're gonna grow them up into what you need, but they need time to to do that. So if you have the time, take advantage of that. If you don't have the time, you're you're likely you need to hire someone that's a little more expensive, that's gonna ramp a lot faster, that's gonna build for you, create the SOPs and like do all the things that you need them to do. So you can then pair somebody that's more junior with them as you're as your revenue grows and your overall business enterprise increases in value. So it's really important to like under think critically about how to leverage these tools because they're super powerful uh if you're using them well.

SPEAKER_02:

Tony, we talk about all these different qualities and traits. I want you to really uh speak to the family law owner here. How can they leverage this to build strong teams uh within a law firm, whether that law firm is opening a new office or simply just trying to enhance the the quarantine they have?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Um so uh I guess one way I'd one way I'd think about it is if if there is a if you have 12 people on your on your team and there are uh there's a uh a more uh highly segmented portion of that group that is the majority, that's gonna create that's gonna create behaviors out of that group that are gonna kind of stir the culture. So like your ability to see those and mix those together is gonna give you a really good opportunity to build a strong team because, like I mentioned, so like the altruist, for instance, they are uh very conscious of what they need to do for their their clients, they love their clients a ton. Um, so like what that does inside a business is everything that's an issue becomes a huge issue. So, what does your neat leader need to look like? What do the conversations need to look like that you're consistently having so that mount mohills don't become mountains and we're managing these things well? Um, so there's a lot of things that will patterns that will show up, and you'll be able to see these as your team leverages this, and you'll be able to predict like what do I need to do? Where do I need to spend time? Where do I need to communicate clearly over and over and over and over and over again, just because this is how my team is pre-pre disposed and predispositioned, and that like it's not a bad thing, it's just it is it is a thing, and like how do we how do we leverage it? So there's a lot of team team building and uh uh like resources for managers to diagnose how to think about these different things in the tool based on each individual person's specific profile, but then you can also aggregate it together and see like what is the overall pattern of my team, and now I know what I can do from a communication and training perspective.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, to dot the eye on that. The first thing you should do, whichever tool you choose, is you should baseline your team. Like, don't start with this on new hires. Start with this on your existing team to understand what my high performers look like, what do my stable people look like, what does my team structure look like? What am I missing on my team? Like I got a big gap over here. I don't even have this represented. What am I overrepresented on? Um, so baselining is really helpful because then when you try to design your profile for your different roles and you go out in the market, you have a sense of like, what do I need? What am I missing? What do I want more of? Um so I would start there, start internally, get a baseline, also inform your managers. That's a great point, Tony. Like, make sure your team leaders are armed with this information so that they can get the best performance out of your team. This is who you're working with, this is their natural tendency. Here, how here's how you get the best version of them going forward. Gives them great arming. And then you go out into the market and say, okay, now that I've done that, I'm prepared to talk to new potential applicants.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I seem to remember we went through an exercise of like uh whiteboarding. Okay, who are our strongest employees and for what reasons? And, you know, okay, we want more of this type for this reason, and and our team is building in this way. So we want to make sure we have this element involved. So I think JP, that point is so valid that you have to go through the exercise of who do we have on our team currently? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are we trying to build towards? And how do those personal personality profiles uh integrate into who we want next? JP mentioned this at the beginning, right? Hiring is already expensive, but hiring the wrong person is so much more expensive and takes so much time, right? So, how can we help our audience really understand the cost-benefit analysis of leveraging a tool like this?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So, what you should look for as a result of this is um quality of throughput and you should measure it on a timeline, meaning you should measure within the hiring process, as a result of this tool, are you seeing more candidates proceed through deeper into the process? The screening, all the screening you do up front, this is, you know, Tony mentioned this is one piece. All the screening you do up front is designed to increase the likelihood that the person who makes it to the next interview makes it all the way to the end. It's it's predictive, hence predictive index, is predictive of the success of this person. And so if it's done right, implemented early, it means you know, one to one to one in your next three steps in the process, which saves everybody time because we're not having high drop-off rates.

SPEAKER_00:

And so literally, everyone, all your hiring managers, your uh your people op staff, everybody who's doing that should have their time saved. So that's an immediate cost savings from implementing it. The second thing is post-hire, do you see retention of those hires downstream six months, twelve months, eighteen, twenty-fourth? Are you saying that we're not having that 12-month moment you shouldn't drop this person on is in the evaluation process? Like that should drop off because you're saying we're taking the right person for the right thing and the right thing. You don't just lose the cost of hiring that turnover and the salary you pay them, you also lose the time, which often has been more important because you just cost yourself 12 months of development or 24 months, or whatever it is, because you pick one person for all that time and energy, and now you've got to like redo it if you can't get it back. Love it.

SPEAKER_02:

Tony, as we close out here, give us some real life uh just data points or examples. How have the the use of leveraging you know PI uh enhanced our retention at the law firm?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh I think it has a lot to do with our pairing pairing of who's leading and and the the team at large, as well as how we pair attorneys with paralegals. So it it it improves the overall quality of the the whole organization from a culture perspective, because we're um we're intentionally trying to match people um that have uh complementary skills. So, like where this works really well is if you have a a high driving sales-oriented who may not be as detail-oriented attorney that's bringing a lot of business to the firm, what do we think the paralegal for that attorney should look like? They're probably not a high driving, you know, person that is trying to get sales for the firm that's not detail-oriented. They're likely a very team team-oriented individual that wants to serve and grow a team. They're someone that uh values relationships and they're super super detail-oriented, and they probably have an ability to multitask. Like that's what that person looks like. So now like you've created this amazing uh team of two people that are now going to perform really, really well in your org because their skills complement each other. Where the attorney might be weak from uh some of their perspectives, the paralegal can pick that up, and the paralegal, vice versa, uh can help support the attorney and uh grow what they need to grow, like growing the way that they need to grow.

SPEAKER_02:

100%. Love it. Uh all right, I want to summarize this for our audience. One, pick a tool. Two, use that tool on your current team to understand the dynamic of your current team and who you want and who you need. Then use it in the hiring process as a lens for what uh type of candidate you want and need for that team, and then build your teams around these profiles so that they can work cohesively together. Did I capture that? Whole podcast in one sentence. There you go. Crush. Love it. Gentlemen, appreciate the time as always. Looking forward to seeing you again soon. If you found this episode exciting, wait until our next one. You are gonna love our episode on resume screening. We will cover how to sift through all the resumes that you get officially and identify top candidates before you even begin the interview process. Make sure to check it out right here.

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