1. You are HR director for a growing law firm in Flagstaff, Arizona, which currently has need of writing sixty legal briefs every hour. Each of your company’s attorneys can write on average six briefs per hour. You are considering hiring six paralegals to shoulder the load; each paralegal is slower than the attorneys and can write on average only two briefs per hour. You scan the current wages in the Flagstaff area + notice that the lawyers in your company earn the local occupational median wage of $51.54 per hour, but that the prospective six paralegals will likely want to get paid their local occupational median wage of $23.12 per hour.
a. Would your company save money in the writing of the sixty legal briefs by hiring the six paralegals and firing some attorneys?
b. The local Law Firm Guild has observed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of paralegals over the next decade will rise considerably faster than the employment of lawyers, which it assumes will push paralegal wages down to $21.50 due to their high supply. Further, your analysis of the larger pool of paralegals suggests some increase of their productivity, and that paralegals will soon be able to write on average three briefs per hour. If the other values remain the same (attorney wage and writing speed, need for sixty briefs per hour), would the company save money in the writing of the sixty legal briefs by hiring six paralegals and firing some attorneys?

2. You work for a company that is being accused of monopoly behavior, given its large size. Comparisons are made to the industry standard, where each establishment has on average about 16.3 employees. Your company is bigger than that, but you want to provide evidence against the monopoly charges.
a. You’ve collected data at different times in your company’s history, when you had different amounts of capital.
In 2010, SRATC = 29Q2 – 1,600Q + 62,000
In 2014, SRATC = 21Q2 – 2,200Q + 100,000
In 2018, SRATC = 25Q2 – 2,100Q + 75,000
Plot these three different SRATC curves (have Q go from 0 to 100 in units of 5; make the maximum on the vertical axis be 100,000), and discuss how (and possibly why) your company has changed since 2010 in terms of its size.
b. Make another column labeled “LRATC” that includes three points: 2010’s SRATC when Q = 5; 2018’s SRATC when Q = 40, and 2014’s SRATC when Q = 95. Plot these three points on your graph (be sure to show, don’t hide, the dots) and add a 2nd-degree polynomial trendline to represent your company’s LRATC.
c. In a more competitive industry with smaller firms, typical LRATC curves follow LRATC = 18Q2 – 165Q + 37,500. Using all available information in this question, present an argument that could be used to justify your company’s size.

1. You are HR director for a growing law firm in Flagstaff, Arizona...