Law Practice Management Blog

If you want to get paid for your consulting time (which you should), it’s easier than ever to capture that value.

But, like all good things, every workflow must come to an end. If it doesn’t, you’ve got a problem: you have a loose end.

There are ways to measure the performance of your staff, and those effectively break down across three categories: (1) Efficiency; (2) Proficiency; (3) Profitability.

If you belong to one of the few law firms that raises their rates annually – Kudos to you! 

Lots of law firms are on the hunt for ‘perfect’ software.  But that doesn’t really exist with off-the shelf-software.  There’s always going to be something you don’t like.

Every lawyer I’ve spoken to in the last year plus has been talking about ChatGPT, which has sort of captured the societal zeitgeist.  And whenever the concepts of machine learning or artificial intelligence are brought up – they’re two very different things, actually – attorneys always start asking: Is this new tech going to take my job?

Law firms have traditionally been built on the back of referral marketing.  You know, lawyers going to events, meeting other attorneys and business owners, and thus generating inbound leads to their firms.  That’s pretty much how it’s always been.  And that focus exists for a number of reasons.

There’s actually lots of different tactics you can use to eliminate unnecessary meetings, reduce the time spent in meetings you need to have and/or better organize those necessary meetings.

If you’re looking to reduce your budget, your office footprint should be in your sights.  Especially as a small law firm owner, the office is overrated.

Law firms are now looking to hire employees who work solely on intake.  This could be an ‘intake specialist’, or an ‘intake manager’, or an ‘intake coordinator’.  Whatever you call this person, the job is to focus entirely on managing intake.

Everybody wants more clients.  It’s a good problem to have.  And it invites additional opportunities – to become more efficient so you can accommodate even more work, or hire some great people.  And there are a couple of super basic numbers you can look at to determine what your current success rate is with respect to adding clients – including whether you can improve it.

One of the things that came out of the pandemic was that it was clear that law firms needed to think more granularly about their intake processes.  The convenience economy was accelerated by the pandemic, which means that any business intake process must now be tight as a drum.

So, if you focus on a specific practice area by leaning into a niche, that’s a great way to add efficiency because you’re gonna get particularly good at that particular thing.

There’s been lots of talk about law firm efficiency of late.  And so, some folks address the value of workflows.  And others talk about how important it is to generate metrics around efficiency.  And then there’s the pressure coming from clients fed up with the inefficiencies inherent in traditional law practice and law firm billing.  So it makes sense that every law firm out there is looking to work faster, and smarter.

And the way to make sure that the right people get the right message is to create specific, segmented lists of your contacts. 

My dad, like all dads, had some choice phrases to impart.  One was that I shouldn’t step over a dime to pick up a penny.  (Not sure why I would do that, but . . .)  And that you have to spend money to make money.  It’s actually pretty sage business advice – especially for budget-conscious lawyers.

You see it all the time, but if you get too buddy-buddy with your employee and you try to act like somebody’s friend, the next thing you know, your work “friend” is taking three-hour lunches, or bagging at 3 p.m., without any kind of notice.  This kind of thing is particularly fraught in a remote work environment.

Every time you get an email message, your phone dings.  Every time you get a text, it buzzes.  And every time a new lead comes into your business, you get pinged in 17 different places.

There are a number of different factors related to the types of client work you want.  So, when you talk to your referral sources, you’ll need to keep reminding them of the type of work you want, and whether and how that ask changes over time.

Law firm accounts receivable can be gnarly – sometimes extending into the six figures. Now, there are a couple of responses to that.  The preferred option is to eliminate accounts receivable altogether, which can be done using epayment options and potentially evergreen retainers combined with stop work orders.