Law Practice Management Blog

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.

Even if you’re not technically misinterpreting the law, because you’re updating for statutory and case law changes, you may not be implementing best practices in document drafting at all times if your editing process only comes around every decade or half-decade, potentially via one of the forcing functions described above.

When lawyers get excited about content marketing prospects, they get really keyed up to add social channels.  And that’s a great idea because it’s true that the more social channels you have, the better – since the more places your profile and content exists, the broader your reach becomes.

That being said, you don’t need to add social channels for the sake of adding social channels.

Law firms don’t often have partnership agreements.  Especially small firms. Which is kind of shocking, right?

The cool thing about working in 2024 is that everybody has more flexibility than ever before — especially about where they want to work.  That’s awesome and as it always should have been. 

It’s 2024 and everybody is still kind of bad with passwords.  Many passwords, in fact, still contain the word . . . password!  That can’t be good.

Does your paralegal need access to your financial data?  Must your bookkeeper have full access to your case files?  For screening purposes, should certain lawyers be barred from viewing certain case files?

If you want to drive revenue within your law firm, it makes sense to look at bonusing attorneys and staff in ways that will incentivize your employees to generate or close more cases for the firm, which will lead to additional revenue.

Speed of response and engagement is essential for starting legal consumers on the client journey.  If you don’t get to your leads quickly, you won’t have a chance to close them. 

Estate planning attorneys can refer cases if one takes taxable estate work and the other does not.  Personal injury attorneys can refer cases to each other if one doesn’t litigate.