Law Practice Management Blog

The most difficult hurdle to law firm growth is staffing up.  Managing people is definitely tough; but so is hiring the right people in the first place.  The good news is that hiring well can be a learned skill, too, just like becoming a good manager.

Technology overhead can make or break a law firm.  Too many unnecessary costs, and you begin to teeter over.  Too little overhead, however, and you’re likely inefficient.  Finding the right mix of technology is not an easy thing to do, and Googling gives you tons of options, but not necessarily experienced guidance.

Last time, in this space, we addressed the fact that attorneys can exercise ‘the nuclear option’ on any case referral, at any time: they can keep it for themselves. That’s why it’s so valuable to also network for referrals from non-attorney professionals, who have to find a lawyer to deliver referrals to.

Lawyers tend to congregate together. This is as much a fact of lawyer life, as it is a fact of professional life. Once you’re embedded in a career, you start to develop friends who do the same work that you do, and you generally prefer quality hang with colleagues, since you speak the same language.

You’ve heard the phrase often from busy lawyers, law firm owners particularly: ‘If only I could clone myself’. It’s wishful thinking; but, it gets to the heart of the one barrier to law firm expansion that you can’t fake: In order to grow your business, to scale it . . . you have to hire.

A decade ago, lawyers had just one option for office space: a traditional lease.  That’s a costly option, of course, and can be a barrier to entry, especially for young lawyers, looking to start new law firms. 

Google Voice allows you to ‘mask’ your personal phone number, while still receiving calls at your personal phone.  It’s free; and, it takes less than a minute to set up. 

Attorneys seeking inspiration or advice on reconfiguring or revising their business practices often seek out colleagues or friends for advice.  Most attorneys maintain other attorneys as colleagues and friends.  So, when they’re seeking business advice, they’re getting it from other attorneys. There are a couple of problems with relying on that strategy, however. 

Fortunately, for law firms owners, there are more staffing options now, than you can shake a stick, even if you’re not ready to make the move to hiring an employee.

Review some law firm logos and you’ll probably find similar characteristics: prominent use of gavels and/or columns; the logo design will likely be based on the first letters of the last names of the name partners; and, the color scheme will probably be blue/white or gray.  What I’m trying to say is that pretty much every law firm logo is the same.

A modern law firm should base its software program on three primary tools: productivity software (email + calendar, document storage), law practice management or case management software (a relational database to organize everything in one place) and an accounting program.

Lawyers who know their overhead are empowered because they have a baseline idea of what they need to make to keep the lights on, and what they need to make over and above that to earn a comfortable living.

Lawyers are funny in that they sometimes treat cloud technology vendors like visitors from another planet, featuring a mixture of awe and fear. 

Law firms cite to a lot of things, like cases.  But, when it comes to modernizing business management tactics, law firms cite traditional barriers, like cost and effort. 

There’s a prevailing argument in legal tech circles over whether lawyers should be coders.  This argument is often misconstrued to mean that lawyers should be developing their own software.  And, that’s an entirely different thing.

When thinking about how to market a law firm effectively, the question of frequency is important, especially as it relates to content marketing: get as much of your stuff out there into the world, as often as you can, and people are bound to pay attention to you.

For my money, unless you have actually been a real-life, honest-to-goodness website designer at some point in your career, and if you’re a lawyer, it’s never a good idea to design and maintain your own website.

Many lawyers view client communications as bothersome–an interruption from the important work of lawyering.  Of course, that work is being done for clients; so, it’s important that they know what’s going on, right?  But, this isn’t just a one way street.  In fact, lawyers derive lots of benefits from staying in touch with their clients.  So, let’s address three of those . . .

This is the year you turn your law firm into a high performance machine.  You’re currently driving a Chevrolet Chevette; by the end of next year, I want you to be rolling up in a Ford Mustang. 

Lawyers have always billed clients the same way: by the hour.  (Yawn.) While that option is good for law firms (hello: uncapped billings), clients often chafe at the model, because $— x however many hours the lawyer decides to work is a little bit more of an investment than, say, a Netflix subscription. But, there’s a reason why subscription services like Netflix flourish: it’s because of the low level of investment, and the high value of return.