Law Practice Management Blog

If you’ve got 20 years’ experience, and have run your own firm for the last 10, you likely don’t know any attorneys with 3 years’ experience, or a newly-minted paralegal, or a recent college graduate who could become an administrative assistant at your firm. But you know who might know those sorts of people?  Your existing staff.

There’s just a lot more that you can manage with a job posting on social media than almost anywhere else.

Why would I ever use any legal software if it’s not as good as the alternatives?  Don’t I want to be using the best software?

The most obvious option for designing a website is doing it yourself (DIY). But let’s be real – even if you’re the best website designer in the world, you still don’t want to do it.

It can be really valuable for business owners, including lawyers, to get booked as guests on podcasts.  Not only are podcasts really popular, but it’s a great way to display your expertise as an attorney – which is all that clients and referral sources want to know about anyway.

It’s easy to say that law firms all act alike and look alike, but it’s difficult to really bring home that point, lacking a graphical interpretation. 

Have you ever had to write a client’s name over and over again – so many times that you mess it up? They really hate that. How about adding the last of five children to an estate plan?  Now, was her middle name Elise of Eliza?

Generally speaking, there are three types of reviews you’ll get online: great, middling and poor. You can (and perhaps should) respond to every last one, but each one requires a different level of tact.

Because lawyers try to do everything, and do everything perfectly, they’re also more prone than the general population to take on more work than they need to.  For example, they’re unwilling to delegate, including to paralegal and administrative staff, but also to other attorneys.

There is a significant subset of attorneys who still dictate communications.  Some lawyers will dictate to staff people while others use standalone technology, like Dragon Naturally Speaking, to manage the trick. But you don’t really need any substitute technology to dictate any longer. 

Some lawyers get burned hiring staff–whether it’s legal assistants, paralegals or other attorneys.  But just because you miss out once in trying to hire somebody, that doesn’t mean you should give up forever. 

You can ask ChatGPT to draft you a 250-word blog post on a specific topic.  And you can then tweak it (via additional prompts) as you see fit.  Even if what ChatGPT produces is not the final version, that’s okay – because if it gets you 90% of the way to the finish, you can polish it from there. 

The truth of the matter though is that if you’re not managing your data, it’s managing you.

One of the advantages of buying new domain extensions is getting access to basic domain names that have long been unavailable under the traditional .com formation.  Like you could have bought personalinjury.esq if you were quick on the trigger. 

Lawyers need to present as experts to potential clients and referral sources, and there are a number of things you can talk about, in terms of your expertise – but, not an infinite number of things. 

Buying commercial property for your law firm, where you can also rent space to others, is not just an additional revenue stream – it can be a cash cow.

You can also easily share files and folders, as well as invoices, contracts and notifications via the “client portals” that are now built into most case management and customer relationship management software.

So the client creates a password and views the data in its secure format.  Now the client may download or save the file or document, but then it’s on them to secure it.  This method is safer/more secure than sending sensitive data via email where that information can pass through a number of unencrypted servers before reaching its final destination.

If you haven’t revisited your intake program in a while, it may make sense to take a fresh look at your client journey to see whether and how you can improve that program – and generate additional revenue for your law firms.

If you’re looking for help in your law firm and struggling to find it, maybe it’s time to go back to school.  Reach out to the career development offices at your local colleges, universities and law schools + see if there’s a fit for your firm.