Law Practice Management Blog

So, let’s do a quick crash course on what millennial (and younger) employees want out of an associate position.

Utilizing these features from a single interface not only means that you’re more efficient, it also means that you’re paying less because you don’t need to buy alternative products to substitute for what you’re already paying for. 

So, if you’re not sure about what to do with initial consultations, and you’re afraid that you might be wasting your time, consider what you ultimately want out of those conversations. Then create your system around your end goals.

The stats on law firm intake are pretty damning.  64% of voicemails left for law firms by leads are never returned.  Only 1 in 3 phone calls for law firms are picked up live.  It takes an average of 8 emails to schedule an appointment with a law firm.  Those aren’t the sort of numbers you want to see in an economy driven by consumer convenience.

As is clear by now, more efficient law firms make more money than inefficient ones.  The more work you can get through, the more money you make.  Of course, efficiency does not build up out of thin air; you need to work for it. And, the best step to take, in terms of building law firm efficiency is to map out everything you do. 

The good news is that it’s not going to cost you anything, and will take less than 5 minutes to set up.

With most law firms shifting to cloud-based tools, you can effectively integrate multiple calendars — even linking your personal and professional calendars, if you’d like, including with appropriate color coding for different events.

And, this isn’t about Google or Microsoft or Amazon’s server architecture going down in flames — if that happens, we’ve all got real problems — it’s more about creating an alternate pathway to your data.  What if you need a particular file when your document servers are offline for maintenance?  What if there’s an extended power outage, and you can’t get to your files on the web?

If you want the best people to work for your law firm, take advantage of the current opportunity to intentionally craft the distributed workforce you want.

A lot of those networking opportunities have moved online, and lawyers can now take advantage of broader marketing options via the web. 

In order to give yourself another bite at the apple for leads who don’t convert the first time, you need to be able to develop a remarketing strategy. 

More than 60% of law firm do not return voicemails. It takes an average of 8 emails to schedule an appointment with an attorney.

Email drives business; yet, it also drives most of us crazy. If this is the year you want to take control of your email, here are some steps you can take.

If you’re a ‘Super Lawyer’, a legal consumer understands that that’s probably better than hiring an average lawyer; but, that doesn’t tell the legal consumer anything at all about whether you can handle their case.

One place lawyers don’t put enough emphasis, in terms of content development, is in the design of website practice area pages.  Many lawyers draft super generic content.  But, realize that potential clients are coming to you because they want your expertise, and because they want to learn more about the legal process. 

Law firms still tend to make most decisions about practice management on an ad hoc basis: What does your gut tell you to do?  But, those attorneys who employ data-driven decision making can gain a tremendous competitive advantage. 

The fact is, even without the emergence of the coronavirus, the convenience economy was coming in hot anyway.  In the convenience economy, a lack of information is just one more reason to find another service provider.

If your accounts receivable are so high, it makes you sick, or if you won’t even look at them because you’re afraid to see the numbers, that probably means you aren’t billing with any kind of frequency. 

Are your services ‘convenient’ for legal consumers to use?  Most attorneys can’t answer that question in the affirmative.  And, if your law firm is one of those, you should not be asking yourself how you can improve over what another attorney in town is doing, but how you can more closely align to what Amazon is doing.

And, while most attorneys think that raising rates is a dangerous step, there are ways to manage it, without alienating new or existing clients.