Law Practice Management Blog

If you don’t use, or haven’t optimized for, web directories, you’re missing out on a fantastic way to build your online brand.

Since cloud software is accessed by a web browser, rather than through a premise-based desktop program, that means that you can access the same software, with the same information, anywhere you have a secure internet connection. 

Law firms put themselves through some interesting gymnastics in order to reconcile trust accounting, well or poorly – mostly poorly. 

For consumers who are used to paying low monthly rates for high-value services (think Disney+ or Netflix), paying lots of money per hour for a lawyer, with no discernable end point — so, no notion of the total cost of engagement — seems like a pretty risky proposition.  It’s the rare consumer who will confidently enter such an open-ended arrangement these days.

By now, the vast majority of law firms want to run paperless offices; the problem is often figuring out the logistics — especially for law firms with decades of history (and files) behind them.  The most daunting question is often how to get started.

Legal consumer habits are shifting under the feet of attorneys, and law firms, rooted in tradition, are feeling the pressure to reduce prices and overhead while increasing service. 

Workflows are simply aggregations of tasks, strung together.  What workflow tools allow you to do is to create groups of tasks at the same time, rather than task-by-task. 

Law firms should not be thinking of a work from home policy as a band aid for the current times; distributed workforces are likely the future of work, such that law firms should be looking to build and manage remote work teams for the long haul.

With unprecedented economic pressure in place, the vast majority of law firms will start to virtualize, which carries with it reduced office space requirements, reduced staffing needs and more flexible technology. 

It’s time to finally rely on technology to manage your law firm.  Managing a remote staff is about creating task-based, time-sensitive workflows in order to keep an eye on each employee’s progress on each case, without being in their physical space to do so. 

The coronavirus pandemic has shaken the global health and economic infrastructure.  The legal field is still reeling; and, law firms are continuing to adjust to a new world.  For modern law firms to succeed, it’s clear that providing virtual services is now a requirement; it’s no longer optional.  But, taking the ‘e’ out of things like epyaments and esignature, and normalizing those items as ‘just’ payments or signatures is going to take a significant mindset change for the vast majority of lawyers.

Modern legal consumers may want to know about the technology a law firm uses, as well as the data security principles to which it adheres.  Modern legal consumers expect that type of transparency from data and software companies; and, as law firms become more technically viable moving forward, there are going to be more similarities than differences between those two (seemingly wholly different) business models.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to persist in some form or another, law firms should continue to scrutinize their expenses to see whether and where they can reduce their overhead. 

A number of esignature options exist.  If you utilize a law practice management software, it may already be included, or available for integration.  If you’d prefer or require a standalone solution, DocuSign, RightSignature and AdobeSign are popular options.

Everything you did in-person before, you now need to be able to do virtually as well.  Since law firms have thrived on traditional business models, built on handshakes and in-person meetings, that can be a difficult conversion; but, it’s not impossible.

One current trend is the increasing exposure of paid advertising on the sought-after first page of Google search results.  Looking at a first page result now versus those same results, even as compared to a few years ago, yields a significant difference.  There are more paid advertising results (generally PPC) at the top of the page than ever before, and the prominence of those ads has been amplified. 

Traditionally, law firms had no way to reach, or capture revenue, from DIY clients. With legal products, however, law firms can appeal to both DIY-focused and cost-sensitive legal consumers.

To cut through the noise, check out the ‘Legal Information Buyer’s Guide & Reference Manual’, which is updated annually, to get am organized, unbiased collection of legal research tool features and costs. 

I often tell attorneys that, if you can think of a workflow you need covered, there’s a technology tool out there for the job. 

In a very real sense, law firm phone systems are really money machines.  Getting a lead to the right person, transferring calls appropriately, accessing a message in a timely fashion, utilizing a system in which leads most often reach humans, even if those humans are part of a contracted virtual receptionist service . . . any or all of those attributes of a feature set and their application can increase your chances of converting a lead by degrees.