Law Practice Management Blog

Every time you complete a business-facing page — your website, a social media profile, a review platform page — you’re always asked to provide an opening and closing time for your office. Don’t.

Because clients choose lawyers based not only on their general expertise, but also based on their specific expertise in particular niche practice areas, they want to know more about the legal process that effects their claim.

So, if your law firm is really bad about keeping in touch with clients and referrals sources, why not pretend like you just started your law firm?  Reannounce yourself to the world, then use that as the launching pad for a consistent marketing program.

If you haven’t fully adopted cloud software, you’re likely storing your documents and email on a server.  But, there are a lot of associated costs for maintaining physical servers, like: the space they require, their need to be cooled, the electricity they suck up, the requirement to manage your own data backup and the frequent replacement cost.

Not every goal is going to represent a total transformation of your business — but, you should have at least one that does represent that.

All lawyers have marketed their law firms in the same fashion since time in memoriam.  The idea was always to build a personal referral base via business networking, and that the rest would take care of itself.  Even as the world around law firms has changed over time, that one constant has not changed.  But now, if a new report is to be believed, other modes of client acquisition may be outstripping this tried and true option.

The majority of business owners have a very difficult time price setting.  However, much of that effort (meant to define the value for what a professional does) is most often undone by those same professionals.  This is especially true of lawyers, who don’t like to talk with clients about money, and are more than willing to discount their services at the slightest provocation.

Efficient law firms return the most revenue by a wide margin.  Yet, much of what law firms do cuts against efficiency.

All I’m saying is: ignore logo design/creation/recreation at your own peril. In a hypercompetitive environment for small law firms, you need to show distinct differences between your firm and your competitor firms, to draw and convert client interest.

Because any law firm could be struck by disaster, every law firm should develop and maintain a disaster recovery program.  And, the primary component of any disaster recovery program in a cloud-based world is an effective data backup program.

89% of lawyers surveyed believed that their law firms followed up with potential clients within 24 hours; 62% of law firms actually never follow up with leads at all.

If you’re not familiar with utilization rate, it represents the amount of total hours you could bill in a day versus what you actually bill.  For example, if you set aside 8 hours to work on any given day, billing for all 8 hours would represent a 100% utilization rate.

Because lawyers manage law firms, change within those law firms happens at a glacial pace.  Yet, while law firms cling to the status quo, upstarts in other industries redefine life and culture.  Not that law firm managers need to be out to change the world, writ large.  They just need to change their own worlds, just a little bit.

Password management is no sweat these days — with tools like LastPass, a master password unlocks all doors.  Not only will such a service obviate the need for memorizing any passwords, it will also automatically creates secure passwords for you.  No fuss, no muss.

Every lawyer I’ve ever met wants to do everything on his own.  In other words, every lawyer secretly desires to be a solo attorney.  Of course, there comes a time when your business grows to the point that you need some real help; and, since you can’t clone yourself, it’s necessary to hire.

If you can collect more, more quickly, and can also automate payments via electronic payment processing systems, it will reduce or eliminate your accounts receivable — and, backlogged accounts receivable are a long-standing problem for law firms.

The law firms that become early adopters of new and improved technology should be able to add further efficiencies, in order to create a significant competitive advantage as against law firms that linger in older technology stacks.

So, if you’re operating without a succession plan, or a wind-down program, for your law firm, you’re potentially driving your grieving family members into years of taxing and fatiguing work.  No law firm closure I have ever seen that has been managed by family members of the lawyers has been easy, or gone well.

Have ever had trouble finding information in your law firm?  Probably, right?  Because looking for something is like the lawyer default mode.  The vast majority of law firms I consult with have their client information all over the place.

How tech competent are you and your law firm? Do you reach the reasonable level of competency that the comment requires? If not, it’s time to get up to speed.