Congratulations, you’ve made the move! You’re no longer just an attorney, you’ve made the exciting decision to hang out a shingle and start your own firm. All too often great attorneys make this move and they fail. Very rarely do they fail because of their ability to practice law, but instead they simply don’t have the infrastructure in place to manage a firm, or even know what that infrastructure includes.

Our line of business depends on lawyers building successful practices. If they don’t we don’t have anyone to sell our practice management solutions to. So we hope that you’ll take our advice seriously, because we’ve seen firms who ignore this advice come and go.

Here are three things every new law firm must have in place if they intend upon being successful.

1. Practice Management– When you are managing your own firm, your duties go far beyond just simply practicing law. It’s your responsibility to make sure that the business runs as it should. The right law practice management software can make this new part of your job much easier. Your new firm can fire on all cylinders when you utilize calendars that make your meeting billable to reduce leakage and dashboards to ensure that all areas of your firm’s business are operating at full efficiency
2. Legal Billing & Time Management– A major problem for firms when they first start out is limited resources to carry out administrative tasks. I can’t even count how many times attorneys have told me that forgotten time and expenses have lost their firm money. Now it isn’t ideal for any firm to lose money based on simply forgetting to record and even bill clients for their time and various expenses, but it can be particularly costly for a young firm looking to get their footing. It is imperative that new firms implement systems to easily capture time and expenses, and later bill their clients.
3. Legal Accounting Solutions– Every lawyer worth their salt knows that legal accounting is it’s own animal. It is far more complicated than general business accounting, and there are extremely strict regulations and penalties associated with it. You could be hard pressed to find an accountant with expertise in legal accounting, and general business accounting software won’t get you far. In order to avoid harsh penalties your firm must remain compliant, and the best way to do that is to implement a legal specific accounting solution. Trying to get around this is dangerous and could end up with your firm being disbarred, and that’s not the way to grow a new practice.

If you’re starting a new firm we want to wish you the best of luck, but we also want to make sure you have these three things in place. CosmoLex has all three of these important pieces of your firm in one place and we are happy to extend a 30 Day free trial if you would like us to help you get started.

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