Modern Tips for Running a Successful Law Practice

Running a law firm

For many lawyers, the sometimes vexing side of running a law office is not the legal work for clients—it’s running a business. And as the past couple of years have seen a sharp swerve toward more remote working, modern tools and tech have become even more essential for success.

Below, as part of a special project in collaboration with Nish Parekh and Neovision Consulting, we break down a few essential tips for running a successful, modern law practice.

Sales and Marketing

When it comes to virtual marketing, the same rules apply as if you were in person. For example, you can still network online. According to your practice area, related businesses may be good places to look to—just make sure you have a viable website.

Keep track of where your good (and bad) business is coming from. Use customer relationship management (CRM) tools in your practice management system to do so.

Likewise, use metrics to track which marketing activities are bringing in leads. When you take the time to develop marketing messages, don’t forget to include a call to action, such as providing contact information. Or you may wish to outsource your marketing instead.

Conduct Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys with clients after completing a matter, and source satisfied clients for referrals and reviews. Consider including the latter on your website.

IT Management

Do yourself a favor and breathe some flexibility into your (and your team’s) work schedules—by going serverless and embracing the cloud. Just be sure to vet outside vendors who host or back up your data.

Hand-in-hand with remote work schedules comes updating work policies, particularly around technology. Keep your staff—and yourself—up-to-date on current best practices for cybersecurity through online classes and assessments. Run disaster recovery drills with any data stored on site.

Accounting and finance

Improve accuracy and streamline your firm’s accounting by leveraging your practice management system where you can. For instance, importing bank feeds can help track credit card activity and improve monthly reconciliation.

Find a tech-savvy bank to work with and a legal-specific credit card merchant so that you can accept online payments without having to worry about trust accounting violations. Today’s clients expect the speed and convenience of online payment options.

If your practice management system has tools for automated billing, use them. You can use these tools to prevent billable hours from slipping through the cracks, from time tracking to bulk invoice generation. We always recommend automating repetitive, administrative tasks whenever possible.

And don’t forget to measure your team’s productivity. Track billable and non-billable time to find inefficiencies so that you can address them through outsourcing, delegation, or other solutions.

Operations

Document your daily processes and use this to develop checklists and workflows. By putting in this time upfront, you’ll make your life much easier down the line because you’ll eliminate the possibility of forgetting important steps, and you’ll be able to provide a more consistent service for your clients.

Make sure that secure video conferencing capabilities are in your tech toolbox, as clients will expect this as an option. The landscape of client interaction has changed considerably in recent years.

Likewise, do what you can to streamline the remote working experience for your staff with cloud-based collaborative tools. For example, use internal chat and commenting and leverage calendaring.

Modern solutions

We know that between being a lawyer and running a law office as a business, keeping up with the latest office solutions can come to feel like just one more thing on the “To Do” list.

But modern tools can save you valuable time and streamline staff and client collaboration—which is why we’ve also put together a webinar in collaboration with Nish Parekh from Neovision Consulting on how technology is best leveraged in the workspace.

For more tips on running a law firm that’s successful in every facet, check out the full webinar here.

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