The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

Right up until the COVID-19 pandemic hit , most law firms were very office-centric businesses, meaning that everybody was working inside of an office , most of the time .  You know, commuting and the whole deal .   Now, pretty much everybody’s got a flex schedule, and law firms have even expanded into using contractors far more extensively , than they ever have before .     So, the question is: How far does this go?     Like, geographically .  How far, in terms of miles?     Because the thing is that, lots more law firms are now starting to (literally) extend their use of contractors, to offshore teams .  There are many countries from which law firms can draw contract staff, including those in Asia (particularly the Philippines , where there is a significant administration management culture), Eastern Europe and Latin and South America .  Staffers are trained for specific administrative roles; and, many contractors are ‘accent...

The more your business grows, the more specific your financial management strategies need to become .  In particular, as you expand your law firm into different physical locations = opening up new offices, you can’t just dump all of your financial information into one place, because if you do that, it becomes impossible to get insight into what parts of your firm are profitable, why and how.   So, each office location needs to be measured, in a vacuum, for profitability .  If you don’t do this, it’s very easy for one high-performing office location to prop up another .  And, in a growing firm, each office location should be profitable , in its own right, which is partly the responsibility of that office’s manager, and partly the responsibility of the managing partner.     But, you can’t provide specific incentives, or course correct, without transparency into finances.     In addition to knowing your overall numbers, in a growing law firm,...