The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

It can’t happen to you until it does.   I’m talking about the business disaster that could strike your law firm at any moment: flood, fire, data breach, device breakdown, smoke damage,  truck carrying 30000 pounds of bananas careening out of control  . . . Well, you get the picture.   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 .   So, here’s what you need:   -an encrypted, physical backup drive (harddrive, thumbdrive, whatever ;  ioSafe is amazing )   -an online, incremental backup system (like  Carbonite ,  BackBlaze  or  CrashPlan )   And, you’ll need both, in case one fails.   Make sure to test your backup, as well.  You don’t want to be trying to r...

Perhaps the most damning of a series of damning facts about law firms released within the latest Clio Legal Trends Report ( link here ), is this: 89% of lawyers surveyed believed that their law firms  followup  with potential clients within 24 hours; 62% of law firms actually never follow up with leads at all.   I’ll let that sink in.   The Report also goes on to indicate that of the law firm clients surveyed, 89% want to hear back from the law firm within 24 hours, while 24% want to hear back within a few hours and 10% want to hear back within the hour.  Guess what?  Those demands are only going to increase over time.   This whole dialogue is, of course, representative of the massive disconnect not only between lawyers and consumers, but also between lawyers and their own marketing efforts.  Many times, in law firms, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing — except that the right hand is always focused on substantive...

The 2019 Clio Legal Trends Report (download link  here ) , which is a longitudinal study of law firm data across a variety of categories, including internal efficiencies and external relationships with clients.  It’s a fascinating read every year; and, that includes 2019.   The 2019 study focused on  what the functional difference between growing firms (law firms that grew revenue by over 100% across a 5-year period) and shrinking firms (law firms that lost over 50% of their revenue over a 5-year period)  was.  Perhaps surprisingly, the driver for revenue growth was not what you might expect.  It wasn’t pricing.  And, it wasn’t marketing spend.  It wasn’t attorney experience.  And, it wasn’t total case intake.  It was utilization rate.   If you’re not familiar with utilization rate, it  represents  amount of total hours you could bill in a day  versus what you actually bill .  For example...

Lawyers are trained to be risk-averse, and to cling to the status quo.  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.   The fact of the matter is that any small innovation in a law firm has a greater impact than in another business, because most law firms are so far behind the curve.  While many businesses view  esignatures  and electronic payment processing tools as business necessities, in legal, these are still fairly risqué technologies.  Many law firms eschew cloud-based technologies for premise-based software. Law firms are reluctant to embrace process management.  I mean, you get the picture.   The point is that, if you can gain a single technology or marketi...

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  create s  secure passwords for you.  No fuss, no muss.   But, what if you don’t have the volume of accounts that would necessitate the use of a service like LastPass?  Or, what if you’re old school, and like creating your own passwords -- you know, ones that you can remember without an assistive device.  I get it.   There’s still a world for you.   Try passphrases .  Whereas most passwords include numbers, special characters, uppercase and lowercase letters, you don’t necessarily  need  all that jazz.  Passphrases are just  combinations of words and phrases that are  potentially  meaningless to the rest of the planet, but have some significance to you.  T...