The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

Just because you want to be a modern lawyer, that doesn’t mean that you have to give up  all  of your paper .   For lawyers, the love of paper persists; it often hearkens back to a prior age of law practice.  In practice, it’s a tactile sensation.  Many lawyers just like to write on paper, to hold it.  A lot of attorneys still print files to review .   So, if  going full electric  make you uncomfortable, there  is  a middle ground.   Apps like  LiveScribe  allow you to  use smart pens and smart paper to capture traditional and nontraditional electronic notes via the traditional mechanism you still love.  Yes, it’s a real ink pen.  Yes, it’s real paper.  Sorry, fountain pens are unavailable.   But, otherwise  --   it’s the best of both worlds .   I often tell attorneys that, if you can think of a workflow you need covered, there’s a technology tool out there f...

Phone systems, and managing phone systems, are essential for law firms  --  even if managing lawyers can tend to overlook the importance of such things.  But, in a very real sense, law firm phone systems are really  money machine s.  Getting a lead to the right person, transferring calls appropriately, accessing a message in a timely fashion, utilizing a system in which leads most often reach humans, even  if those humans are part of a contracted virtual receptionist service . . . any or all of those attributes of a feature set and their application can increase your chances of converting a lead by degrees.  You can also utilize phone systems to keep existing clients happy, including by  reducing the perceived layers of administration between lawyers and their customers.   As with most technology options that face modern attorneys, there are no easy choices.  Not only is  a lawyer’s ethical competency now often tied to...

Everytime  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.   I mean, think about it: Does that jibe with the way modern consumers access businesses, or the way that modern business owners work ?   Do you work 9-5?  Of course not.  You do things after hours, and you're frustrated when consumer service options don't exist after hours, too.  So are your clients.  And, guess what: If you indicate that your office close s  at 5 pm, you're just giving your potential clients an excuse not to call you, and to call someone else  instead .   Of course, this course of action necessitates the need for providing contact options for potential clients who contact you on off hours.  That c ontact option c ould be you.  Or ,  it could be a contact form.  Or, it could be a virtual engagement service or to...

Law firms have a particularly hard time with lead intake.  It costs time and money to acquire leads in the first place, to the point where it’s devastating to whiff on those leads, once you have a chance to convert them.  Even when  law firms effectively engage  leads  and are responsive in contacting them back, oftentimes they don’t say the right thing, and therefore fail in transitioning the lead to a client.   One of the chief reasons for that is that lawyers are unwilling to respond to what clients most want to know.   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.   Only, lawyers  are reticent to talk with leads about the legal process for a couple of reasons: (1) they’re worried about overstepping ethical bounds; and, (2) they’ve ...