The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

Law firms that require paper-based signatures are committed to in-person meetings ;  b ut,  th ose  may not always be feasible .  In some cases, the decision is out of the lawyers’ hands,  for example:  during a personal, national or global disaster.  Of course, there are ot her reasons why your law firm may want to utilize  esignatures .  Not requiring a physical signature likely means that you  can add new clients faster ,  because you won’t have to set up an on-person meeting  to do it .  With  e signatures , signing can take place  closer to the time of conversion, which also means  that  you can get started working faster.  It also may be more  convenient for a potential client or existing client to sign online, perhaps because they don’t want to come to your  office, and  pay for parking.  There are a million reaso ns for law firm clients to prefer  esignatures . ...

As ‘social distancing’ has now become part of the American lexicon, it will never be ‘business as usual’ again for law firms.  Everything you did in-perso n before, you now need to be able to do virtually, as well.  Since law firms have thrived on traditional business models, built on handshakes and in-person meetings, that can be a  difficult conversion; but, it’s not impossible.   Even when in-person meetings are off the table, it’s important to be able to talk with people, to see their faces, to make a visceral connection  with them .  In some cases, like for client intake, you may use meetings  as a way  to  authenticate identity.   It may be how you cement referral relationships.  Maybe you just prefer  visual  meetings to the phone or email.   Whatever the case, for now, and potentially more often moving forward, it may make sense to convert all or some of those meetings to video conferences....

Law firms, especially big law firms, tend to rely on SEO to market their practices online.  The age-old question is: how do I get to Page One on Google?  The new problem is that Page One of Google is changing.   Leveraging search results has always been more of an art than a science; and, the picture is shifting again.  Google's algorithms and search results pages get tweaked from time to time, and it pays to monitor trends, which develop over time .  One current trend is the increasing exposure of paid advertising on the sought-after first page of Google search results.  Looking at a first page result now versus those same results, even as compared to a few years ago, yields a significant difference.  There are more paid advertising results (generally PPC) at the top of the page than ever before, and the prominence of those ads has been amplified.  Furthermore, map results are displayed directly below paid advertising, in a more prominent way than those results have pre ...

Most lawyers view document automation as a time-saving device.  And, that's true: the efficiency wrought by document automation allows law firms to take on more work, and to make more money.  But, in the modern context, it may be that law firms are still underutilizing document automation.   As law firms seek to revise their payment structures in order to appeal to modern clients, some are opting to sell products, rather than (or more likely, in addition to), services.  Law firms have always sold personal services, which are high-touch, and costly.  But, modern consumers want cost certainty, in terms of total cost of representation -- and, some folks who want to access legal services want to manage that process themselves.  Traditionally, law firms had no way to reach, or capture revenue, from DIY clients.  With legal products, however, law firms can appeal to both DIY-focused and cost-sensitive legal consumers.  One obvious product law firms can sell are legal docume...

Legal research options abound, more so than ever before.  This is in line with the general proliferation of law firm technology, buoyed by the rapid advancement of cloud technology for use in business.   But, with legal research, the challenge of finding the right products at the right rate structure is particularly important, because legal research is still a high - number budget line item for law firms.     Legal research is the life-blood of substantive work for so many attorneys that the systems they use for research just have to work.  But, no law firm has an unlimited budget.  And, if you try to research legal research tools on Google, or a lesser search engine,  the results are often overwhelming, and only bring more confusion into the equation.  Ah, the irony drips.   To cut through the noise, check out the ‘ Legal Information Buyer’s Guide & Reference Manual ’ , which   is  updated annually,  ...