The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

There is likely a mentor in your past who told you to make sure that you don’t give away the farm when talking to potential clients.  The idea is to  leave them wanting more.     That’s bad advice.       If you leave legal consumers wanting more in 2020, they will go find another attorney.     The fact is, even without the emergence of the coronavirus, the convenience economy was coming in hot anyway.  In the convenience economy, a lack of information is just one more reason to find another service provider.     In the context of legal consumers, if a potential client is willing to have a conversation with you, that means that the lead wants to hire you: You just have to give them a reason to do so.  But, withholding  will not help .  Legal consumers have very little idea about what lawyers actually do.  So, talking with potential clients about the legal process, and helping them to understand what the next steps would be in a representation are essential to converting clients.   In fa

As the coronavirus, resultant lockdowns, and their effect continue to press every sector of society, lawyers continue to respond to what they hope is a blip.  Only ,  it’s not a blip.   But, that has very little to do with COVID-19.  The pandemic has only accelerated a trend that was already occurring.   The ‘convenience economy’ has been accelerating for some time, but is raging now.  Think about all the things you can buy and do from the comfort of your own home.  There is a reason streaming services and home delivery have ratcheted up massively of late; and, consider that Amazon and Netflix have  not  been felled by demand for virtual options, as have so many other traditional institutions -- it’s because the infrastructure was already there, due to already-existing consumer demand.  Software design, launch and management is now about reducing steps and promoting automation, including via machine learning.     So, ask yourself: Does your law firm operate on the same principles?  Are

The reason your accounts receivable are high, is the same reason every other process in your law firm is relatively untamed: because you don’t apply systems to managing your business.     Everything in your law firm should be systematized.     But, let’s walk before we run, and get a basic system in place for managing your accounts receivable.  Collect on those stale  invoices  first, work on everything else after. If your accounts receivable are so high, it makes you sick, or  if  you won’t even look at them, because you’re afraid to see the numbers, that probably means you aren’t billing with any kind of frequency.  So, the very first thing you can do to improve your position is to not add to the pile.  By making sure you get billing out like clockwork at the end of each month, it’s more likely that more of your clients will pay you.  That’s simple math.  And, think about it: If you were a law firm client, and getting bloated bills covering 90- or 120-day windows . . . How likely wou