The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

‘Work in Progress’ (often abbreviate d  to WIP)  is a representation of work outstanding for law firm clients.  While most lawyers just let it ride, and take it for granted that the work just keeps coming in, and keeps getting done – WIP has some predictive powers that law firms are largely ignoring.   Your WIP gives you an idea of what your pipeline  value  is, in aggregate.  In other words, you should be able to pinpoint how much money you’ll make, if you finish everything that’s currently on your plate.  Better yet, many modern softwares (including law practice management softwares) will calculate that number for you automatically, so you don’t have to jump through any  mathematical  hoops.     Now, you can get fancier than that, to boot.  Because, if you know how long it generally takes you to close cases, and the frequency of payments for those cases, you can generally pinpoint (pretty precisely) when you’ll get paid,...

Email is good for email; but, when law firms start to try to expand the uses of email into broader technology functions – that’s where they run into trouble.     Like when attorneys try to convert their productivity software into case management software.  (In case you haven’t tried it, that doesn’t work because productivity software is decidedly not a relational database.)     Emailing sensitive documents can be a problem, too.  When you email something, it passes through a number of different servers before it reaches its final destination.  Some of those servers are likely to be unencrypted, which means that, to ensure document security ,  you’ll need to encrypt the file itself, or your email system.  That’s  a  whole other step, and maybe an entirely ne w  software to buy.  It’s also largely avoidable.   With modern document repositories (like Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive) and law practice management softwa...

Routine is so . . . ‘routine’?     The notion of slipping into a routine has lots of negative connotations: it’s boring, it’s stultifying, it lacks creativity.  Oftentimes, routine and ‘rut’ are used interchangeably.     A routine is something to climb out of, not  to get into.     But, if you run a business, especially a law firm . . . a good routine may be all you need.   Stagnation is a problem with law firms; but, that’s largely because they stick to a  systemless  model, that ends up being the antithesis of routine.  And, honestly: most lawyers don’t want to set up systems, because they’re worried about being bored.  They like the  challenge , the intellectual stimulation ,  of untangling thorny legal issues.  Putting systems into place seems  so  . . .  ‘routine?’     But,  this isn’t an either/or proposition.     You can still work on the cases that you love; an...

Arizona has recently stricken the rule barring non-lawyer ownership in law firms  from its professional ethics code .  Utah is creating a sandbox environment to explore the same option.  Mixed ownership law firms are called  ‘ alternative business structures ’ , and they already exist in other parts of the world, most notably the United Kingdom.  It’s only a matter of time before the traditional lawyer monopoly is broken.   So, if you think it’s hard to compete with the law firm across town, try working against Walmart.     Lawyers have been  exceptionally  late adopters of both technology and new ideas.  But, the chance to continue in that mode of operation has passed.       This is the eye of the storm.  It’s your last chance to build a modern practice, before the Walton family comes for you.     Attorneys are smart and resilient, and will be able to carve out a niche in this brave new world....