The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

Despite what you hear, time never appears to be on your side.     And certainly, everyone is looking to maximize their time.  In terms of business management, that means that you’re always looking to inc rease the volume of cases you can take on, which you can do by increasing your utilization rate .   But, this all starts with achieving a level of personal efficiency, because: if you can’t be efficient yourself, it’s very difficult to ask others, including your staff and associates, to be more efficient than you are – you’ve got to be the leader, in that context.   So, if you’re struggling in becoming more efficient, here are three tips you can take to the bank:     (1) Wre stling with email is a significant time waster for most lawyers.   Lots of attorneys have thousands of emails in their inbox, which is impossible to manage.  And, it makes it seem like Inbox Zero is light years away.   But, even the gnarliest of email inboxe s can be cleaned out with a systematic approach that

Good help is hard to find -- and keep.  It’s that latter part that you tend to hear less about , and often that latter part that managing attorneys tend to focus on less.  In many ways, lawyers treat their employees the same way that they treat their clients.  They work very hard to acquire them,  and then roundly ignore them, as communication slows to a drip.  Neither situation is good, as both clients and staff become disgruntled over time.   And, this isn’t any way to get buy-in from your staff.       So, i f you want hard-working, modern employees to join, and choose to stay with, your team, you’ll likely need to modernize your staff management tactics.     Here are some ways to do that:     - Focus on professional development.   Law firm employees, like most other employees, are heavily interested in developing professional skills.  Yet, most law firm business owners tend to focus their professional development budget on themselves, or on associates, instead of administrative st

It’s difficult for new attorneys , or attorneys starting a new law firm, to find consistent mentorship.  The fact of the matter is that the best mentors are the best mentors because they’re busy and successful.  So, seeking out only on e mentor, is not necessarily a great strategy, when the rubber comes to meet the road.   But, there is a better way to find mentors, and it comes with diversification.     Instead of trying to find one mentor, that you can access consistently, instead focus on finding a ‘circle of mentors’ = a group of experience d professionals who can assist you .  That way, you won’t have to lean heavily on just one person, and potentially place them under undue pressure to answer for all your needs .     The other, significant advantage that creating a circle of mentors allows , is for a new attorney to focus on mentors with certain skill sets.  So, for example: Perhaps one of your mento r s is a small firm attorney; and, maybe another is a big firm attorney.  It