The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

If you’re charging for initial consultations, as many law firms do, and there are still multiple steps (including manual steps) involved in that process, you can potentially tighten things up , significantly. At this point in time, there are a number of ways for your law firm to allow leads to schedule and pay for consultations, in one motion.   For one thing, case management softwares now often include CRM-style applications or features, making it more likely than ever before that you can allow your leads to schedule a consultation time via the scheduling program, and then make a payment via the proprietary payment system, that lots of law practice management softwares have developed .  Failing that, this may be done via integrations for scheduling, and payments + applied through the case management software’s existing workflow tool .  And, standalone CRM products are beginning to function in exactly the same way , while also featuring additional integrations to case managemen

T here are at least two types of people who can’t abide loose ends: mob bosses and lawyers .  Focusing on the latter, much of an attorney’s job is the movement toward tying things up, and putting a bow on them .       Now, over the course of the last few years, especially, there has been a lot of talk about the importance of workflows in law firms.   And, it’s true : process is vital to managing a law firm + it’s still something of a competitive advantage for the lawyers who use it, as against those who don’t .  But, like all good things, every workflow must come to an end .     If it doesn’t , you’ve got a problem: you have a loose end.   Think, for a moment, about all the ways that an incomplete workflow could leave you unfulfilled.     - If you don’t close an intake loop, no one ever becomes a ‘lost lead’ – so, you’re wasting time following up for eternity, without ever placing that person into a drip campaign.     - If you don’t have an additional process for closing a

Many law firms default to using subjective methods to define staff performance – which, frankly, isn’t good for anybody .  Your employe e s have no idea how they’re being judge d , since there is no objective criteria in place; and, you’re kind of winging it, too, as an owner or managing partner, which makes it almost impossible to justify anything you do.     There are, however, ways to measure the performance of your staff, and those effectively break down across three categories: (1) Efficiency; (2) Proficiency; (3) Profitability.   In determining efficiency , you basically want to know how quickly your staff get through their work projects, and how much billable time your billers log in any given day .  To track the latter, you can utilize a metric like utilization rate -- which measure the billable time an attorney or staffperson records each day as a percentage of their total work time, eg : a 25% utilization rate works out to 2 billed hours in an 8-hour day .  To tra