The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

The main reason law firms struggle to collect revenue is because they’re always taking payment in arrears & then chasing clients for the money .  That is a strategy that is absolutely proven not to work, because law firms collect only around 70% of their bills.  So, you’re only actually making 70 cents of every dollar you invoice – and, that’s before we even address taxes, or business expenses.   But, if you can make one simple change in your law practice, collection becomes so much easier & your collection rate will skyrocket!  The change is pretty simple, too.     All you have to do is collect electronic payments & initiate the payments on behalf of your clients, instead of waiting for them to do it .  The most common method by which this is done is by acquiring your clients’ credit card information, adding it to your payment processing tool, and clicking a button, when a charge needs to be made .  That’s it .  N...

Lots of lawyers have trouble focusing; and, it’s sort of obvious why .  You’re out there, trying to market for new business; if you’re managing anyone at all, you’re fielding lots of questions – mostly at inopportune times; then, you’ve got to manage your family & your personal life .  There’s just not a lot of time , anymore .  But, to finish – especially big projects – you’ll need focused time, without distractions (power hours); the big question is: How do you find that time?   One option is to schedule yourself, for 2-hour blocks, when you’re free on your calendar – or, when you can make yourself free on your calendar .  (You can even make that a recurring meeting with yourself, by utilizing built-in calendar features.)  You’d be surprised at what you can get done, in a couple hours of distraction-free time.     Of course, you can get more technical than that .  There are ‘smart calendar’ tools, including those utili...

If you own a law firm, there’s a lot to like about AI .  It can make you way more efficient, without adding staff .  Take a darker view, and AI means that you can potentially let go of current staff, in favor of an AI tool (or, tools ), that can replace existing staff .  Now, of course, your employees aren’t dumb – you wouldn’t have hired them, if they were – and, they realize this .  This set of circumstances , of course, creates a problem: Why would your employees use AI, if they know that it’s going to be used to replace them ?  Would you?     So, how do you – as a business owner – incentive your employees to use AI ?  Well, your staff wants upskilling training .  If they are effectively being asked to offload a portion of their job responsibilities to an artificial intelligence, they’ll want to replace that skillset with another .  For those employees to continue to justify their roles, they know and understand that their...