The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

Efficient law firms return the most revenue, by a wide margin.  Yet, much of what law firms do cuts against efficiency: Attorneys tend to avoid modern technology.  Attorney like to do things themselves, and so they avoid effective delegation.  Attorneys want manual processes, which they feel they have more control over.   Of course, this is not the way to practice at the top of your law license: billing at your highest rates, or acquiring more work that you can  bill  at your highest rates.   Too often, lawyers are trying to pilot the plane, and hand out the pretzels.   While it’s true that delegation is a proven method for driving efficiency, law firms need not always delegate from managing attorneys to associate attorneys or staff.  Automation of rote tasks and processes is often more effective.  Consider the chain of events reflecting on law firm lead intake: scheduling, emails, contact forms, chat or text com...

Law firms work vigorously to convert leads: to get those leads to pay retainers and sign engagement agreements.  That all makes sense: winning business is essential for any organization.   However, once law firms convert clients, there is often a dry spell before the new client s  hear from their new law firms again; and, because many cases start with potentially significant periods before anything of note  actually  happens, new clients may go for months, or even a year, before they hear from their lawyer again.   This paucity of response is one of the reasons that  law firms have a bad reputation for customer service .  Keep in mind that , while you deal with the legal field every working day of your life,  for many of your clients, it will be the first (and potentially only) time   they ever have an interaction with the legal system .  So, it’s essential to keep them informed of what’s going on, even if you kno...