The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

The ongoing pandemic has been rough on everyone, in multiple aspects of life, from the personal to the professional.  Lawyers are particularly hard-hit by isolation in even the best  of  times, and  suffer   higher incidences of depression tha n  the general population .  This is especially an issue for solo attorneys. During this time, things are even tougher.  Not only are lawyers dealing with social isolation at a broader scale than previously witnessed,  many are experiencing increase d  financial pressure, as  legal revenue is  d own across the industry .  It’s a double whammy, for sure.     But, that’s precisely why it’s more important than ever for lawyers to focus on their own mental health, while balancing the demands of modern business, including those related to the overarching health crisis.     To better understand what you’re feeling, and how to manage it, listen to  this podcast ....

If you don’t use, or haven’t optimized for ,   web  directories, you’re missing out on a  fantastic  way to build your online brand.  Online directories are great for building linkbacks to your website, a s well as  for creating domain authority.   There are a number of free directories available to lawyers, but none has the immense reach and distribution of Google’s ‘My Business’ profile.     If you haven’t yet claimed your Google My Business profile,  do it  yesterday, since it’s an online billboard advertisement for your law firm, and facilitates things like Google Reviews.   It’s  also free; and, you can’t beat that troika.       If you have a Google My Business profile, and you’re  not  doing much with it, there is not a better time to start, as law firms must now focus more on their online presence than ever before.   This is a comprehensive guide for getting the most...

With more and more attorneys working from home, more and more attorneys are  using multiple devices than ever before.  A common arrangement is to have a desktop at the office, and a laptop at home -- even as lawyers are working from home more and more often.     That setup, of course, becomes a significant challenge when you’re using premise-based software, because that software lives  o nly on a specific  device.   So, if you work on email  i n a desktop application, and then open that same application on a laptop, you’re going to have some hoops to jump through before you ca n  update for any changes you made.  This situation becomes more problematic when you are using your email to organize your files; th at  is a  true  subfoldering  nightmare.     Using cloud software instead wipes all of th at  difficulty away.  Since cloud software is accessed by a web browser, rather than through a premise-...

Law firms put themselves through some interesting gymnastics in order to reconcile trust accounting, well or poorly – mostly poorly.  There’s a couple of reasons for that: (1) Lawyers are  pretty bad  at math, finance.   That’ s  definitely a thing.  (2)  Also, law firms tend not to focus on utilizing technology throughout the trust account management process, and errors tend to occur when busy lawyers  (or their staff)  use analog methods to try to balance accounts, or review account balances.   IOLTA violations mostly occur due to user error (transposing digits, leaving out information, fudging an audit trail, misunderstanding the requirements of account reconciliation recordkeeping), not bad intent.   The vast, vast majority of  lawyers don’t actually want to steal their client’s money.   Literally the best way to tighten up your trust account management is to adopt software fit for the purpose.  Trust ac...