The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

Lawyers tend to manage in place.  They oversee staff by walking around the office, to randomly check in on people,  like  Lumberg  from ‘Office Space’ .   They can also be vicious micromanagers.  It’s understandable to an extent, of course;  if someone in the office screws up in a major way, it’s the attorney’s license that’s on the line.  I get it.  But, there is a better way; and, a way that is becoming increasingly necessary  for law firms .   In the current environment, law firms are managing distributed workforces on the fly.  Often, there’s no more  physical  office  available  to be occupied ,  to walk around  in .  No more coworkers in your physical presence to hover over.  So, what do you do  now ?     It’s time to finally rely on technology to manage your law firm.  Managing a remote staff is about  creating task-based, time-sensitive workflows , in...

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...

Attorneys seeking inspiration or advice on reconfiguring or revising their business practices often seek out colleagues or friends for advice.  Most attorneys maintain other attorneys as colleagues and friends.  So, when they’re seeking business advice, they’re getting it from other attorneys. There are a couple of problems with relying on that strategy, however.  The first is that law firm managers tend to rely entirely on their own experience.  If you ask them what to do in a specific situation, they will invariably say: ‘Well, this is how  we  do it . . .’   But, there is no one size fits all model for law firms, which means that lawyers should refer to various scenarios, before determining which option works best for them.  (And so, that’s a good conversation to have with a law practice management consultant  *AHEM* , who regularly speaks to different law firms, to gauge their perspective s . )   The second problem w...