The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

There’s nothing like daylight savings time to get you to observe how dramatic a small shift in time becomes.  Push back one hour, and all of a sudden it’s instant winter.  People are like, ‘Wow, when did it get so dark out?’  And, hot chocolate sales start to rise.   Saving time as a business owner can have a similar effect on you.  But, instead of greeting the coming of winter, you’ll be saying things like, ‘Wow, I just got home, and it’s not even dark yet!’   For law firms, just like for any other business, change start s  small; and, it’s the same thing when it comes to better managing your productivity.  There are some immediate changes you can make to your law firm that will incur massive incremental value.  So, if you buy a second monitor for your desktop, laptop or tablet, you’re eliminating many of the several seconds you spend opening and closing windows every   day.   Over the course of months and years, that time adds...

Nobody has ever liked waiting.  But, there has never been a point in recorded history where people have liked waiting less.  Cave people, I suppose, never had the benefit of the internet and smartphones.  But, I’m not even talking about the Neanderthals; heck, people are far less patient than they were even ten years ago, since things like Netflix have pumped urgency addition up on steroids.  No one wants to wait for anything anymore, because no one has to wait for anything anymore.  Except for hiring law firms. Despite the fact that consumers are simultaneously less patient and have more choices than ever before, attorneys still make those consumers wait.  They call; you wait to call them back.  They want engagement; you give them online forms.  They text; you ignore their texts.  Converting leads starts at first contact; and, if you’re not the first contact back, you’ve already lost the game.  Everything you do in marketi...

You know what’s really scary?   Losing your law firm data.   Even so, many law firms don’t utilize effective data backups. Every business needs to backup its electronic data; but, the imperative is even more important for law firms, which have ethical and fiduciary duties tied to their client relationships.   And, although it’s now 2018, many law firms subsist on remarkably thin data backup systems.   This is true even though law firm data loss is not an extremely rare or impossible occurrence.   Fires, floods, natural and manmade disasters -- those all still wipe out law firm data.   So, if you’re concentrating on securing your law firm data backup, there’s no time like the present to get a handle on it. This is a three-step method to making sure your data is recoverable: (1) Set up a physical data backup.   It doesn’t really matter what it is (some firms still use backup tapes) -- just have something in place.   (If you’re p...

Most lawyers have a general understanding of what encryption does.  (If you don’t, let me introduce you to Wikipedia .)  Nevertheless, most attorneys don’t feel like they have a comprehensive plan for managing encryption in their law firms, when it comes to sending secure files to clients and colleagues.  That leaves a lot of law firms feeling a little insecure.  But, there’s a simple strategy for managing encryption in law firms, that’s entirely based on the volume of files you need to encrypt. If you don’t send out a lot of documents that need to be encrypted , you can use the built-in tools in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat to encrypt those documents.  Apply passwords, and then call the recipient with the password -- don’t email it along with the document. If you do send out a lot of documents that need to be encrypted , use an email encryption system that will allow you to manually encrypt certain emails and their contents, or to automate t...

If you ever want to stop practicing law, and become a business management consultant, here’s how you do it: When lawyers ask you about going paperless, recommend the Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 .   It is, hands-down, the best scanner for law firms on the market; and, in over a decade of consulting work, I’ve never had a single complaint about it.   It’s fast, it’s wireless, it works on both PCs and Macs, it’s portable and it comes with PDF conversion software.   This version of the ScanSnap is under $500, and you can usually find discounts online, at sites like New Egg .   If you want to go paperless, but have been stymied by figuring out what hardware you need to get started, now you’ve got your answer. This is not a product pitch, and I’ve never received a penny from Fujistu -- it’s just my opinion, backed by long experience.   However, if you find that the ScanSnap ix500 does not suit your needs, there are other versions of the ScanSnap available , inc...

Law firms have never been particularly great at onboarding of staff, including associate attorneys.  I suspect that most lawyers agree that effective staffing is essential; but, most attorneys are so deep into the substantive work they do that they don’t prioritize training.  At the same time, attorneys usually just let their technology wash over them, using what they’ve always used, while again focusing on their substantive work, and fearing the productivity dip inherent in adding new software.  In law firm management, however, having the right technology and placing the right staff are inherently tied together. Let’s take it as a given that law firms do not, and will not, allocate extensive resources to onboarding new employees.  Let’s also assume that modern associates continue to be primarily trained in substantive law in law school, and that they are more comfortable with technology than their predecessors.  As noted above, senior lawyers and mana...

Law firms operate between ad hoc decionmaking and fire-putting-out.  It’s the natural state of the law firm manager.  That being said, humans have been improving on the state of nature since there have been humans.  So, it’s maybe not the worst thing in the world if this is the year you decide to put together revenue projections for your law firm. If you’ve never done it before, start now.  (Don’t wait until January, and cram this in, like everything else in your life.). The reason you create revenue projections for your law firm is because you need goals, just like everybody else. If you don’t have revenue goals to strive for, you’re far more likely to accept the status quo (even if you don’t like it), and your law firm will begin to stagnate.  Applying revenue goals applies pressure, gets you out of your comfort zone and (spoiler alert): will likely mean you actually make more money, even if you don’t ultimately hit your projections right away. I...