The National Creditors Bar Association Law Practice Management Blog

As the COVID-19 pandemic begins to wane across the United States (maybe)  , lots of folks are breathing cautious sighs of relief.  It’s been a  pretty crazy  16 months.     Everybody is looking for a return to normalcy.     But, your law firm shouldn’t be going back to normal.     All those painful adjustments you made during the pandemic to get more digital, and to become more consumer friendly – make sure those stick around.   You see, the need to run a more digital business (to drive down costs, and save time), and the importance of adjusting to the convenience economy (that was here before the pandemic, the pandemic just accelerated it) . . . none of that is going away.     And, if you’ve already adjusted, and feel a strong pull to keep innovating, good on you.     If not, it’s time to get on board, before you get passed by.     If you’re still using premise-based technology, and swimming in paper ....

Most attorneys feel overwhelmed by everything they need to do.  Especially for solo and small firm lawyers, this can be crushing.     It helps to take a step back, redefine your goals, reset your tasks, and focus on what you need to do now.  For many attorneys, they’re just trying to do everything at once, which is impossible; and so, they end up multitasking themselves into extinction.     Of course, while establishing an order of operations is immensely helpful, you still need a good system, through which to manage all your tasks, and to stagger them in the order you want.   It’s likely that you already have a task management system in place – in fact, pretty much every productivity (email) s oftware , or  law practice  management system has one built in.   But,  you may find those lacking , in terms of the task functionality .  If you do, there are a lot of great task management tools, that focus on that one operation, ...

As COVID restrictions are lifting across the country, and business owners and their employees are deciding whether or how to come back together in an office setting, the question persists: How and when should people meet for work?     Whether you’re in-person, at home or mixing it up – you and your team are probably not meeting enough.     It’s easy to let staff meetings slip through the cracks as a busy managing attorney.   But,  if you’re not organizing them – nobody else will.   Cadence: How Do You Meet Now? And ,  organization is the key component:  You can’t hold regular meetings if you don’t put them on the calendar.  You won’t hold focused  meetings, if  you don’t develop an agenda.  Regardless of whether you hold those meetings online or in-person, the same organizational principles apply.     And, if you don’t want to commit to long-form weekly meetings, borrow a scrum tactic, and adopt daily ‘ stan...