How to Improve Your Law Office
The practice of law is dynamic by nature. Lawyers not only need to adapt to changes in the law but also evolving markets for legal services in order to be successful. Here are some tips for implementing changes in your legal practice.
Make an Assessment
The first step in improving your legal processes is to evaluate your current operations. Seek feedback from employee participants in the practice to get a sense of what works and procedures that may be less effective. Analyze your income and expense reports to determine if any trends deserve attention. Review your billing data to see if receivables are being collected in a timely fashion and ensure services are being invoiced efficiently.
Reconsider Physical Location
Attorneys have traditionally operated law offices of a physical location. The need to have conference space available for depositions and client meetings drove the legal practice to seek a large amount of square footage to operate a firm. New services are available that allow many facets of the legal practice to be conducted remotely. Court reporters in Bend, Oregon, offer video conferencing services that enable you to run remote client meetings, depositions and settlement conferences. Your practice can save on rent and the expense of having ample physical office space if you decentralize operations and function more remotely.
Use Technology
Running a law practice includes many challenges, including dealing with revenue production, employees and client matters. Fortunately, technology is available to aid you in your operations. Case management software helps you manage your client matters. This type of program can track and calendar deadlines and keep your legal files in a central online location. Tasks and other notifications can be added for attorneys working on time-sensitive cases to ensure that everything is completed before the deadline.
Legal office staff can use billing software to track your invoices and receipts of legal service fees. These programs allow attorneys to record hours worked and then format the entered information into a bill to be sent to the client. This information can be integrated with your accounts receivable ledger and bank account to ensure that receipts are appropriately credited. In addition, you can link your attorney trust account for any credits needed on client money held on deposit.
Outsource Functions
Most attorneys would prefer to focus on legal issues and client matters than day-to-day operations involving payroll, staff and accounts payables. You should consider outsourcing some of these operations. Many companies are available to handle payroll on your behalf. These services can include tracking hours, issuing paychecks, paying withholding taxes, and filing required tax and employment forms with government entities. Payroll services can also include employee benefits administration and management, including employee’s payment for benefits and claims for assistance.
Train Your Employees
You will need to train your employees on the new processes and procedures for any changes that you make. Workers can be reluctant to adopt change, so training must be thorough but should also focus on the value-added the new process brings to the firm and their daily workflow. One of the main goals of training should be to remediate any lack of enthusiasm for new methods by promoting the product to get buy-in from the employees.
Plan For Transition
For any changes that you implement, there will be a transition period. It would be best to determine how you will meet client and firm needs while the new processes are taking over the old ones. Before executing any change, you should consider the impact on current data and operations. Next, you can decide if everything should change over at once to the new way of doing things or if you need to leave some of the old processes in place for a time period.
Change is essential for any business to evolve and survive in a competitive market. The legal field is particularly transitional, and your law practice needs to be prepared to make the necessary modifications for success.
