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We’ve all heard it before – “fail to plan, and you plan to fail.” And we have all heard it because it is true. Without a plan for where you are headed, you will never arrive at the desired destination.
It is important to make time to plan. With the many demands of your practice, it can be very difficult to tear yourself away from your firm to work on your business in addition to working in your business. It is important to recognize that despite the fact that those hours spent on working the business are not billable, they will pay big dividends in the long run. Firm leadership should set aside at least one day per year to work on your business plan and define how you plan to get there. These meetings should be held off-site, away from the demands and distractions of the office.
Goals should be broken down into timelines: you should identify ten-year, five-year, three-year, and one-year goals. Goals should be quantifiable and SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based. Examples of goals can be team size, gross revenue, profit, number of new clients, addition of new practice areas, etc.
Start at your end goals – those that are farthest out. By working backward from your ten-year point, you can break your goals down into chunks so that you can identify how you will get there. Breaking those larger goals down in this way makes them seem more attainable and will keep you from just giving up.
Your one-year goals are considered short-term goals. Reaching these goals should help you to attain your three-year goals. For example, if you want to increase your attorney size from 5 attorneys to 10 attorneys within three years, you know you need to add 1-2 attorneys per year over the next three years in order to get there. This feels manageable, and by working toward that goal gradually over three years, it won’t feel unachievable. Your three-year goals should lead you to your five-year goals, etc. By setting shorter-term goals as mile markers along the way, you will have a road map to guide you to your final destination.
To go one step further, one-year goals should be broken down into 90-day chunks. Otherwise, you will find yourself at the end of a year wondering how the time passed so quickly and nothing accomplished as you had hoped. By setting 90-day timelines for specific tasks to be completed that lead to your one-year goals, you will stay on task. Your leadership team should meet at least quarterly to review the progress of these goals. Without this accountability measure, the goals will likely fall prey to the other demands your team has to meet.
Leadership may want to consider involving multiple levels of team members in your process as you work on your plan. While they do not have the final say in your decisions, by providing them the opportunity to have input, you will increase the chances of buy-in and success. Different teams in your firm may have different goals created for them that lead to the bigger picture goals, and it will be important that they meet regularly to review progress just as your leadership team will.
You will also want to identify your firm’s particular strengths and potential obstacles and how you plan to overcome them. This is referred to as a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. By bringing these areas to light and focusing on playing to your strengths and addressing how you will overcome your weaknesses, you will be better for it.
Business planning does not come naturally to all attorneys. If this planning and follow-up feels foreign to you and you are not confident you have the bandwidth to navigate the process among all your other responsibilities, there are many consultants available who specialize in law firms. These specialists are familiar with your challenges and can help guide you through the maze and help you stay on task. By taking the time to plan for your future in a very intentional way, you will be surprised to find that what once felt like unattainable pipe dreams can truly be a reality.
Bottlenecks commonly occur within the law firm environment, but certain pain points are specific to attorneys as they provide legal services to firm clients. A single client matter can encompass numerous steps, from developing a strategy and managing client expectations to implementing the plan and bringing the matter to a close. At every stage of that process lies an opportunity for obstacles, especially when lawyers lack the technology they need to handle their cases efficiently and effectively. Add in the unique challenges of remote work arrangements, and the potential for bottlenecks looms even larger.
The following bottlenecks represent some of the challenges that attorneys face in the regular course of serving law firm clients:
Paperwork and the practice of law go hand in hand, so attorneys need immediate access to necessary case documents. Bottlenecks in this aspect of legal practice can occur for a number of reasons. For example, editing delays can leave an entire team of lawyers waiting for one party to make changes to a contract or other document. This can be especially problematic if the editing is being completed by more than one person.
Fortunately, several legal software options streamline the editing process, making it easier and far less time-consuming. With these technologies, all credentialed parties can work within one file instead of repeatedly emailing the latest edited versions of documents back and forth between one another. Some of these tech options also allow for comments and controls on who can edit documents and when.
Remote working arrangements also affect document accessibility. Let’s say a group of four lawyers are working on a client matter, but each of these lawyers works from a different location. Creating multiple paper copies of the client file is not an efficient and effective option. In addition, what happens if one of the attorneys forgets to bring an important document when they come together and work in person?
With a cloud-based document management system, every member of that team has access to all of the case file documents from any place they choose to work, and at any time of the day or night.
These convenient options allow lawyers to store files and documents in a secure cloud-based environment. They also have easy-to-use search options, so time isn’t wasted combing through pages and pages of documents. Some also offer version management, so that attorneys can easily see what changes have been made since they last accessed the file.
Document management is an essential part of collaboration. Attorneys need the ability to access, edit, and store files without the bottlenecks that can get in the way and impede the progress of a client matter.
When working within an office setting, it’s easy for attorneys to simply walk into a colleague’s office and confer about a case. Whether asking a simple question, soliciting advice, or collaborating on a project, the camaraderie that an in-person work environment provides can prove extremely beneficial to attorney productivity.
But for firms that operate among different locations, whether by choice or in response to the pandemic, the benefits of regular communication can become lost without the right strategies and systems in place.
It is not uncommon for attorneys in different physical locations to work on firm matters collaboratively as part of a team. When the communication between team members becomes strained, various problems can result, including miscommunications and missed deadlines.
For attorneys working remotely, feelings of isolation may result from their inability to have those valuable impromptu conversations with their fellow attorneys as the need arises. In addition, they may find it challenging to reach support staff when needed, which can also lead to incomplete tasks and process inefficiencies.
In today’s remote working environment, lawyers need communication plans that include useful tech innovations. Regularly scheduled team meetings and check-ins help firm members ask questions, solicit help, and feel connected to the firm as a whole. Additionally, having the ability to chat directly within a matter and track your conversations and directed references will not only keep you organized, but it will also reduce the number of emails flooding your inbox. Bring you internal conversations to chat from wherever you are regarding whatever matter you may be working on.
Tools like Zoom and Cisco WebEx can also help facilitate these regular meetings, while resources like Slack make quick interactions easier to manage and document.
The practice of law is largely about the management of client relationships. After all, attorneys work to further their clients’ interests when taking on a matter, so it follows that managing the client relationships must be an integral part of the process.
As attorneys establish and maintain their positive reputations, they need to build positive relationships with their clients. They can achieve this goal by doing the following:
Legal technology, like CRM, also helps attorneys establish and maintain client relationships. With CRM, lawyers can securely store client contact information and document previous interactions. It offers a quick and easy reference when specific client information is needed. Some CRM software options can also be programmed to provide reminders for client follow-ups and important deadlines.
Client portals also promote positive client relationships. With these tools, attorneys can quickly provide clients with updates on their matters, as well as timely invoices. Clients can independently log into their secure accounts to view notes and review their firm bills. With a client portal, attorneys can efficiently keep clients informed.
Happy clients become repeat clients who refer new clients. By placing the focus on client relations, attorneys can avoid the bottlenecks that arise from unrealistic expectations and poor client relationships.
Legal case management software offers viable solutions to many of the bottlenecks that attorneys contend with on a daily basis. These platforms often include tools that promote internal communications among members of the firm while also keeping clients adequately informed and up to date.
Case management software may also offer some document management features so that attorneys can quickly and easily edit, access, and store client files in a secure environment. For attorneys that find themselves interrupted by the pain points of practicing law, the right case management software can be the solution to their bottleneck problem.
Law firm administrators wear all types of hats on any given day of the week. Their work impacts the financial health of the firm, while also promoting the efficient provision of legal services. As the link between the legal and business sides of a firm, these professionals need a strong grasp on a variety of organizational concepts. From human resources to accounting responsibilities, administrators handle a wide range of duties as they seek to maintain and grow their law firms.
Some of the most common responsibilities of a law firm administrator include:
Decisions made by law firm administrators greatly impact the financial and operational wellbeing of a law firm. Firm leaders count on administrators to identify existing and potential problems, then implement strategies to properly address them. When the administrator’s efforts result in greater profitability and enhanced productivity, the law firm benefits overall.
With so many processes taking place under the umbrella of law firm administration, numerous opportunities for bottlenecks exist. Bottlenecks occur when procedural inefficiencies prevent firm processes from progressing effectively. These inefficiencies may arise for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to staffing issues or procedural deficiencies. Inadequate technology is another common cause for law firm administrative bottlenecks, but with so many tech advances happening within the legal community, these problems should be easily addressed.
Let’s look at some of the bottlenecks that law firm administrators commonly deal with when working to maximize firm productivity:
About one quarter of legal malpractice claims directly relate to calendaring failures. Issues such as forgotten deadlines, late filings, and missed appearances can lead to serious consequences for law firms. Judges don’t have much compassion for firms that miss important case events, and many won’t hesitate to dismiss cases when lawyers fail to meet deadlines.
Particularly within larger firms, maintaining an adequate calendaring system can prove challenging. They have significantly more dates and matters to coordinate between a larger number of lawyers. They may also handle a wider variety of practice areas across multiple jurisdictions.
Paper calendaring simply does not offer a sufficient solution, so legal calendaring technology needs to play a central role in any law firm administration strategy. These systems offer numerous alternatives for law practices, including:
Unfortunately, most law firms have experienced the obstructive delays that accompany missing files and data. Firm administrators recognize that the lack of document management hurts client relationships, damages cases, and leads to potential malpractice claims. Firm attorneys and paralegals need access to necessary case files, but the manual access of physical documents is inconvenient and inefficient.
With cloud-based document storage, firm members have the ability to access necessary documents from anywhere. These platforms use the cloud to offer law firms a secure, orderly, and highly available tool for data storage. Platforms, like NetDocuments, offer a cloud-based document management system that keeps law firms organized and productive.
Inadequate client communications also commonly lead to legal malpractice claims. Whether it’s miscommunication, negligible communication, or a lack of any communication at all, law firm administrators must understand the potential consequences of failing to make communication a priority.
Law firm communication problems can cause external and internal issues, and they stem from various sources. Externally, an overwhelming number of incoming calls may result in overflowing voicemail boxes and unanswered messages. Internally, the challenges of remote work may cause barriers to communication between firm members.
Technology provides a solution for both internal and external law firm communication challenges. Law firm administrators should choose software systems that include such coordinated communication tools as:
Many law firm administrators identify billing processes as an area ripe for bottlenecks within a law firm. This is partly due to the numerous steps that go into crafting and sending client bills for legal services. For example, the billing process actually begins with time tracking completed tasks. When timekeepers fail to keep accurate records, they risk overbilling clients or shorting the firm of billed hours.
Delayed timekeeping negatively impacts the invoicing process, and delayed invoices mean that clients can’t pay their bills on time, decreasing the firm’s cash flow. Billing inaccuracies also result in delayed payments and strained relationships as clients question the integrity of the firm.
Law firm administrators need to invest in legal billing software options that promote improved invoicing practices. These systems speed up the legal billing process so that law firms get paid faster. With the right platform, law firm administrators can streamline the markups, billing edits, and the approval process. The firm also benefits from e-billing and billing portals that allow clients to quickly view and pay their invoices with ease.
The lack of effective technologies causes major bottlenecks in various areas of law firm administration. For this reason, the administrator needs to consistently evaluate and manage all of the firm’s operating and information systems. Administrators need to understand the hardware and software commonly used within law firm environments.
When managing computer systems, law firm administrators should do the following to avoid bottlenecks:
The most valuable computer system that a law firm can implement is practice management software. With it, law firms have a tool that efficiently maintains, organizes, and tracks case information related to client matters. By building case files directly into practice management software, firms can more efficiently update and complete tasks. These tools also help prevent other bottlenecks through document management, calendaring systems, contact management, and billing capabilities.
The law firm administrator keeps the entire firm running with productivity and efficiency. A huge part of that responsibility involves identifying bottlenecks and implementing solutions to address them. The latest technology offers the features that law firm administrators need to address the many inefficiencies that hamper law firm processes.
Why are referrals so important? You already know that referred clients tend to be your highest quality clients, but they are also the most affordable to obtain. These clients typically walk through your door pre-sold on your services and expertise and off the bat they come in with a much higher level of trust and respect. Additionally, referred clients are much more likely to pay on time and refer others to your firm in the future.
There is no question that referrals are marketing gold for law firms and because of this, it makes sense to invest time and money into generating a process that not only encourages these referrals but fosters them as well. If you can create a referral-based firm, you can worry less down the road about how to market and sell your services.
Building a steady stream of referrals takes consistency and it takes persistence. Attorneys are busy and dedicating their time to these efforts is not always at the top of their priority list. For most firms, referrals are incredibly important, however, there are no systems in place to ensure successful word of mouth.
Providing outstanding service to your clients is certainly the first step in creating a referral-based firm. But you must also regularly and consistently cultivate these referral relationships. There are methods that can be put in place to encourage this referral process and it begins with identifying professionals who are interested in passing along referrals before you invest the time in relationship-building.
Begin this process by generating a list of around 50 local professionals. This should include roughly 75% attorneys in complementary specialties and 25% non-attorneys with clients whose needs may overlap services. It’s important to remember that other attorneys and firms are also looking to build referral-based practices, so use that to your advantage!
Consider professionals in these industries:
This list is a great place to start, but you know your clients and your firm best. No one is more equipped than you are to identify the fields of professionals that you believe are best suited to leverage a referral relationship with.
When you begin to build out this list, the easiest way to start is to create an excel sheet that details as much information as you can find on each of your 50 contacts. Start by pinpointing the geographic location you want to target, the practice area or clients they serve, and then do a little digging about what their website looks like. How do they market themselves, are they running a lot of ads? Do they have any associated publicity? What do their Google reviews look like? These indicators will give you a better sense of how they are marketing their firm.
These businesses are who you want to reach out to first because if they’re putting a significant amount of marketing dollars into their firm, they are likely bringing in a steady stream of leads. This means they have more potential referrals to send your way. It is important to take the time to vet these contacts to ensure you’re reaching out to the appropriate firms. Your time is valuable so don’t waste it!
As an attorney, it is best practice for you to handle or be involved with the first potential referral source call. As much personalized follow-up, you can provide is ideal, but the most long-lasting referral relationships are forged by attorneys who make that initial effort and cultivate trust. But with that being said, the other aspects that come before and after the initial call can be delegated. The creation of your contact list, for example, can be delegated to another member of your team. Setting up the initial appointment call can be handled by someone else on your team, and so on so forth. Having access to a shared calendar where you can seamlessly view your team's schedule will be critical to set these appointments in the most efficient way possible.
Contrary to some recommendations, picking up the phone and calling potential partners is far more effective for setting an initial appointment than postal letters. With postal letters, you’re not only waiting a few days for the recipient to receive the letter, but you also have to set up a game plan for once the letter is received. We are not saying to avoid snail mail entirely, but the return on investment for phone calls far outweighs that of physical mail. Not to mention it is significantly faster.
Once you start calling your list of prospective referral sources, ask to speak directly with the attorney or professional. If you do not get through or are stopped by a gatekeeper, ask for an email address and leave a voicemail.
You should be spending about 2 hours of work for each appointment you set. So what does this mean? This means you will spend a decent amount of time on the phone trying to connect and learn more about the professionals and their businesses in your surrounding area. Some specialties and practice areas will naturally be tougher than others, so don’t get discouraged if the outcomes aren’t materializing how you thought they would. Two referral appointments, or 4 hours of work, is a good target to aim for each month. At this rate, you will build a very robust network. Check out the attached referral partner appointment request script if you need some help getting started!
Once you book that first appointment, you may be asking yourself, “Well now what? What do I say?”
Remember this quote by Epictetus: We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
During your initial referral partner call, stick to the general 80/20 rule. You should be listening 80% of the time and speaking the remaining 20%. Start by asking about the attorney/professional and show curiosity about their practice. Ask how it started, that they focus on, who their ideal client is, and keep the first half of the call focused on them. Additionally, take this opportunity to learn as many personal things as you can so that you may build a connection and foster a relationship!
Once you compile all this information, concisely give some details about your firm, but don’t go overboard! This conversation should be about them.
Engaging your new partners is crucial. These new budding referral relationships need to be cultivated, they need to be nurtured. To engage these partners, start with a give. Add value right away, and then stay in regular contact.
You should certainly be engaging them before your first conversation and after as well. Consider sharing resources like a blog, white paper, or even current events articles. This will not only demonstrate your willingness to help that firm or practice but also to show your engagement and genuine interest in their business. Newsletters are also a great way to stay top of mind for your referral sources. Not to mention they can also double as content you send your current clients as well. Maintain a nice mix of content that is both legal-focused, general industry topics, and lifestyle content.
The bottom line is that you need to be consistently providing value so that you’re thought of when these businesses have potential clients to send your way.
Occasionally, attorneys won’t seek referral partners because they feel like they don’t have enough cross-referrals to provide. There are other ways to provide reciprocal value than exchanging one-for-one referrals. If you can’t always return a referral with one of your own, think of other ways your firm can provide value to them. Maybe it’s collaborating on publicity or marketing campaigns, co-promotions, or spotlights in your content and newsletters.
Additionally, if you are sent a client, consider sending that referral partner a note every other week to let them know their referral is in good hands and that you’re taking care of them. It is very important that the businesses you work with trust that you’re providing good services, otherwise they will not send you prospects.
Building referral relationships are crucial for your business. They are also no-brainers. If you can leverage your community to help grow your book of business that is absolutely what you should dedicate some of your time to doing. Utilize these steps and take the leap!
Today more than ever, attorneys are realizing there is more to being a lawyer than the practice of law. Firm leadership needs to run the firm like a business. The most successful firms also know it isn’t just about the billable hour. If a firm is to be profitable, there are key metrics to consider and actions that can be taken to improve the firm’s profitability without increasing billing hours.
In a prior blog, we reviewed the importance of using cost accounting methods to know what the hourly cost is for each of your attorneys. There is more to be considered than their salary and benefits when calculating what it costs to have each attorney working in your firm. If you know their true hourly cost including firm overhead, you will know where you need to set their billable rate in order for them to add to your firm’s profitability.
By ensuring you don’t have partners performing associate-level work, senior associates performing junior associate-level work, and attorneys in general performing paralegal-level work, you are providing better service to your clients by keeping the work as economical for them as you can while also improving your firm’s profitability. Proper training of your attorneys and paralegals to help them understand the importance of delegation will help your firm to be successful in this area. Delegation is not intuitive to everyone; it is important that the firm’s leaders recognize this and that management has procedures in place to assist in this area.
No two cases are the same. However, there are many similarities among cases where standardized documents and processes can be created. As we discussed in Everything Your Firm Should Know for Practice Area Expansion, by analyzing and structuring your internal systems to take advantage of areas that are duplicative, you can save time and money.
Look for processes that take place in your practice areas that will be similar across all or most of the matters in those areas and create procedures, processes, and forms for those tasks. Part of this process should include identifying how each task will be staffed. By carefully identifying your legal services in each practice area and setting up procedures and protocols for each task with team members assigned appropriately, you will develop an efficient and well-oiled machine that contributes to your firm’s profitability. And if you still aren't sure where to start, check out the blog How Do You Know What to Automate at Your Law Firm
As firms grow, they often find that the ways things have been done historically are no longer contributing to the firm’s success. A firm that started out small may be able to manage without officially documented processes and procedures. As more attorneys and staff are added, however, it is important to ensure that protocols are followed across the board and that everyone is steering the ship in the same direction.
Regardless of your firm’s size, using a practice management software that suits your number of users and type of practice will save you countless hours and headaches in the long run. It will help you to keep a well-documented record of the activity in a matter that will make your practice much more efficient. Should you experience attorney turnover or unexpected illness, having a good system in place that everyone follows consistently will mean another attorney can step in without wasting non-billable hours trying to determine what has occurred in the case and where the status currently stands.
It can seem counterintuitive to turn away work when you are focusing on increasing your firm’s profitability. However, by taking on work that you are either unequipped to handle or that will not pay enough to cover your attorney hourly costs will end up costing you money instead of adding to the bottom line. Attorneys who are forced to handle a case that is out of their practice area end up spending many non-billable hours just getting up to speed on how to handle the matter. Cases that do not dictate an hourly rate that covers your overhead will be practiced at a loss.
There are times when you will choose to take these matters on. Perhaps you want to move into a new practice area, and you are willing to incur the expense of getting your attorneys up to speed in that area with an eye toward the future. Maybe you are trying to get work from a particular company or industry, and you are willing to take on a loss leader at a rate lower than you need in order to move in that direction. The key is that you know what you are doing and why you are doing it so that an educated decision is being made.
Studies show that more than 30% of billable time is lost when time is not captured concurrently. Putting the right billing policies in place can help to avoid seeing billable hours go down the drain. It is important to note, however, that having policies in place is only the first step. It is important that firm partners lead by example and support firm management in enforcing the policies if they are to be successful.
Like the rest of us, many of our clients no longer pay their bills by writing a paper check. By providing multiple options for how your clients pay their bills, you should see improvement in the speed with which your invoices are paid. Consider allowing clients to pay by credit card or eCheck. There are services available that are geared toward law firms that will allow you to include a payment link with an emailed invoice so that the client may pay by credit card or eCheck. LawPay, for example, allows both credit card and eCheck payments and also has the ability to accept payments for both operating and trust accounts while charging all credit card fees to the firm’s operating account.
There are so many ways a firm can impact its profitability without increasing work hours. You can work smarter and not harder by putting these few examples into practice, resulting in an immediate change to your bottom line.
Over the past few years, automation and technological advancements have been making headlines. Publications from the National Law Review regarding lawyers’ ethical obligation to technology, to articles from Above The Law about how technology can make you a better lawyer, there is no escaping it! Even the New York Times has contributed their thoughts on A.I. and its impacts on our industry. The news of legal technology and its prevalence throughout the industry is becoming more and more ubiquitous every year and there’s a reason why.
Hesitant eyebrows have been raised surrounding automation and A.I., but the consensus remains that human experience is what clients are looking for and willing to pay for. However, what they do not want to pay for is the routine and administrative work.
So with this in mind, how can you eliminate the need to bill clients at a high rate for routine work? Is it even possible? Let’s find out.
23% of a lawyer’s job can be automated with existing technology. So let’s think about this... if you’re not automating almost ⅓ of your workload right now, you may have some work to do. Throughout this blog, we will be discussing some ideas and tools that will allow you to assess what you’re doing with your practice and how you can get better and be more efficient.
Automation and Productivity go hand-in-hand. What this means is there will still be a human element to everything we discuss. So while some of the aspects of what we go over today might not be true automation, they will without question speed up your processes and enable you to deliver on your client’s expectations. You are also giving yourself a competitive advantage and in fact, most clients today will demand that their lawyers practice efficiently. On the flip side, if they are not demanding this level of efficiency, this could be a great opportunity to market your service and differentiate yourself. The idea is to allocate the most amount of your time to the tasks that only you, the attorney, can complete. At the end of the day, your job is to use the law to bring a successful outcome for your clients, however, that work is dependent on the backend business and administrative tasks that have to be taken care of.
Attorneys time is their most important asset. It’s what they use and it’s what they bill for. Anything they can do to take that time, preserve it, and use it effectively, and furthermore bill for it, is going to go a long way in making their firm more efficient, more profitable.
When you think about getting things done, what you should be doing is finding ways to make the mundane or repetitive tasks, be it emails or document creation, and simplify or automate them so they take less of your time.
Technology is in no doubt becoming more and more pervasive, and in many cases, it can be overwhelming. It is important to be able to discern what you do and don’t need and educate yourself on all the resources and advancements out there, because as they say, you don’t know what you don’t know.
To help you with this process, start keeping a log of your firm’s daily activities for one week. This can be done by you, or a paralegal, or any associate you may have. Ideally, it is best to have everyone participate and take note of what they do during the week. This should include everything from standing at the printer making copies, stuffing envelopes, and sticking stamps on, to going back and forth with a client about scheduling a meeting. Everything you do, big or small, should be logged.
Once you have recorded all those activities, you organize them into areas of work. Areas of work simply mean categories that you can compile each of your recorded tasks into. Then, address each area of work with ideas of improved processes. So if you notice in each area you’re creating the same document 5 times in a week, or you’re spending 20% of your week scheduling phone calls, you may have just identified an area that can benefit from an improved process or automation.
Your next step should be to research technology tools that may ease the administrative burden of each area of work. There are a ton of tools out there that you can evaluate and see if they could be good solutions for your firm. If you need a place to start, check out our Legal Tech Buyers Guide!
While you do this preliminary research, you should consider the costs associated and decide how many resources you’re willing to allocate to improve the areas you’ve identified. Those resources encompass the capital, manpower, and time you have available to spend researching and investing in tools.
The last step is to set realistic goals for implementation and give each project an owner and a deadline.
Going through this process will help you identify tasks and areas within your firm that you can automate. Improved processes in your firm really do mean more profitability at the end of the day. Not to mention more peace of mind. Work-life balance is crucial and having the ability to get back the wasted time from daily monotonous tasks is the best place to start.
Let’s dive into some of the most easily automated areas within your firm and discuss what processes you could put in place to make each of these categories more manageable and efficient.
Beyond basic drafting, document generation takes up a large part of most law practices. Hopefully, you have already started to build a document database for your practice where you have quick and easy access to commonly used templates. These templates could consist of letters to opposing counsel, intake forms, contracts, estate planning documents, you name it.
Consider the things you do repeatedly, the documents you’re touching all the time like pleadings, collection letters, and letters to clients. Think about what you’re using most often and why you’re using it so frequently. Another thing to think about are commonalities, things you’re doing over and over again, or bits of information that you’re repeatedly using. Begin gathering these things electronically in word documents or notes, and file them accordingly into folders that your staff can access. These files should denote to your team which documents your firm could benefit from if they were automated.
For documents specifically, one of the huge benefits of automation that is definitely worth mentioning is that this streamlined process helps eliminate human errors. Human errors happen, but in your line of work, it is crucial that they are made very infrequently. Automation removes typos and it eliminates missed elements or pieces of a document that you may have merged into another. These mistakes reflect poorly on you and your firm, and if you’re on the receiving end of a document that has the wrong party name on it, you know that someone was not thinking very clearly or proofreading. These simple mistakes can be the difference between a client staying with your firm or moving over to a competitor.
Now, in some cloud-based systems, you can open and save documents directly in your software from within Microsoft Word and create document templates by merging information stored within your matters. To go even one step further, some platforms even allow you to create time entries in Word as you’re working on documents. So not only can you more effectively manage and log your time, you can do it all concurrently without having to create make a mental note to record your time later on in the week.
Do you have a checklist to maintain the organization of your matters or a systematic process that you use to move through new client intake? If the answer is yes, then keep reading because we’re about to go through some tips as to how you can tackle streamlining and automating your checklists.
Gather your paper checklists, or if you don’t have any, think of case types that you handle often and think about everything you need to do to bring a case to a certain point. This could be every checkpoint, every due date, or every reminder needed to propel your work forward. These steps are right for automation, why? Because it is a repeated process. It is a process that you work through for every matter and for every client that walks through your door.
Once you have this in place, standardize the data fields and each step you take to bring each matter to a successful conclusion. What do those steps look like for your firm? What are you going to call them? Standardizing your data fields are important because in order to pull in data from your matters into your documents (like discussed in the previous section) you have to have a uniform way of identifying what you want to be merged and auto-populated and what you do not.
Some case management software on the market today will allow you to automate your checklists and create workflows for calendaring, tasks, and matter templates (to name a few). For example, you can build your case flow directly into your case management system and automatically assign or complete tasks for you. Keeping information on a matter up to date is a lot of work, but you can keep matters updated with a workflow system that automatically updates information for your team, freeing up your staff for billable activities. Not to mention, you can keep your clients in the loop by automatically sending update emails to your client as a matter reaches different stages.
Today’s modern software and technology have really revolutionized the way firms practice. It’s because of this continual innovation and sustained progression that we are able to see the transformation of how the best attorneys in the world capture more billable time. And for those people who are wary of technology, don’t view it as an unconquerable behemoth, view simply as a way to help your firm make more money.
What are some ways you can think about tightening up your billing processes and automating them?
Let’s do a little exercise…
Consider optimizing your billing if any of these subsequent points ring true to you:
Use your time and billing software to its fullest potential.
What does that mean exactly?
If you have a standard rate that you use no matter what that’s fine! You can still use your billing software to send out all of your bills expeditiously. However, if you’re in a situation where you bill different clients at different rates or different matters for the same client at different rates, things get a little more complicated. In these instances, it will be significantly harder to keep track of if you're accurately billing each client.
Your practice management software makes it so much easier for you to plug in those billing rates when they become effective. By doing this you open the door to batch billing which will significantly speed up the rate at which you get bills out the door. Batch billing will allow you to run all your invoices at once, not to mention you can set qualifications on any open matter that is above a certain dollar amount for a specific time period (since you last ran bills) and will allow you to create invoices for them.
And if you’re not billing as you work you should be. And what we mean by that is if you’re not assigning time to everything you do, whether it’s sending client emails, or working on documents, you’re losing money. Some software will give you the ability to run timers while you work. So you don’t have to worry about tracking your time, it will automatically be captured for you and go straight back to that matter.
A big bear for firms is the pre-bill approval process. In many cases, this is the step that significantly decreases efficiency and timeliness. What happens is firm admins or the billing team print a zillion copies of every bill, distribute them to timekeepers, and wait for them to be edited. Once they're returned (which sometimes takes longer than anticipated), those notes, sometimes legible, sometimes not, have to be retyped and saved as a new bill before getting the final stamp of approval to disperse to clients. Clients or more willing to pay while they feel like their matter is still being worked on. The longer you wait, the more time and distance the client puts between the work you did for them and the close of their case. The solution to this? Get your pre-bill process done faster! And how do you do this? Through solutions like ePre-bill that let you electronically edit a pre-bill! A solution like this will let you flow a bill up a chain of approval, see all previous markups, and get insight into all the previous changes. If you want to keep printing bills that is fine! But now you have an option not to that will save you more time and get you paid faster. That is the beauty of automation and technology!
Ultimately, the goal is to avoid having to piece together everything you’ve done over the course of the month because you have utilized technology that has kept track of it for you.
Let's look at a different example... if you are dealing with a client who pays you a $2,000 retainer every month for access to your services for 10 hours a month, you can set that up so your client is automatically receiving that bill or auto drafting from their account at the end of every month. Setting up this consistency will create a level of expectancy from your client, trust, and reliability. Now, what if you have clients that say hey, I can’t pay this entire invoice right now, I can pay you incrementally over time. Normally, you would have to remember every month that your client promised you a reduced amount, but with payment plans, you can set that up automatically to send the new invoice with designated payment reminders until that bill is paid off.
These are just two examples of how you can utilize automated billing, the possibilities are endless. If you're curious to read more, check out: Staying Ahead of the Curve: Bolstering Efficiency Through Automation.
If you’re using a practice management system, it cannot be stressed enough how much time you will be putting back into your day. For decades, attorneys would keep time by hand on a piece of paper, or retype every single document that had one small change to it. And many still do that today, but the reason why this technology was created is that it helps you do your job faster, in fewer bottlenecks, and with more accuracy. Sure, adopting this technology is a change in mindset, but once you can get there mentally, you will realize the benefits of utilizing today’s technology far outweigh the initial uncomfortableness of breaking old habits.
What if I told you about a technology that would relieve 50% of the administrative burden from your job…would you be interested in hearing what I had to say?
Of course you would!
And that’s why many in the legal tech community have become fascinated by workflow technology. For many attorneys, finding tools to free up more time to bill is essential to growing their practice. Based on a recent report, law offices surveyed responded that they spent 40% of their time on administrative or manual tasks.
In this article, I will introduce you to workflow, explaining what workflow is, some of its benefits and the different workflow tools available in legal practice management software.
If we go back to the basics, workflow itself is defined as the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion (thanks Google).
Process, automation and workflow are terms you’ll hear people refer to as synonyms or married together such as “workflow automation” or “process automation”.
In my opinion, the three terms refer to different things:
For example, if you’re trying to improve your client intake, here’s how each term would be defined:
Process: A prospective client contacts the website > someone from the firm contacts the prospective client > an initial consultation is scheduled > an attorney meets with the prospective client
Automation: A webform populates a database, a personalized email is created and sent from information stored in the database and a document is automatically generated based on information stored in the database.
Workflow:
For many law firms, workflow can be a game-changer by creating structure and efficiencies within their practice.
Although the list is long, here are some of the most important benefits workflow can bring to a law firm:
Workflow can be used in any area of your practice that requires administrative work but the majority of the legal practice management programs will focus on automating one of three areas:
74% of all legal consumers visit a law firm’s website to first take action. This means if your firm has a high volume of website form submissions you need a process for managing your pipeline.
Today, many firms receive an automated email from their website’s form tool with the prospective client’s information, but that doesn’t get the information into your practice management software to begin managing the intake process.
These days, many legal practice management software have workflow tools to help you manage your intake.
This includes sending personalized response emails out once someone contacts the firm, scheduling follow-up tasks, merging new client agreement documents or keeping the status of the potential client updated.
If your firm deals with a high volume of matters, such as an insurance defense or personal injury firm, workflow can be used to help you juggle all the balls in the air.
On a matter, you can use workflow to do things such as schedule follow-up tasks if a member of your staff hasn’t touched a matter within a certain number of days, automatically email updates to clients or generate/email medical records requests for you with the click of a button.
Using workflow to manage the pre-bill process and collections can help dramatically improve cash flow.
For pre-bills, workflow can flow the pre-bill through an electronic approval process. If your firm requires the associate then responsible attorney to review a pre-bill before posting it, the workflow can move the bill from one person’s approval list to the next, before finally updating the status once all the approvals are completed. Your billing team can then receive a notification that the bill is ready to post and send out.
Collections is another pain point for a lot of law firms. It requires the staff to constantly manually send out reminders to your clients. With workflow, you can have reminders automatically sent out to your client once a bill is overdue and continue sending the emails until the balance if paid off.
In the last section, I discussed the practical uses for workflow in a law firm. In this next section, I’ll discuss the technology offered within many legal practice management applications.
The first type of workflow I am going to discuss is calendaring workflow. This type of workflow is for task management and calendar appointments.
If you work with a team, there is a good chance that you assign tasks to different staff members at different stages of a case.
Think about when you open a new case. If you don’t have activity workflow, you either:
This can be automated using a calendaring workflow within a practice management software.
Some legal practice management programs will let you create a prebuilt lists of tasks and then quickly assign them out.
Other programs will automatically assign tasks to different staff members you’ve designed once a matter is open..
Or finally, programs will give you a list of tasks and let you fill in the staff you want to complete the task.
This is helpful to any firm, but especially firms that have a high volume of cases, new potential clients contacting the firm or if you have a high staff to attorney ratio on your team.
Similar to tasks, many firms have a set of internal deadlines or meetings they want to schedule once a new case is opened or reaches a certain stage.
For many firms, this requires a paralegal or assistant to manually calculate relative dates based on a certain deadline. It’s time consuming and error prone.
Many legal practice management software programs have a feature built in to solve this problem.
The technical term for this feature is chain calendar events. These are all appointments with relative dates based on a trigger date such as “date of trial.”
This isn’t to be confused with a scheduling order designed by the courts but rather, a list of internal deadlines.
Automated workflow expands beyond activities and allows you to flowchart your processes into software automation. This type of workflow will keep your case status up to date and offer your staff different options based on the process you’ve defined for that stage of a case.
Your process for opening a new matter might look like:
Throughout this process, your system could use workflow to take the burden off your staff by automatically merging the engagement letter, sending out an emailed retainer bill to the client and even opening the matter file in your system.
With workflow, the software will bring you down the path you set up and automate certain tasks, but your staff will still be required to prompt the software to move to the next stage by marking tasks as complete or clicking on the next step.
Advanced automated workflow is like having a robot assistant.
The difference between automated workflow and advanced automated workflow is in advanced automated workflow, your staff doesn’t have to click a button to make something happen.
Advanced automated workflow can be triggered by creation of a record, updates to a records or queries.
Your possibilities become endless with advanced automated workflow, but it does require the most set up.
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The events of 2020 and their impact on our lives will not be soon forgotten. Like other businesses, the legal industry is seeing changes to its landscape as we move forward in 2021. In general, law firms weather downturns in the economy better than most, but there is nonetheless a change in the areas where attorneys will be most needed. With some forethought, attorneys and firms can proactively prepare for the changes ahead. By combining this preparation with an intentional focus on client service, you will find success.
While attorneys will always be needed, we have seen some areas of practice on the rise while others have suffered over the past year. Practice areas that have seen the most significant growth include:
Practices who focus on foreclosures have suffered the most during the COVID crisis. By using what they know about banking and finance, attorneys and firms that practiced in the foreclosure business previously can pivot in a natural transition to banking and bankruptcy practices.
If your firm has decided it needs to move into another practice area, you may be wondering where to start. There are many things to consider.
What are you trying to accomplish by adding a new practice area to your firm? Do you have a strategic plan in place defining your one-, three-, and ten-year goals? There are many questions you may want to consider:
Most practice areas have a wide range of legal matters that fall under them. Consider family law, for example. There are divorce, custody, child and spousal support, settlement negotiations, litigation, premarital agreements, protective orders, and others. Some areas, such as employment and personal injury practices, typically require you to choose whether you want to be a plaintiff practice or a defense practice. You need to define the scope of matters you intend to cover once you have chosen a practice area so that your internal and external clients will understand what you do.
In addition to giving all interested parties a clear understanding of what you do, having a specific definition of the scope of your practice will help you in multiple areas. It will allow you to:
It is important to have systems in place for internal communication so that your partners can share information for existing clients who may be served in your new practice area. It is surprising how many firms have corporate clients who are unaware that the firm offers services that the client is currently getting from another firm. In addition, knowing the scope of services you intend to offer in this new practice will allow you to train all internal stakeholders on the types of matters you will and will not accept.
When you know who your desired clients are, you know how you need to structure your marketing plan. A plaintiff’s personal injury firm is going to be marketing to an entirely different audience than a personal injury defense firm, and their marketing strategy will be very different.
Begin by identifying the similarities your new practice area has with an existing area, where procedures can follow the same protocol. Once those items have been identified, look for other processes that will take place in this new area that will be similar across all or most of the matters and create procedures, processes, and forms for those tasks. Part of this process should include identifying how each task will be staffed. By carefully identifying your legal services in each practice area and setting up procedures and protocols for each task with team members assigned appropriately, you will develop an efficient and well-oiled machine.
Once the processes have been identified, you will need to determine where your current staff is lacking in knowledge, skills, and abilities so that you can either train existing attorneys and staff or add new hires. Bear in mind that change is scary and difficult for people, and managing change effectively will help make it easier for everyone.
You have identified processes and procedures that need to take place with your new practice area. Do you have the technology in place to make those systems work efficiently?
Technology offers us many opportunities to provide exemplary service to our clients. Using good practice management and time & billing software means that you can:
They say the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Whether you want to add an additional area of practice to your firm or change your practice entirely, with some careful planning you can have a successful transition, and your team will learn a lot of valuable lessons along the way.
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Did you know that only 33% of firms with 10–49 attorneys use practice management software? Furthermore, only 51% of firms with 100+ attorneys use practice management software. We find that a lot of firms become interested in adopting practice management if they only have a billing system when they begin to evaluate new technology. And we agree that if a firm is coming from a system that strictly handles billing, it is a good time to consider moving to a practice management system.
A practice management system creates a hub for the entire firm to find information about your cases, which makes you more efficient and allows you to give better client services, answer questions faster, and gain a better grasp of your data.
Practice management is a feature-rich component of legal technology so we are going to start with a few different elements that may be important for your firm.
Although every practice management system on the market today should be able to store all of the important information about your cases in one spot, they vary in terms of customization. For example, not every practice management software allows you to edit fields or use multiple matter layouts. If your firm specializes in multiple practice areas, this type of flexibility is something you may really need.
Overall, most firms will be looking for two overarching features: calendaring/task management and document/email management. Let’s dive into these first.
Calendaring. It seems so simple – trivial even. Yet nothing is more critical to your day-to-day operations than an accurate and up-to-date calendar. Evaluating and understanding the types of calendars each attorney uses – and how they use them – is critical. Even if you’re a pencil-and-paper type of firm, practice management software provides a considerable amount of calendaring advantages that can’t be ignored.
For starters, it gives you a centralized calendar that is backed up and allows you to choose from multiple views along with a matter-centric view. You can even create tasks through workflow automation that are built into each calendar view. This means that all of the activities associated with meeting specific deadlines can be configured into customizable matter templates depending on individual deadlines.
From an organizational standpoint, this results in everyone having a better idea of when a document has been prepared and when tasks have been completed. And if that isn’t enough visibility, users can subscribe to a specific matter feed to get alerts for every asset pertaining to that matter. This is great for collaborative firms or those that have a heavy workload and need help juggling a multitude of tasks.
All of this sounds great, right? But how does it fit within the complete picture of your firm? To avoid getting overwhelmed, start by asking yourself these questions:
One of the major benefits to a firm-wide calendar is that you can see everybody’s calendar and schedule multiple events with several attendees all at once, or select only the peoples’ calendars you need to see – no more having to do it manually one at a time. The ability to sort and change your views as you see fit will ensure you always have visibility into the matters and projects you need when you need it.
The other thing to consider is your calendar reporting. Suppose you’re the type of firm that prefers to distribute your calendar reports. In that case, you’ll want to make sure that the software allows you to generate – and perhaps print – the reports you need for providing various insights, appointments, and deadlines to the relevant members of your team.
On the task management side, a lot of firms currently use Outlook. Moving forward, you have to think about what kind of task management your firm wants in the future. Some software offers Kanban-style task management. Is that something that is important to you? Firms that use Outlook or just a whiteboard for their task organization find it difficult to assign activities to various staff and then keep track of those activities as they progress. How does your firm currently handle this and could your process be made more efficient?
The point of task management is to make it easy for your partners and managing attorneys to check the progress of their cases. How easy is it for them to do this now? Can they see at a glance what has been completed and what hasn’t been completed? The goal of any task management platform is to be able to get an overview of where any case stands at any given point in time.
Essentially, you have two options here: You can either go with the practice management system or you can use an integration dedicated to document management. When you’re evaluating document management, you need to look at a few things.
Begin with how you need your documents to be structured.
Some software uses plugins for Microsoft Word that allow you to create template documents. Is that important for your firm to have? If you have a form that you use over and over again, will the software be able to automatically populate the blanks with the new contacts’ information? We often see firms manually replacing a client’s information with a new client’s information, which can lead to embarrassing and critical human errors.
Storage is also an important factor. How big is your drive now? How much would it cost you for additional storage? These are things you definitely want to evaluate when thinking about document management systems.
On the other side of the coin is your email management. Some practice management systems let you save emails directly from Outlook or Gmail to the system itself. If you’re planning on saving them, how easy is it to do so? We have seen instances where the user is made to drag and drop the folder or has to CC a specific email address. However, some will automatically save them for you.
Once you have learned how saving emails works within the system, the next step is to ask how the system will store the actual emails you save. Is it making copies of them or is it simply linking to those emails? Is it converting them? If you need to use those emails again or bring them forth as evidence, they need to be stored in the native MSG format. A lot of systems don’t do this so this is definitely something you need to keep front of mind. Getting emails into the system is one thing, but getting them out may be another story. And, just like with your documents, you’re going to want to find out what search capabilities are available for your emails. Does the system make it easy for you to find the things you need based on a one-word search? If you get over 200 emails a day, the last thing you have time for is sifting through all of those for one line item.
If we go back to the basics, workflow itself is defined as the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion (thanks, Google). For many attorneys, finding tools to free up more time to bill is essential to growing their practice. Based on a recent survey, law offices responded that they spent 40% of their time on administrative or manual tasks. So, is workflow something you should consider? Our answer is yes, but we will let you decide.
Essentially, workflow brings process and automation together. Workflow takes a process, adds highly defined inputs and outputs, and uses automation to complete the tasks on your behalf. For example, a client fills out a form on the website which triggers a potential client record to be populated in the database. Once a new record is created in the database, an email is automatically generated and sent to the prospective client thanking them and letting them know someone from the firm will be in touch with them shortly. Then, a task is created and assigned to the firm administrator to contact the potential client. The firm administrator then contacts the prospective client and completes the task, updating the potential client status to “initial consult scheduled,” finally triggering the system to generate a merged fee agreement letter.
For many law firms, workflow can be a game-changer by creating structure and efficiencies within their practice.
Although the list is long, here are some of the most important benefits workflow can bring to a law firm:
Many software programs today integrate with services like Microsoft Teams or have an internal chat function already embedded in the software. These capabilities allow you to facilitate more streamlined communication around matter management and tasks, ultimately creating a more cohesive and efficient team.
As important as it is to maintain thorough internal communication, it is just as essential to be able to communicate externally with your clients. Does your current system allow you to text and call your clients? Does it track and record the time you spend communicating with those clients? Evaluate how you currently work with each of your clients, how they prefer to be communicated with, and if there are any points of friction that could be smoothed out.
Client portals are getting prevalent to the point of becoming a standard feature that your future clients expect. What does your client service look like right now? Does your team lose billable hours because you spend a majority of your morning answering client questions that could easily be answered through a client portal? Do you give your clients the autonomy to pull the answers they need on their own or do they still rely on getting in contact with you?
In order to improve client communication and create a client-centric approach to your day-to-day tasks, here are some priorities you should keep in mind when setting up a portal:
Most client portals come built-in with file storage attributed to each matter at your firm. The key is to make sure everyone uses the portal from the start of the case; this way, all paperwork, notes, and updates are logged for clients to take advantage of whenever it’s convenient. It’s a two-way street – a spot for clients to access things they may be wondering about in their case, and a tool for staff to easily share files when used with law management software.
Between all the digital phishing and security breaches, hacking emails has become way more common. Why put your clients’ sensitive information at risk of being compromised when a portal is a perfectly viable alternative to holding all their data in one place? The nice thing is your clients won’t need to download anything additional to access their files – any internet-enabled device will be able to log on to view updates and they’ll receive a simple notification email whenever any new information becomes available. Security should always be at the forefront of your firm’s mind so clients feel safe when interacting with you. It will create a seamless, positive experience that they’ll be sure to recommend to others.
Depending on your area of law, a client portal can diminish the issues that arise with distance. Whether a client has temporarily relocated or your firm is currently working remotely for the time being, everyone can be logged in and have access to all the necessary information on both sides. Not only is this more convenient, but it also creates a better place for client-centric interactions on an ongoing basis. Smoother communication and collaboration leads to better efficiency for everyone.
Attorneys are spread thin, and a lot of their time is spent on non-billable labor instead of billable tasks. In fact, on average, lawyers only bill for 2.3 hours of their time daily. After factoring in realization and collection rates, the average lawyer only collects about 1.6 hours of billable time per day. And to take it a step further, about 33% of an average lawyer’s time is spent on business development. To this point, did you know that two out of three potential clients say their decision to hire a firm is most influenced by a lawyer’s responsiveness to their first call or email?
The problem here is that interruptions, like emails and calls, are not just zapping time away in the immediate sense; they come saddled with a recovery time that results in a 2-hour time loss per day. If you’re getting these intake calls, they may not always result in good clients, which is a further waste of your time. Without an effective process, you’re losing money – it’s as simple as that.
All of this brings us to this question: How are you tracking the new leads that come in? Whether they are from your website or over the phone, how are you monitoring your business development?
Most of your new clients will find you online, so you should automatically be asking yourself if this new practice management software allows you to integrate your firm’s intake form directly into your website? Does it provide a way for you to track referrals or assign workflow tasks to different people based on the referral source? Are you able to monitor and analyze conversion statistics based on different marketing campaigns you run? By having access to these metrics, you can gauge your return on investment and allocate funds directly to the campaigns that are seeing the most success. This intake process looks different from firm to firm, but at its core, you need to be able to track data efficiently and access it whenever you need it, from wherever you are. Here is a high-level framework outlining the steps your practice management software could help facilitate:
A huge part of the client intake process is cultivating the relationships that are most fruitful for your firm and then tracking the progress that comes from those leads. Being able to pull lists and reports on current clients and potential new clients is paramount to your firm’s growth.
For example, a huge area we see come up for new and existing client tracking is the holiday list. The holidays only come once a year, but when the season arrives, do you have a way to quickly download a list of names and organize them based on importance to your firm? Who gets the gift card versus the $200 bottle of wine?
The last step to evaluating your practice management software is to make sure that the vendor offers the third-party integrations that your firm deems essential. Whether it’s a way to text your client, document management, or calendaring tools, you should have a list of all the tools you currently use and make sure the vendors you’re looking at can pair well with them.
This was a lot to digest! The bottom line is there are a lot of options your firm can take when considering what practice management features you want, the ones you need, and the ones that may just be luxury. Do your homework, and use this blog as a guide to help you make informed decisions!
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To get the history of practice management consultants within the legal industry, you have to go back about 30 years or more. Back then, all programs were server-based (i.e., not in the cloud), so you needed someone with enough technical expertise to understand how to load your new program onto your server, install all the updates when they rolled out each year, deploy those updates to your server, and ensure everything functioned and was maintained properly.
Ultimately, if a firm needed or wanted to switch to new software, four things needed to occur:
Obviously, things have changed quite a bit: Technology has progressed and firms that are evaluating cloud-based programs don’t necessarily need someone to download their data and upload it to new software on a new server. The primary reason for this is that these days the technology vendors will do all of that leg work for you.
Over the course of the last several years, we have seen firms work directly with the practice management vendor and we have seen firms utilize practice management consultants. It is not our intention to lead you one way or another, but rather to give you an overview of what both scenarios could look like. Ultimately, you will have to make the best decision for your firm and choose a direction that best aligns with your goals and processes.
As we discussed in, How to Begin Evaluating New Technology, when you’re beginning to evaluate different programs, the first step is understanding your firm’s needs. The first thing a consultant is going to do is come in and interview you and your firm. They’re probably going to be familiar with the program you are currently using so they’re going to understand your technical needs. Based on the conversations they have with you and your staff, they’ll gain an understanding of your firm’s process needs. Finally, they’ll make recommendations based on all the information they have collected.
So, if you don’t feel comfortable speaking directly with a vendor about what you need or discussing with your staff what they need – or you feel like you lack the technical knowledge to make those judgment calls – we recommend bringing a consultant into the fold.
Consultants today typically work with multiple systems. This can be both a good and bad thing.
The good thing is that their experience with multiple systems can prime them to bring multiple options to the table for you, providing the pros and cons of each of the recommended services.
However, if a consultant works with multiple systems, they’re probably not an expert in any single one. So if you’re evaluating multiple programs and end up going with a specific one, your consultant will not necessarily be an expert in that chosen system. What this means is that they will have the foundational knowledge to initiate the basic setup for you but may lack the granular details to help you flourish and excel. In this scenario, working directly with the vendor is going to be more advantageous because the vendor will know more about its own program and be better equipped to help you overcome any issues you may encounter.
Vendors and consultants operate under two very different business models. The vendor is a software company and the consultant is a service company. Software companies view services as a means to get you to use their software and to make you successful on their program so that you stay with them. Service companies sell services as a way to make money.
Typically, working with a consultant is going to be more expensive than going directly to the vendor. The right consultant will offer a lot of value, but some firms just don’t need those services. What we have seen happen after some firms opt to work with a consultant is that the perceived value of what they thought they were going to get was way higher than it should have been, thus setting themselves up to be unhappy once they go live. Other times, we have seen firms who were grateful they chose to work with a consultant because they were able to get reluctant staff on board with the technology change with as little friction as possible.
Think about whether or not it makes sense for your firm to hire a consultant in order to get from point A to point B. If your main concern is cost and keeping expenses as low as possible, you may want to skip the middleman and think about working directly with a vendor. And if your firm has a complex situation and growth trajectory is pointing to a need for more robust features, reports, and capabilities, working directly with a vendor may be the most prudent choice because the vendor will have the insight into how to guide you through that process properly.
Another thing to consider is that consultants tend to come from smaller organizations. The benefit to that is you will develop a close working relationship with your consultant and you will have the opportunity to get to know them and, conversely, they will have the opportunity to get to know you and your firm on a deep level. In most cases, you are assigned one personal consultant, which is conducive to an intimate working relationship. The downside of this is that while they may be a personal consultant to your firm, your firm is probably not the only firm they are supporting. In other words, if you need to get in touch with them, you could be waiting based on their availability.
Most software vendors today are set up for you to work directly with them throughout your migration, go-live, training, and support periods; however, they will also accommodate your firm if you choose to work with a practice management consultant. It is up to you and what you think will not only best fit your firm but your firm’s future needs as well.
