Peruse any standard law school syllabus, and you’ll find a class – and a curriculum at large – that rewards individualism. An attorney’s entire career rides on their sole expertise to attract clients. With this in mind, from test scores to days in court, it’s no secret attorneys often prefer to practice separately. It’s easier, not to mention they don’t have to rely on someone else – and thoughts of “What if they steal my client?” can be put to bed.

But it’s lonely and risky at the top. We’re seeing the narrative is starting to change with the advent of successful collaboration and the value it’s bringing to law firms. (Who knew working together could pay off so well?)

Legal collaboration “involves specialists working together substantively to deliver a project rather than experts working separately in disciplinary silos.” (Source)

Distinguished Harvard Law School Fellow Heidi K. Gardner uncovers the empirical, often unlocked potential of collaboration: that “clients served by multiple practices are far more likely to retain their law firms for longer – even when the client-relationship partner leaves.” The higher margins brought on by attorneys working together are often ignored due to the inherent risks and lack of competency trust. After all, as we mentioned before, attorneys are led to their profession on the efficacy of their own work; their own test scores; their own intellect. It’s far easier to trust yourself than another associate in an area of law you’re not well-versed. And what if they take your client?

On a surface level, matter collaboration may not seem palatable to risk-averse firms, but the long-term payoff reaps considerable rewards for attorneys by helping them gain a wider breadth of experience and higher payment margins – often by hundreds per hour in a few short years.

So let’s demystify the stigmas around collaboration and discuss how you can take actionable steps toward adoption of its practices in your firm:

Legal Collaboration: More Effort Than It’s Worth? Think Again.

Necessary building blocks to sustain a successful partner collaboration within a firm

Although expectations around collaboration may feel limiting, the reality is, for many firms with a “lone wolf” mentality, it’s likely roadblocks will occur. This, unfortunately, leads to confirmation bias of its ineffectiveness. Many firms rife with high stakes projects feel the effects of performance pressure, leading to risk-aversion and often less-than-stellar outcomes.

However, with the proper checks and balances in place (which we’ll cover in more detail later), matter collaboration opens up a treasure trove for lawyers to work across specialties, gain loyal clients, and charge more for their work in the long run.

Why?

Clients are privy to value; they want strategic direction and validation more than anything else. And yes, while a bevy of attorneys possess technical prowess, no one knows all the ins and outs of every aspect of law. Being able to drive the car forward in a way that benefits your client’s best interests leads to higher margins and a better relationship with your partners. The fuel to keep the car going lies in ongoing colleague collaboration.

Not only that, but cross-practice collaboration encourages a team player environment and reinforces loyalty to the firm and all its partners. Consequently, this helps train lateral hires and retain quality associates for longer, too.

Here are some insights from years of research (sourced from Gardner’s report):

  • Surveys and interviews with hundreds of practicing lawyers reveal that trust in colleagues is the key ingredient that enables knowledge sharing and collaboration
  • According to data from one large law firm, a single work referral typically generated about $50,000 of extra revenue for the receiving partner
  • Cross-practice collaboration experience allows attorneys to raise rates faster than peers only doing siloed work, raising from $500 to well over $750 (with attorneys in siloed work only raising to about $600 in comparison)

These collaboration referrals also provide an extra layer of security during recessions, as 2008’s market crash proved. With even five to ten trusted associates, you can ensure during hard times that you’ll still have work coming through to you.

Ways to Facilitate Collaboration

In order for collaboration to truly thrive, a clear plan must be in place. When it comes to legal collaboration, creating goals, and specifying how they’re measured is vital for attorneys to understand expectations.

Psychosocial Rewards

In Gardner’s report, she discusses the need for psychosocial rewards to help further relations and fill in the gap for trust: “Therefore, provide abundant psychosocial rewards, such as recognition for excellent client work or firm-building initiatives. Compensation still matters, but people pay far less attention to it than in places where ‘the number’ is their only signal of their worth.”

Rewarding performance with compensation bonuses alone isn’t a failsafe to fostering an environment for accessible collaboration. This is especially telling in firms seeking to bring up junior associates and help build their repertoire. If an attorney gives one of his cases over and doesn’t meet a specific quota, it would hardly make sense to give the extra bacon to another who kept everything to himself and refused to mentor or funnel cases to other juniors. This is counterproductive toward spreading knowledge, and instead manifests as a roadblock rather than a benefit.

Face-to-face Interaction

Another way to encourage collaboration is to host face-to-face events. This networking will forge stronger relationships and increase knowledge on all colleagues and their capabilities. It’s been shown that firms that do happy hours and retreats – ways for associates to get to know each other – strengthen the firm and keep employees engaged and loyal.

With these methods in motion, now all you need are the tools to keep the momentum going – what can be seen as the wheels of your collaboration car.

Software and Collaboration: The Facts

It’s important to note before moving forward that regardless of any software, matter collaboration succeeds only by fostering an ongoing environment of trust – both in relational and competency trust – between associates. Trust is the key ingredient that creates your coveted high profit and strategic direction benefits as time progresses.

With matter collaboration, you need effective communication tools to enable visibility for everyone. At the end of the day, a law firm is nothing without its people. You need a channel to share ideas; pitches; networking events. And you need a space that makes sense of it all with custom dashboards and reporting. Welcome to Centerbase’s project management and client relations tools.

Here’s how these tools can help:

Client Service Tools

Creating an easily digestible experience for clients is built directly into Centerbase. Our text messaging app allows for frictionless, real-time communication between you and your clients – all stored directly in our cloud-based system from any device. Simply send a message, and skip playing phone tag. Rest assured, for confidential information, you have the capability to send an encrypted email straight from the app.

But what does this mean for referrals, you may be asking? It means you can transfer all the same conveniences – for instance, with billing and communication – to other associates and referral cases. It’s one platform for everyone to use.

  • 24/7 tools: With convenient 24/7 tools readily accessible, everyone can remain aligned on billable hours and the status of all cases a client is involved with
  • Matter specific phone numbers: Maintain boundaries between work and home by using the software’s generated numbers (no more giving out your personal cell phone number)
  • Conversation tracking: Conversations can be directly tied to matter, so you never have to remember who said what when – it’s all in the digital file, so you can read and go “Oh yeah, I remember!”

Project Management Tools

The staff at your firm are the very backbone of daily operations. Empower them with seamless tools to be more efficient, make less mistakes, and flourish in personal development.

The very same occurs when it comes to collaboration. Once the doubts of investment and associate trustworthiness are removed, you’ll have full visibility into all associates and what’s being worked on. This isn’t about reinventing the wheel; it’s about simplifying the cogs and removing impediments.

  • Matter reporting: Get instant caseload updates and important stats, such as upcoming deadlines or various case updates from associates
  • Deadline management: You can easily juggle different areas of law for one client – our deadline tool imports all region-based court deadlines directly in the system
  • Visual tracking: Use kanban style tracking with a simple drag and drop interface (think Trello, but for legal management and matter collaboration)

The Reality of Legal Collaboration

As they say, two minds are better than one. While there are risks involved in adopting collaboration in your firm, if onboarded properly with outlined incentives (not just compensation), the benefits are vast.

The law firm landscape is changing, and adapting with effective collaboration methods will keep your talent engaged while also broadening their skills.

There are many similarities between managing a practice management implementation and being a coxswain on a rowing team (for those who don’t know what a coxswain is, it’s the person who sits on the end of the boat and motivates the team to row faster) – your job is to make sure everyone is working in unison to achieve a common goal. If everyone rows hard together, you win the race, but if everyone is rowing at different speeds, the boat gets turned around in a different direction.

Over the past few years, I’ve been watching law firms successfully and unsuccessfully adopt practice management software. Very rarely do you get everyone “rowing” at the same speed right from the starting gun, but there are things you can do to make the transition smoother for your employees and increase your adoption rate.

Launching your legal software has never been easier1. Begin with the highest value changes

If you’re at the point of implementing practice management software, you should have a list of the features you wanted to implement because you had to pitch this list of features to the management team by explaining the benefits. If you don’t have a list, stop what you’re doing and make one right now!

Take this list and begin putting together a plan of attack. Personally, I like to first implement the features that bring the highest value and are the easiest to implement. This way, your team members quickly see the benefit of the software and your team morale is heightened.

If you’re having a hard time prioritizing, make a list of the features. Next to the list of features create two columns, one for “highest impact” and one for “easy to implement.” For the highest impact column, take the total number of features you’ve listed and begin to number them with the lowest number as the least impactful feature and the highest number as the most impactful. Next, do this same exercise for the “easy to implement” column with the lowest number being the hardest to implement and the highest number as the easiest to implement. Then, add up each row and begin implementing the row with the highest total first.

2. Roll it out in stages

I’ve seen law firms do entire practice management, billing, and document management software implementation at once, and although it’s possible, I don’t recommend it. I also don’t recommend going from 0 to 100 using practice management software either.

Why is this? It’s a big change for your staff and it can cause you a lot of personnel headaches along with a low adoption rate of the new software.

3. Pick super users at your firm

It’s always a good idea to have a few super users on staff. These super users are typically staff members that are more technical and well-respected amongst their coworkers. These super-users will do a few things at the firm:

4. Invest in training

Many people view training costs as an added expense, but in reality, it is a vital investment because of its ability to boost adoption rates for any software at a firm. If this is the first time your firm has used legal practice management software, training is especially important because it’s new to your staff.

Training should be broken out into multiple sessions. In my experience, the staff begins to lose focus after about an hour.

We have a lot of great material on investing in your training and how to create a legal practice management software training program.

Implementing legal practice management software is rarely a walk in the park but if you commit to the steps above and have the right implementation specialist, I am confident your team will be more willing to make the leap. If you have more questions about implementing legal software, feel free to reach out to us – we are happy to help.

Many law firms today still operate without legal practice management software. Mainly because… well, change. Each attorney and team has their own way of tracking matter-related information that’s “working for them.”

I’m here to tell you that your spreadsheets aren’t working.

There are endless reasons why you should adopt case management software, but I’ve narrowed it down to 7 specific reasons to consider:

1. Increased staff productivity

The heart of any legal practice management software is the matter. Typically, everything related to the case can be found on the matter record inside of your practice management software. This includes all party’s contact information, case documents, calendar appointments, tasks, email correspondence, notes, and billing information.

With everything in a single software, your staff knows where to look for matter-related information without having to contact a coworker to send the file over. They’ll know that if they navigate to the matter, they should be able to find the information they’re looking for.

2. Happier clients

Services like Amazon Prime have made people expect everything instantly. This is very true for your client’s expectations of case updates. With a legal practice management application (especially if it’s cloud-based) you’re able to get to all of your clients’ information from anywhere, no matter if you’re at your desk or crossing the street in New York City.

Quick updates = Happy clients

3. More complete conflict checks

If you’re able to run a conflict check in the software where most of your clients’ information resides, you’ll get a more complete conflict check.

I’ve spoken to many firms that have to run a conflict check in their billing software, against a spreadsheet, and then send out a conflict vote to make sure the attorneys don’t uncover conflicts in their own personal files.

This is also important because it not only improves the firm’s processes, but it also protects the firm and keeps them compliant with their liability insurance.

4. Better collaboration within teams

Within a legal software application, you’re able to share information between staff members. Some systems allow you to assign tasks to other coworkers and get notifications once the task is complete. Other programs have chat systems built into the application itself, so you can communicate without having to send an email, call them or get up from your desk.

Quick updates = Happy clients

5. Easier to onboard new staff

One of the hardest parts of onboarding new staff is training. A single practice management software means less software and process training.

An added benefit of some practice management applications is automated workflow. With automated workflow, you can build your processes into the program, ensuring compliance across your entire staff with minimal training needed.

6. Work from anywhere

This benefit is true if your firm picks a cloud-based practice management application. With most of the newer cloud-based, legal practice management applications, you can access your firm’s database from the web or from a native app on your iOS or Android device. This means as long as you have internet, you’ll have access to your client information.

7. Automated time entry

Many practice management applications give you the ability to capture time as you’re working. Some even capture time spent within their application and other programs attorneys use throughout the day.

If you think your firm is ready to take the plunge and pursue a practice management software, check out this blog about the 3 Types of Legal Practice Management Software to Consider for Your Firm.