Anything you do, whether it’s baking a cake, building a model, practicing law – drafting a petition, creating an estate plan – involves process. But many times, attorneys do not treat practicing law as having steps because it feels like second nature. Let’s take a single example. In drafting a deed, one must describe the parties, describe the property, assure you have the right document for your jurisdiction and ensure the deed is properly executed and recorded.
When people start a firm, they don’t think about their process. They don’t write it down, and then they can’t measure it, they can’t price it properly, and they can’t do quality control.
As attorneys, you know the steps of the things you do everyday. Take what you already know, write it down, and you unleash a lot of power.
Here’s how processes can help boost your profit:
- Help your team help you…
Documenting processes creates a ready-made framework for checklists and training for other attorneys, paralegals or legal assistants, allowing you to maximize your leverage. Powerful case management systems are able to create documents, set time parameters between documents, and set your expectations for those documents.
- Validate your pricing…
A detailed set of processes allows you to make sure all your bases are covered: Am I billing enough per hour or, if in a flat-fee environment, what should the fee be? (For more on billing methods, see my newly published book, Judicial Dollars and Cents.)
- Set and manage client expectations…
When you’re meeting with a prospect or a new client, documented processes allow you to lay out the road ahead. Communicating the matter milestones to a client and then delivering on those commitments leads to client satisfaction.
- Boost billing hygiene…
If you know where you are in the process, you know whether or not you’ve billed and collected. (As much as we might love what we do, we also need to be paid if we want to keep the roof over our heads.)
- Amp up your marketing…
How are you reaching your clients: live meetings, on the web, or advertising? Which avenues provide the volume and types of clients you wish to serve? Once you know your marketing process and you memorialize it, you can evaluate how successful it is, go back to it and change it.
Every aspect of running a business has some level of process. And while we all have it up in our heads, if you put it down on paper, you’re able to see it, you’re able to analyze it, and you’re able to refine it.
Get Started on Improving Law Firm Operations Through Process Documentation
When you look at other businesses you admire, with amazing documentation, it can be easy to feel discouraged. But they didn’t do it overnight.
An empty book begging to be filled with brilliant processes can prove daunting. Don’t write a book. Write a single process. One at a time. Pick an area of your practice that you use on a regular basis. Start with what you already have, forms, processes, anything. An engagement letter is a great place to start.
Here’s what that might look like:
- Initial contact with client: What do you do when a client calls? Within what timeframe do you plan to schedule a meeting?
- Pre-meeting: What intake forms do you have for them and where are they saved? Do you have a letter to customize or a standard intake form to fill in?
- Initial client conference
Update the engagement letter to reflect what is going to happen.
Sign the document and decide where to store it.
Determine and collect retainer amount (if applicable).
- Set up an electronic system: What information do you have to input?
It doesn’t matter where you write these things down: use old-school legal paper, a white board or an online tool. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s visible. Then give yourself a chance to review and ask: Am I doing this correctly?
If you repeat this exercise, slowly but surely, you’ll build up to an entire library – and if it still feels overwhelming, there are professional consultants who can help create a strategy to prioritize around this.
Improving law firm operations requires an investment in time, but it eventually pays dividends. From improving your ability to use leverage, get feedback on your pricing, improve billing hygiene, set client expectations and evaluate your marketing, processes help every area of firm management.
Check out our virtual CFO services for law firms or schedule a consultation below.
