5 Ways Tech Helps Law Firms Maximize Office Time
Twenty-four percent of small business owners spend up to 10 hours weekly solely on administrative tasks. From keeping up with billable hours to rescheduling clients who miss pre-trial consultations — there aren’t enough hours in the workweek.
Time is money and every minute spent manually running your business is money slipping through your fingers.
Your time is your most valuable resource. And with only so many hours in the week, using technology to your benefit is vital to your firm’s survival.
At Thryv, we’ve mastered the art of maximizing time through automation. We help law firms improve their processes, communicate more with their clients and organize their files all while cutting down the time it takes to do all three.
Here are five processes your law firm can use software for to help cut out timely tasks.
Client Intake
More than 40% of the time, it will take three or more business days for a lawyer to get back to a prospective client. What does that time range say to your client? That this is what they can expect from your firm.
Rather than have receptionists fight to keep up with incoming calls from new clients while routing current clients to the appropriate members of your legal team, push client intake forms online. You’ll get the same relevant information without having to decipher handwriting — or risk further burning out your team.
Scheduling
If you have clients who need to come in for a pre-trial consultation, having an online booking system allows them to schedule based on your availability. This is important now that 87% of lawyers say their workplaces allow them to work remotely.
By allowing clients to book the appointment online, you’re once again freeing up your office staff from routing calls while also giving yourself a break from phone tag and back-and-forth email communications to coordinate a time.
Appointment Reminders
This goes in tandem with your appointment scheduler. By connecting your calendar to your customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can have emails or texts automatically sent to your clients to remind them of upcoming appointments. This reduces the number of delays and no-shows you receive, which is important considering the national average no-show rate is roughly 18%.
Document Location
Whether it’s past legal cases, contacts or client-submitted documents, you need to find it quickly. Fifty-four percent of office professionals report wasting time searching for much-needed files in cluttered online filing systems.
Finding a system to host, organize and share your documents is important. The added ability to use tags for speedy recall is vital to saving your business time and resources.
Billing
If manually sending out invoices to clients is eating away at your time, cut the manual entry and use payments software. Not only will it be more organized for your business but, clients will finally have a clearer view of what they’re expected to pay.
One major client complaint is that they receive the bill 90 days post-completion. Of course, by then, they’re reluctant to pay. Tapping into software that offers a client-facing view and automated payment reminders, you can resolve the payment dilemma.
Schedule invoice reminders for the first of the month as a best practice, and clients can head into their account to view what’s owed, so the bill doesn’t end up snowballing.
By handing over these five tasks to technology, you can become a more efficient firm and save hours in your week. Curious about fresh ways to get more value for your time on the clock? This guide will help you run a profitable law practice and maximize your bottom line.
This content is advertising.
