What Impacts Your Bottom Line?
Tick tock, tick tock…How’s Your Year Shaping Up? Focusing on what matters in a smaller law firm.
What impacts your bottom line? Back in January, we published a blog series titled, “3 Resolutions to Fuel Your Law Firm Growth Strategy” to help smaller law firms fast track their growth in 2017. Often, smaller law firms struggle with actually taking the time to stop, reflect and create a plan for success. Now that we’re in about the middle of the year, it’s probably a good time to reflect on how things are going so you can plan for a successful second half, and adjust as needed.
Focusing on the chicken or the egg? Balancing “lawyering” vs. running the business. You gain your clients based off of your legal expertise, your track record, your client service, and your outcomes. Your job is to serve your clients to meet their needs – whether that is winning in a courtroom or getting the deal done. Are you spending enough time on your clients’ strategy and your client service or, are you spending too much of your time on inefficient firm processes that eat into your billable time? Did you know that according to a recent study conducted by Thomson Reuters,
“Lawyers at small firms spend 40% of their time on activities other than the practice of law.”
If you work from 8am-6pm each day, that’s like working for free after 2pm. Or, think about it in terms of the year - how about not getting paid from January till nearly June (40% of your year) because it’s spent on non-billable or administrative time? Ouch.
Legal technology shouldn’t be viewed as a headache or a decision put off for another day. Find one part of your practice you wish was easier and leverage technology to create value for your law firm. Whether you’re looking for better matter management, a simplified and more professional time and billing process, streamlining your intake process, or managing your deadlines automatically, cloud-based practice management can help you. And, the ROI is there.
Are you improving on meeting client demands, or falling behind? Another critical component of driving firm growth is your current client base’s perception. Would they recommend you? Would they give you a positive review? How you meet client demands surely impacts your future success. In the 2016 State of U.S. Small Law Firms Study conducted by Thomson Reuters, one of the major challenges identified by small law firms was clients demanding more for less or client rate pressure. In the study, 62% of small firms said that is a challenge for their firm. But even among those that say it’s a significant challenge, only a third has implemented changes to address the issue. And, to pile it on, “Client Satisfaction Ratings” was the TOP defining factor for firm success according to the study.
So if you haven’t already, what are you doing to address increasing client challenges in the 2nd half of the year? One tip is to be able to address clients’ needs anytime, anywhere. You need access to your firm information and a secure way to communicate with your clients whether or not you are in the office. Many have turned to the white paper, “Mobile in Practice: The Benefits of a Virtual Law Firm” on how to run a successful law practice in a mobile world. The challenge is real – address it today.
There are many ways cloud-based practice management can help you overcome the challenges that small law firms face today. The question is, are you going to wait another year, or start the success plan now?
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