Below are our best law practice management tips and advice, so get your practice in order!
We recommend you transition to a paperless office, try alternative billing, outsource menial tasks, create the ability to have a mobile law office, and streamline your procedures.
We also offer ideas on the best legal software and on maximizing your continuing legal education.
Once you are on your feet, you might be interested in learning our favorite productivity tactics, including the Getting Things Done (GTD) system.
Need more ideas? Join other innovative lawyers in the Lawyerist LAB.
Last week I dispelled some prevalent myths about solo attorneys.
Here’s another myth worth examining: young lawyers should take every piece of advice and immediately act on it.
Seeking input from other attorneys is a good idea. But blindly following external advice is a terrible idea.
Sometimes the best advice is to ignore everyone else and do what you think needs to be done.
Having trouble organizing notes and to-do lists in a way that helps you complete tasks? Before you get another freaky tattoo, check out Workflowy.
It just may be the world’s best tool for taking notes and making lists.
Here’s why I believe WorkFlowy will soon be one of your favorite productivity tools too.
Yesterday, I sat in on the ABA Young Lawyers Division council meeting in Minneapolis. The council was considering a resolution to recommend to the ABA House of Delegates that would require law schools to teach business skills to law students.
Better-equipping law students to practice law ought to be the job of law schools, after all. But, I can’t help thinking, what makes anyone think law schools would be any good at teaching business skills?
Billable hours have been back in the news over the past month thanks to a dispute between DLA Piper and one of their clients over legal bills. The client refused to pay the bill, claiming DLA Piper overstaffed its files and performed unnecessary work. Emails from former DLA Piper attorneys (“Churn that bill, baby!”) surfaced during discovery, underscoring the problem. DLA Piper called the emails “unprofessional” and “an offensive and inexcusable attempt at humor,” but said that the billing was appropriate for the work performed.
In a paperless practice, screen size is critical. Don’t skimp on the screen real estate. You have two choices: jumbo monitors or multi-monitor setups. I’ve opted for the jumbo monitor. Here’s why:
Multi-monitors are great for segregating programs to different screens. They look very cool. But if you are reading this, you are an attorney, not a day-trader. You will spend the majority of your time at your computer doing two things: reading and writing. Most of what you do falls in one of those two categories. And for those purposes, jumbo monitors excel. Keep Reading ⇒
The following is an excerpt from Cloud Computing for Lawyers, Chapter 7, “Cloud Computing Applications for Your Law Practice.”
There is no shortage of cloud-computing services specifically tailored for the practice of law. The most obvious example of cloud-based legal software is the law practice management suite. This type of platform provides lawyers with an assortment of tools designed to make running a law firm more efficient, ranging from case and matter management, time tracking, billing and reporting, and client contact management. However, unlike some cloud-computing applications not specifically aimed toward lawyers, most legal cloud-computing services are not free. Most are subscription-based services that require you to pay a monthly fee for continued access to the service.
I recently downloaded and read Alexis Neely’s Law Business Manifesto. It’s an interesting approach. Of course it is written like a marketing piece, because it is, but there are still some gems. I’ll be doing a full review soon, but in the meantime I’ve started implementing one of her strategies: not taking unscheduled phone calls.
The life of an attorney can be filled with WTF moments—many of which are avoidable.
The advent of social media (combined with a tough legal economy) has made some attorneys overzealous in their marketing attempts—resulting in chasing potential clients.
That can also lead to attorneys providing legal advice when they simply do not have enough information to render a professional opinion.
Rendering haphazard legal advice creates all sorts of problems—and none of them are of the good variety.
Young attorneys are frequently crippled by a lack of morale and inability to trust their gut to make decisions.
For me, the most frustrating aspect was bouncing an idea of another attorney, only to be told: “no, you have to do it this way.”
Wrong. There is more than one way to achieve your client’s goals, and your way is just as likely to lead to success.
Never, I mean ever, send a Word file as “correspondence.” In a paperless office a word processing file is not a document. PDFs are documents. Word files are drafts. And sending a draft that includes your digital letterhead and signature to anyone is just plain stupid. Here’s why:
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