LAW PRACTICE WORKFLOW PART 4: STREAMLINING LAW FIRM PROCESSES 

Why your law firm practice should be like Starbucks? Because Starbucks has meticulous and detailed procedures for each and every shop so they all operate similarly regardless of location. This coffee provider you now find on every corner of every street in your neighborhood has streamlined their steamers, now it’s time for you to consider streamlining your law firm processes to optimize your workflow. 

Here is The Social Lawyer Show podcast version of this blog for easy listening on your commute or while you are walking your dog, or yourself…

LAST WEEK

Last week I talked about being picky about who becomes your client and I shared a few simple ways to ensure you are employing the same criteria and mental checklists to effectively know a good fit for both you and your client early on. All part of creating a streamlined practice, less headache, and freeing up more time to focus on lawyering, more time for all you enjoy doing outside your practice as well.

THIS WEEK

Can you imagine how efficient your practice would be if you had policies and procedures in place for most aspects? Well, not quite so easy. You are busy lawyering and creating SOPs (standard operating procedures) takes time! Something most attorneys don’t have much of.

Bite off one chunk at a time to break it down and get it done! Streamlining law firm processes will make a huge difference in your bottom line. I’ve seen and worked with firms that have easily tripled their revenue in less than 6 months! Other bonuses along the way? Associates and support staff are all much happier better understanding expectations and having a clear structured framework to work with to meet mutual goals. So, let’s talk practical now on how to break down into some easy steps to get your practice more streamlined…

1. HAVE A POLICY MANUAL IN PLACE   

Having a policy manual in place is the best way to ensure that the firm culture projects what you want it to and throughout the entire team. It sets expectations giving everyone a firm anchor to work from, and will position the firm for success.

Here is a list of the main items you must include in any manual, and they typicallt fall into these areas:  Introductions, General Policies, Employment Policies, Client Service, Office Procedures, Finances, Technology, Emergency/Disaster Response, Updates and Acknowledgements by Employees…

• Introduction (provides an understanding of your firm and supports pride in being part of your law firm team)
• General policies that handle questions about confidentiality, security, privacy, and harassment,
• Employment policies showing clear compliance with employment laws including expectations, roles, and benefits. These are further broken down into conduct, office hours, holidays, leave, payroll, benefits, job descriptions.
• Client service which includes detail no how staff should deal with the public and clients, possibly even scripts and templates for email correspondence, dress code, confidentiality, client representation, communications protocol generally.
• Office procedures including filing systems, security, calendar control, and work product appearance.
• Finances that reflects a clear billing statement to meet client satisfaction, itemization of information in time entries, description of trust and general accounts, and otherwise strict procedures for all accounting transactions.
• Technology and equipment
• Emergency response
• Updates and acknowledgement by employees – in electronic form so easily updated and accessed by key employees                                                                                                                                        

2. CREATE A TRAINING MANUAL

This can be part of the policy manual or separate if you have additional time (or delegate to trusted key employee). One of the best ways to create is to ask every person in the firm to account for every single thing that they do daily for one week (and put a deadline on this). Thereafter you ask employees to also write out step by step how they accomplish each thing on that list.

3. PROVIDE CLIENTS WITH A QUOTE SHEET AND A DOCUMENT LIST AT THE INITIAL CONSULTATION

It is common for most attorneys to provide their clients with a quote sheet, but if you also provide a document list at the first consultation where documentation needed to start the case, you make onboarding very efficient. Clients often come in fully prepared at the time for sign up and saves plenty of time having to chase them for documents.

4. START THE CASE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING SIGN UP

If you can streamline both the quote sheet and a document list, this will allow you to also start the case much sooner following sign up. Schedule and set aside a few hours for the sign up to review the contract, obtain all the necessary information needed.

WEEKLY TIP, TOOL, TRANQUILITY FINDER…

There has been plenty of talk about what tools are best for law firm communications, and SLACK surfaces time and again for an increasing number of firms. Client confidentiality is of course one of the main concerns in this context. Since lawyers are duty bound to protect client confidentiality including communications and shared documents, this is something any communication tools need to address properly. Slack takes security seriously, and here is a white paper they published about how serious they are about the area of security, read it by clicking on this wording.

Another security measure for any communication tool or applications should all provide (and Slack does) is multi-factor authentication which should always be enabled. One of the most useful applications of Slack in the law firm context is the ability to organize team communications into channels based on a particular client, matter, project, office, or department. Channels can also be made public to entire firm or private and limited to related members. This tool is robust and will dramatically reduce your internal email communication, but using Slack properly will improve accountability and decrease email.  Who couldn’t use fewer, and more relevant email correspondence in this noisy world?

IN NEXT POST…

Thanks for taking the time to join me and hope you’ll join me next week when we’ll start talking about how to continue streamlining from a technology and online standpoint – my favorite area, and expertise!