3 Ways to Improve Law Firm Efficiency
A hiring strategy for a law firm cannot both begin and end with the legal recruitment process alone. We must constantly be analyzing the efficiency in how our law firm operates, and focus on how we can improve that operation. Good retention begins with a good working atmosphere in which the new employee is going to be entering. It is allowing for an environment that sets up the people within it for success.
Here at Del.Trust, we focus on aligning the right people around the right priorities with the right processes to enable predictable and sustainable growth. Here are three ways to improve law firm efficiency that is categorized under our “right processes” mentality.
ONE | Set Yourself Up for Easy Delegation
If I had a nickel for every time an attorney client of mine told me, “I know I should delegate more to my team, but once I sit down and start getting things together to send over, I realize it would take me less time to do it myself than to provide instructions for them to do it.”
This can be something as basic as sending out an email to a client and opposing counsel to begin working on setting up a deposition, to something as complex as drafting a motion. Whatever the case, these tasks that you should be delegating begin to pile up on one another and take hours upon hours away from your weeks.
The first step to delegate begins with learning to recognize when you’re doing something that the people you’ve strategically hired are meant to do and are fully capable of doing. The second step is learning to record and document processes and store case information in a compounding and intentional way so that you are always setting yourself up to easily delegate.
First and foremost, delegating will become so much easier when you can create a templated and repeatable list for the general flow and progression of every phase of a case and itemize each individual contribution that will be needing to get done to finalize each phase. Each task should clearly have a name or role written next to it for the person that will be in charge. Then, as time allows (and be sure to carve time out and make this a priority), use a software like Loom to record how to do each task within your systems when applicable so that when your new hire(s) come on board, you don’t need to personally explain it to them.
Doing this will also be a key indicator of how many trivial tasks you are doing on each case just to avoid having to show someone how to do it. Teach it through recording it once, and never again.
TWO | Outsource
Employees are great. Employees are the dream of every business owner. However, we shouldn’t overlook how freelance paralegals, freelance legal assistants, or other types of contracted companies can support certain areas of your law firms’ operations. Sometimes outsourcing roles can be a temporary fix, but most times they can be permanent and incredibly lucrative.
For instance, if your law firm deals with a heavy volume of medical record retrieval and summarization, but not enough to justify an entire position dedicated to a “medical records department,” you may want to investigate how you can outsource this to a professional company or an individual freelance professional.
Doing this is an effective strategy that focuses on bringing in the right people for the specific jobs that will help free up yourself as the attorney and your legal team to focus on other components of the case. Additionally, a law firm should consider outsourcing higher-level work to a senior level freelance paralegal when their local job market doesn’t offer that experience level. There are millions of professionals in this country ready to be of service to you. Of course, identifying the right professional is the key.
THREE | Use Technology to Click Less
In a law firm, technology should be leveraged to support the people in their day-to-day tasks and cut down on trivial tasks that pull focus away from important tasks through automation.
If you can eliminate five clicks from one task, for instance, you’re saving that person approximately two minutes to complete that task. Two minutes over 200 tasks in a week, for instance, saves nearly 7 hours. That is almost an entire workday. Crazy when you look at it that way, isn’t it?
Removing extra clicks comes in leveraging the tools. Some examples of this:
Utilize the description sections in your task lists to include links to the resource they need to complete that task.
Utilize a chrome extension such as CloudHQ (free) to create templates for frequently sent emails.
Implement automations if your case management system allows for it, or anywhere else they can be applied (Zapier).
Utilizing “digital stickie notes” for quick grabs to the places you’re in most.
Cut down on emails and only use them for external communication (leverage SLACK or Teams for your internal communication).
CONCLUSION
To effectively delegate and manage your legal team, the right processes must be in place. It takes a strong mixture of good professionals and the right technology to make it happen.
We focus on bringing in the right people around the right priority with the right processes in place to enable predictable and sustainable growth. Whether that be a full-time employee or a 1099 freelance legal professional, our entire legal recruiting team comes with a legal background and we can help guide you towards that desired outcome.