Law Firm Management

Law firms have long dominated downtown trophy office space, locating in buildings that are the best-of-the-best at "Main and Main." But times are changing. While growth is slowly returning to the legal industry, slightly rising revenues are still no match for rapidly increasing office space rents. New solutions ' and new locations ' must be found.

Over the last decade, technology has at least conceptually moved from a supporting role to a central role in the legal industry. Law firms market their technology prowess and clients demand investments in systems and expertise to leverage technology on their behalf. It won't surprise any trainers out there, however, to read that law firms continue to face difficulty maximizing effective user behavior, mandating adherence to policies, and even encouraging attendance at training.

Many attorneys run into issues related to the improper management of trust accounts, and some firms don't have the appropriate safeguards and checks in place to help prevent issues. Implementing proper controls can help reduce the risk of trust accounting improprieties and errors.

The collective weight of the new year is upon law firm managing partners, with the season being that of collections, partner compensation and rate-setting. And the latter has proven a bit vexing for firm leaders as they grapple with setting rates in an era where firms span multiple markets and practice concentrations, clients aren't willing to pay the published rates and alternative fee deals are a growing part of firm revenue.

For law firms to get smart about bidding on work, they need a legal management infrastructure with deep knowledge and understanding of their matters, staffing resources, billing rates and spending data. This business intelligence (BI), goes beyond a stand-alone matter management application.

Those who gauge networking success by the sheer number of contacts they can cultivate digitally need to get this through their heads: You are not "networked" unless you make your net work, which is to say, unless you work your net.

All rebranding projects are unique ' no two are the same. Here are a few tips that will help make your rebranding project ' should you dare to take one on ' a success.

Given that lawyers are not sales professionals and only spend a small amount of their time focused on business development, and given that they already have a full-time job, it's important to keep the business development approach as simple as possible. Some ideas related to keeping it simple follow: