Law Firm Management

Admit it: You've been doing the same thing for too long in an attempt to get your firm in the news. And it's just not working anymore. Below are five ways to be more effective in 2016.

This article enumerates the most common pitfalls in any research study to help you ensure the information you and your firm rely on is the best available, and used properly.

It's hard to find a process more critical to the lifeblood of a law firm than its invoicing. Getting paid quickly and fully for professional services rendered is what keeps the lights on. It is what enables firms to grow, attract the best attorneys and serve the interests of more clients.

Law firms are metrics-driven organizations, and the need for accurate metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) will only continue to increase as law firms answer the client's demands to re-tool service delivery and organizational structure. This need for metrics-driven analysis now extends to the firms' research services, a heretofore last bastion of resistance to technology and measurement.

Last August and September, we published a two-part article on the phenomenon called "manterruption." We commented on some important social research discussing men's pervasive tendency to interrupt women in group meetings or settings where the power stakes were high ("manterruption") and to appropriate women's ideas as their own ("bropropriation"). These posts triggered a torrent of response, some of which was gratifying to us and some of which was pretty bewildering.

2016 is in full swing and we will soon be conducting the 2016 Mattern & Associates Cost Recovery Survey. We've been conducting this bi-annual survey since 2004 and, during that time, it has become an industry resource for tracking the cost recovery practices of law firms across size and geography.

Data breaches and cyberattacks aren't new occurrences, but it can sometimes feel like they are. It's only in the last few years that we've seen these attacks make headlines more and more, increasing in both quantity and impact.

"There's math and technology involved? Count me out, that's why I went to law school." But the practice of law is not immune to technological advances, especially in the areas of research methodologies and, of course, electronic discovery. Furthermore, clients are continuing to focus on value, whether that is in seeking alternative fee arrangements or evaluating outside counsel on their efficient delivery of legal services.