Productivity has become a bit of a buzz word, but with good reason. The more productive your law firm is, the more money it has the potential to make. The more productive lawyers and support staff are during work hours, the less personal time there is devoted to outstanding projects. There are plenty of articles and blog posts devoted to law firm productivity basics that you can read to find techniques that work for your practice. This post doesn’t address those items. Instead, we’re looking at 3 law firm productivity basics you should look at on a regular basis to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your work day.
Whether Your Daily Routine Is Efficient
There are things in life that are better than creating and establishing efficient daily routines. Lawyers and support staff should regularly examine their daily routine to determine whether it still works well for them. It also helps for members of the law firm to examine each other’s routine and the way tasks are completed to help pinpoint potential inefficiencies. Keep in mind, though, that this is not about being critical of someone who does a specific task differently than how you would do it. It’s about truly looking for helpful ways to improve law firm productivity.
Why must daily routines change? The very thought that it is a routine implies it is something that you stick with forever. That’s simply not true. It is an outline of the order of tasks that you complete during the day, but it is not set in stone. As your work priorities (and life!) change, your routine can also change. Adaptation is a crucial part of life.
The Tools and Technology Used in your Law Firm
Legal tech is expanding at rapid speed. There are technological solutions to just about everything that is part of law firm life. Looking to go paperless or paperlite? No problem. There are plenty of options for scanning, securely storing, accessing, and sharing files. Solo attorneys, virtual attorneys, and law firms of any size can opt to have an in-house reception team or use a lawyer answering service.
As your law firm grows, its needs change. You should regularly review the tools and technology you use to know whether they still work well.
Do You Have the Right Templates?
Regardless of whether you have support staff, templates can play an important role in your law firm productivity. When you use templates for your most commonly used documents, there’s less time spent creating drafts. You and your staff save time and hassle. Templates also help ensure that your documents follow a standard format. If you have staff, ask them whether there are certain documents they’ve found that they’re using more. If so, appoint someone to create a template that everyone can use.
Improve Productivity by Partnering with Clients ARM
Clients ARM has more than 30 years of legal industry experience. We help improve law firm productivity by enabling lawyers to choose only the services they need. They can spend more time focusing on active matters and growing their practice. We can take care of client intake, invoices, IOLTA trust fund management, write policies and procedures, and help new clients find the funding they need to pay you in full. To learn more about our services and how we can help, schedule your free consultation.
