Resources

Red Cave Law Firm Consulting's Technology Blog Series (from CEO Jared D. Correia, Esq.)

2021 Quarter 4

December 27, 2021: Teleprompter: Choosing a Law Firm Phone System

Phone systems, and managing phone systems, are essential for law firms -- even if managing lawyers can tend to overlook the importance of such things.  But, in a very real sense, law firm phone systems are really money machines.  Getting a lead to the right person, transferring calls appropriately, accessing a message in a timely fashion, utilizing a system in which leads most often reach humans, even if those humans are part of a contracted virtual receptionist service . . . any or all of those attributes of a feature set and their application can increase your chances of converting a lead by degrees.  You can also utilize phone systems to keep existing clients happy, including by reducing the perceived layers of administration between lawyers and their customers.

As with most technology options that face modern attorneys, there are no easy choices.  Not only is a lawyer’s ethical competency now often tied to their ability to select and utilize appropriate technology, but modern consumers also demand expediency, at almost all levels of process.  And, because the phone is still the most frequently-accessed mode of communication for lawyers (this side of email) it’s important to get that side of the equation right.

Even given the forgoing, attorneys still don’t make choices about phone systems unless they’re forced to: there’s an office move, an existing provider raises prices or is acquired, a physical phone breaks, etc.  But, you don’t need to wait for your hand to be forced before you make a decision to upgrade your phone system.  Opting for a modern VoIP system, with effective routing and voicemail features, is probably an upgrade over what you have, whenever you make the upgrade.

This article offers a useful rundown of phone system options for the modern law firm.

December 20, 2021: Open for Business: Why You Should Never Close On the Internet

Every time you complete a business-facing page -- your website, a social media profile, a review platform page -- you're always asked to provide an opening and closing time for your office.

Don't.

I mean, think about it: Does that jibe with the way modern consumers access businesses, or the way that modern business owners work?  Do you work 9-5?  Of course not.  You do things after hours, and you're frustrated when consumer service options don't exist after hours, too.  So are your clients.  And, guess what: If you indicate that your office closes at 5 pm, you're just giving your potential clients an excuse not to call you, and to call someone else instead.

Of course, this course of action necessitates the need for providing contact options for potential clients who contact you on off hours.  That contact option could be you.  Or, it could be a contact form.  Or, it could be a virtual engagement service or tool, like a virtual receptionist, live chat or chatbot service.  If you can engage your leads via a conversational mechanism -- 9 times out of 10, you can convert them. 

And, there's no reason that conversion can't occur after dinner.

December 13, 2021: Respect the Process: Clients Desire to Know How It All Works

Law firms have a particularly hard time with lead intake.  It costs time and money to acquire leads in the first place, to the point where it’s devastating to whiff on those leads, once you have a chance to convert them.  Even when law firms effectively engage leads and are responsive in contacting them back, oftentimes they don’t say the right thing, and therefore fail in transitioning the lead to a client.

One of the chief reasons for that is that lawyers are unwilling to respond to what clients most want to know.  Because clients choose lawyers based not only on their general expertise, but also based on their specific expertise in particular niche practice areas, they want to know more about the legal process that effects their claim.

Only, lawyers are reticent to talk with leads about the legal process for a couple of reasons: (1) they’re worried about overstepping ethical bounds; and, (2) they’ve been taught not to ‘give away the farm’, and to make clients pay for it instead.  As to (1), utilizing a disclaimer, including clickthrough web disclaimers, and sending nonengagement letters to leads who do not become clients, solves for keeping the lead apprised of her status, and making certain that an attorney-client relationship doesn’t attach.  With respect to (2), you’re not giving specific advice; you’re laying out further information about the legal process, just as you would on your website.  If you’re holding back from telling your potential client exactly how you will manage the type of claim they will bring, don’t do it any longer.  It’s not like they’re going to get a law degree, and do it themselves.  And, if you’re worried about that: make what you do sound really, really complex -- which it is.

After all, it’s what modern law firm clients most want to hear.

December 5, 2021: Relaunch: How to Market Your Old Law Firm Like You Just Opened It
It’s a well-known fact that attorneys don’t spend enough effort staying in touch with clients and referral sources.  Updates are substantive and never personal.  Of course, that’s a problem -- because much of modern marketing is executing on an omnichannel plan, and staying relevant by staying in touch.

So, if your law firm is really bad about keeping in touch with clients and referrals sources, why not pretend like you just started your law firm?  Reannounce yourself to the world, then use that as the launching pad for a consistent marketing program.

So, what would you do if you were reopening a law firm, say, 10 years in?

Glad you asked; here are three options:

-Collect the fullest contact list you can (former and existing clients, referral sources and colleagues, friends and family), and send out an email about your practice.  Reorient people into what you do, and deliver a call to action.  What do you want interested parties to do?  Next: Think about how to extend that content marketing approach . . . How can you deliver quality information to your list every month?

-Rebrand as if you’re branding your law firm for the first . . . which you probably are.  C’mon, you know you want to.  At the very least, create a new logo.  You know you’re logo is boring.  Embrace the opportunity.  Start to build a brand, and use that as a touchpoint to construct a more meaningful client experience.

-Engage a new opportunity outside of your comfort zone.  In other words, get hungry again.  When you started your law practice, you’d take every opportunity to market yourself that you could.  You were more experimental.  But, you’ve gotten away from that.  So, take on some of the challenges that a startup would.  Join a new networking group.  Heck, start a new networking group!  Leave the Snickers behind, and get raw.

December 1, 2021: To Serve Man: The Time to Adopt the Cloud Is Long Past

Remember that old Twilight Zone episode?  (It’s a cookbook!)

Well, this time, it’s not hungry aliens that are coming for us: it’s your server, and what it really wants is your wallet.

If you haven’t fully adopted cloud software, you’re likely storing your documents and email on a server.  But, there are a lot of associated costs for maintaining physical servers, like: the space they require, their need to be cooled, the electricity they suck up, the requirement to manage your own data backup and the frequent replacement cost.

But, when you are entirely cloud-based, you’re essentially renting server space from another entity (probably Amazon or Google, even if you’re using another vendor), and all those affiliated costs go away.  And, since the cloud is essentially eternal (at least so far as your lifespan is concerned) the replacement cost never accrues.  Instead, you pay monthly or annual fees for the use of data storage containers.  If a server does go down, that’s on your provider to replace it; and, because your data is backed up (by someone else), it’s not lost (which it could be, if you screwed up your own data backup), it’s just replicated within a new container.

Add to that the fact that cloud storage is usually more secure than the traditional law firm document storage model, peppered as it is with paper files and post-it notes — and, you’ve got a winning combination.

If you go cloud, you won’t go back.  And, at this point: you’ve probably already waited too long.

So, get to where you need to be.  Your wallet will thank you.

 

November 22, 2021: Future Proof: What’s Your BHAG?

Goal setting for attorneys is often circular.  Most times, their goal is to set goals ��.

But, because lawyers don’t utilize goal setting, they underachieve.  They’ve got nothing to strive for, nothing to compete over, nothing to drive them to the next chapter of their business.  This is probably the chief reason why the status quo dominates law firm management, and why most law firms exist in suspended animation.  It’s why I’m never surprised to talk to an attorney who sounds like he’s running a law firm from 1999.

It matters less what your goals are, than that you set them.  If you’re interested in making more money, run some revenue projections, and set specific revenue goals.  If you want more of a lifestyle practice, figure out how you’re going to work less, and build more time into your schedule -- and then create actionable goals to get you there.  Maybe you want to grow your law firm beyond a solo or small practice; if that’s the case, you’ll need to figure out a manageable plan to arrive at that station, including for when and how you hire new staff.

Not every goal is going to represent a total transformation of your business -- but, you should have at least one that does represent that.  It’s called a BHAG, or a ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal’.  This is the major long-term goal that you want to achieve for your law firm, and that will represent a fundamental, positive shift in the way that you do business.  Since many lawyers are risk-averse, perhaps the best way to categorize this is by asking: What’s your ‘impossible dream’ for your law practice?

Even if you don’t get there, getting 80% of the way there is better than sleepwalking through the rest of your business life.

If you need help establishing a BHAG, we’re here for you.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.

 

November 16, 2021: Web Client: Move Beyond Referral Marketing

All lawyers have marketed their law firms in the same fashion since time in memoriam.  The idea was always to build a personal referral base via business networking, and that the rest would take care of itself.  Even as the world around law firms has changed over time, that one constant has not changed.  But now, if a new report is to be believed, other modes of client acquisition may be outstripping this tried and true option.

The 2019 Clio Legal Trends Reports indicates that fewer potential law firm clients are seeking referrals from other attorneys or affiliated professional service providers.  In fact, the study indicates that legal consumers are more likely to ask family members for a referral.  And, more than half the time, a legal consumer performs independent research to locate the right attorney.

Of course, most of those preferred mechanisms do not align with how attorneys work to acquire and convert leads.  In fact, the traditional preference of finding other lawyers and ancillary professionals is the worst of those relayed options.  Lawyers, then, who want to market to modern legal consumers are active in their communities (to leverage family-based referrals) and use content marketing and social media (to attract legal consumers relying on independent research conducted via in-app search focused on long tail search queries.)

The point, though, is not to abandon traditional referral marketing techniques; it’s that you shouldn’t place all your eggs in that one basket.  The present and future of law firm marketing is omnichannel.

Need to expand your horizons when it comes to marketing?  We can help.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.

 

November 9, 2021: Settle Down: Build a Rate Sheet to Capture More Revenue

The majority of business owners have a very difficult time price setting.  However, much of that effort (meant to define the value for what a professional does) is most often undone by those same professionals.  This is especially true of lawyers, who don’t like to talk with clients about money, and are more than willing to discount their services at the slightest provocation.

This becomes a significant problem, as attorneys reduce their effective rates via the method of death by a thousand cuts.  Law firms usually bleed revenue in fits and starts, until they begin to hemorrhage it; and, constantly discounting in an inconsistent manner is where it starts.  Plus, clients and referral sources talk about how a particular lawyer can be a soft touch; so, not only does this issue exist in a vacuum, it most often mushrooms over time.  Law firms that staunch the bleeding, tend to make more money overall, and per hour.

The best way to preserve the value of your fees is to utilize and maintain a rate sheet.  Simply put, a rate sheet is a list of your prices, which may include discount rates.  The use of a rate sheet solves for the most common attorney foible in sabotaging settled billing rates -- that is the ad hoc applications of discounts.  Treat the rate sheet as inviolable, including only discounting at the percentages included on that sheet, and you’ll be guaranteed to make more money.  This tactic is especially useful for solo and small firm lawyers, with whom clients know the buck stops.

I’ve written in further detail on this concept here: https://www.attorneyatwork.com/utility-of-the-law-firm-fee-schedule/

If you can’t seem to help but discount, we can help you to make what you’re worth.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.

 

November 3, 2021: Trigger Happy: Automation is the Key to Law Practice Efficiency

Efficient law firms return the most revenue, by a wide margin.  Yet, much of what law firms do cuts against efficiency: Attorneys tend to avoid modern technology.  Attorney like to do things themselves, and so they avoid effective delegation.  Attorneys want manual processes, which they feel they have more control over.  Of course, this is not the way to practice at the top of your law license: billing at your highest rates, or acquiring more work that you can bill at your highest rates.

Too often, lawyers are trying to pilot the plane, and hand out the pretzels.

While it’s true that delegation is a proven method for driving efficiency, law firms need not always delegate from managing attorneys to associate attorneys or staff.  Automation of rote tasks and processes is often more effective.  Consider the chain of events reflecting on law firm lead intake: scheduling, emails, contact forms, chat or text communications, contracting, ecommerce . . . Any or all of those components of the intake process can be automated: by web-based scheduling tools, by messaging applications, by esignature tools, by epayment programs.  Not only that, but each step in that process could automatically trigger the next step, all the way through to completion.  Modern software is capable of managing workflow automation without human intervention.

By using automation technologies to trigger every step of their workflows, law firms can make time – and, a lot more money.

If automation’s not your bag, we can help.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.

 

October 26, 2021: Go Your Own Way: The First Thing You Need to Brand Your Law Firm

Believe it or not, the most important part of law firm branding is something that law firms often ignore, or throw away.

A business logo offers its owner a distinctive mark, a visual interpretation of the business’ purpose and meaning, that resonates with consumers.  Think of Coca-Colo or Ford or Apple or Target, and you immediately think of distinctive logos.

But, how many law firms have you ever seen with a really compelling logo, that wasn’t using a blue, white and gray color scheme, and that didn’t feature columns, scales of justice, a gavel or the attorney’s initials.

Law firms that conceive of compelling logos separate themselves from the morass of their competitors in a meaningful way.  Those law firms choose a unique color scheme, and let it set the design elements for everything else they do: business cards, letterhead, website, etc.  Those law firms that choose a unique avatar for their logo (like a bird, or a constellation) have a better story to tell.  Those law firms that brand a business better find it easier to distribute work to attorneys other than the named partner, and can offer more value when the law firm is sold or transitioned.

All I’m saying is: ignore logo design/creation/recreation at your own peril.

In a hypercompetitive environment for small law firms, you need to show distinct differences between your firm and your competitor firms, to draw and convert client interest.

If your brand image needs some work, we can help.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.

 

October 19, 2021: Copy That: How to Manage Law Firm Data Backup

It can’t happen to you until it does.

I’m talking about the business disaster that could strike your law firm at any moment: flood, fire, data breach, device breakdown, smoke damage, truck carrying 30000 pounds of bananas careening out of control . . . Well, you get the picture.

Because any law firm could be struck by disaster, every law firm should develop and maintain a disaster recovery program.  And, the primary component of any disaster recovery program in a cloud-based world is an effective data backup program.

So, here’s what you need:

-an encrypted, physical backup drive (harddrive, thumbdrive, whatever; ioSafe is amazing)

-an online, incremental backup system (like Carbonite, BackBlaze or CrashPlan)

 

And, you’ll need both, in case one fails.

Make sure to test your backup, as well.  You don’t want to be trying to recover your data for the first time in an actual disaster.

This podcast offers a wealth of information on data recovery: https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/legal-toolkit/2011/06/disaster-recovery-and-disaster-planning/

Could your law firm recover from a disaster?  If not, you need to talk to us.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.

 

October 12, 2021: Get Back: Lawyers are Really Bad at Following Up with Leads

Perhaps the most damning of a series of damning facts about law firms released via the 2019 Clio Legal Trends Report (link here), is this: 89% of lawyers surveyed believed that their law firms followed up with potential clients within 24 hours; 62% of law firms actually never follow up with leads at all.

I’ll let that sink in.

The Report also goes on to indicate that of the law firm clients surveyed, 89% want to hear back from the law firm within 24 hours, while 24% want to hear back within a few hours and 10% want to hear back within the hour.  Guess what?  Those demands are only going to increase over time.

This whole dialogue is, of course, representative of the massive disconnect not only between lawyers and consumers, but also between lawyers and their own marketing efforts.  Many times, in law firms, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing — except that the right hand is always focused on substantive legal tasks, not business management tactics.

There are, though, fixes available for this malady.  Law firms can create intake systems, including client journeys.  Law firms can automate marketing processes, and reduce reliance on humans: who eat lunch, and take breaks.  Law firms can increase engagement across the board, where they tend to ignore client and lead followup in the regular course of business.  The fact of the matter is that clients want you; but, you don’t need to be the first point of contact . . .and neither does any other human.

Your law firm can utilize technology and automation to help you to actually respond to clients the way you think you do.

Feel like you’re letting leads slip through the cracks?  We can help.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.

 

October 6, 2021: Difference Maker: Utilization Rate Separates Growing Law Firms from Shrinking Ones

The 2019 Clio Legal Trends Report (download link here) is a longitudinal study of law firm data across a variety of categories, including internal efficiencies and external relationships with clients.  It’s a fascinating read every year; and, the 2019 version may have been the most compelling.

The 2019 study focused on what the functional difference between growing firms (law firms that grew revenue by over 100% across a 5-year period) and shrinking firms (law firms that lost over 50% of their revenue over a 5-year period) was.  Perhaps surprisingly, the driver for revenue growth was not what you might expect.  It wasn’t pricing.  And, it wasn’t marketing spend.  It wasn’t attorney experience.  And, it wasn’t total case intake. 

It was utilization rate.

If you’re not familiar with utilization rate, it represents the amount of total hours you could bill in a day versus what you actually bill.  For example, if you set aside 8 hours to work on any given day, billing for all 8 hours would represent a 100% utilization rate. 

Of course, no one does that.  In fact, 29% is the industry average in legal.  Growing firms, however, increase their utilization rate at a higher percentage than other firms, and top out at 33%, 5 percentage points above the industry average.

So, if you ever wanted to know what the secret sauce for law firm growth is, it’s efficiency.

Need to get more efficient? We can help.

The Westchester Bar Association now offers DISCOUNTED law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To access consulting services, visit this website, and start running your law firm like a business.