Resources

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

2023 Quarter 4

December 26, 2023: Melting Pot: Should Law Firms Start Hiring More Non-Lawyers?

Hiring is rough right now.  And, that turned around in a heartbeat.  Over the course of a single quarter, the employer’s market become an employee’s market – with no signs of slowing down.  It’s got law firms everywhere rethinking how and why they hire.

One trend that is manifesting is that attorneys are beginning to expand their vision of who can and should be hired by a law firm, by looking at non-traditional roles within the law firm.

For the most part, law firms have hired for three roles: lawyers, paralegals and administrative staff.  But, as law firms begin to reformulate how they operate, that has opened up roles for human resource managers, chief operating officers, chief financial officers, sales directors, intake specialists, customer success associates, and similar roles – that you far more often see in technology companies.

In some cases, these new hires are cheaper and carry less baggage than do attorneys.  In some cases, they have training and a skillset that attorneys just don’t have.  And, in other cases, they buttress a new approach to running a law firm, eg – customer success personnel meeting a renewed focus on intake.

It’s a brave new world for lawyers in so many ways; but, if you’re struggling to find the right people, maybe it’s time to look for new sorts of people.

December 23, 2023: Hero’s Journey: Law Firm Intake, Part 2 – Advance’

In the last piece in this short series, we discussed how important it is for law firms to be focused on engaging potential clients.  That’s how you bait the hook; but, there’s still the matter of reeling in those leads – and, to accomplish that, you’ll need a way for clients, following an initial engagement, to take a next step, in order to advance the process.  And, that’s where many law firms fall down, because they haven’t set up any kind of system, and don’t know what the next step is themselves, or because they don’t have a simple and convenient option for clients to move the ball forward.

The first thing to figure out is just what you want your potential clients to do, after they’ve been engaged.  The logical next step for most law firms is to schedule an initial consultation call.  That’s largely because attorneys tend to clean up in those conversations, converting leads at a high rate.  So, how do you get to that stage, as quickly as possible, so your potential clients don’t meet with someone else?

An automated calendaring tool is a good start, and probably the best option, for allowing a potential client to book into your calendar with the most ease of use.  Some chat products, law practice management software and customer relationship management software come with or can be integrated with an automated calendaring tool, meaning that law firms can use such tools as standalone programs, or sync them with (potentially automated) workflows in other softwares.

So, once you’ve effectively engaged a lead, the next step is to get them to the next step, by throwing the book(ing software) at them.

December 04, 2023: Engagement Party: Your Fee Agreement Is More than a Recitation of the Cost of Legal Services

Many attorneys will try to rush through the drafting and explanation of a fee agreement.  The job, as they see it, is to get the fee out there, and to define the scope of legal services, as quickly as possible – so that the client will sign off, and so that the lawyer can go back to what they really want to do, which is to practice substantive law.

But, there’s so much more that you can do with your engagement agreements, to make them truly engaging (see what I did there), and to set the tone for a more useful attorney-client relationship.

Here are three potential additions you could consider to your standard fee agreement, that will truly turn it in to an engagement agreement:

-Add a Technology Clause.  In part to better govern client communications (more on that in a second), you should relay to your clients the technology you use in the firm.  This will also allow you to get their sign-off on using that technology stack, and allow them the opportunity to object to what your propose.  In most cases, clients will just use the tech you want them to; and, in the end, you can even have them initial this section of the fee agreement to affirm their assent.  This also has the potential to make you look like a tech-forward law firm, focused on efficiency, which many clients will appreciate.

-Add a Client Communications Clause.  Tired of getting texts from clients in the middle of the night?  (Don’t answer those – at least right away, by the way.)  Then, set expectations ahead of time.  You can use a technology clause to lay the groundwork for this, before talking to your clients about the technology tools you prefer they use to communicate with you.  You can also set times for when you will not be available, as well as creating an expectation for when a response will arrive, eg – in 24 to 48 hours, via email.

-Add a Document Disposition Clause.  This is really helpful in terms of managing law firm logistics, because it’s a forcing function for generating a document management policy in a law firm, which would include a document destruction policy.  This also creates a future marketing opportunity, if you decide to provide your clients with a file when their case closes.  Perhaps you do that via an encrypted thumbdrive with your branding in place?

November 30, 2023: Ringer: Who Should Answer the Phone at Your Law Firm?

This is kind of a trick question.  It’s one that initiates the lawyer’s go-to response: It depends.

But, in reality, the choice of who answers your phone when clients and potential clients call has a lot of layers to it, not unlike an onion.  And, this is reflective of the many choices now available to attorneys.

In a perfect world, where you have ample time (riiiight), it’s probably best to have lawyers answering every call – and, the more senior the lawyer, the better.  Why?  Because it surprises and delights clients.  (Wait, I’m actually talking to the lawyer?!)  Clients and potential clients expect you to have gatekeepers; if you don’t = they’re amazed, and thrilled.  Some law firm actually employ this method.  Not surprisingly, clients are happy, and revenue increases.

Of course, the vast majority of law firms can’t accommodate that arrangement.  And, if that’s your law firm, the next best option is to have a staffperson pick up the phone, because they know the next most about your business.  And, now that most law firms are increasingly comfortable with a virtual workforce environment, and are more reliant on VoIP phone systems, it’s easier than ever before to have your attorneys or staff pick up calls wherever they are.

Now, if attorneys and staff are not realistic phone answering solutions for your law firm, consider a virtual receptionist service, so that calls aren’t left unanswered.  Just make sure you provide your vendor with a tight call script, so your outsourced provider is asking all the right questions, and vetting both leads and clients effectively.

The last thing you want is to let a call get to voicemail.  Just a hair over 35% of law firm voicemails are ever returned; and, once a lead or client gets voicemail, it’s no guarantee that they will even leave a message – and, the next move is definitely to call your competition.

November 20, 2023: Accommodation: Making Money in Legal Services Is About Finding More Time to Work

The notion of a ‘factory practice’ gets a bad name among lawyers, who retain a burning desire to exist as white tower intellectuals.  Conversations about revenue and efficiency only get in the way of a good conversation about Supreme Court cases from the late 1880s.  Ah, the Gilded Age, indeed.

But, really, it’s the law firms that can accommodate the most work, that make the most money.

Lawyers often think it’s pricing, that makes them money.  It’s not.  In specific geographic areas, for specific practice areas, lawyers charge about the same, across the board.

What really separates the law firms that make the money versus those that don’t (make as much of the money) is how many widgets they can make.  In an environment where legal services is becoming commoditized, and in which consumers continue to exhibit increasing price sensitivity, it only makes sense that efficiency would be the ultimate answer.

So, yeah: the more your law firm functions like a factory, the more like an assembly line your workflow becomes, the more money you’ll make.

If revenue generation is the primary objective of your law firm (which for about ¾ of attorneys, it is), then efficiency is the byword by which you need to run your practice.

It turns of those questions about widget-making weren’t just built for law firm hypotheticals.

November 17, 2023: All-Star Game: How to Better Leverage Technology in Your Law Firm

Lawyers are generally not super tech-savvy.  And, that’s not meant as a slight to attorneys.  Lawyers are just busy with substantive work.  And so, attorneys often lean on staff to assist with technology matters.  But, they do that in a way that is ad hoc, most often – which is how just about everything is done in law firms.

You can’t figure out something in your email, so you ask your admin to help.  And, that’s the end.

The next time something comes up, you just grab whoever is near at hand, to assist.

But, what if you had a staffperson who was a tech all-star, was great at troubleshooting, willing to help others, and held an intimate understanding of law firm technology.  Wouldn’t it be better to leverage that person more aggressively?  Perhaps even have them own that role within the law firm?

Maybe you are lucky enough to have two or more all-star staff, who can help you to manage technology in your law firm.  One could work in the customer relationship management software, the other could work in the law practice management software, etc.  You could choose one of those folks to oversee the data management plan for your firm.

And, if you wanted to take this to the next level, you could do what only very few law firms have been brave enough to even try at this point – hire someone into the role of a technology manager.  That person may be a lawyer or a non-lawyer.  But, that role is often left unfulfilled in the law office.

Sometimes, as it turns out, you can throw people at the problem.

November 10, 2023: Is Walmart Targeting Your Law Firm? What Alternative Business Structures Will Mean for Small Firms

Small law firms generally have it pretty good, in that they’ve mostly had to compete only against other small law firms, that aren’t particularly innovative either, and that also don’t spend money aggressively to build their businesses.  Now, over the course of time, cracks have been made in that armor, as organizations like LegalZoom have addressed services for legal consumers in an entirely different way – by focusing on products (document delivery), at more cost-effective prices than most law firms are willing to offer.  And, even if those law firms have access to the technology needed to accommodate that approach, they can’t or won’t adopt it.

But, that’s all just an initial volley in the coming clash between small law firms and legal service providers.

Lawyers have always been protected against other business owners infiltrating their territory by the existence of ethics rules banning lawyers from sharing fees with non-lawyers, effectively barring business partnerships between lawyers and non-lawyers.  But, that wall has been breached, because at least two states (Arizona and Utah) have removed or circumvented the rules around fee sharing, non-lawyer management and multidisciplinary practices (offering legal services and other services via a single business), which opens the door for alternative business structures (‘ABS’) = actual business partnerships between lawyers and non-lawyers.

Where ABS ends up being allowed, attorney and non-attorney business owners can work together and share revenue.  So, yes: Walmart can open law firms.

That’s a whole new ballgame.

So, what can small law firm owners do, as ABS continues to encroach on traditional practices?

Listen to this podcast, to learn more: https://solopracticeuniversity.com/2022/01/26/how-will-alternative-business-structures-impact-law-2022-version-guest-lecture-with-jared-correia/

October 30, 2023: The Say Hey Kid: The Simplest Tickler in Your Calendar is Also the Most Important

Most attorneys are ‘good lawyers’.  They do good work; they’re conscientious, and thorough, to boot.  And, the traditional advice on that topic was that if you simply did good work, the clients would flock to you, and be happy.

That sounds like a wonderful fairy tale, because it is.  It’s just not true that doing good work is enough to keep your clients happy.

Modern consumers are more demanding, and expect consistent updates.  They’re obsessing over their cases, and expect the same from you.  And, if you’re working diligently behind the scenes, they won’t believe it unless you tell them.

Doubting Thomases, all.  And, the same solution applies here.

If you want to make sure your clients are happy with what you’re doing, put a recurring four-week tickler on your calendar, to reach out to each active client of the firm.  Then, do it.

That’s it.  That’s the magic formula.

Even if you don’t have an update to make, your clients will feel cared for, because most attorneys only contact their clients if they want something, including more money.

It’s a small effort, that goes a long way.

October 29, 2023: 2FA 2day: This is the Simplest Security Upgrade You Can Make to Your Law Firm

The news surrounding data breaches is always big, national or international in scale, involving lots and lots of money, and big names and big companies.  Of course, smaller data breaches happen everyday, to unknown and unnamed victims.  Some of those victims are law firms.

But, you don’t have to make big changes to improve the state of your law firm’s data security protocols.  In fact, there’s one change you can make today, that will markedly improve your system security.

That’s adding two-factor authentication to your accounts and/or for accounts that you administer.  Essentially, two-factor authentication requires an additional data input beyond a password.  A common method is to require that an additional passcode be entered, which can be sent via SMS or email.  When a new login to the system is made, or when a login comes from an unusual location or a unknown IP address, the passcode is sent.  Obviously, that helps to put a kibosh on some bad actor trying to login to your system from another country, for example.

The way you setup a second factor of authentication is different for different hardware and software, but it’s usually found in the settings, and is a simple process.

There are also additional factors of authentication that could be used, and some system require not just a second, but multiple factors of authentication, and include biometric indicators, like fingerprint or facial recognition.

But, maybe start with just the one thing beyond the password 😊.

October 22 2023: Buried Treasure: What Software Features Are You Missing?

What’s been great lately, is that lawyers are increasing their reliance on technology.  That means that law firms are adding efficiency, and revenue.

This is fantastic, absolutely.  But, there’s still more work to do.

That’s because lawyers may be overpaying for technology; and, it’s largely because they’re buying new stuff without looking harder at what they already have.

In fact, there are lots of instances where attorneys will purchase a new product without assessing whether they have that tool already included as a feature in another technology platform.  This often happens with productivity software and law practice management software.  The former can include tools like video conferencing and internal chat as product features (meaning you don’t have to pay any more money to use them); and, the latter can include tools like esignature and epayment as product features.  In some cases, and depending on a user’s subscription level, there may limitations on volume with respect to usage of those tools – but, those limitations may fit your use case.  You won’t know until you take a look.  So, the trick here is pretty simple: Before you buy a new software, check to see if you already have access to that tool.

Now, this does not mean that you can’t intentionally choose to adopt a different product and pay more for it (for example, maybe you don’t like Microsoft Teams, and would happily pay more to use Zoom) – but, it pays to make that an intentional decision.

October 10, 2023: Double Trouble: Is Your Data Backup What You Think It Is?

Data backup has always been a difficult puzzle for law firms, who traditionally traffic in documents heavily – whether they’re electronic or paper.  So, managing files is always a concern for lawyers, and that concern is often exacerbated by disorganization – lots of law firms are scattered in terms of document storage.  The good news is that there’s an easy solution for that: centralize your documents in one place, preferably in the cloud.  And, lots of law firms accomplish that by moving everything over to a cloud drive, and integrating that tool with a case management software.

The mistake that law firms make is assuming, at that point, that they have created a data backup.  In most cases, they have not.

First off, check to see whether your case management software is also saving your files.  It may just be creating a pathway to access the document, via your cloud drive.  So, that’s not a backup, because if you lose access to that cloud drive, you can’t get your documents.  In a similar vein, a lot of attorneys will tell me: well, Microsoft, or Amazon Web Services, or Google backs up the data.  But, that doesn’t mean a damn thing to your law firm, if you can’t access Google Drive or OneDrive.  So, a backup is really an alternate access point for your data, if the first one fails.  So, if Google Drive is down, where do you get your stuff?  If the answer is: you don’t know, then you don’t have a backup.

In an ideal world, you’ll probably have at least a couple of data backups = an online, incremental one, like Carbonite, or BackBlaze, or CrashPlan (if your primary cloud drive is inaccessible) + a physical backup device, like an encrypted harddrive or thumbdrive (if your primary cloud and online backup is inaccessible).

Data backup is really about options, and most law firms don’t give themselves enough of them.

October 4, 2023: Channel Surfing: Tailor Your Marketing to the Content Platforms You Use

Probably the worst thing you can do in marketing your practice on social media is to use the same messaging on every platform.  If you create one post, and publish that same exact post on each platform, it will land on one, or some, but seem tone-deaf on another.

That’s because each social media platform is built on different audiences.  LinkedIn is lots of business professionals talking about business-y things.  Facebook is a bunch of middle-aged people talking in groups, and grannies looking at pictures of their grandkids.  Twitter leverages breaking news and trending topics, to drive discussion.  Instagram thrives on storytelling.  TikTok is a short-form video application that requires a specific hook.

So, when you’re utilizing each platform, you’ll need to consider which type of content you should create (text, audio, video), and how you should deliver that message.  For  example, a business person, who is more likely to be on LinkedIn, needs a different approach than a potential older client (who might be on Facebook), or an even younger potential client (who might be on Instagram, of TikTok).  Each post (even if you’re introducing the same content) should be built for the platform to which you’re making it.  And, also understand that that messaging may be different if it comes from a business account (more formal) versus a personal account (less formal).

Really, this is mostly about being more thoughtful about what you post online, and how you post it.  Just exercising this tactic will help your law firm to better maximize content marketing.