Maine Law Practice Management

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 follow ed 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.  

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, th e 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 f

Lawyers are trained to be risk-averse, and to cling to the status quo.  Because lawyers manage law firms, change within those law firms happens at a glacial pace.  Yet, while law firms cling to the status quo, upstarts in other industries redefine life and culture.  Not that law firm managers need to be out to change the world, writ large.  They just need to change their own worlds, just a little bit.   The fact of the matter is that any small innovation in a law firm has a greater impact than in another business, because most law firms are so far behind the curve.  While many businesses view esignatures and electronic payment processing tools as business necessities, in legal, these are still fairly risqué technologies.  Many law firms eschew cloud-based technologies for premise-based software. Law firms are reluctant to embrace process management.  I mean, you get the picture.     The point is that, if you can gain a single technology or marketing advantage over your competitors (or

Password management is no sweat these days -- with tools like LastPass , a master password unlocks all doors .  Not only will such a service obviate the need for memorizing any passwords, it will also automatically create s secure passwords for you.  No fuss, no muss.     But, what if you don’t have the volume of accounts that would necessitate the use of a service like LastPass?  Or, what if you’re old school, and like creating your own passwords -- you know, ones that you can remember without an assistive device.  I get it.  There’s still a world for you.   Try passphrases .  Whereas most passwords include numbers, special characters, uppercase and lowercase letters, you don’t necessarily need all that jazz.  Passphrases are just combinations of words and phrases that are potentially meaningless to the rest of the planet, but have some significance to you.  Try to build a passphrase, and you’ll begin to make the right connections.  Their length and complexity make them tough to cra