Maine Law Practice Management

Broadly speaking, lawyers take on too much .  You know: at work, emotionally .  They’re probably also trying to carry too many grocery bags into the house at one time .  You know how it is.     This, of course, leads to a whole host of problems, including that attorneys have higher incidences of alcohol and drug dependence, as well as depression, than does the general population .  Maybe you already knew that .  But, the fact is that this also has a direct effect on how much a lawyer can make.     Hear me out: Because lawyers try to do everything, and to do everything perfectly, they’re also more prone than the general population to take on more work than they need to .  For example, they’re unwilling to delegate, including to paralegal and administrative staff, but also to other attorneys .  That means that lawyers end up being chief cook and bottlewasher, rather than focusing on the high-end work (strategy , client engage...

Some lawyer s get burned hiring staff, whether it’s legal assistant s , paralegals or other attorneys .  But, just because you miss out once , in trying to hire somebody, doesn’t mean you should give up forever .  There are distinct advantages to bring ing on employees, including increased control over work product + improved revenue generation models.   In my experience, I’ve found that law firms connect on a successful hire (across all employee categories) about 40% of the time .  That may seem like a low number , but it represents about a 50% hit rate, meaning that every other hire should yield a viable staffperson , who’ll stay on between 3-5 years – which is not too bad, in the modern economy.     Putting that into baseball terms, which folks often do when trying to rationalize failure : your hiring batting average as a law firm, is about equivalent to Ted Williams’ 1941 season , when he was the last baseball player to hit .400 over a full ...

There is still a not insignificant subset of attorneys who still dictate communications.  Some lawyers w ill dictate to staffpeople , while others use standalone technology, like Dragon Naturally Speaking , to manage the trick.   But, you don’t really need any substitute technology to dictate, any longer .  All of Microsoft Word , Google Docs and Apple Pages feature dictation tools built-in, at no extra cost .  And, the majority of lawyers have access to at least one of those softwares , with some having access to all three .     And, each of those softwares does a pretty good job of capturing your voice .  How good ?  Well, a great way to test dictation software is to see whether it can capture the lyrics of complex, sped -up songs .  Try Johnny Cash’s ‘I’ve Been Everywhere’ , and see how your dictation tool hold s up .  If you’re using one of these major drafting softwares , it should be able to keep up.     ...