Maine Law Practice Management

Most attorneys feel overwhelmed by everything they need to do .  Especially for solo and small firm lawyers, this can be crushing.     It helps to take a step back, redefine your goals, reset your tasks, and focus on what you need to do now .  For many attorneys, they’re just trying to do everything at once, which is impossible; and so, they end up multitasking themselves into extinction.   Of course, while establishing an order of operations is immensely helpful, you still need a good system, through which to manage all your tasks, and to stagger them in the order you want.     It’s likely that you already have a task management system in place – in fact, pretty much every productivity (email) s oftware , or law practice management system has one built in.  But, you may find those lacking , in terms of the task functionality .  If you do, there are a lot of great task management tools, that focus on that one operation, which you could...

Sailors use a series of flags to indicate danger ; Billy Joel occasionally names albums after such flags .     Lawyers ignore red flags – at least when they relate to client engagement.     As has been discussed in this space, attorneys tend to avoid the intake process .  And, a byproduct of that is that law firms often engage with clients they shouldn’t – largely because they haven’t done enough due diligence in the lead phase .  Attorneys tend to ignore their gut feelings about the potential for longstanding pain o n a specific engagement, when there’s a check (virtual or otherwise) on the table.   But, books like the ‘Checklist Manifesto’ have shown that simple lists can be really effective in helping professionals to make big decisions.     So, if you don’t have a list of red flags for potential clients , you may end up stepping in it, down the road .  Maybe you think those red flags are so obvious, they’re not even wort...

Attorneys hate to think of themselves as ‘salespeople’ – but, if you’re a law firm owner/manager, you’re selling things the same way everyone else who owns a business is selling things.     Though, you might not be selling what you think you are . . .     Legal consumers are not like you : They don’t know as many Latin phrases as you do .  They don’t care about arcane statutes .  Precedent is meaningless to them .  Heck: they probably don’t even have a ballpoint pen.     What they do ha v e is a big problem, that they want someone else to solve.     And, you’re th at someone else; you’re the problem-solver.   Keep that in mind when trying to convert your leads .  They’re stressed; they really want to hire you – and, they’re making an emotional buying decision, which is what most purchases come down to anyway.     Once a potential client is having a retention conversation with you, they’ve already dec...