Increasing profits – Law Office Manager

MANAGING THE OFFICE

TO DOs: Your May office checklist

May 2, 2021 by Barb Manning Grimm

It can be difficult to focus on work this month. May is when many of us come down with spring fever, yearning to get outside in the garden or on the hiking trails. Added this year is the anticipation life might be heading to some sort of normal after more than a year of COVID-19 restrictions, but uncertainty about planning activities. Start planning coverages for summer vacations. Many firms do not use temporary legal assistants or secretaries anymore. With stepped up efficiencies in the office, legal assistants or secretaries are often assigned to cover for an attorney while another staff member is out of the office. Looking at the schedules for the coming months now will ensure that there is sufficient coverage. If outside help is necessary, now is the… . . . read more

Tagged With: Employee benefits, Increasing profits, Managing the office

SURVEY SAYS

Tech, talent search and space reduction drive law firm changes

February 15, 2021 by Barb Manning Grimm

Change is a fact of life for law firms today, and leadership is fully aware—three in four survey respondents noted their firm’s partners are receptive to change. This need for change centers around two central premises: the need to improve real estate efficiency to stay lean and cost-competitive, and the need to evolve to attract talent and accommodate new ways of working. Despite these initiatives, the majority of respondents to a recent survey by Gensler Research Institute reported that their firm continues to lease more space than is necessary. Larger firms are more likely to have excess space on their books. Recently designed firms are less likely to have excess space, confirming the focus on space reduction in recent years—though even among those whose offices have been redesigned recently, one in… . . . read more

Tagged With: Hiring, Increasing profits, Managing the office

TRAINING

Are you measuring the right metrics for your law firm training program?

February 15, 2021 by Barb Manning Grimm

By Doug Striker bio I recently attended a fabulous webinar hosted by LearnUpon, the award-winning company that serves as the platform for our Savvy Academy Learning Management System. This webinar was designed to help learning and development (L&D) professionals quantitatively assess the impact of their training programs. Let’s face it—this is the biggest challenge of any training or educational program. Are you adding value to your firm? More important to upper management: Does your work contribute positively to the firm’s bottom line? During the webinar, Frances Kleven, Manager of Customer Success for LearnUpon, discussed: The key reasons leading L&D teams calculate the success of their learning programs. The most valuable metrics you should be recording. How to align your L&D metrics and business goals to develop a high-impact strategy. If… . . . read more

Tagged With: Increasing profits, training

MANAGING STAFF

Use your high performers to engage the rest of the team

January 4, 2021 by Barb Manning Grimm

Among the goals of any manager is to create and maintain a high-performance organization. That means you have created a machine that operates at top efficiency, and your employees are engaged. Some organizations don’t believe this really applies to them. Research has suggested that only 25 percent of the typical workforce is engaged. This means that only a fraction of your employees are in tune with your mission, vision, and values. As a high-performance organization, with a larger core group who can be counted on to care about the organization’s success, your results would be much higher. But nothing stays the same. Employees leave for reasons that have nothing to do with job satisfaction, and it can be a challenge to replace former employees. It can be a challenge to… . . . read more

Tagged With: Increasing profits, Working with attorneys, Working with lawyers

INCREASING PROFITS

Can every attorney in your office answer these 10 critical questions for 2021?

December 14, 2020 by Barb Manning Grimm

Want to see more profit in 2021? Get each attorney to draw up a practice plan for the year. A plan forces the attorneys to organize their work agenda by focusing on practice development, production, and self-improvement. What’s more, it ensures that everybody does work that furthers the firm’s goals, it keeps the marketing focused, and it keeps the collections in line. Use this 10-point format: First are the hours goals 1 What is the number of hours you will devote to billable work? This forces the attorneys to take a serious look at how they should spend next year’s time. It also forces them to look at their historical performance. It’s not reasonable, for example, for an attorney who has billed 1,400 hours for the past two years to… . . . read more

Tagged With: Billing & collections, Increasing profits, Productivity, Working with attorneys, Working with lawyers

INCREASING PROFITS

How to pay the partners

September 27, 2019 by Barb Manning Grimm

Is your compensation system driving away the talent you need to grow? What approach did your firm take when establishing its partner compensation plan? It’s likely you chose…

MANAGING STAFF

Want to jump ahead of the competition? Get everybody aiming for the same thing

September 20, 2019 by Barb Manning Grimm

No matter what the business, the winning players are always organizations with a motivated and productive workforce…

INCREASING PROFITS

Keep your accounts receivable young

September 20, 2019 by Barb Manning Grimm

Collection work is something that can’t wait, because a dollar of receivables doesn’t stay a dollar…

RISK MANAGEMENT

How to reduce the risk of in-office theft

September 6, 2019 by Barb Manning Grimm

Theft in law firms comes from all corners, from staff to partners.
“It happens more than people realize,” says St. Louis legal management consultant John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC. In fact…

INCREASING PROFITS

Job descriptions make paralegals a profit center

August 30, 2019 by David Brooks

A Phoenix firm realized its paralegal force was not paying for itself in billings. Instead, the group was not only unsupervised but was being given…

TO DOs: Your May office checklist

Tech, talent search and space reduction drive law firm changes

Are you measuring the right metrics for your law firm training program?

Use your high performers to engage the rest of the team

Can every attorney in your office answer these 10 critical questions for 2021?

How to pay the partners

Want to jump ahead of the competition? Get everybody aiming for the same thing

Keep your accounts receivable young

How to reduce the risk of in-office theft

Job descriptions make paralegals a profit center

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