Law firms have a reputation for being difficult work environments. Because it’s such a competitive industry, attorneys and other team members feel pressure to be as productive as possible, but that pressure can easily turn into stress and burnout.
That’s why it’s essential for law firm leadership to recognize these challenges and do everything possible to mitigate them. Focusing on creating a strong work culture will make your team happier, more productive, and more likely to stay at your firm for years to come.
Strategies for creating a better work culture are nearly endless. But knowing just a few of the most effective methods will help you make an immediate impact at your firm.
A strong, productive work culture is one guided by a vision for what the firm stands for and what team members want to accomplish. Your firm’s work culture can value and even reward hard work, but it must also facilitate the personal growth and well-being of every team member, from the managing partners to the newly hired legal assistant.
Strong work cultures give everyone on the team a stake in the business. That doesn’t necessarily mean a financial stake, but rather a place where all concerns are heard and every idea, no matter where or who it comes from, is considered to help improve the firm.
If you and your coworkers don’t understand what you stand for, then you’ll have no frame of reference for your firm’s best practices. Establishing your law firm’s mission and core values is a collaborative process that requires reflection and deliberation by you and all your fellow team members.
No organization is without inefficiencies and shortcomings. Everyone at a firm, whether they’re a partner or an intern, has a unique vantage point of the firm’s processes.
They should all have the ability to voice their thoughts about what works and what doesn’t. Providing channels for all team members to provide anonymous feedback to leadership is a best practice for creating a strong law firm work culture.
Increasing efficiency and productivity at your law firm requires working collaboratively with everyone on staff and maintaining open communication. At backdocket, we’ve made collaboration and communication a central feature of our practice management software. If you currently don’t have a system in place to facilitate collaboration on client outreach and case management, we suggest you contact us for a free demonstration.
Having a diverse team with a wide range of backgrounds makes your team better by giving you a collective wealth of experience to draw from. Law firms work with many people from many different nations, races, and backgrounds. The more diverse and inclusive you are in your hiring practices, the better prepared your team will be to understand and assist your clientele.
Any organization risks falling prey to a hierarchical allocation of respect. It’s natural, even if it is counterproductive, for respect to flow up the chain of command. This is why firms should make sure that everyone on the team feels included, respected, and heard.
Sharing details about the innerworkings of your firm can embolden all team members to work toward a common goal and work together to tackle challenges. Whether you’re involving more team members when interviewing new hires or sharing regular updates about your firm’s finances, you’ll find that opening the door to more team members allows everyone to feel invested in the firm’s progress.
Few environments are as demanding as a busy law firm. It’s important for everyone working at your firm to offset being overextended and burned out by setting clear boundaries. This means, whenever possible, restricting team communication to office hours, offering company-wide vacation days, and ensuring that each team member can occasionally unplug from work.
At backdocket, we’re passionate about helping firms grow, and that means improving their communication, making them more efficient, and catering our software to meet their needs.
If you’d like to learn how we help firms work smarter and not harder, contact us today to schedule a free demonstration of backdocket.
For growing law firms, new leads are the most precious currency. To bring in more cases, law firms invest in marketing, encourage word-of-mouth referrals, and, of course, do great work for clients once they sign them.
Few firms reach sustained growth without knowing how they’re actually getting leads, and this is why attribution is essential. When you know how to attribute the source of your leads—for example, did they come from specific marketing channels or other attorneys—you can make smarter choices and double down on what works.
When you know where leads are coming from, you can determine whether a marketing campaign is bringing in clients or if word-of-mouth is the biggest driver of new clients to your firm. This empowers you to make smarter choices when planning future client outreach campaigns.
Conversely, if you know that certain outreach efforts like paid online advertising or print ads aren’t bringing in leads, you can invest that budget in more lucrative channels. This ensures you’re getting more mileage out of the time and effort you spend bringing in new business.
One of the easiest ways to find out how your clients heard about you is to ask them. This should be a common practice in your firm. It’s simple and free, and it can immediately lead to actionable insights.
If you just have one number that people can use to call your firm, and you don’t have any type of call tracking in place, you could be missing valuable data about how people find your firm. By using call tracking platforms, you can easily determine which marketing campaign prompted them to call you.
For example, if you have an advertisement in a local publication, you can generate a unique phone number that then forwards calls to your firm. You will then be able to attribute any calls using that specific number to that advertisement.
You likely already have tools for tracking website activities. For example, if you have a website, you either have a tool like Google Analytics installed or you can easily install it for free. With this and similar tools, you can track the channels people use to contact your firm.
If you also decide to track website activity for even more insights, you can look to additional cost-effective tools. You can see how users behave on your site with screen recordings, where users spend most of their time with heatmaps of webpages, or determine whether stronger calls-to-action bring in more leads with A/B testing.
At backdocket, we’re passionate about helping firms grow, and our practice management software can help you better organize a lead’s status, whether they’re a prospect, conversion, or a current client.
With backdocket, you can also improve your firm’s efficiency and communication. If you’d like to learn more about our practice management software, contact us for a free demonstration.
Thinking like an attorney and thinking like a businessperson aren’t always the same thing. In fact, these two mindsets can sometimes be at odds. For example, if a solo practitioner doggedly pursues personal injury cases, they might do exceptional work but still find themselves losing money if all the cases they take have low recovery potential.
This type of conflict can be especially common in firms with no operations manager and firms where partners are juggling dual responsibilities through casework and business management. The following tips can help attorneys who are hoping to change how they see the business side of their law firms.
Thinking like an entrepreneur means always looking for opportunities. This could mean spotting a trend of certain case types coming to your firm. Or it could mean identifying types of cases that other lawyers in your market don’t accept. Opportunities also come in the form of referral sources, community outreach programs, and marketing channels.
You’ll ultimately want to adopt a mindset of looking for chances to spread the word about your firm’s services and how you can fill unmet needs in your market. Once you start to see things in this way, you’ll notice many untapped opportunities for growth.
Great lawyers can sometimes make bad business decisions. If your firm isn’t billing the right amount for your services, it won’t matter how great you are at practicing law. Similarly, if you’re investing too much time doing casework without monitoring your revenue and overhead, you could be setting your firm up for failure.
If you’re struggling to make a profit, it’s time to reevaluate your business practices. Designate a few hours each week to look at your operation from a business perspective instead of a legal one.
When a sound business approach isn’t implemented at a law firm, a lot of potential can be squandered. This is why it’s so important for law firms to have someone in charge of thinking about the bottom line.
If you have a passion or even an inclination for the business side of your practice, then it might be time to consider allocating more of your time to operations and marketing, leaving other attorneys to handle casework. However, if you love practicing law and business acumen isn’t your strong suit, then consider designating someone else at your firm with the business management role. If no such person currently exists at your firm, then you could start looking for someone who fits the bill and bring them on.
If you’re planning on devoting more of your time thinking about your firm’s business potential, then the best way to get started is by reading—a lot. Sit down with classics like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People and more modern business-centric books like Kevin D. Johnson’s The Entrepreneur Mind.
You’ll also find great reading suggestions through online communities, podcasts, newsletters, or by simply asking other businesspeople in your life which books they’ve found most valuable.
Many of the ways that law firms grow can be facilitated by the right practice management software, like backdocket. Our software improves law firms’ efficiencies, communications, and client relations.
In some cases, law firms find that the right software can make teams so efficient that they can hit the pause button on hiring new team members. If you want to grow your firm, look no further than backdocket. Contact us today to schedule your free demonstration.
As you’ve probably noticed, many law firms publish blogs on their websites. If you’ve wondered why, then you’ve come to the right place.
When done properly, blogging can offer many benefits to law firms, including building your brand and educating people facing legal issues.
First, a quick note that in this blog, we’ll be talking a lot about your “audience.” When we talk about audiences, we are referring to the people you want to communicate with, which can include your physical community (the region you serve), your professional community, or simply visitors to your website.
Not every law firm has the desire or resources to blog, and that’s okay. If you have a solid website and social platforms, then you can have a strong web presence without having a legal blog.
However, for law firms that want to go the extra mile for their audiences, blogs offer many benefits. Here are just three examples of the rewards you could reap by having a legal blog.
Through your blog, you can answer questions you commonly hear from your clients to educate people who visit your site. You can also share important or entertaining messages about your law firm, team members, or services.
Offering your expertise through a blog is a great way to demonstrate your value and authority in legal matters related to your practice. If a potential client is seeking an answer to a general question about their legal issue and you provide the answer in your blog, they’ll be more likely to trust your firm when it comes time to hire an attorney.
You can also use your blog to share your thoughts and opinions about legal issues. Your blog can be your voice to both potential clients and your colleagues in the legal field. This can help you generate business through new clients and referrals.
Blogs can help drive traffic from search engines to your website, thus making them a viable tool for search engine optimization (SEO). Typically, blogs that are popular on search engines are those that answer questions people commonly ask online.
If you’re hoping to boost your SEO through blogs, we suggest you first make sure your website is well optimized for search engines. You can learn all about the best practices by reading our free guide for law firm SEO to get started.
As you can see, we have a blog here at backdocket. We blog because we work closely with many law firms, and we wanted the opportunity to share important insights with legal professionals.
We blog because it contributes to our overall mission: Helping law firms grow.
Of course, the primary way we achieve this goal is through our practice management software, which is designed to help small- to mid-size law firms become more efficient, effective, and—ultimately—more profitable.
If you’d like to learn how backdocket can give your law firm an edge, contact our team to schedule a free demonstration of our practice management software.
It’s important for attorneys and law firms to have a strong presence on social media platforms. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram offer law firms a chance to connect with their communities and potential clients in personable ways.
However, no platform offers lawyers the opportunity to connect and network with their peers like LinkedIn. Let’s look at what makes this platform so unique, and what you should be doing to improve your presence on LinkedIn.
Though other platforms are great for client outreach, LinkedIn has an added benefit of being a professional networking tool. For attorneys, that could help build a referral network with peers, which could generate new cases or additional revenue from cases you refer to others.
Simply creating a LinkedIn profile and never looking at it won’t do the trick. To get the most out of LinkedIn, you’ll need to create an impressive profile, share valuable content, and engage with others.
When creating your LinkedIn profile, you have the opportunity to make a good impression quickly. Follow these tips to get started.
If you are a thought leader in the legal field, here’s your chance to share your insights with connections. You can write posts, blog entries, or share videos to your feed to engage your community. Or you can simply share interesting content you’ve found elsewhere.
Being active on your LinkedIn account shows that you take your job and industry seriously. It also shows that you want to share your enthusiasm and ideas with your colleagues, which sends a signal that you’re open to exchanging interesting ideas with others.
On LinkedIn, you can ‘like’ your connections’ content, make comments, and endorse the skills they list on their profiles. It’s an easy thing to do, and it goes a long way in cultivating relationships with other lawyers. Be supportive and engaging online, and you’ll be shocked at how well that translates to your relationships with those colleagues offline.
If you’re reading this blog, chances are good you’re passionate about your job and you want to grow your firm to new heights. At backdocket, we share your passion and your goal.
Our practice management software helps law firms work smarter, not harder. We help small- to mid-size law firms grow by making them more efficient, communicative, and better equipped to offer the best service possible.
Contact the team at backdocket today to schedule a free demonstration!
Law firms have so many strategies available to generate more business that it can be difficult to know where to start or where to focus your marketing dollars. Fortunately, the methods discussed here have already been tried and tested by countless law firms, and a select few have proven to be the most reliable lead generation strategies.
To help you better understand your options, we’ve created this free guide to learn lead generation strategies for law firms. The guide covers:
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If you need help growing your law firm, backdocket has your back! Our practice management software will make your firm more efficient, help your team communicate better, and keep your clients thrilled with your service.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help, simply contact our team today to schedule your free demonstration.
When attorneys think about how to provide the best legal service possible to clients, they probably think about the results they achieve in the courtroom or the hours of research and preparation they do on a given case.
Though these aspects of your firm’s services are crucial, they have very little to do with one of the most important of your team’s offerings: communication. When you don’t communicate effectively, all the hard work you do will only go so far.
Communication is a blind spot for so many attorneys and law firms. Often, firms aren’t even aware of their clients’ frustrations. The good news is that, in most cases, the fixes are easy.
Here are four client communication problems you might not even realize your firm has—and how to fix them!
The worst feeling a client can have is feeling like they’re their own case manager. Even if you are working hard on a case and doing everything possible for the client, they’ll never know if you don’t communicate that to them.
It’s often true that a case sits idle for many reasons that have nothing to do with the lawyer who is handling it. In those situations, it’s best to promptly communicate delays to the client and let them know their case is still on the top of your mind.
Fixing these problems means communicating frequently with a client. That will alleviate any uncertainty they’re feeling and demonstrate your value as their advocate.
For your client, their case is potentially one of the most important events in their life. Imagine their frustration when they reach out to the person they’ve trusted to handle it and hear nothing in return.
Client messages should never go unaddressed, and the sooner you respond, the better. Even if the client’s question doesn’t have an answer, letting them know that will help put their mind at ease.
Create a policy at your law firm that someone should respond to the client’s message on the same business day if possible and no later than 24 hours. This will prevent a backlog of unreturned messages.
It’s likely that daily updates on your client’s case would be unreasonable. After all, you and your team are busy, and there isn’t enough happening with the case that would warrant that much correspondence with a client.
However, it’s possible that your client doesn’t realize this. It’s a law firm’s job to communicate and set expectations very early on in the relationship. Failing to do could result in an unnecessarily disappointed client.
When you first accept a case, or even before, discuss with your client how frequently you’ll be in touch and what you’ll be communicating when you reach out. This could entail communicating milestones and a broad estimate of when those milestones are likely to occur.
Attorneys are often so familiar with the law and the details of a client’s case that they tend to do more talking and explaining than listening. This is a big mistake, as your client’s needs go well beyond receiving information.
The time you invest in listening to what your client is experiencing will reap dividends when it comes to client satisfaction and generating more business. Practicing empathy is a soft skill that receives far too little attention in law school and ongoing education.
Fortunately, the solution is simple. When you call or meet with your clients, carve out time to ask them questions and listen thoroughly to what they’re saying.
At backdocket, we’re passionate about helping small- to mid-size law firms do the best work possible for their clients. Our practice management software uses automation, dashboards, and centralized documentation to make sure team members excel at client communication.
One of the most common pieces of feedback we hear from our customers is how backdocket dramatically improved their relationships with clients. By having reminders in front of you and notes from previous calls on hand, you can pick up conversations where you left off. Your client will feel like your team is always having meetings about their case. If you’d like to learn more about how backdocket can help you and your team work smarter, contact us today to schedule a free demonstration.
There comes a point in the lifespan of a law firm when smart marketing tactics can take it to greater heights. In some cases, marketing is used to break through plateaus. In others, it turbocharges existing growth.
Whether you’ve always been eager to start marketing your law firm or you’ve previously resisted the idea, it’s important to understand when marketing is no longer optional.
Here are a few signs that it’s time for your law firm to take marketing to the next level.
If your firm has seen sustained growth over months or years only to hit a plateau, then it might be necessary to launch a marketing campaign. When you’re at this stage, you likely already have the pieces in place to accommodate new growth; you just need to generate interest in your firm through advertising.
Referrals alone can take firms to some very lucrative places, but there is a limit on how much you can grow if you rely solely on word of mouth from former clients. Consider leveraging the positive reviews you’ve received from former clients to create a stronger online presence and an impactful advertising campaign.
In competitive markets, brand awareness makes the difference between a successful and a failing law firm. Your team can be skilled and offer exceptional service, but still fall short of your goals if no one in your market knows who you are.
The good news is that raising brand awareness doesn’t necessarily mean a costly ad campaign. You can even focus on digital marketing or community involvement to help raise your firm’s profile in your community.
When you’re hoping to establish a foothold for your law firm in a new market, you should strongly consider doing so via a new marketing campaign that introduces your firm to potential clients. That’s especially true if the market you’re targeting is competitive.
If your firm is making a push for a new type of case, you need to let your community know about it. Perhaps you’ve already built a reputation for handling personal injury cases, but you’ve recently brought in seasoned attorneys who practice family law. In that case, now is the perfect time to create a marketing budget and campaign to let people know about your new offering and push for more of those cases.
Certain types of advertising aren’t the best fit for smaller or struggling firms. For example, if your firm has little-to-no money to allocate to marketing, and you’re struggling to handle the cases you already have, investing in a massive television advertising campaign simply isn’t an option.
However, there are almost always ways of marketing your firm that don’t involve a huge marketing war chest. For example, having a simple but solid website, setting up your Google My Business profile, and encouraging your former clients to leave reviews is far less cost prohibitive than a major advertising blitz in your market.
It’s important that you or someone else at your firm is always thinking about your outreach and looking for ways to maximize the tools you have at your disposal.
At backdocket, we’ve worked with many law firms that are in the exact position you’re currently in. Being a small- to mid-size law firm definitely has its challenges, but your opportunities for growth are likely far greater than you realize.
We built our practice management software to improve how firms operate, and the law firms we partner with have become more efficient and more profitable because of backdocket. Contact us today to learn how we can help you grow your firm.
In today’s busy world, who doesn’t want a few more hours to devote to anything but work? It’s especially true in the legal field, where workers spend a notorious amount of time keeping up with the demands of the job.
If you’ve found yourself seeking a more productive, less “busy” work life, then you might even be jaded by the mere idea of “productivity hacks,” and, at backdocket, we share that sentiment.
Though there are no end to the number of books, podcasts, blogs, and news articles doling out less-than-helpful advice, there are also some time-tested strategies that can help law firms identify redundant, unnecessary tasks to simplify workloads and do more in less time.
Our latest guide gives you practical ways to identify inefficiencies at your law firm. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you’ll find that you really can work smarter and not harder.
Click below to download our guide on how to boost your law firm’s productivity while working fewer hours.
In this guide, you’ll learn…
At backdocket, we know exactly what law firms are facing, and why it’s so important they use the right tools to make team members’ lives easier. Our practice management software offers small- to mid-size law firms a lifeline to a more organized and efficient work life.
If you’re interested in seeing how backdocket can improve your firm’s processes, contact our team today for a free demonstration.
This is the fourth installment of our series about the lifecycle of personal injury claims, in which we focus on what you can do to get more clients while providing them the best service possible.
When you close a personal injury claim, you reap the rewards of your firm’s hard work on a case. However, just because the case is coming to a close doesn’t mean that your team’s job is finished.
If you’re striving to offer your client the best service possible and to ensure your firm is collecting its fees, then closing a claim is a pivotal time to go the extra mile.
One of the most effective ways to usher your client through the personal injury claim process is communicating clearly what they can expect at each stage. This means walking them through a potential timeline, the possible paths their claim might take, and when you’ll collect your fee post-settlement.
Setting expectations and revisiting these steps throughout the process will alleviate the stress and uncertainty your client might feel. This will also cut down on the number of questions you and your team will field from the client throughout the claim process.
During the final stages of a personal injury claim, your client is likely very emotionally invested in the progress of their case. Their claim might be weighing heavily on their mind, and they’ll likely have many questions they want answered.
As their claim resolves, frequent and responsive communication is essential if you want to keep your client happy. Ideally, you and your team will be proactive during this period. Whenever there are new developments during the settlement negotiation process, your client should be the first to know. That’s true whether the news is good or bad.
Even if you’re being proactive, your client might still reach out to your firm for updates or with important questions. Do your best to respond to these questions and concerns as soon as you get them.
As mentioned above, you’ll want to make sure your client understands early on in the process how much you’ll charge for your services and when you will collect your fees. Many personal injury attorneys will claim a percentage of their clients’ settlements, and you might arrange payment so that you collect your fee before your client receives their settlement.
Whatever your fee arrangement is, communicate it clearly with your client ahead of time so there will be no surprises once it’s time to collect.
The collection process should be a top priority for your law firm. This pertains to both collecting the settlement from the insurance company and, depending on how you’re billing your client, collecting your fee from the settlement.
It’s important to know exactly how much you’re owed and how the money will be collected. The best way to keep track of this information is through a centralized database. A practice management software like backdocket will help your collection team know how much your firm is owed and what steps need to be taken to collect the money.
You and your team have worked hard for your client, and you’ve been paid for the work you’ve done. However, that doesn’t mean your relationship with your client should end.
Remember that your clients can be the most effective ambassadors for your firm’s services. They can be not only referral sources for future business, but they can also provide you with reviews and testimonials that help garner more clients in the future.
Don’t forget to ask your clients to review your site online. If the client is willing, you might also consider asking them for a written or video testimonial that you can use on your website or in your marketing campaigns.
To turn your former clients into brand ambassadors, consider ways to stay in touch well after their cases are resolved. That could mean sending them cards or messages on their birthdays or holidays, or simply reaching out occasionally to see how they’re doing.
This will let your clients know they were more than just another claim you handled, and it will keep your firm top of mind if those clients know others in need of a lawyer.
You can also rely on your practice management software to keep you on track with former client outreach. With backdocket, you can set reminders on client milestones like birthdays or to reach out to past clients at regularly scheduled intervals.
At backdocket, we know how crucial it is to resolve claims with an emphasis on client communication. We’ve built our practice management software to grow small- to mid-size law firms, and we customize our system to fit the way they work.
If you’d like to learn more about what backdocket can do for you, contact our team today to schedule a free demonstration.
