This is the third 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.
Client relationships are the lifeblood of every law firm. Most of a lawyer’s relationships with his or her clients revolve around the legal representation they provide. But so many other factors dictate the quality of service a client receives.
In other words, you can have a keen understanding of the law and get big results in the cases you handle but still have poor customer service. You don’t want to be the legal equivalent of a doctor with bad bedside manner.
If your law firm lacks communication skills and poorly manages client relationships, you might never be able to position your firm for long-term growth.
This crucial aspect of building fruitful relationships with clients is what we’re focusing on below. Let’s discuss the key aspects of successful client management for law firms.
Nothing frustrates a client more than having to constantly reach out to their lawyer for updates on their case. The best way for an attorney to combat this far-too-common sticking point is to be proactive with client interactions.
Whenever your firm has an update about a case, the client should be notified as quickly as possible. If a client communicates to you that they prefer less correspondence from your firm, then and only then should you pump the brakes on case updates.
Your firm can even take things a step further and schedule reminders to your team to follow up with clients at regular intervals when there are no actual updates to provide. Even if a client would prefer to hear that their case is moving forward, knowing that there are no updates to report can alleviate some of the uncertainty they’re facing as they wait for their case to resolve.
Another crucial way your team can be proactive is to send clients reminders about court dates, depositions, appointments, or other important events they need to attend or be aware of. Some practice management systems (like backdocket) let you set up automated reminders to clients so your team won’t get bogged down sending reminders.
Being proactive will eliminate the need to respond to endless client calls and requests, but it won’t eliminate them entirely. In some instances, you’ll still have a client that wants more correspondence than you’re providing. In other cases, a client might have their own update regarding their condition, medical treatment, or other developments regarding their case.
Being responsive to a client’s calls or emails is essential if you want to build great client relationships. Ideally, your team will respond to clients on the same day that they reach out to you. At the very least, create a policy that says your team should never wait longer than 24 hours to respond to their messages.
Practice management software can be invaluable here, too. Whenever a client reaches out, a team member can enter in that request into your practice management system and create an alert for the attorney or case manager to respond.
Whenever you speak to a client, you should be able to pick up exactly where you left off. This doesn’t just apply to the conversations you were having about the case itself. It also applies to any personal conversations that you had with your client.
For example, if your client mentioned in a previous call that their spouse was about to undergo major surgery, you should ask how their spouse is doing the next time you speak to them. These types of interactions let clients know that you’re thinking about them and that you care about more than just the legal issue they’re facing.
For attorneys and other law firm team members, it can be difficult to remember exactly what you spoke with clients about in your most recent interactions. That’s why relying on your memory alone isn’t enough.
Either you or another team member on the client call should take notes about what’s discussed, so you can read through those notes before your next call or meeting. At backdocket, we make this easy for law firms. Through our software, firms can take detailed notes about a client, which are easily available to all team members to review prior to a meeting or call.
Everyone at your firm, especially those who are in a client-facing role, should understand how important it is to build great relationships with clients. One way to make this part of your firm’s culture is to have regular meetings to discuss ideas for assessing and improving client relationships.
In practice, this might look like quarterly meetings to consider things like Christmas cards to send to clients or which clients might need more correspondence from your firm. The meetings might yield great ways to improve relationships, but they’ll also serve as a reminder to all your fellow team members that client satisfaction is an ongoing process and should be a priority for your law firm.
At backdocket, we’re focused on helping small- to mid-size law firms find success. One of the most common types of feedback we get from our law firms is how dramatically their client relationships improve because of our practice management software.
Through backdocket, you can centralize notes about your clients, set up automated correspondence for appointment reminders, and always be on top of a case’s status.
If you want to grow your firm, backdocket can help. Contact our team today to schedule a free demonstration.
This is the first 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 personal injury attorneys seek opportunities to grow their firms, they’ll rightfully examine the many steps in the process of filing claims to look for ways to improve or streamline. But one of the most overlooked steps in the lifecycle of a claim happens before the actual claim even begins: your marketing.
It’s important that firms avoid the mistake of seeing marketing as a separate process from handling cases. In fact, it’s the first step of a claim’s lifecycle. That’s because marketing is what gets clients to reach out to your firm in the first place.
From raising general awareness of your firm to making your firm visible to people who need a personal injury attorney, let’s look at why marketing is essential, and more importantly, what you should do to create successful marketing campaigns.
One of the biggest (and most challenging) priorities for every personal injury law firm is raising awareness of their services. This is a long-term endeavor, and the ultimate goal is to become a familiar name in the minds of people in your market, regardless of where they’re at in their “buyer’s journey.”
Pro tip: One of the most effective ways of approaching any marketing campaign is to think of audiences in terms of their “journey” to your firm or, put another way, to think about the stage of the “sales funnel” they’re in. Top-of-funnel audiences are just beginning their search for a lawyer (perhaps they don’t even know they need one yet), while bottom-of-funnel audiences are those who are on the verge of contacting (and hopefully hiring) your firm.
You have several marketing strategies available to raise brand awareness in your market. The strategies you choose will largely depend on your budget. For example, broadcast advertising is typically more expensive than online advertising.
Here are a few of the tools you can use to raise awareness of your brand:
Building trust with your audience is an extension of your efforts to raise brand awareness, and you’ll want to make it a key part of your presence online and offline. Any informational content that you provide audiences online helps build trust by demonstrating your expertise on relevant subject matters.
However, you want to make sure that you tell your audience why you are different (and more valuable) that the other firms they might be considering. There are several approaches to do this, including:
These strategies are particularly effective on your website, but they can also be incorporated into offline campaigns.
Once a potential client is ready to hire a firm (which means they’re at the bottom of the funnel or the end of the buyer’s journey), you’ll want to be as visible as possible. Many searches for local lawyers happen online. This is why it’s so important to have marketing strategies that increase your online visibility.
Here are a few strategies to make sure you’re the firm people find online when looking for a lawyer:
If you’re unfamiliar with many of the terms and online strategies listed above, that’s okay. Online marketing is a huge topic, and you’ll likely need to do some additional research to become familiar with the many approaches that marketers use.
You can also consider consulting online advertising experts for help executing these tactics. They’re increasingly important for law firms that want to be as visible as possible to potential clients.
Even after you sign a client, you can still use marketing tools to keep them engaged. Consider creating resources you can send a client who recently hired your firm. Those resources can educate them about the personal injury claim process or give them tips of what actions can help or hurt their claim when it’s underway.
Once you’re finished representing a client, you should also stay in touch. For example, we’ve talked about sending former clients holiday cards, but you can also occasionally check in via email to check in. Your former clients can become your most important brand ambassadors and one of the best sources of client referrals.
We created backdocket to help small- to mid-sized law firms grow and provide the best service possible. Whether you want to automate helpful reminders to your clients or keep track of your prospects, backdocket can help. Perhaps the best marketing strategy of all is to offer excellent legal representation, and that’s where backdocket comes in. Contact our team today to schedule a free demonstration of our practice management software.
If you practice law, you already know how common burnout is among lawyers. It’s not just common, it’s ubiquitous in large firms, solo practices, and every point in between.
You also likely know that taking long breaks and vacations are some of the most commonly suggested strategies for avoiding burnout. That’s an effective method, but we want to discuss three strategies that have nothing to do with vacations, though some of these strategies could free up hours in your week that you can then devote to other things.
Not even work should come between you and your health. And you might be surprised at how your habits outside of the office can have a dramatic impact on how you do your job.
If you aren’t paying attention to your physical and mental health outside of work, then you’ll pay the consequences in your professional life. A proper diet, plenty of exercise, and adequate sleep are non-negotiables.
Don’t just tell yourself you’ll fit healthy habits in when you get time. Put exercise on your schedule. Set alarms on your phone to remind you when it’s time to go to sleep. Plan out what you’ll eat in the upcoming week, then zealously stick to your planned menus.
Many professionals find that other activities, such as meditation, journaling, and yoga, help them restore their energy and diminish symptoms of burnout, but it’s ultimately up to you which additional activities you want to incorporate into your life. Experiment to find out what is most effective.
One of the leading causes of burnout is the unfounded belief that one person (in this case, you) must do everything themselves. If you’re overwhelmed with work, then it’s worth asking whether you can afford to bring on additional team members. You might even find that many of the tasks you’re currently doing would be better suited for someone else currently working at your firm.
Conduct an audit of how you currently spend your average week. Identify the tasks that regularly eat up your time and energy. Then, take that list and highlight everything that’s either unnecessary or can easily be handled by someone else. These are the tasks you can eliminate or delegate to others.
One of the most helpful ways to focus on what really matters and improve your productivity is to map out your week through a technique called time blocking. One of the biggest proponents of this technique is Cal Newport, author of productivity-oriented books Deep Work and Digital Minimalism.
Newport estimates that meticulously scheduling out your week in blocks can make a 40-hour workweek as productive as a 60-hour workweek. He even offers a template online that you can use to start time blocking your week immediately.
Burnout leads to health complications, diminished job performance, cynicism about your job, and a host of other challenges that could end the career you’re trying so hard to focus on. So, the strategies outlined above aren’t necessary just to make you feel better; they might even help you save your career.
Look for all the little ways that you can improve your work life and streamline the tasks required in your job. You might find that several small adjustments compound over time to make your life far more manageable.
We created our practice management software, backdocket, to give small- to mid-size firms practical solutions to solve the problems they face every day. Through backdocket, legal professionals often save a significant amount of time and energy by working smarter, not harder.
If you’d like to learn more about how backdocket can save you time AND grow your firm, contact us today to schedule a free demonstration.
The importance of having the right technology at your law firm’s disposal can’t be overstated. Depending on where you’re located, you or your firm’s attorneys might even be required to take a CLE devoted specifically to how to incorporate technology.
Though you’ll find plenty of technology you can implement at your firm, it’s important to make sure it meets your needs. That might involve a bit of research, but to help you in your quest, we’ve put together a list of the most important types of technology you should consider.
As providers of practice management software, we’ve seen firsthand how transformative the right system can be for all aspects of a legal practice. It can improve the workflow (and alleviate the workload) of every single team member at your firm.
Through our practice management software, you can automate processes, customize your own personal dashboard, improve communication (both within your firm and with third parties), and better manage your case tracking. That’s why we recommend backdocket; but there are other forms of technology you’ll need to succeed in your market.
Though most firms have some type of document processing, such as Microsoft Word, there are several other types of applications that can also help you be more organized and efficient. Consider the value of:
Confidentiality and privacy are essential for law firms, so cyber security should be a priority. The type of security you’ll need for your law firm depends on the systems you use internally and the digital systems you offer clients.
Identity authentication and encryption tools will be a good starting point for most firms. Some of the tools you need might be included in other applications or digital systems, so consider checking with the providers of your current services before purchasing third-party systems.
From content managements systems like WordPress and Squarespace that host your site to social media platforms to further establish your online presence, you’ll find several options for website, web marketing, and web data tools.
After you identify a platform to host your website, take advantage of social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn) and data analysis tools (like Google Analytics or Bing Webmasters Tool), all of which are free for your firm.
Once you have the budget and the staff capabilities to look into more advanced tools, you can start looking into tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Ahrefs, SEMRush, Crazy Egg, HotJar, HubSpot, and countless other tools to take your marketing to the next level.
Finding the right tech tools for your firm is a big undertaking, but it can be incredibly rewarding, exciting, and reassuring to find and implement the best systems needed to offer the best services possible to your clients.
If you’re a small- to mid-size law firm considering the benefits of a practice management system, then reach out to the team at backdocket to schedule a free demonstration!
Most law firms and law firm marketers know that search engine optimization (SEO) is important, but they don’t know what it really means and requires of them.
The good news is that you don’t need to be a seasoned SEO specialist to make your site perform better online. If you’re looking for a helpful guide to improve your law firm’s SEO, we have you covered.
Enter your email address below to receive your free copy of our Crash Course for Law Firm SEO:
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We hope you find our free guide helpful. At backdocket, we’re focused on growing law firms through our practice management software. If you’d like to learn more about our software and how it can benefit you, we want to hear from you.
Simply contact our team today to schedule a free demonstration.
Working in a law firm often requires in-depth knowledge and expertise of complex topics. Hard skills are obviously crucial for so many roles in the legal field, but they aren’t everything. In fact, a soft skill deficit could make life impossible for someone hoping to thrive at a law firm.
Here five examples of soft skills that are indispensable in a law firm.
The ability to deal effectively with clients is one of the most fundamental aspects of working in the legal field. And it’s applicable to all types of workers within a law firm. From senior partners to receptionists, showing empathy and warmth is an invaluable skill that will be just as important in your client’s experience of your firm as the legal representation you provide.
Make sure that everyone in your firm who is client-facing shows patience, sympathy, and an overall good nature toward the people you represent.
Being an effective communicator is one of the most important skills in any business, but it’s especially key in an industry where so much is on the line for clients. Whether a paralegal or legal assistant is communicating the need for more attention to be given to a case, or an operations manager is emphasizing the importance of keeping track of billable hours, clear and effective communication spawns action and ensures all team members are on the same page.
Understanding your surroundings, the sensitive information you’re dealing with, and the audience you’re addressing is arguably more important in the legal field than in any other industry.
Law firm workers of all ranks are privy to confidential information, so understanding when they’re free to speak at length about sensitive information is essential. And knowing how to adapt to varying environments (internal meetings, client consultations, in the courtroom) with that information is equally important.
For those unfamiliar with the law, it might seem like it’s full of absolutes. Something is either lawful, or it’s illegal. Someone is either negligent, or they aren’t. But legal professionals understand that it’s the uncertainty that makes practicing law so engaging. The same is true of the profession as a whole.
Whether building a case, fixing problems with internal processes, or finding new methods of reaching out to clients, creativity is what makes great law firms stand apart from the rest.
Of course, knowing how to effectively manage one’s time can make the difference between a long, successful career in a law firm or a short, tortured tenure working in one of the most demanding jobs imaginable.
It’s important to not only know how to allocate your time in the most efficient way possible, but also to know when to step away from work to maintain your health and happiness.
So many of the skills listed above can be enhanced by the right practice management software. At backdocket, we designed our software to meet the needs of small- to mid-size law firms. It can help your team communicate more effectively, better manage your time, improve client relations, and so much more. To learn more about what backdocket can do for your firm, contact us today to schedule a free demonstration.
Whether you’re a sole practitioner or one of many hard-working attorneys at a large law firm, you likely struggle to find a proper work-life balance. The legal field is notorious for long hours, burnout, stress, and even depression, so know that whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone.
If you’re wondering how to be a happier lawyer, you’re in luck. There are several proven strategies that can improve your mental well-being, without you having to look for a new career. In fact, you might find that being happier makes you even better at your job!
Before you dismiss the idea that working less can solve any of your problems, consider the value of rest and engaging in something—anything—outside of work. There’s good evidence that having a hobby you take seriously is correlated with being a top performer.
For example, Nobel Prize winning scientists are 2.85 times more likely than average scientists to have a hobby that is artistic or crafty. In other words, the hobby these top-performing scientists pursue is completely unrelated to their profession.
So, if you’re someone who believes every pursuit should be in service of your career goals, then know that taking time away from the grind to focus on something completely unrelated to work can actually boost your performance.
More importantly, having a pursuit unrelated to your career will also make you happier. One study from researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Institute of Work Psychology in the U.K. found that when people have hobbies that are too similar to their profession, their levels of self-confidence in their abilities to do their jobs decline.
But when their hobby bore little-to-no similarities to the professional’s job, their self-reported levels of happiness and health were far greater than counterparts with hobbies that were related to their professions.
A few activities are almost always included in lists for improving your mental health, and you should investigate any (or all) of them in your quest to find happiness. Those strategies include:
These practices are cornerstones of improving mental well-being. If there’s anything on this list you haven’t tried for a sustained period (at least one to two months), then consider incorporating them into your daily or weekly schedule.
Helping others, whether through charity, volunteer work, or simply expressing gratitude and compassion to others, also has a strong correlation with higher levels of happiness. Research shows that being generous activates the same part of the brain stimulated by eating delicious food.
If the idea of altruism doesn’t appeal to you, that’s okay. Helping others can still make you happier, even if it’s done for completely self-serving purposes.
Sometimes it’s helpful to simply understand what happiness could mean in your life and what research says about how you can and can’t achieve it. Fortunately, several experts have devoted their careers to find out what does and doesn’t make people happy.
For example, Dan Gilbert, a social psychologist, writer, and Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University is one of the leading voices on happiness research. Gilbert’s book, Stumbling on Happiness, explores what it means to be happy, and why we so often rely on the wrong strategies to obtain it.
Yale professor and cognitive scientist Dr. Laurie Santos teaches a free course on a happiness at Yale. She also has a podcast called The Happiness Lab, in which she speaks with other experts and examines what does and doesn’t improve mental well-being.
Sometimes the roots of depression and anxiety run deep enough that the best treatment is through a mental health professional. If you’ve considered speaking to a therapist or counselor, or if you’ve considered taking medication, don’t hesitate to take the first step toward getting help. Talk to your doctor, friends, or loved ones for a recommendation of a mental health professional.
Whichever strategy you choose to become a happier lawyer, know that you’ll be less likely to follow through if you don’t actively make time for it. If you live and die by your calendar, then start scheduling time in your day or week to pursue a hobby, exercise, meditate, volunteer, read, journal, or do whatever else you’d like to try.
At backdocket, our contribution to happiness in the legal field comes through our practice management software. With backdocket, legal professionals can work smarter, not harder, so you can spend less of your day on tedious time-consuming tasks and give yourself room to breathe. If you’d like to schedule a free demonstration, contact our team today.
Think about how you feel when you walk into your favorite restaurant or coffee shop. Do you feel welcome? Do you feel like you’ve established a relationship with the people who work there?
Of course, you likely visit your favorite spots because of the quality of the goods or services they provide. But how much of your decision to frequent these businesses is based on the experience you have when you go there?
It’s likely that your overall experience is key to your loyalty to any given business.
Now, think about the experience your law firm provides when a client or anyone else walks through your doors. Hopefully, they feel welcome and cared for each and every time. If not, you could be losing clients. However, changing that requires incorporating only a few small, considerate gestures for those visiting your firm.
One of the best examples of a business that cultivated a loyal following is Starbucks. Plenty of people like Starbucks coffee, but author Joseph Michelli argues in his book The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary, that the experience Starbucks provides is fundamental to its success.
In his book, Michelli dives into both the inner-workings and customer-facing operations at Starbucks that gives them a distinct advantage over other companies. When customers walk into any Starbucks, they’ll be greeted with the same familiar smells, casual surroundings, and an aesthetically pleasing design created specifically to put customers at ease.
Many businesses have used insights from the Starbucks business model to craft their own experience, and law firms are no exception.
Even simple changes can dramatically improve clients’ experiences of your firm.
Examples include:
If law firms only look at their competitors when thinking about how they serve clients, they’ll never gain a true advantage in their markets. What the Starbucks experience teaches us is that we can look anywhere for inspiration.
Is there a business you frequent that handles billing in a way you find easy and intuitive? Do you like the way your doctor’s office sends you a reminder of your upcoming appointment? Do you like the opportunity to provide a review of the service a business provides you?
Ask yourself these types of questions with every business you interact with. Don’t hesitate to experiment with these innovations at your law office. Though your client obviously wants a high standard of legal representation when they visit you, the experience they have at your firm can help give you a serious edge over your competitors.
Backdocket is a practice management software designed specifically to accommodate the needs of small- to mid-size law firms. Our software is the best in the industry, but our customers also come to us because of the services we provide.
Our team regularly works with our customers to cater our software to meet their needs. If you’d like to learn more about how backdocket can improve the way your firm works, contact us today for a free demonstration.
A law firm manager has arguably the most important role in the organization. They make sure that the firm is efficient and successful. That’s no small feat, and it requires several key traits, from organizational skills to problem solving abilities.
Let’s look at six of the most important traits law firm managers need to succeed.
As the person in charge of structuring the inner processes of the firm, a manager must possess excellent organizational skills. Whether they’re managing their own or others’ time, a manager must be able to map out how the firm can reach its short- and long-term goals with its available resources.
The job of a manager is never-ending, and at times, it can be demanding. Whether dealing with law firm partners, staff members, or clients, they’ll need to do so calmly and with a clear mind. The ideal law firm manager handles and even thrives under pressure and has the ability to appear calm when coworkers are stressed out.
Good law firm managers communicate clearly and effectively with their team members. Time is often scarce at law firms, and the execution of key tasks depends on the ability of the manager to articulate who needs to do what and when tasks should be carried out. Though managers don’t have to be exceedingly gentle in their communications, they should be patient and understanding in how they communicate with team members.
An endless number of fires can pop up on any given day in a busy law firm. It’s imperative that a manager knows how to put out these fires. Whether it’s dealing with an angry client or finding solutions when a key team member is unexpectedly unavailable, managers must be able to find fast and effective solutions to any given problem.
Though it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of the daily grind, a law firm manager is always thinking about how processes play into the firm’s overall mission and bottom line. What is truly important? What can be dealt with later? How does a process help a firm grow? These are all questions that a manager must grapple with to help a firm thrive.
Even if a manager occasionally needs to jump into the trenches with coworkers to help solve problems, they also have the ability to delegate tasks when appropriate. The best managers don’t micromanage every problem. They understand their team members’ abilities, and they delegate tasks to help them be more productive.
At backdocket, we understand the challenges facing small- to mid-size law firms. We created our practice management software to help these firms to work smarter, not harder. From improving internal communications to automating tasks, backdocket can dramatically improve a firm’s processes and save countless hours on basic tasks.
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of using backdocket, contact our team today to schedule a free demonstration.
The legal industry is competitive and unforgiving, and you need an edge to thrive. Getting and giving referrals can provide a steady stream of revenue to your firm and help you broaden your reach, making it easier to grow and succeed. But knowing where to start this process is a challenge for so many attorneys.
We’ve created a free guide to building referral networks for law firms. This practical, actionable guide includes advice on:
To access backdocket’s free guide to building a referral network, simply enter your email address below.
At backdocket, our mission is to help firms grow. Our practice management software was built to make it easier for you and your teammates to do your jobs. If you’d like a free demonstration, contact us anytime to get started.
