The owners of law firms may consider merger options as part of their succession planning.
While periodically reviewing merger options can be an effective part of long-range strategic plans, it’s important that firms do not rely on mergers as a life raft. Instead, mergers should incorporate a well-thought business strategy and create greater client value.
Many attorneys spend their time and resources focusing on getting more leads but fail to realize that what they do with those leads is just as important as generating them.
The ISBA’s whitepaper on managing leads and converting prospects into paying clients highlights four major components of improving conversion rates, which include training for your front office and intake staff; specific tactics and strategies to maximize conversion at each stage; an intake customer relationship management software; and tracking and measuring key metrics.
While retirement is usually planned, the sudden death or disability of an attorney requires contingency planning.
It’s especially important for private-practice attorneys to designate a representative on their ARDC registration documents or certify that they have made a similar designation in a succession plan or comparable agreement. The representative would be able to take limited fiduciary action if the designating attorney loses the capacity to run his or her firm, abandons the practice, or dies, thus preventing the negligence of client matters.
The age-old idiom “hope for the best and prepare for the worst” can be applied to assessing risks to a law firm.
To plan for recovery, attorneys should understand what risks threaten their practice, and how to determine their potential impact in order to mitigate risks.
In the digital age, technology is the cornerstone of any law firm.
With a myriad of options on the table, it’s important to ensure that you don’t forget anything when opening a new practice.
With nearly 75 percent of consumers searching for an attorney online, it is important to make your website the hub of a successful legal marketing strategy.
What makes the difference between a great website and an ineffective one? It starts with planning.
For many law firms, referrals are an integral part of obtaining new clients. But it takes time to build a referral base, which must be cultivated through meaningful relationships with reliable sources.
The ISBA’s whitepaper on increasing a firm’s referrals provides five fundamental keys to accomplishing that goal. They include tips such as not trying to be a generalist, actively building relationships with five to 10 new referral sources each year, keeping in touch on a regular basis, rewarding people for referring clients, and not relying on just other attorneys for referrals.
Closing a law firm can be a daunting task.
There are many considerations attorneys must take into account, and the process itself takes time due to obligations to protect client information as well as the interest of the clients.
It’s no secret that a document assembly system is a cure-all for document-intensive areas of practice.
Attorneys in practices such as estate planning, real estate, contracts, banking, and employee benefits can greatly benefit from automating their document production process. It’s one of the few technologies that can actually revolutionize the way you work.
Studies show that the average American worker is interrupted every two to three minutes while on the job. At that rate, it’s a wonder anyone can finish daily tasks, let alone major projects.
The ISBA’s whitepaper on managing distractions in a digital age provides four fronts to address distractions and how to overcome them in the workplace. Those fronts include promoting physical and mental health, putting value on workplace and organizational health, creating a time, task and email methodology, and better understanding attention- and distraction-management skills.