It’s almost the end of June and we are halfway through the year. It’s time to take a look at your practice for successes, challenges, and areas for improvement.
According to an article on InfoEntreprenuers.org, systematic reviews are essential to the continuous growth of any business. From a legal perspective, you cannot identify the strengths and weaknesses of your law practice without regular reviews.
While this may sound like an incredibly challenging task, I have good news for you. If your firm has implemented legal project management (LPM) into your practice, progress assessments are easily accomplished.
Learn profitable benefits of Legal Project Management
When conducting a law practice evaluation, there are several perspectives to consider for a comprehensive and complete view of your firm.
- Matter profitability – A combination of the right billing software and LPM strategies puts matter profitability information right at your fingertips. By running available reports, you can review the amount of time and resources used for each individual matter. You can then compare that data to the actual earned profit amount to determine which matters and practice areas were most financially beneficial to the practice.
- Time management – Did you find that some matters were not as profitable as expected? Perhaps there was a time management issue that resulted in wasted resources. With useful LPM tools, you can go back and review the amount of time spent on individual matters by each member of the respective teams. You can also review the productivity of individual milestones to assess where time could have been better used in furtherance of the matter.
- Partner and Associate Performance – Is an associate not performing as expected? LPM is based on teamwork, but you can still evaluate the performance of individual associates, as long as you have the right billing software. I hate to keep repeating myself, but comprehensive legal billing software is essential to performing these reviews. With the right tools, you can assess the contributions of each team member to determine whether deadlines were adequately met, budgets were adhered to, and the adequacy of work completed.
- Future Outlook – After you have taken the steps to gather all of this information, put it to good use by creating new goals for the firm. Perhaps you found that one practice area is substantially more profitable than another. Focus your marketing efforts on the more profitable matters to increase the financial well being of the firm overall. You may have also found that too much time is being wasted on a particular task. Look for ways to streamline and make the most of your resources.
The benefits of a regular review are priceless, and you know that “right software” that I keep mentioning. It’s TimeSolv. With customized billing options and numerous reporting capabilities, this legal billing software is the perfect complement to your LPM goals.
Don’t be content to just sail along, with little to no consideration for the well-being of your practice. You may be missing real problems that need to be addressed or opportunities for growth and expansion. Make the month of June productive by conducting a comprehensive review of your practice and setting new goals for success.
About Erika Winston:
Erika Winston is a Virginia based writer with a passion for all things legal. As a former domestic relations attorney, she understands the challenge of determining the best fee structure for your practice. Erika is a regular contributor to TimeSolv and a variety of other publications.