How Systems Can Lead to Incredible Success
By Next Level Pod on October 5th, 2022 in Uncategorized
We don’t just discuss feel-good tips here; we discuss real, actionable strategies that successful law firms use every day.
However, when you’re just starting out or when you’re struggling as a law firm owner, it can be hard to believe success like that is possible. That’s why we’ve decided to highlight some case studies.
Today, we’re giving real-life examples of firms that have implemented systems within their businesses and are now reaping the rewards.
Signs That You Need Systems
Firstly, let’s go over why systems are important in the first place. What happens when you don’t have systems and how can you know that your firm is in desperate need of instituting some?
Here are some of the signs:
- Your law firm feels chaotic and more like a group of firefighters putting out fires rather than a legal team performing good legal work to support your clients.
- You have inconsistent revenue.
- There is a lack of staff happiness and client happiness.
- The cash you have coming in is haphazard. You have no billing or payroll system.
- You as the law firm owner aren’t sleeping well at night because you’re so exhausted and stressed about running your business.
File Organization Systems
Now, let’s hear some stories of firms that realized they needed systems in place in specific areas of their firm, worked with Streamlined Legal to get those systems in place, and saw amazing success from those efforts.
The first is an estate planning firm in Las Vegas. They have over 2500 open matters in their practice management software, though they weren’t a very high-volume firm. That number had been inflated because they had been using the same practice management software for a while and had never closed matters in the software. As a result, they were left with a huge list of files that weren’t accurate.
There was one paralegal dealing with all of these open matters, trying to figure out which needed to be worked on, and doing it all through a spreadsheet. If she got sick or went on vacation, nobody else knew the status of the files. The firm could hardly keep operating when she wasn’t there.
Streamlined Legal came in and helped the firm come up with a file opening and closing procedure. They documented all of the steps and trained their team on them.
As a result, the team could work on open matters whether or not the paralegal was in office and their meeting times reduced drastically. The attorney who owns the firm is also sleeping much better because he knows what’s going on in his firm.
Workflows
We’ve also seen great success when firms implement workflows. For example, there’s a firm out in California that practices elder abuse law. Steamlined Legal worked with them for quite some time to create task lists in Clio to direct their workflows. The task lists trigger people to do things when they’re representing a client.
Workflows help you direct your firm without you having to be on top of every single case. For this firm in California, after creating 35 workflows that were representative of their litigation process, they were much less frazzled and stressed. The workflows were truly a lifesaver. Not only did they help the owner manage the firm but they also helped her team members communicate with each other.
Within about eight months, the firm doubled in size. Workflows helped them increase their capacity and to be able to track more cases.
If you want to hear two more case studies, check out Episode 062: Systems Success Stories.