Blog â Clio

Your Complete Guide to Effective Small Law Firm Management

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 13:00:15 GMT

If you’re wondering how to manage a small law firm effectively, you’re not alone. Managing a small law firm poses unique challenges to legal professionals compared to Big Law, where admin staff perform many of the day-to-day tasks. In most smaller law firms, those admin tasks fall on the shoulders of the attorneys and paralegals. This takes time away from billable and direct client work to be the “chief, cook, and bottle washer.”

Managing a small law firm also looks very different at the end of 2020 when ompared to earlier this year. There are unique challenges to managing virtually every aspect of the law firm, from staff delegation and oversight to changing your law office’s processes and client relationships.

Regardless of where you’re located, no one can deny the impact of the events of 2020 on the flow of their business. Your law firm must be extremely nimble and adaptable to change and keep up with the latest industry trends and developments—to make sure your legal practice does not fall behind.

In this blog post, we’ll cover how to manage a small law firm effectively, by focusing on key aspects of your law firm: staff, client experience, financials, technology, and brand. We’ll also include tips on how to manage a small law firm team to set you and your team up for success in the new year.

Rethink your pricing and payment models

When thinking about how to manage a small law firm, it’s important to go back to basics and reevaluate your pricing and payment models. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report found that clients care about affordability. In particular, 78% of consumers say that lawyers should adopt pricing and/or payment models that will make legal services more affordable. But lawyers should look at the issue of affordability across multiple dimensions. “Affordable” is more than just about the overall price. It’s about the value your clients perceive they have received for the price they have paid. How many times have you happily paid extra for something knowing you were getting excellent customer service? At the same time, how often have you paid less and been less than pleased with the results?

For example, for many years my optometrist was also my supplier of contact lenses. While I knew I could get them cheaper at the big-box stores, I also knew I always got excellent service and valued my relationship with the optometrist. Over the years, he helped me in various ways that had value but no price. When the optometrist retired and I went to see a new one in a bigger company, there was no comparison to the customer service–I couldn’t even get someone to call me back to place an order! Off to the big-box store I went, having lost the incentive to continue with the new firm.

Go beyond reducing prices or offering discounts for your legal services

Reducing prices or offering discounts is a short term solution. In addition, there is often a race to the bottom that is very hard to compete with, especially against larger firms with more resources and profit margin to work with. It can also condition your clients to always expect or ask for a discount. Think about it: Would you ever go into Bed Bath and Beyond without a 20% off coupon? This strategy can easily backfire and devalue your work—in the eyes of your clients.

To quote Seth Godin, a well-known author, speaker, pricing and marketing expert, as well as a recent keynote speaker at the 2020 Clio Conference: “The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about.” In addition, his blog article about the Tyranny of Lowest Price speaks very clearly about the costs of lowering prices. “The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win. Even worse, you might come in second.”

Consider offering alternative methods of billing and payment

Payment plans, fixed fee billing structures, subscription-based services, and unbundled legal services benefit not only your law firm, but also your clients:

Payment plans provide flexibility: As the 2020 Legal Trends Report shows, 72% of consumers would prefer to pay their legal fees via a payment plan. For example, a client who cannot afford to pay a $5,000 fee may hesitate to contract with your firm. But they would likely find it far easier to agree to a payment of $1,000 per month for 5 months or even $500 per month for 10 months. This is a win-win for both your firm and the client.
Fixed fee billing provides predictability: Creating fixed fee billing structures will allow your client to understand and budget for the cost of the legal services without the fear of the terrifying “unknown” cost.
Subscription-based services make legal fees more flexible and transparent: These are a great recurring revenue option for the firm and can also give you peace of mind that your client can contact you without “watching the clock”. This is also an opportunity for the client to reach out before little problems become much bigger ones. Your client views you as part of the team in providing solutions, not just an expensive cost.
Unbundled legal services increase affordability, flexibility, and transparency: Providing a client with just the legal services they need while limiting the scope allows your client to have more control over the case and potentially save them money. When combined with the flexibility of a payment plan and the predictability of fixed fees, unbundled services give many consumers the ability to pursue legal problems that they would otherwise not be able to afford.

Learn more about the best practices for law firm billing, pricing your law firm, running a subscription-based legal practice, and offering unbundled legal services.

Hire the right staff with the right roles to improve productivity

In a smaller law firm, one team member can make an oversized impact on your firm. Surprisingly, small firms often make the mistake of hiring receptionists and staff with poor people skills. In my 20 years of consulting with law firms, it is unfortunately not unusual to have staff answer the phone in a less-than-friendly manner and ask someone to call back rather than take a message. These are not only your office gatekeepers but should be known as “Director of First Impressions.” Having staff who not only share your firm’s vision but also are on board with making it into a daily reality is crucial to your firm’s success.

Delegating administrative and non-billable work is also key to making the best of the most limited resource you have—time. When attorneys and paralegals can focus on client work with fewer distractions and interruptions, they can be more effective, productive, and profitable.

Another way to improve productivity is to have your staff specialize in specific tasks and areas of work. It is common in smaller law firms for a single staff member to be the office manager, billing coordinator, paralegal, and occasional receptionist. This is understandable, given the smaller headcount. However, outside bookkeepers, receptionists (or virtual receptionists), and team members who are experts at specific tasks can often perform their work more efficiently and sometimes at a lower cost.

With a more productive team at your law firm, you can save time and ultimately—money.

Focus on relentlessly improving the client experience

Meet clients where they want you to be—online

As the 2020 Legal Trends Report shows, clients want to be able to interact with their lawyers online. With the rapid changes to the legal, economic, and healthcare landscape in 2020, the entire client experience is moving online—to a cloud-based environment. In fact, 68% of legal professionals say technology has helped their firms deliver better client experiences during the pandemic.

Clients interact with law firms and lawyers online through multiple touchpoints—through an initial review of a clear and engaging website, easy client intake process, e-signing documents, or online access to a client portal with key information related to their case. When a client can access the information they need with ease and minimal friction, they will have a more positive experience.

Reduce friction in payment options by offering payment methods that clients want

According to the 2020 Clio Legal Trends report, 65% of consumers prefer to pay through electronic payments. Offering your clients more digital ways to pay for legal services also helps decrease friction for clients by making it easier for them to pay. When your firm sends out invoices, is there a clear and easy way to pay? Both firms small and large have inadvertently added friction to payment processes, then wonder why their cash flow is inconsistent.

Quick case studies about law firms streamlining their payment process

Following are examples of two law firms I’ve worked with recently regarding streamlining their payment process:

Firm A mailed out invoices, along with a paper credit card authorization form which needed to be filled out and sent back (or called in). This caused days (if not weeks) of delay for payments.

Firm B did offer credit card payment in person or via phone. Yet they did not offer a link to their credit card processor on their emailed invoices or a way to pay via their website. At billing time, they “braced for impact” for the flood of calls of people wanting to pay their invoice via credit card. Inevitably, there was a delay since clients could not call after hours or on a weekend (if bills were sent on a Friday afternoon). In addition, staff had to take time away from client work to handle an administrative task that could have been handled without intervention, and at the client’s convenience.

For both these firms, automating this process would have a direct and immediate positive impact on their cash flow.

Learn more about delivering a client-centered legal experience.

Improve and streamline your law firm’s billing process

To start improving your law firm’s billing process, here are some questions to ask:

Is your billing process spelled out clearly at the beginning of the client engagement?
Does your firm provide easily understood invoices at reasonable intervals?
Have expectations been set appropriately?

Ideally, clients should never be surprised by the billing process or the amount of their invoice. Lack of attention to these items can result in uncollectable work and unhappy clients—both of which can be devastating in a small firm.

Too often, law firms will take a retainer and not produce an invoice until the retainer has been used up. The results in their client receiving a shock because they were unaware of the cost of the legal services that had been provided thus far. While working with an attorney recently, they mentioned that the client was going to be upset at the size of the bill. Whether it was due to the length of time since their last invoice or the amount of work completed, if you feel that a client will be shocked at the bill, be sure to communicate along the way to improve the client experience.

Learn more about using evergreen retainers at your law firm.

Have a clear understanding of your law firm’s financials

When thinking about how to manage a small law firm, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of your law firm’s financials. Law schools are notorious for training lawyers who know the law but not how to manage their law firm—especially their law firm’s finances. While you do not need to be an accountant, understanding key metrics is important to making decisions for the firm.

Work In Progress (WIP): How many hours/work has your firm captured but not yet billed? While not always a collectible amount, this gives you an idea of the potential upcoming billings. If your firm has hourly arrangements, it is also very important to know how “old” the time is (i.e. Aging). Once the time is more than 60 days old, it can be harder to invoice.
Accounts receivable (A/R): Work that has been billed but not yet collected. Again, the Aging of the Accounts receivable will be critical to the collections process. Once an invoice is over 60 days old, the chances of collecting in full drop steeply.
Collectible: Knowing how many hours your firm has captured, billed, and collected at any one time will help you to understand your actual realization rate.
Trust accounts: Do you know the trust balance for all of your client matters? Are the accounts reconciled according to your State Bar Rules?

Reviewing the above periodically (at least monthly) will help you understand and address issues before they become critical. This lets you address issues and bill clients whose work has been completed and review outstanding A/R to identify accounts that might need more aggressive collections.

Run your small law firm virtually with cloud-based legal practice management software

With the increased shift towards working remotely, cloud-based legal practice management software has seen explosive growth in the last several years. This allows firms to operate and serve clients in our current world, even in a pandemic or natural disaster. Technology adoption can influence law firm performance dramatically—including improving resilience during times of crises. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report found, firms who were already working with cloud-based systems typically had a much easier transition from the traditional office to work from home environments—when compared to those using older on-premise software. Firms using on-premise software often had to scramble to find ways to remotely connect to their offices to perform their daily tasks.

With cloud-based legal technology, it’s often easier to:

Automate tasks like billing, document creation, and payments
Schedule consultations and accept payments online
Manage contacts and email lists
Automate essential aspects of client retention and communication

Building a virtual law firm also benefits your existing clients and helps you serve new clients remotely. These are clients who may otherwise be unable to access legal services.

Grow your client base with cloud-based client intake tools

Legal client intake tools like Clio Grow can help you create a reliable and streamlined intake process easily. Client intake tools can help take your client from intake to engagement, along with specific follow-up tasks to make sure each inquiry has the proper timing and amount of follow up. These tools also allow you to market your services to an already interested audience.

Learn more about how to improve your law firm’s client intake process and automate your client intake process.

Develop a strong personal and law firm brand

Developing a strong law firm brand is also essential to the “how to manage a small law firm” question. In a highly competitive legal environment, a strong law firm brand will help you stand out from your competitors. What can you do to differentiate your firm from others who provide similar legal services?

According to Katy Goshtabi, an attorney and brand consultant, a Personal Brand is a process of:

Unearthing your unique and relevant attributes
Communicating these attributes consistently to your audience
Managing how your audience perceives this brand

Learn how to develop a strong law firm brand.

How to manage a small law firm team

In addition to the above points, managing a small law firm team has its unique challenges. Here are key ways to manage a small law firm team effectively:

Create procedures for everything

For many attorneys who leave a larger firm to start their own practice, they are immediately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of “trivial” work that they had no idea how to complete. This includes everything from e-filing court documents to handling the various licensing and bar requirements. In one conversation with a client recently, he shared how amazed he was to learn about the work that entire departments did (i.e. billing, HR, admin) that he had no idea about until he started his own firm.

Create a system for anything that you do more than once. It is easier to delegate and repeat when the process is defined and easily followed. As Mike Michalowicz writes in his book, Fix this Next, Make the Vital Change That Will Level Up Your Business, “When you bring order to your business, you give it autonomy, because the company is no longer dependent on any individual (including you). It has balance, strength, and fluidity. You are no longer carrying the business on your back, which means your company can continue without you – for a few days, or weeks, or years or a lifetime.”

Without a clearly defined process, you and your staff can easily miss steps. As Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, a surgeon, writer, and public health researcher writes in Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, “Checklists seem to protect against such failures. They remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit. They not only offer the possibility of verification but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance.” Procedures are also important for cross-training your staff and onboarding new staff. Examples of procedures include routine tasks like billing, payments, document management, client services, marketing, etc.

Learn more tips on how to get organized as a lawyer.

Streamline your processes

Once you have documented your procedures, it’s time to examine your processes (both manual and technology) to avoid duplicating your efforts. It is important to capitalize on technology that will enable you to spend less time on routine tasks and repetitive manual tasks. The more often (or places) you need to enter the same information, the more likely you will have mistakes. By automating wherever possible, your firm will be more efficient and therefore profitable.

Leverage the technology available

Review potential integrations between software programs to expand functionality and reduce extra work. One of my clients realized that the time it took to add contact information in both his case management system as well as his VOIP phone system was wasted and introduced not only extra lag time but also possible errors. We enabled a link between the two programs and it had an immediate impact on his functionality. In Clio, you can use the Vonage integration for a similar function. Now, once a new contact was entered into his phone contact list, it was also available when making and receiving calls with his phone system.

Invest in training your team

One of the most overlooked components of working with a team to implement new strategies, processes, and technology is training. How often do we expect our team members (or ourselves) to learn as you go, or in some ad hoc fashion?

Think of training as an asset, not an expense. This is an investment in not only being productive, but also preventing costly mistakes. I’m often called in to address issues that occurred because staff did not understand how to implement software, so they made common mistakes. “You can hire me to teach someone to do it right, or you can hire me to fix it.” The latter is much more time consuming and expensive, as we must not only isolate and resolve the problems, we also must properly retrain staff.

The good news is that there are more resources than ever available for training. There are as many formats available as there are learning styles, including videos, one on one or group training, mentorship, conferences, articles and manuals, e-books, etc.

Provide training for your staff so they can be more efficient, and effectively use the technology and processes that you have. Make sure that staff is cross-trained if needed, and ideally have all staff attend relevant training.

As Richard Branson said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

Most importantly, be involved in the training process, or at the very least do not interrupt it! Giving your team space and time to learn is crucial. I can’t tell you how often during a training session a staff person is interrupted to address other work, which breaks their focus and clearly shows the priorities of the “now” are less than the knowledge for the future.

Learn more about training for lawyers.

Hire Expert(s)

Whether the expert is an accountant, business coach/consultant, or legal technology consultant, hiring an expert is an investment in your firm’s success, and can often help you identify areas for improvement. Just as your clients depend on your firm to be specialists in your field with years of knowledge and expertise, these key players can help save you time (and money) and help elevate your firm.

Set team members up for success in their legal careers

Your team is the backbone of your firm. Without them, you could not support your clients, so it is important to support the team as well. Prioritize your staff’s mental health and wellness, in addition to their professional success. The longevity of your staff’s tenure will speak well to your management style and the workplace environment you create.

One of the firm administrators I worked with recently shared a story of her boss. Years ago, after her family suffered a personal tragedy, the attorney went above and beyond to support her and her family in a difficult time. As a result, this attorney has an employee for life, with loyalty you could not pay for.

At the same time, helping your staff grow professionally in their careers helps both the team members as well as your firm. As a small law firm, you more easily have the advantage of building a strong team that is close-knit and works well together. Invest in your people, to ensure your firm will thrive in the future.

Devote time to personal and professional development

Spending time on developing yourself personally and professionally will help you feel more fulfilled as a leader in your small law firm and business. This can take on many forms, whether it is participating in various professional communities, peer groups, attending conferences or webinars, or increasing your personal and professional skill sets.

With smaller firms, connecting and networking with others outside your office is also vital. Other professionals can be great referral sources, as well as provide complimentary or different areas of expertise. Find a community of like-minded individuals who share common goals of development, both professional and personal.

You’re ready to start managing your small law firm effectively

Small firm management is simultaneously challenging and advantageous. However, focusing on the big picture and the critical details will help fuel your growth. I hope this blog post will provide you with key steps to start managing your small law firm effectively. If you are interested in reading further about how to manage a small law firm, I’ve included more resources below.

Helpful resources for managing a small firm

How to Start a Law Firm by Rachel Roche and Darren Sylvester
The Client-Centered Law Firm by Jack Newton
Building a StoryBrand: Clarify your Message so Customers will Listen by Donald Miller
Fix This Next: Make the Vital Change That Will Level Up Your Business by Mike Michalowicz
Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande

Clio This Month: Bill Message Templates + Google My Business

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 13:00:17 GMT

The feeling of community and collaboration that was shared at last month’s virtual Clio Cloud Conference was incredible, and there’s a lot still coming to help law firms succeed amidst a continually challenging year. From smart Bill Message Templates to a new way to help your firm stand out online with Google My Business and much more, this month we’re sharing the latest ways to help your law firm enhance productivity and grow your client base, and prepare for success in 2021. Read on for more of what’s new and exciting at Clio this Month.

Bill Message Templates in Clio Manage

The faster you can create and send out bills or balance requests, the quicker you’ll get paid—but you still want to ensure that the bills you send out are personalized, accurate, and professional.

When sending out bills, trust requests, or reminders for outstanding balances, Clio’s new Bill Message Templates make it easy for you to automatically share personalized messages with your clients—so that they receive a better billing experience, while you save time otherwise lost on manually filling out messages. With this feature, you can create, save, and pre-populate Bill Message Templates with the following features:

Smart autofill fields: When you set up a Billing Message template with smart autofill fields, Clio will then pre-populate the unique details of the client, dates, and balances when you send out the bill.
Quick, customizable design: Start with existing templates to save time, and then personalize them with details like custom salutations and subject lines.
Preview: By viewing the message your client is about to receive before you send it out, you can help ensure consistency and professionalism.

Learn more about Bill Message Templates (and how to set up and customize them).

Trust check printing with QuickBooks online integration

You already turn to our integration to QuickBooks Online for simplified client trust transactions. Now, we’ve enhanced the integration so that you can record a trust disbursement in Clio Manage and sync it with QuickBooks Online to print professional checks securely.

The result of this enhanced integration? It helps create an accurate transaction record in both Clio Manage and QuickBooks Online, reducing the time you spend creating checks and eliminating costly accounting errors and trust overdrafts.

By using trust check printing via our QuickBooks Online integration, you’ll unlock:

Simplified, accurate trust records: Enter trust records once in Clio Manage, and they’ll automatically sync over to QuickBooks Online.
The ability to print checks at scale. By eliminating handwritten trust checks, you’ll save time—while ensuring accuracy.
Eliminated trust overdrafts. Clio’s intuitive trust accounting platform eliminates trust overdrafts, and it also provides a warning if you are about to issue a disbursement that exceeds the client or matter trust balance.

Learn more about Trust Check Printing in Clio Manage’s QuickBooks Online integration.

Matter Dashboard in Microsoft Teams

It’s more important than ever for your firm to be able to stay connected and effectively collaborate. The Clio for Microsoft Teams integration makes it easier to access your Clio matters—without leaving Microsoft Teams. Now, it’s simple to check the status of your matter, scan recent communications, and plan for upcoming events—directly from the appropriate Team or Teams channel.

You can easily do the following—all in Teams:

Review recent Notes and Communications in Teams. View recent updates to your matters from the Matter Dashboard tab.
Plan for upcoming events in Teams. Check your upcoming events and discuss a plan with your team in the sidebar.
Access Clio Manage from Teams. Follow the links in the Matter Dashboard to quickly jump to Clio Manage for more details.

Google My Business integration

More and more potential clients are searching for law firms and legal services via Google, so it’s key that your firm is easy to find—and engage with—online. To help, we’ve got a new way to increase your firm’s online presence with Google My Business and Clio.

Start turning Google searches into clients for your firm. Clio’s integration with Google My Business helps you:

Establish your profile. Create, publish, and manage your (free) Google My Business Profile—all without leaving Clio.
Connect with potential clients. Help clients find your firm on Google Search and Google Maps—where they’re already likely searching for you.
Be more reachable. Give clients more ways to reach you—like calling, messaging, and leaving reviews.
Accept direct bookings. Allow customers to conveniently book and pay for consultations directly from your Business Profile via Clio Scheduler.

You can learn more about Google My Business and Clio and how to set up your free Google My Business Profile in your Clio account today here.

Redesigned documents experience

We’re always looking for ways to improve your experience so you can focus more on your work, which is why we’ve redesigned Clio Manage documents with a more streamlined interface and improved navigation.

The redesign makes it easier to manage and work on your Clio Manage documents with:

Easy folder navigation. Navigate quickly within your folders—a new element shows you which subfolder you are in.
Less scrolling. The Documents list now displays a minimum of 50 files at one time, so you can see more in a single view—and spend less time and energy searching and scrolling.
Single-view access to key details. Preview documents and see the version history—all on the same screen.
Easier team collaboration. Add, edit, and review comments relevant to the file or folder from the main Documents list.
Document e-signature status tracking. See the status of documents sent for signature—track when a document has been viewed, not signed, or signed.
A clean, consistent look. The new look is in line with the rest of Clio Manage, so you can seamlessly work across your legal practice management software.

New types of in-app notifications

You need to stay informed and up-to-date on your matters, no matter where you’re working from. To help, we’ve added a few key new types of in-app notifications for Clio Manage. You can now set up in-app notifications for when:

A matter budget is updated or crosses a set threshold.
A trust balance is below a set threshold.
You are subscribed to a note or phone log, or a note or phone log you are subscribed to is updated or deleted.

Learn more about what’s new and improved at Clio, and watch our Product Update Meetup, Innovate Legal Online: Exploring Clio’s Newest Features and Integrations, to learn how new and enhanced features in Clio will help you serve your clients better.

That wraps up what’s new at Clio this month! Check back next month as we close the year out and share features and tips for success in 2021.

Highlights from the 2020 Legal Trends Report

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 13:00:48 GMT

Since 2016, the legal professionals have relied on Clio’s annual Legal Trends Report for unbiased information and comprehensive, in-depth analyses of legal industry trends. As “one of the legal industry’s most important benchmarking tools,” as stated by Above the Law’s Joe Patrice, the 2020 Legal Trends Report is proving to be more useful than ever—especially in a year filled with sobering economic, political, and human rights challenges.

In this blog post, we’ll cover key points from the 2020 Legal Trends Report. We’ll also highlight the opportunity that the legal industry is facing despite 2020’s crises—the opportunity to rise to the challenges and build a better normal.

Building a better normal from a period of crisis

Needless to say, 2020’s events have created countless problems for legal professionals—specifically, the outbreak of the global pandemic. Although some challenges driven by the pandemic are new, many are simply magnified by our new normal. In fact, many issues stem from long-standing problems in the legal industry—like the access to justice gap, lagging technology adoption, lack of virtual systems, and mismatches between client expectations and client service.

However, these issues bring to light new opportunities for a better future. For example, the seismic shift from lawyers working in physical offices to working remotely will likely remain unchanged even after the pandemic. This lays the foundation for a new legal-service model that suits clients’ needs better. We will explore this further in the sections below, starting with the importance of creating a VUCA Prime environment.

The importance of creating a VUCA Prime environment

How should law firms find a way to thrive against the enormous uncertainty of 2020 and beyond? By creating a VUCA Prime environment to take advantage of the uncertainty. VUCA—which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—was originally a military term used to describe the difficult nature of modern battle situations. Its use has since evolved to refer to the chaotic and rapidly changing environment that businesses and organizations often find themselves in. VUCA Prime, on the other hand, is a model to help businesses and law firms thrive in a VUCA environment. It encourages law firms to face an uncertain world by turning volatility to vision, uncertainty to understanding, complexity to clarity, and ambiguity to agility.

Why is creating a VUCA Prime environment key to thriving in 2020 and beyond? Despite its turbulence, a VUCA environment creates huge opportunities for innovation. Law firms need to recognize the amount of change happening in legal services—including massive shifts in client expectations—and adapt to meet those changes. This way, law firms will be able to find lasting success.

Focus on creating a positive-growth trajectory for your law firm

In periods of crisis, building a positive-growth trajectory for your law firm is more difficult than ever. However, by understanding and applying concepts like the aggregation of marginal gains, prioritizing clients, achieving product-market fit (more on these below), law firms can create a future for themselves that is cloud-based and client-centered, two critical pillars for surviving—and ultimately, thriving—in 2020 and beyond.

Work on aggregating and celebrating marginal gains

Developed by Dave Brailsford, the British Cycling coach, the aggregation of marginal gains is a concept that highlights the power of many small improvements. When these small improvements are added together, they result in dramatic improvements toward your goal. This concept makes sense—especially when you connect it to the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes who proclaimed: “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”

Colossal problems like a shortfall in monthly revenue can cause tremendous stress and further financial strain for law firms. Data from the Legal Trends Report indicates that firms have seen monthly shortfalls of over $2,000 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Although it is difficult to find immediate solutions to recover these financial losses, law firms should focus on making small improvements to their business now. These improvements will ultimately help them survive these financial losses and ultimately, start growing again.

Law firms can apply the powerful “aggregation of marginal gains” framework to their business to not only see positive results, but also open up many paths to success. Read on to learn how law firms can make small changes in their businesses to help them survive 2020 and beyond.

Prioritize clients to survive and ultimately succeed

To help law firms gain clarity and perspective on what to focus on in their decision-making, we conducted a method of study known as a MaxDiff analysis to find out the most important priorities of lawyers and their clients. From reviewing data from over 2,000 respondents that include legal professionals and consumers, we found that when it comes to firm success, everything stems from the success of clients.

When looking at the other key factors in the MaxDiff analysis, we found three critical areas of opportunity for law firms to innovate in the coming months:

Invest in law firm technology. Not only does technology adoption influence law firms’ resilience in times of crises, it also helps them gain more success in more profitable times.

Redefine the affordability of legal services. Affordability does not simply mean lower prices. Instead, the 2020 Legal Trends Report found that consumers rank pricing and discounts, payment plans, and fixed fee billing as some of the most important criteria when it comes to hiring a lawyer. We’ll go into more detail about exactly how you can redefine the affordability of your legal services in the next section.
Brick-and-mortar law offices are least important to legal professionals and consumers. This means law firms have to re-examine the in-person nature which legal services have traditionally been practiced. We’ll also go into more detail about how law firms can take advantage of the opportunities from delivering services remotely.

For more detailed information on how we conducted a MaxDiff analysis, refer to Part 3 of the 2020 Legal Trends Report.

Find the fit between product and market

As Jack Newton emphasized in his opening keynote during the Clio Cloud Conference, the access to justice gap is essentially a product-market fit problem. In other words, today’s legal service product doesn’t fit the needs of the legal consumer market. As evidence to the problem, according to the World Justice Project, 77% of legal problems don’t receive legal assistance. This highlights the extreme economic inefficiencies between the supply and demand for legal services.

To help solve this problem, many legal professionals see technology as a potentially powerful solution:

49% of legal professionals believe that technology is a powerful equalizer when it comes to justice issues.
45% of legal professionals believe technology can help create a more equitable justice system.

What lawyers need to do now is find ways to bridge the gap between the legal product they provide (including both legal services and the client experience) and the market they serve. One way lawyers can do this is to address the affordability issue in legal services.

Addressing the affordability issue in legal services

The affordability issue has been a longtime concern in the legal industry, and the events of 2020 have only intensified those issues. Law firms need to innovate on new cost and payment structures to enable more consumers to pursue their legal problems.

As mentioned in the previous section, redefining the affordability of legal services is one of the main ways law firms can innovate. In fact, the 2020 Legal Trends Report found that 78% of consumers say that lawyers should adopt pricing and/or payment models that will make legal services more affordable.

But the key to the affordability issue goes beyond making legal services cheaper: Even though 40% of law firms regularly reduce prices or offer client discounts, the results are an increase in client expectations for future discounts, an increase in revenue unpredictability, devaluing legal services, and lost client opportunities.

Consider offering alternative payment and billing structures

Instead, as the 2020 Legal Trends Report highlights, law firms should explore the following:

Offer payment plans to provide clients with more flexibility. This allows clients to purchase services they would otherwise be unable to afford. Be sure to communicate clearly to clients that you offer payment plans—through your marketing and client service efforts.

Offer fixed fee billing structures to make pricing more transparent to clients. As Clio’s Legal Trends Report from this year found, flat fees are simpler, more transparent, and more predictable for clients. As a result, clients can better plan and pay for legal services. Cost predictability also helps consumers determine whether they have the funds available to pursue their legal issues. Also, consider developing a rate sheet of fixed prices for individual services

Offer alternative billing structures like unbundled legal services. Unbundled legal services are great for clients who can’t afford to deal with a legal problem. With unbundled legal services, clients can reduce the overall cost of dealing with their legal issues. This is especially true when combined with the flexibility of a payment plan and the predictability of fixed fees.

Offer alternative billing structures like subscription-based legal services. Subscription-based services make paying legal fees more flexible and transparent. Subscription fees work similarly to an advanced-fee or retainer agreement, where the client pays a number of fee installments throughout the duration of their matter. This creates more cost assurance for both the lawyer and the client.

The future of law firms will be cloud-based by design

Some key statistics from the 2020 Legal Trends Report that illustrate the importance of being cloud-based and client-centered:

76% of legal professionals believe that legal services can be streamlined when conducted virtually.
30% of firms with 10 or fewer lawyers are currently operating without commercial office space
Even among firms with more than 10 lawyers, 15% say they are operating without commercial office space
37% of consumers prefer to meet virtually with a lawyer for a consultation or first meeting, and 50% would rather conduct follow-up meetings through video conference. 56% of consumers would prefer videoconferencing over a phone call.
65% of consumers prefer to pay using electronic forms of payment, such as credit cards, debit cards, or online payment systems such as Clio Payments, PayPal, or Apple Pay over cash or check.
69% of consumers prefer working with a lawyer who can share documents electronically through a web page, app, or online portal. Many electronic document systems now offer seamless e-signature services as well.

What this means for law firms

As Jack explained in his opening keynote at the 2020 Clio Cloud Conference, the meaning of being cloud-based has shifted. No longer does it mean moving on-premise technology into the cloud. Now, being cloud-based means that your entire law firm should be able to operate in the cloud. This includes collaborating with colleagues, acquiring and connecting with clients, and getting paid all in the cloud. Moving to the cloud is no longer just innovative, it is now imperative to your law firm’s survival in this new environment. Although this goal won’t be realized overnight—it is what the legal industry is moving towards, and it is happening much faster in our current reality.

While the prevailing law firm model in the last millennia has been very lawyer-centered, the pandemic is presenting us with the opportunity to recreate legal services in a way that’s truly client-centered by design. Now and in the future, this means communicating and collaborating internally and with clients digitally, remote client intake, and bringing routine administrative work online. Law firms that embrace both a cloud-based and client-centered mentality will be best positioned to succeed going forward.

Build a better normal for the future of legal services

Looking forward, it will be critical for law firms to build a more flexible firm infrastructure with more robust and varied structures of legal services. By building these systems based on cloud technology, law firms can ensure their ability to work with clients in person or online—whatever is most suitable to the client at the time. In turn, these innovations will help law firms create more resilient business structures designed to withstand even the challenges posed by a global pandemic. The key is for firms to adapt to these challenges to become more successful over time.

The Future of Law: A New Vision for Legal

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 22:50:24 GMT

As law firms head into 2021, I’ve talked at length about adaptability, and about how I believe in the resilience of lawyers to do what’s best for their businesses and their clients to build a thriving legal industry. Iterative change and innovation are important, but the external factors that drive change are not slow and meandering—they come as a shock to the system and demand immediate action, as the pandemic and other events of 2020 have this year.

Charles Darwin famously stated, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, it is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” But that change is not stable and progressive—it is punctuated by moments in time where dramatic geologic events drive rapid change. Paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould postulated that this model of “punctuated equilibria” was a far better representation of the history of life than phyletic gradualism.

Species are in stasis for a long time, then they experience an event or period of disruption, and then they emerge to a new state of stasis, according to Dr. Gould’s studies. COVID-19 has, for legal as was as so many other industries, served as a “punctuated equilibrium” event. In the absence of such a forcing factor, the legal industry has been in a period of relative stasis for decades. Thanks to the macro-level impacts of the pandemic, the legal industry has seen more change in the last eight months than in the last eight decades.

The punctuation that is COVID-19 will drive the speciation of law firms into two groups: those that have rapidly adapted to the new realities of the COVID-19 landscape, and those that are unable or unwilling to change. There will be some law firms that struggle significantly in this new reality, and some that will fail outright. But the law firms that rapidly adapt will be the law firms that not only survive, but thrive in our new legal environment.

The benefits of adaptation were borne out in the findings of our 2020 Legal Trends Report. We analyzed aggregated and anonymized data from tens of thousands of legal professionals to compare how the use of three technology solutions within the Clio platform—online payments, client portals, and client intake and CRM software—affected business performance. Those using the technologies studied saw much better year-over-year business performance throughout the pandemic. Additionally, we saw that the adoption of more than one technology showed a compounding effect in business performance, both in terms of impact during the coronavirus pandemic and overall volume of casework and revenue collection.

For example, firms that used electronic payments saw negative impacts mitigated by up to 5% during the initial months of the pandemic, when law firms saw a dramatic decrease in new casework. Through the summer, those using electronic payments collected 2% to 3% more. Firms using client intake software in 2020 saw over 20% more cases every month from February onward, and are projected to collect $27,304 more revenue per lawyer.

In total, firms using online payments, client payments, and client intake solutions together are projected to collect $37,622 more revenue per lawyer in 2020.

Urgent change is necessary for the long-term survival of the legal industry, but there is also a massive opportunity to drive business growth. Law firms who respond to the punctuated events of 2020 by adapting to bring us to a new equilibrium will bring in more revenue, secure more clients, and position themselves to provide legal services to those who need it.

Change has happened, and continues to happen, at an incredibly rapid pace. This might seem overwhelming, but it’s important to keep in mind that keeping a growth mindset is most important. Leveraging the mindset of VUCA Prime to bring vision, understanding, clarity, and agility to an uncertain world will ensure your firm can continuously adapt, and therefore succeed. Because innovation is an ongoing process, where there is no finish line.

While the punctuated event might feel sudden, the resulting changes don’t need to happen all at once. I’ve talked about the aggregation of marginal gains before, and how small, consistent changes have compounding benefits—and often this happens faster than you’d think. Perhaps this is the new vision for legal: One of deliberate, but consistent innovation.

As the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen has said, “disruption is a process, not an event, and innovations can only be disruptive relative to something else.” This resonates with me deeply, and provides further encouragement to lawyers that even in the midst of punctuated events, innovations can be small and iterative—as long as law firms keep moving forward. Take this approach to law firm innovation, and you’ll build a better normal for your law firm, emerging in this next legal industry equilibrium as a success.

Your Guide to Year-End Law Firm Accounting

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 13:00:01 GMT

Needless to say, 2020 has been a trying year for legal professionals. Not only do you have to prepare your law firm for 2021 and the uncertainty it brings, you also have to get your year-end law firm accounting in order and close out the year. But the key is to start your year-end accounting process early.

Reviewing your law firm’s finances before year-end is critical for setting up the practice for financial success. By taking the time now to methodically review your records, close on outstanding receivables, and budget for the year ahead, you’ll give your firm an advantage. You’ll also make planning for the coming year that much easier. Beyond that, gathering necessary firm financial information at year-end streamlines tax time for you and your accountant.

To help make year-end law firm accounting a little simpler this year, we’ve updated our guide to end-of-year law firm accounting. Read on to learn the steps you need to know to get your firm’s finances in shape for end-of-year—so that you can set your firm up to thrive in the new year.

What is law firm accounting?

Law firm accounting is often confused with law firm bookkeeping. To be clear, law firm bookkeeping refers to making sure every financial transaction in your law firm is accurately recorded, managing invoices, and team payroll. On the other hand, law firm accounting is a higher-level process that refers to getting essential business insights like key performance indicators (KPIs), financial trends, forecasting, and more to make critical financial decisions for your law firm. Accounting in a law firm also involves adjusting entries in your books that were previously missed, preparing your firm’s financial statements, tax planning, and completing tax returns.

1. Identify and collect on outstanding balances

It’s best practice to collect on all accounts receivable in a timely manner (after all, the longer an invoice is outstanding, the less chance you have to collect the full value that your firm earned). But, for those clients that are slow to pay, making an effort to close them out in December will make things a lot less messy for your firm the following year.

Step 1: Ensure time entries and bills are current

Before you can look at your collections, it’s important to ensure that your firm has been on top of time tracking and billing. One way to achieve this is to require that everyone at your firm has tracked their hours worked through the end of November, so subsequent billing can take place at the beginning of December.

If you’re using the right software, this step should be painless. For example, Clio Manage’s legal time and expense tracking software makes it simple to effortlessly, accurately track hours, and send out bills.

Step 2: Run an accounts receivable report

An accounts receivable report will provide amounts outstanding on all open and past-due invoices. In Clio, this can be viewed on a per-user, per-client, and per-matter basis (see how to easily create an accounts receivable report in Clio Manage here).

Step 3: Identify large and/or old outstanding balances

Because your chances of collection decrease with time, it’s also a good idea to identify long-overdue balances before the end of the year.

Why? As Saville’s David Epperson explains in his year-end financial law firm financial checklist, this leads to another important year-end action: “For any accounts deemed uncollectible, write them off as of December 31.”

You can see any overdue balances in Clio under Outstanding Balances (located within the main Billing tab of Clio Manage) and easily send payment reminders via Clio Connect or email to clients.

Step 4: Collect!

If you have several unpaid accounts, December can be a tough month to do collections—clients are focused on the holidays and are spending money on gifts, travel, and festivities. Again, it is best practice to stay on top of your collections all year round—but it’s not always possible to keep up.

However, there are a couple of positive reasons to collect in December:

Bonuses = extra funds to pay invoices. Many companies give out bonuses during the holidays. That means your client may have an additional source of revenue in December to pay your invoice.
It’s everyone’s year-end. If you represent businesses, they are usually looking to pay all their expenses before year-end. It’s best to send bills early in December so that your clients can get on top of payments.

Tips for improving your year-end collections process

Still stuck on how to smooth the collections process for the end of the year? Try these year-end collections tips:

Give a discount. Consider giving a small discount for bills paid before year-end to encourage clients to pay you sooner.
Be clear and prompt when billing. There are many reasons why a bill may be going unpaid—be sure that you’re not one of them. Clio’s legal billing software makes it easy Clio’s to generate clear, readable bills quickly, with customized, branded templates, so you can send professional bills out on time. And, if you send bills out electronically with Clio, billing and collections are simpler and faster than ever before.
Bill more frequently. Try billing every two weeks in December instead of monthly, explaining the change in your billing process with a letter. Again, most clients will understand that you’re simply being proactive and working on your business’s year-end.
Send reminders. Your clients may not be holding off intentionally. Send a brief reminder to ensure your firm is top of mind (you can do this under Outstanding Balances in Clio).
Start accepting online credit card payments. When you make it easier for clients to pay, you’re more likely to get paid (and get paid faster). According to Clio’s 2017 Legal Trends Report, firms using Clio Payments get paid 39% faster than firms using check-based payments. In fact, the 2019 Legal Trends Report found that 57% of electronic payments get paid within the same day, and 85% get paid within a week. What’s more, according to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, the majority (65%) of consumers prefer to pay using electronic forms of payment, such as credit cards, debit cards, or online payment systems such as Clio Payments, PayPal, or Apple Pay over cash or check.
Set up a payment plan. If your clients are unable to pay on time, consider setting up a payment plan to get them back on track, and collect what you’re owed within a mutually agreeable time-frame. Survey data from the 2020 Legal Trends Report show that the majority of consumers—72%, to be specific—would prefer to pay their legal fees on a payment plan.

Note: If you feel a bit lost when it comes to accounting specifics and want to review the essentials for legal professionals, check out this guide to essential accounting practices for law firms, featuring advice from Clio Cloud Conference speaker Amanda Aguillard, CPA.

2. Review your trust accounts

Even if you’re careful and meticulous when dealing with your law firm’s trust accounts throughout the year (which you should be, in order to stay compliant), you should dedicate time at year-end to double-check that you’ve been diligent about moving money from your trust account to your operating account as fees were earned. Here’s how:

Ensure all of your client ledgers are balanced

Check that client ledgers are balanced by running a Work in Progress (WIP) report to look for any outstanding time or expenses. (Here’s how to do it in Clio.)

Did you find anything outstanding? If so, invoice yourself, and pay yourself out of your trust accounts before year-end.

Reconcile your trust accounts before year-end

Next, you’ll also need to reconcile your trust accounts before December 31. That means checking your records against your bank statements to make sure that everything lines up.

In many states, lawyers are required to do this on a monthly basis, but some states also require annual reports—so check what’s required in your area.

Use tech to simplify the process

By removing some of the manual work of managing trust accounting, you reduce the risk of error—which is why technology can simplify the process of checking and reconciling trust accounts at year-end.

Tools like Clio Manage’s trust accounting software make it easier to keep accurate records of trust funds and transactions—so you can stay compliant and be confident at the end of the year.
Accounting tools like QuickBooks or Xero help manage your accounting and recordkeeping year-round, and they integrate with Clio Manage.

3. Review your financials

The key to setting yourself up for success in the new year is to clearly see how you’ve done this year by properly tracking your firm’s financial information.

Review your law firm’s financial picture, including:

Actual prior year revenue/expenses:
- Were you in the red or black LAST year (and by how much)?
Current year revenue/expenses:
- Were you in the red or in the black THIS year (and by how much)?
Actual current year cash flow by month:
- How did you do in terms of cash flow on a month-to-month basis?
Current year-to-date (YTD) actual compared to YTD budget:
- Compare your current year-to-date revenue/expense to your year-to-date budget for the year.
- Don’t have a law firm budget? This is a great time to make one for next year!
Opening and ending operating account balance:
- Look at your account balances on a year-to-year and month-to-month basis.
- How is your cash flow?
- Do you need to be more mindful of when expenses come up?
Profit/loss by month (which is different than the operating account balance):
- This is similar to the first two items on this list, but it isn’t quite the same: You’ll be looking at your bottom line each month, which is your revenues and gains minus your expenses and losses.
- Look for any telling trends month-to-month.
- For example, November might always be a slower month, and March might always be busy.
- For most lawyers, profit/loss will still be fairly similar to your revenue/expenses, but if you’ve made a big investment in technology or hardware for your firm, it’s worth taking a look at this number too.
Accounts receivable each month:
- How much were you owed each month? You’ll be able to see this under your accounts receivable report.
A cash flow projection
- In addition to looking back on the past year, and forward into the future, you’ll also want to examine where you’ll be for the rest of the year with a cash flow projection. A cash flow projection can help estimate your firm’s cash on hand as of December 31. This should account for items such as:
  - December operating expenses
  - Staff bonuses
  - Quarterly tax payments
  - Paying down a firm line of credit
  - Profit distributions to equity partners

Putting it all together

Once you’ve got a bird’s-eye view of your firm’s finances, here’s what to look for:

Compare your current year’s revenue to last year’s revenue and your current year’s budget. This keeps you aware of areas where you may be overspending, underperforming, or doing great.
Look at the opening and ending balance of your operating account, and look for yearly trends or patterns to see if you are starting the month out with less in the bank than you thought you would be.
Look at your total accounts receivable, and keep an eye on whether this number is growing month-to-month. If it is, you need to be more diligent with your collections!

4. Get ready for tax season

Tax season can sneak up on you faster than you think. To make sure you’re prepared (and that you’ve taken advantage of all available tax deductions), take these steps at year-end:

Look at your “Owner’s Draw” account. Make sure the entries in this account are correct (These are expenses you ran through the business as non-business-related expenses.).
Clear the receipts. Clean out the pile of receipts in your drawer/purse/wallet/car and make sure you have properly reimbursed yourself for any business-related expenses you paid on your personal credit cards or from your personal checking account.
Check travel expenses. Review your calendar for appointments and places you’ve traveled that were business related and make sure you have prepared expense reports for mileage.
Consider tax-deductible expenses. If you’re running your business using the cash method of accounting in the US, invest in tax-deductible expenses to offset your 2019 revenues. For example, consider purchasing a yearly subscription to Clio Manage to save come tax time (you can try it for free first).
Ensure you’re paid up. Now is also a good time to check that you’re up to date with your tax obligations for the current year. For example, have you met and paid any quarterly tax payment obligations?
Key takeaways: Review, reconcile, record

5. Consider hiring a law firm accounting professional

Accounting for law firms can be an overwhelming and time-consuming process—especially at the end of the year when your firm is wrapping things up for the year, planning for 2021, and getting ready for the holiday season. By hiring a law firm accounting professional, especially a CPA (Certified Public Accountant), you will have more time to focus on other aspects of your law firm. In addition, an experienced accountant is also an expert on helping your firm’s financial strategy, tax planning, tax compliance, and more. For the best outcomes, we suggest working with accountants who specialize in working with law firms. Try asking fellow attorneys for recommendations, or check with your State Bar or any accountant referrals. You can also find the right accounting professional by checking out our Clio Certified Consultants.

You’re ready to get your year-end law firm accounting in order

The truth is, there’s no need to be afraid when it comes to year-end law firm accounting. If you’re following best practices for law firm accounting and using the right tools to help year-round, then end-of-year is just a matter of reviewing your firm’s finances and making sure everything is in order before December 31.

To review, here are our key tips to help ensure your firm’s finances are in check at year-end:

Review your accounts receivable. Ensure your billing is up to date, and collect on outstanding accounts!
Review your trust accounts. Invoice and pay yourself for any outstanding amounts, reconcile your trust accounts, and report any unassigned fees if necessary.
Check in on your performance. Look at how you’ve done for the year in terms of revenue compared to your budget, and compared to last year’s revenue, to get an idea of your firm’s performance. Then, set goals and make them part of your business plan for the coming year.
Get your records in order. Look through your receipts and make sure you’ve reimbursed yourself for business expenses by year-end. You’ll thank yourself come tax time!
Consider hiring a law firm accountant. An experienced CPA can help with your law firm’s financial strategy, tax planning, tax compliance, and more.

Get your firm’s books in order for the year, and you’ll be that much more prepared to grow your law firm and enjoy more success in the year to come.

Note: The information in this article applies only to US practices. This post is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, business, or tax advice.

A Guide to Creating a Law Firm Disaster Recovery Plan

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 13:00:19 GMT

From the global pandemic to California’s wildfires to hurricanes in Florida, this year has shown us that the unexpected can—and, unfortunately, does—happen.

While no one expects you to predict or prevent the unpredictable, you should be prepared for how your law firm will respond. How you react and adapt to disastrous events can mean the difference between resuming work with relative business continuity—or leaving your clients stranded or in the worst scenario, closing your business. Being unprepared for emergencies can also leave your firm’s staff, clients, and data vulnerable and at risk.

Law firms need a clearly defined law firm disaster recovery plan now, so that they can get back to work as quickly as possible (and with as little loss of data, time, and business as possible) after an unexpected event.

In this post, we’ll cover the essentials of disaster recovery strategy and planning for law firms. We’ll outline what a disaster recovery plan should include, and how to create and maintain it. In addition, we’ll review the ethical obligations to consider when creating a law firm disaster recovery plan, and discuss essential technology and tools you can start using now. These tools will be fundamental to keeping your firm running should a worst-case scenario occur.

Ethical obligations when creating a law firm disaster recovery plan

An effective law firm disaster recovery plan is about more than just the potential business disruption. As with any aspect of running a law firm, you must also consider and research the ethical rules of creating a disaster plan. Taking the time to research the exact ethical obligations that apply to your firm is important, as they will vary depending on your location and state. Those ethical obligations should then shape the procedures that your firm implements for disasters.

The act of preparing for potential disaster—both by having a disaster recovery plan and by using available technology to safeguard client data—can help ensure your firm can meet its ethical obligations should the unexpected occur.

The American Bar Association offers guidance with this formal opinion on ethical obligations related to disasters. While you should review this in detail along with researching your area’s specific obligations, (note that many states have not adopted the ABA model rules for this topic), the overarching takeaway is that “The Rules of Professional Conduct apply to lawyers affected by disasters.”

As the ABA reminds us, “Lawyers have an ethical obligation to implement reasonable measures to safeguard property and funds they hold for clients or third parties, prepare for business interruption, and keep clients informed about how to contact the lawyers (or their successor counsel).”

Highlights from ABA’s model rules

Highlights include a firm’s responsibility to:

Communicate with clients after a disaster: As ABA Model Rule 1.4 (communication) states, lawyers are required to “take reasonable steps to communicate with clients after a disaster.” You should have a plan in advance for how you will be able to access client contact and information, as well as a strategy for physically reaching out (for example, via phone or email).

Store client files electronically with a reputable software provider: ABA Model Rule 1.1 (competence) touches on the need for lawyers to “develop sufficient competence in technology to meet their obligations under the Rules after a disaster.” Take the time to learn and implement a system for storing client files securely, electronically, with a reputable provider before a disaster strikes.

Ensure access to funds in trust: According to ABA Model Rule 1.15 (safekeeping property), lawyers must “protect trust accounts, documents, and property the lawyer is holding for clients or third parties.”

What are the features of an effective law firm disaster recovery plan?

Your law firm disaster recovery plan needs to cover certain essential topics. Have a clear set of priorities is also key. Specifically, an effective law firm disaster recovery plan must consider—and have a documented plan for how to account for—the following factors (in order of priority):

Safety
Staff
Systems
Services
Suppliers
Business resumption

Once the above factors are accounted for, you can move forward towards resuming business.

How do I create a law firm disaster recovery plan?

An effective law firm disaster strategy should be a step-by-step document that’s well thought-out, written down, and frequently revised. Your disaster recovery plan should give your team a clearly defined blueprint on how to resume business operations, protect client data, and communicate the plan to essential personnel and clients.

Steps to creating a law firm disaster recovery plan

The first step to preparing your law firm for disaster is to assemble a law firm disaster recovery plan. With this plan, the goal is to recover your law firm and clients’ data.

Brainstorm, draft, and document your plan for the following points, and then revisit the plan at least once every year to revise as necessary.

Identify the scope of the situation. Brainstorm likely issues for your area (for example, do you live in a hurricane-prone region?).

Appoint emergency contacts. We also recommend educating team members on personally preparing for disaster by having personal emergency kits that hold 72 hours worth of essential supplies.

Get a disaster recovery team together. Identify specific people at your firm.

Determine roles and responsibilities. Ensure that everyone knows their roles in advance.

Restore technology functionality. You should know how long it may take to get your technology back in service if there is any interruption.

Data and backups. Have a system in place—with backups—to protect and recover firm and client data.
Do testing and maintenance. Ensure any hardware, software, or other technology your firm uses is well-maintained.

Steps to creating a law firm disaster response plan

You also need to build a detailed law firm disaster response plan. When creating your law firm disaster response plan, the goal is to be able to jump into action as quickly as possible when needed. Here’s how:

Step 1: Conduct an inventory.

You should always know exactly what your firm has on hand so that anyone following your plan knows what needs to be recovered or replaced. Your inventory should account for:

Software. Make a list of any software your firm uses. How many licenses do you have? Do you need to have passwords or other ways to access it?
Hardware: How many computers, servers, or other pieces of physical hardware does your firm have—and where are they located?
Client files. Should a disaster occur, have an inventory of all client files in your firm’s possession so that they can be recovered.
Location. Note the locations of everything. For example, are files stored in the cloud, or a physical location?

Step 2: Do a risk assessment.

Account for:

Each type of asset in your inventory. Include everything from firm hardware to client files.
Possible risks to those assets. Consider natural disasters, hardware failures, service provider failures, or human error.
The likelihood of each risk.
The impact of each risk. What would happen to each item if that risk should occur? For example, if the asset was paper client files and the risk was an office fire, the impact would be high and devastating.
Ways to mitigate the risk. Are there ways to mitigate future risks? For example, moving paper files to a secure cloud-based server now could greatly reduce the impact of a fire to a physical office location in the previous example.

Step 3: Identify critical services, systems, and data.

Group each of the types of information, systems, and services at your law firm into the following categories. This allows you to prioritize should a disaster occur.

Critical: For example, any important client data that is located on a single server or has no backup is of critical importance.
Medium: Data or systems that are important to clients or the outcome of a case, but that could be recovered (for example, a file with a backup).
Low: Items in the low category can be easily replaced, or are backed up in multiple places and easily recoverable.

Step 4: Define your recovery objectives.

Determine how long you could reasonably be without each service or application accounted for in your plan after a disaster. For each, determine your:

Recovery Time Objective (RTO): The acceptable amount of time any of your data and systems could be unavailable.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO): The acceptable amount of data your firm can afford to lose.

Step 5: Identify supporting tools.

Identify any tools, techniques, and procedures that support your recovery objectives.

Data backup: Do you backup your data? How often? Where is it located (is the backup site located in the same region as the primary site)? Assess your current situation, and make note of any gaps that could be an issue. In this case, consider ways to mitigate the risk, such as using a cloud-based data storage system.
Automation: Could you use automation technology to remove or reduce human error to help protect your firm in case of disaster?
Outsourcing: Can you outsource any critical functions (like data-hosting backups) to mitigate risk in case of a physical disaster?
Planning for recovery: Make a list of the tangible steps to take to recover specific assets and data. We recommend having copies of insurance policies so that clients can open claims as early as possible.

Step 6: Assign responsible individuals.

Should a disaster occur, people should know in advance what their responsibilities are

Identify members of your response team and assign roles and responsibilities: Ensure each person is aware of their specific responsibilities. For example, who would declare a disaster and start your disaster plan? Who would be responsible for client communication?
Service providers: Identify any service providers to be contacted (for example, if your firm would need professional data restoration help, who you would contact? Who on your team would contact them?).
Create a contingency plan. Always have a backup plan for if an assigned individual is unavailable in an emergency.

Step 7: Review SLAs (service level agreements) with vendors.

For every contract that you have (for example, with SAAS providers, insurance companies, landlords), have a defined service level agreement that includes details on what would happen—and how long it would take—to move forward after a disaster.

Step 8: Determine how to handle sensitive information.

Document a plan for handling essential records (like employment records, financials, and client files) in terms of confidentiality, security, and integrity following a disaster. Considerations could include:

Hard copy and soft copy documentation: What is the procedure for transferring hard copies of files to another person?
Secure communication: Who can access files, and how?
Tracking requests to access: What would be the next steps if a client wants to switch attorneys during a disaster response?

Step 9: Create a communication plan.

Document a plan for communication in case of disaster, including:

How? Detail the specific means of communication your team members will use.
When? How and when will your firm communicate with essential personnel, service providers, and clients?
Who? Who will be responsible for each type of communication? We recommend planning multiple methods of communication, as you can’t rely on any one method during a disaster. For example, phone networks can drop during hurricanes, but text messaging may remain available despite experiencing significant delays.

Step 10: Document the plan.

Write it all down. This reduces guesswork and speeds up the resumption of business when disaster strikes. Be sure to:

Create a centralized document. We recommend having multiple copies. Store a copy in the cloud for remote accessibility. Also, have a local copy on a phone, laptop, or printed out in case of major disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, where telecommunications will fail.
Share it. Familiarize the whole team with the plan.

Step 11: Test the plan—annually.

Test your plan, and test it often. Testing helps ensure that everyone at your firm knows what to do, and also helps account for normal business factors like staff turnover or moving offices.

How will you test your plan? Consider:

Types of tests: Will you do a walkthrough, simulation testing, full interruption testing, or parallel testing?
What works (and doesn’t): So you can adjust the plan and train staff accordingly.

Step 12: Review and update the plan annually.

Consider:

The results of your last test.
Any changes to your setup or location.
Any changes to your team.
New software or service providers.

Essentials for when the unexpected strikes

The ability to be agile with your business—that is, having the tools and technology to safely and securely conduct firm business from wherever you are—can be the difference-maker for your firm’s survival when disasters occur. The following essentials can help.

Essential tools for resuming business

Hardware/laptop: You’ll need access to an up-to-date computer (or any machine if you’re using cloud-based software).
High-speed internet: High-speed internet when working remotely after a disaster is essential.
Phone, smartphone, or other mobile devices. Smartphones and mobile devices can be used to conduct business remotely, but you’ll still need a phone to call clients and service providers.
Call forwarding and virtual receptionists: Tools like call forwarding or a virtual receptionist service like Ruby can help keep calls answered and clients cared for.
Scanner: Essential for handling hard copies of documents and making hard copies more accessible to team members and/or clients.

Essential software and services

Secure, cloud-based software and legal technology can help provide much-needed peace of mind in the face of disaster and uncertainty. In fact, according to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, “legal professionals rank technology as a high priority to their firm’s success”—now and in the future.

Clio: Clio’s cloud-based practice management software lets you work from anywhere, while keeping your files and work secure in the cloud. Clio Grow’s legal client relationship management software, for example, streamlines, personalizes, and automates client intake—making client intake easier for you and potential clients following a disaster. Clio Manage makes it easier for you and your firm to do billable work in the cloud—so you can manage cases and clients effectively from anywhere.
Microsoft 365 (with Teams): Microsoft Teams lets you create the communication flow of an office environment, without being in the office. This means that you and your team can work productively—without clogging everyone’s email inbox with the discussion you would have otherwise had in person.
Video conferencing software: Help keep your team together, conduct meetings, and have face-time with clients by using video conferencing software like Zoom.
e-Signature tools: Not all documents require wet signatures. For those that don’t, using e-signature tools like ZorroSign, DocuSign, or HelloSign streamlines signatures when it’s harder to meet with people. Clio Grow also enables lawyers and clients to use e-signature in documents.
Secure client portal: Maintaining security is critical in the wake of an unexpected event, and using a secure client portal makes document management and access simpler and more secure.

Credit card processing and payment plans: The 2020 Legal Trends Report found that the majority of consumers (65%) prefer to pay using electronically—via methods like credit and debit cards, or Clio Payments and Apple Pay. After a disaster, your clients may have a harder time making payments in traditional ways—and secure online payments are easier, faster, and safer for you and your clients.
Email campaign software: Should a disaster occur, email campaign software lets you automate messages to your client base and vendors, and easily send communications to appropriate lists, tailored to specific groups. Software like Clio Grow lets you create and send automated-yet-personalized emails to your clients.

Use this guide to be prepared as possible for the unexpected

While we always hope for the best, the fact is that the unexpected happens—like natural disasters, global pandemics, or floods at your office. How you react to those events can set your firm apart and make it possible for you to help clients who may also be experiencing a disaster.

While you can’t predict the unforeseen, you can be as prepared as possible by creating a law firm disaster recovery plan. An effective plan doesn’t have to be complicated, but it must be thorough, up-to-date, and meet the ethical obligations of your area. By setting up, testing, and reviewing your firm’s disaster recovery plan, you’ll be ready to act when the unexpected strikes.

Legal Symbols Keyboard Shortcuts: A Quick Reference Guide

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 13:00:49 GMT

When looking to enhance your law firm using technology, people often think about adding new tools. But another way to enhance your practice is to better use the technology you already possess. You probably already know that lawyers spend a large portion of their time drafting documents. This is why getting the most out of your word processing program is a great way to leverage technology, reduce errors, and create better documents. One easy trick to learn is keyboard shortcuts for legal symbols.

Keyboard shortcuts for Legal Symbols: Windows and Macs

Symbol	Use	Windows Shortcut	Mac Shortcut
§	Section	Alt + 0167	Option+6
¶	Paragraph	Alt + 0182	Option+7
©	Copyright	Alt + 0169	Option+g
™	Trademark	Alt + 0153	Option+2
®	Registered Trademark	Alt + 0174	Option+r

What are Keyboard Shortcuts?

Keyboard shortcuts are a combination of keys that insert a special character or trigger a special action within a computer program. Inserting special symbols without a keyboard shortcut requires a lot of extra clicking around, which is tedious and time-consuming. For example, when you need to include the section symbol in a brief, you can take the following steps in Word:

Select the Insert tab in the ribbon.
Click Advanced Symbol
Click the Special Characters tab
Select the section symbol
Click the Insert button

The faster way is to just press the Option+6 buttons on your Mac keyboard.

Both Mac and Windows computers have keyboard shortcuts already built in. But how you trigger them is different. In Windows, you press and hold the Alt key and then type the numerical sequence listed in the table above. For the section symbol on a Windows computer, you would press and hold the Alt key. Next, type the numbers, “0167,” and then release the Alt key. This would create the § symbol in your text. While Windows’ Alt keyboard combinations are vast, there are only a few needed in legal drafting. Mac has simpler keyboard shortcuts for these symbols.

Why use legal symbols keyboard shortcuts

There are several reasons to learn and use keyboard shortcuts.

Speed up professional drafting

Using keyboard shortcuts lets you speed up your drafting. However, manually inserting a special symbol can disrupt the flow of your writing. Imagine speeding through a crucial paragraph only to have to stop, remove your hands from the keyboard, and spend time searching for the symbol you need. This is an interruption and will likely cause you to lose your train of thought.

Keyboard shortcuts for legal symbols prevent you from stopping your flow of writing by quickly getting your symbol on the page without stopping.

Reduce errors

Keyboard shortcuts for legal symbols also prevent unnecessary errors. Knowing your keyboard shortcuts for legal symbols means that lawyers can get the correct symbol on the first try. Not using keyboard shortcuts means that you risk inserting the wrong symbol. Knowing the right keyboard shortcuts for legal symbols reduces the chance of errors and the extra stress that comes with them.

Prevent formatting problems

Many lawyers try to save time by copying a symbol from another document or earlier in the document. The problem with copying and pasting a symbol is that you may also be pasting formatting settings. A symbol copied from a heading or a bulleted list carries some of that formatting code with it when pasted in a different place. In addition, a pasted symbol may disrupt a whole paragraph by altering font, style, and more. Correcting all of this is another interrupting distracting you from finishing your draft. A keyboard shortcut preserves your document’s formatting.

How to create your own keyboard shortcuts

This list of legal keyboard shortcuts may not include symbols that your practice area, jurisdiction, or judge prefers. Maybe you don’t want to learn Alt keyboard shortcuts and want to use something memorable instead. You can always create more by customizing your keyboard shortcuts.

Below is an example of using the Customize Keyboard function in Microsoft Word to create a new shortcut for ‡ (the double dagger symbol which is used to point towards notes in some document types).

Buy keyboard shortcut packages

If you do not want to program your own keyboard shortcuts, there are add-ins you can purchase to set these up for you. Lawcut§ (Lawcuts) is an add-in for Microsoft Word that will add a list of legal-specific keyboard shortcuts to Word for you. The monthly fee to keep Lawcut§ running is $1.99.

Useful Auto Text

Keyboard shortcuts do not have to be limited to just symbols. You can program whole sections to insert themselves as well. The Auto Text feature in Microsoft Word can be programmed to insert both phrases and formatting when used. You can type the header and signature blocks in court submissions once, and save them as an Auto Text entry, and then quickly add them in your documents.

Create a new Auto Text entry by highlighting the text in a Word document you want to automate. Under the Insert menu, select Auto Text and then New. Give your text block a name and you are ready to insert it everywhere!

Text Snippets in Clio

Shortcuts are not just for word processors. Clio has built-in text expanding that can turn short codes into full phrases. This feature can turn text snippets like, “ach,” and expand it into “attend court hearings.” This feature is especially helpful in creating robust, descriptive time entries for your clients without having to do extra work. You can create an unlimited number of text snippets in your Clio account. In addition, you can expand Text Snippets in notes, matter fields, calendar fields, time and expense entries, and more.

Hardware alternative to keyboard shortcuts

If learning and programming your own keyboard shortcuts sounds difficult, there is an alternative. Legalboard sells lawyer-specific keyboards. These keyboards have special keys that insert symbols, like § or ¶, for you. The keyboards also have keys for common legal words, like defendant or respondent. You can insert these words just by pressing a single key. Finally, Legalboard also has certain formatting options like keystrokes as well. Switching your fonts to small caps for citations is just a simple keystroke is one example of a function this keyboard provides.

Type less, create more

Keyboard shortcuts are the best way to use technology you already possess to be more efficient. Learning and building keyboard shortcuts will help you complete tasks faster with fewer errors and interruptions. Once you master these shortcuts, your typing will finally keep up with the thoughts you want to get down on the paper.

Advice for New Lawyers: How to Survive and Thrive

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 13:00:54 GMT

This year, in addition to dealing with a lack of jobs during a global recession and six-figure debt, law graduates also have to deal with the stress of staying safe during a pandemic. This includes stressing about staying healthy during exams—whether they’re in-person or virtual.

My first advice for new lawyers is to have faith that it will get better. Once you get past the obstacles you face now, you can build the career of your dreams. Although it won’t be easy and it may not resemble the career you pictured during your 1L year, you will get there.

How? Well, after pivoting many times in my career and after graduating in a similarly challenging environment, I’ve got a few ideas.

What’s the most important career advice for new lawyers?

The most important career advice for new lawyers is to take risks. At this point, the old model—joining the firm, sticking to it for seven years, making partner, then working there until you die—is essentially gone for most graduates. Your career as a new lawyer can go a million different ways. The only way you’re going to find true happiness and fulfillment is to take chances and pivot when necessary.

Be willing to pivot in your legal career when needed

My next piece of advice for new lawyers is to be willing to pivot when necessary. What do I mean by pivot? It is a term startups use when they completely change business strategies or even products. They realize, at some point, that the sunken cost isn’t worth staying the course. As a result, they reinvent themselves on the fly to survive.

You may start your legal career as a prosecutor, then decide that you really enjoy child support enforcement cases and pivot to family law. Or you may start as a litigator and realize that you really prefer dealmaking and would rather get involved with transactional work. Or maybe, you will create the next great legal startup.

This “side project” turned into a multi-million dollar tech company that was acquired within 6 years.

Just start. ???? https://t.co/hHvaIkxeb4

— Janine Sickmeyer (@myfriendjanine) July 29, 2020

Be ready to move fast in your legal career

My advice for new lawyers is to start somewhere. Find a job. Try it out for a while. Don’t be afraid to cut and run if you realize that the job is making you miserable or if you find something you love more. Even in a good economy, your career as a new lawyer likely would not have been exactly what you pictured as a law student. In a bad economy, you have to move faster and pivot harder, but you will still find a way forward.

Learn the VUCA Prime framework

VUCA is an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. The definition of VUCA first came from the US military to describe the nature of the world and the challenges it faced after the end of the cold war. Today, it is often used in business and investment contexts to describe complex organizations, problems, or the overall state of the world.

VUCA Prime, on the other hand, stands for Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. It is a model to help individuals and organizations succeed in a VUCA world.

By understanding the concept of VUCA Prime, you can reframe the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of a VUCA environment and provide a clear path forward to success. For a new law graduate, the VUCA Prime framework can help you find your footing in an uncertain environment, make difficult decisions, and thrive.

Redefine what success means to you

As a law undergraduate, I was seduced by the idea of six-figure salaries. I thought that finally having money, after growing up with none, would make me happy.

It took me more than a few years after law school to get to that financial mark. But did more money equal more happiness? Not really. My greatest professional joys are in building things and reinventing systems—I would rather build a system that can help a thousand people than spend years on a single person’s litigation case. Outside of work, my life is way more about my family than it is about finances.

Does having money help? Of course. But if you do not land your dream salary now, don’t look at that as a failure. You will get there and learn that there are other more important metrics to measure happiness and success.

Determine what you value in an employer

This might be the most underrated point on this list. While there are many great employers in the legal industry, you will find that some don’t value employees’ mental health, treat employees poorly, and have severely unrealistic expectations.

After leaving my job in June and starting my own firm, I can now spend a few minutes in the mornings being creative & artistic. No one is going to yell at me. I lived in fear of allowing any sort of self care for 8 years, because I was brainwashed to bill at all costs. 1/

— What is a yute? (@whatisayute) October 20, 2020

Here is the truth: Know your worth, prioritize your mental health, and learn how to recognize a toxic environment. I’m not saying to quit the moment the job gets a little bit tough. But don’t stick around a toxic employment situation just because you feel guilty that they gave you a job.

Consider all your career options as a new law graduate

Like I said earlier, the days of spending your entire career at one or two law firms are gone for most people. Today’s young lawyers and workers switch between firms and jobs far more often than prior generations.

And if you really want to make money and don’t like working for others? My advice for new lawyers, in this case, is to start a new law practice. Not the entrepreneurial type? Maybe you just want to lawyer. Consider joining a larger law firm where there is plenty of support staff to handle all of the time-consuming billing and admin tasks. You can also get a job as an in-house counsel. This way, you can focus on the legal needs of one corporate master.

Interested in learning about what else you can do with a law degree? Read about how to find an alternative legal career.

Consider starting a virtual law firm

If you are starting a new law firm, strongly consider starting a virtual law firm. A major benefit of a virtual law firm is cutting your overhead costs on a new law firm. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report states, “the technology adoption that we’ve seen during this [pandemic] has laid the foundation for a new legal-service model that will be better suited to the needs of clients.” In other words, all the recent technology adoption is here to stay.

The last six months have been a whirlwind, with the entire world instantly pivoting to virtually delivering everything. While courts have been forced to adopt all of this technology overnight, there are constant glitches, headaches, and questions. There is not enough support in solving those issues, creating lots of stress when you have a case deadline, and no documentation on how to submit an emergency filing. But this great technological push of the last six months has advanced us years on the path towards running the law firm of the future.

A virtual law firm benefits your clients

Here’s a personal anecdote behind why my advice for new lawyers is to consider starting a virtual law firm: Remember when I said I had reinvented my career through so many pivots over the years? Well, a few years ago, I met a girl and moved from the West Coast to the east. With her medical residency guaranteed to cause at least one or two more moves in the future, I took my practice online.

Even two years ago, this was not easy. Clients did not understand the concept of Zoom and many would ask if I was running a scam. Now, I work from home. I handle clients in seven states, mostly back in California, from my home base in New York City. If we have to move to another state at some point, I can still help those same clients in their respective states.

Use cloud-based legal technology tools

You may already use a cloud-based file storage system like Microsoft’s OneDrive or Google Drive. If you are starting a law practice now, do not start with a batch of Word templates saved on your hard drive. Do not start tracking time on an Excel spreadsheet or a yellow pad.

Instead, my advice for new lawyers is to invest in the cloud from the start. Cloud-based legal tech tools like Clio Manage, can handle all of your billing, document storage, and client communication on pretty much any device from any location. While you are there, check out the document automation features that allow you to toss out the binders and thumb drives full of old templates.

Understand what it means to be truly client-centered

Today’s consumer lives online, and ingests reviews and spits them out the moment their case is done. Each consumer’s experience is amplified through marketing and word-of-mouth at a level never seen before.

So what does being client-centered mean? It does not mean that the client is always right. Rather, it means that the client’s experience is paramount. This includes communicating clearly and openly, providing convenience, delivering services virtually, and billing electronically. Fascinatingly, even as recently as last year, consumer surveys such as the 2019 Legal Trends Report showed that clients preferred phone calls and in-person meetings to text messages and electronic communication. Today, that paradigm has shifted significantly. The 2020 Legal Trends Report found that 69% of consumers prefer to share documents electronically, 56% of consumers prefer videoconferencing over a phone call, and 65% prefer to pay through electronic payments.

Pick up some business development skills

Nobody is as popular as the guy who brings in the business. This is a lesson that I hold dear to my heart, after working in a law firm as both an associate attorney and as the marketing director.

The same thing goes for when you run your own firm. You cannot just say that you are a lawyer and leave the marketing and business development to others. Clients won’t just spontaneously call you for help. You have to be where they are. Depending on your practice area, that might mean building a presence on social media, Google My Business, or virtually networking with startup geeks at a local small business conference.

Take care of your mental and physical health

This piece of advice for new lawyers isn’t talked about enough. It is easy to ignore your current physical and mental health needs. If you are doing a great job at work, they will expect more moving forward. If you are available 24/7 and never take time for yourself, when you finally do take a couple of days off, they will think you have become disenchanted or disengaged with your job.

It is hard for us lawyers to talk about lawyer wellness and mental health. But if you ignore things like downtime, hobbies, or even just sleep, you will burn out. You’ll become more impatient with difficult coworkers, you will start making more mistakes on cases, and eventually something will break.

Do not wait to take care of yourself. Get enough sleep. Take some time off on the weekends. Find things you love to do outside of work. It is totally okay to use your vacation time. And it is okay to tell your loved ones that you are struggling and need a couple of days to just catch your breath.

This is also a good opportunity to reiterate the point above about toxic workplaces. If you are working for someone who is making your life a living hell, it probably will not get better. Don’t waste years of your life in a toxic work environment where stress eats away at your health until you break. All you will be left with is regret and a couple lines on your resume.

It isn’t always about the money

This one is hard to write with a straight face because I grew up broke. Like, really broke. Single-mom-with-five-kids broke. Worked-at-McDonald’s-in-high-school-and-peddled-popcorn-and-pizza-throughout-college broke. Taught-the-LSAT-and-supervised-the-dorms-during-law-school broke.

But once you get to the point where you are making enough money to pay the bills without worrying, happiness is not found in getting a bigger paycheck. Instead, you will start looking for jobs, cases, or projects that are more fulfilling or exciting.

If you are looking at this at the beginning of a career, my advice for new lawyers is to design your career to get to the endpoint where you are surrounded with those exciting projects. Avoid picking a practice area or career path that you think will lead to the most money. Obviously, you have to balance a fun career with earning a living. But the key is to find a middle ground.

Seek out a mentor

It is so incredibly difficult to find a true mentor. I have actually taken new jobs just because of the promise of more and better mentorship, only to find that they did not have time to spare to show me the ropes. Good mentors are good teachers—something not all lawyers are good at.

But, if you find one that is willing to help, seize the opportunity. Learning from a lawyer with decades of experience will mean you get much greater results for your clients. You will also cut your stress level and imposter syndrome feelings in half. At least.

How do you find a mentor as a lawyer? It seems to happen by chance for most people I know. Most formal mentorship programs match you with someone who wants to feel like they’re giving back, but they may not be the best teacher. Some people I know met mentors through bar associations and developed a rapport that led to an ongoing friendship and mentorship. I met one by picking up a case that the lawyer-mentor had worked on a decade earlier.

Never stop learning

Don’t be the lawyer tracking time on paper and requiring clients to spend an hour in traffic just to wait in your waiting room before meeting you. If you do these, you will lose out to law firms that invest in virtual meeting technology and cloud-based practice tools.

The same goes for CLEs and substantive legal education. There is nothing quite as fun as reminding your opposing counsel that the rule they cited changed five years ago. As a result, their client is going to lose tens of thousands of dollars.

Law is a profession that requires you to constantly learn. If you are not studying your profession constantly, you will be left behind. If you run your own small firm, the technology to power your business processes is changing by the week. The pandemic has accelerated that change to the point where firms of even six months ago could seem ancient by the end of next year.

In addition to investing time in your clients, business development, self-care, and family, you need to carve out time to continue to learn both substantive law and law practice management technology.

You’re in the most exciting time in history

It is easy to get down on yourself and your situation with all that is going on. You do not have it easy. You are graduating into an economy that seems like it is on the precipice of imploding. With so much uncertainty, you’re probably at a stress level of 10.0.

But you are also on the precipice of an industry that is reinventing itself. Courts that have taken decades to build out rudimentary e-filing have overnight added virtual hearings and trials. Lawyers that did not know what an e-signature was are being replaced by a generation that probably can’t remember the last time they wrote a paper check.

It may not be okay today. It may not be okay in three or four months. But your career is going to last decades. You will pivot and twist and turn and adapt and learn. Here’s my last piece of advice for new lawyers: Know that you will not just be okay—you will thrive because you have what it takes to help reinvent this industry.

A Guide to Selecting a Lawyer Training Program

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 12:00:18 GMT

In today’s ultra-competitive legal market, continually developing your skills as a lawyer is key to success. As this year has shown us, the industry can change quickly—and lawyers that aren’t able to keep up with the latest tools and trends may be left behind. Training for lawyers is also essential for furthering your professional development. Aside from required CLE credits, this means looking for opportunities to develop your skills through more formal lawyer training, informal learning, or a combination of both.

In the following post, we’ll discuss the types of lawyer training opportunities available—from mentorship to coaching to conferences and beyond. We’ll also offer tips for selecting the right mix of lawyer training programs for you. Remember: the goal is to leverage ongoing lawyer training to help you succeed, stand out, and stay competitive in today’s legal landscape.

What are the available types of training for lawyers?

When it comes to lawyer training, there are plenty of routes to success. From informal strategies to structured programs, you can effectively integrate lawyer training into your work life—depending on your available time, budget, and learning style (more on that later).

To start, let’s look at seven types of training for lawyers:

Mentoring

No matter where you are in your legal career, you can always learn from those who have more experience than you. Having a mentor—i.e. developing a professional relationship with a more senior lawyer who’s willing to pass down their knowledge—lets you get guidance, one-on-one, from someone who’s been where you are. Mentorship also fosters professional relationships organically, which can be valuable for both you and your mentor in the future.

Successful mentorships rely on finding a good fit between mentor and mentee. Check if your law firm or legal associations offer structured mentorship programs, or consider asking a more experienced lawyer in your network if they’re open to being a mentor.

Legal conferences and conventions

Legal conferences and conventions pack a lot of lawyer training and learning into a short time.

Traditionally, legal conferences involve physically gathering together—letting you get away from the office to spend time focused and immersed on lawyer training.

Increasingly, there are more opportunities for virtual or online conferences. Aside from the physical distancing benefits of a virtual platform, virtual conferences offer a unique opportunity to participate in these large-scale events without any prohibitive travel time or costs.

Whether virtual now or in-person in the future, conferences allow you to:

Network. Meet and connect with like-minded professionals.
Upgrade your skills. Participate in training opportunities and educational workshops.
Get in the know. From expert keynotes to discussions, stay informed on current industry issues and opportunities. Attending a legal conference tailored to a specific area of law (such as the American Immigration Lawyers Association’s annual conference on immigration law) can be useful for lawyer training customized to your practice area.
Discover the latest tools. Learn about the most current technology and tools to help enhance your practice.
Earn CLE credits. You need to earn CLE credits, and some conferences offer opportunities to get credits while also participating in other learning opportunities.
Reignite your passion for your career. It’s natural to get burnt out from the day-to-day hard work of being a lawyer—attending a conference can help refresh your passion and excitement for the law.

Here are a few key virtual legal conferences to consider:

Clio Cloud Conference: The world’s best and biggest legal conference, the Clio Cloud Conference offers a mix of inspiring speakers, networking opportunities, and training for lawyers.

Note: Although the 2020 Clio Cloud Conference is now over, you can read all about the conference highlights and stay tuned for more information about the 2021 Clio Cloud Conference.

ABA Techshow: Focused on the latest technology for legal professionals, this annual conference brings together lawyers and legal tech vendors.
Legal Marketing Association Annual Conference: Designed for legal marketing professionals, this conference offers speakers and learnings on topics like marketing management and leadership, business development, and technology management.

Webinars and virtual meetups

Similar in purpose to conferences—but on a smaller scale—webinars and virtual meetups let you learn about key legal industry topics online. With a smaller (or no) monetary investment and less time commitment, webinars and virtual meetups offer:

Insights on current topics of interest to legal professionals
Tips and practical tools to help your legal career
Expert opinions and discussions

Also, some webinars are CLE-eligible as well. Many of Clio’s free webinars can be attended for CLE credits (in certain states).

Courses

When thinking about training for lawyers, don’t forget about courses that may not be directly legal-related, like programming. For example, David Colarusso’s Coding the Law teaches lawyers programming language. In this programming course for lawyers, you can learn how to think about technologies in the law by building your own. Even if you don’t have a programming background, the class explores the technical, legal, and ethical dimensions behind the use of computer algorithms by legal practitioners and the justice system.

Another example of a great course for lawyers is Atlanta-based trademark and business strategy attorney Kimberly Bennett’s Watch Us Lead. This resource inspires business leaders to build bold, impactful, and sustainable businesses to fund their impact.

Free online resources

Not all lawyer training programs have to be structured—or even programs at all. Useful online legal training resources include:

Blogs. Legal blogs offer quick summaries and discussion of the latest topics of interest for lawyers. Clio’s blog is a great place to start.
Online guides. You can also find more in-depth guides and online resources like reports and whitepapers for more detailed material. Clio’s annual Legal Trends Report, for example, compiles key data to help lawyers make better business decisions—and it’s available to download for free.
E-books. Downloadable legal-specific e-books provide longer and more in-depth thought and discussion on a topic or idea. Mike Whelan, Jr.’s new e-book, Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal, for example, shows you how to test new ideas at your law firm before you invest in them.
Podcasts: There are numerous podcasts on topics ranging from business to legal matters (like Clio’s Daily Matters podcast). The bonus? You can listen to podcasts to work on your career development in a low-pressure way while you’re driving, cleaning the house, or walking around the block.

Keep in mind that free online resources alone may not be the be-all and end-all for your lawyer training. While you can peruse blogs or online guides at your own pace, it can also be easier to put them at the end of your to-do list and forget about them when you’re busy. While they may be free, they do require you to spend time looking for the best content for you—while a more-structured program or conference offers more personalized content.

Coaching and training programs

There’s a reason why athletes have coaches. Coaches can:

See your effort from an outside perspective
Use their experience to formulate effective strategies and training plans
Hold you accountable
Help you reach your goals and full potential—faster

While your legal career isn’t a sport, professional one-on-one coaching or paid training programs can take your legal game to the next level—for increased professional success, and even personal, happiness.

Coaches may offer lawyer training in areas like:

Business development
Goal setting
Creating work-life balance and keeping lawyer burnout at bay
Communication and team-building

As this article from the American Bar Association discusses, coaching can help lawyers to elevate their career performance—especially when mentorship opportunities aren’t available. Professional coaching is also a good option for attorneys who want to invest in a more personalized lawyer training program.

Law firm consulting

Lawyers deal with much more than just the law, so being able to call on law firm consultants is a smart way to develop in a particular area (like marketing or business development) where you have room to grow. For example, if your law firm is struggling with marketing, hiring a marketing consultant can help you achieve those goals faster.

Not sure where to find law firm consultants? Make your search easier by using Clio’s global directory of Clio Certified Consultants to find local consultants in pertinent fields including accounting, law firms, marketing, and more.

How to select a lawyer training program

If you want to integrate a lawyer training program into your future to improve as a legal professional and/or business owner, the following tips will help narrow your search:

1. Understand your learning style

Before jumping into any kind of lawyer training program, think about your learning style—after all, what works well for your colleague might leave you feeling overwhelmed, bored, or uninspired.

Think about what types of learning make you feel most engaged, and what’s worked for you in the past. Ask yourself:

Are you a talker or a listener?
Are you a reader or a watcher?
Do you learn best with personal guidance—or when independent and self-directed?

Use the answers to choose programs that will work best for you. For example, if you learn best by watching and listening, you might get a lot out of watching webinars. If you need engagement and to talk things out, hiring a coach might be a better fit.

2. Determine your training goals

Some questions to help you determine your training goals:

Are you looking to help your business succeed?
Would you like to find better work-life balance?
Would you prefer to have a formal lawyer training program planned for you?

To get the most from any lawyer training, first, determine what exactly you want to achieve by setting specific goals. This will help you select the best programs for you right now, and will help you better measure your progress in the future.

Part of this process can mean taking an honest look at yourself—the good, the bad, and the in-between. If you can assess your strengths and weaknesses, you can identify areas for improvement—and choose lawyer training in those areas.

Also consider which areas of the legal industry you need the most help on. Law firm business development? Law firm marketing? Legal tech? Focus your goal-setting efforts there.

3. Consider your budget

While you may want to try all the available types of training at once, you still need to set a budget.

Things like legal conferences, professional coaches, and consultants are incredibly valuable, but they aren’t free. Cheaper or free training resources like CLE courses, webinars, and online materials are more budget-friendly, but they may not be as in-depth.

The solution? Plan for a combination of free and paid training that best suits your needs (and your budget).

4. Consider the value of each type of training

When choosing lawyer training options, consider the tangible and intangible value of each. Lawyer training is an investment of your valuable time, effort, and money—but the potential payoffs (like becoming more efficient, productive, and happier in your career) can mean an even higher return on that investment.

If a type of training can significantly increase the number of clients you work with, your profits, your leads, or your confidence, it should be prioritized.

Conclusion

In today’s rapidly evolving legal market, training for lawyers—whether that means increasing your knowledge base, learning the latest legal tech and trends, or working on your business skills—can lead to greater success as an attorney.

There are plenty of lawyer training options available to you. Whether you want to find a mentor, hire a coach, attend more industry conferences, or learn from free online resources, the key is to create a plan and select the training programs that work best for your learning style, goals, and budget. By actively pursuing training for lawyers, you can set yourself apart, be more competitive, and make your work-life more satisfying.

A Guide to Conducting Great Legal Research

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 12:00:40 GMT

When it comes to the practice of law, we often think about legal experience. But even the most winning legal argument will ultimately fall flat without solid legal research.

Legal research—that is, identifying, finding, and cite-checking the information and applicable laws needed to support your legal decision-making—empowers your arguments and gives substance to your legal work.

While learning how to do legal research effectively may not be the most glamorous part of being a lawyer, it can deliver a major competitive advantage. Whether you’re a law student or an experienced attorney, enhancing your legal research techniques and using smart research tools can save you time. Developing your legal research skills can also yield the most relevant information—so you can make a stronger argument and ultimately, capture more successful outcomes for your clients.

What does it take to become a pro at legal research? You need to start with a strategy and know how to use legal research tools to your advantage.

To help new and experienced lawyers strengthen their legal research techniques, this guide will review the fundamentals of the legal research process, including what sources you should turn to—and when. We’ll also discuss how and why it’s important to check that you’re using “good” law, and offer tips for how you can improve your legal research skills—no matter where you are in your career.

How to do legal research

While the techniques and tools you use may vary, the goal of legal research is simple: You want to find the relevant information (i.e. laws) that apply to the facts of your case, so you can support legal decision making. With this in mind, the legal research process can be broken down into three basic steps: Understanding the key details and questions of your legal issue, finding laws and information to support your legal argument, and checking that what you’ve found is still relevant—or good law.

Gather critical information about your legal issue

When presented with a legal issue, it’s natural to want to dive in and start looking for cases. But it’s in your best interest to first collect key details about the legal issue at hand.

Pausing to gather and record critical details (like the who, what, when, where, and how of your case) lays the foundation for a more focused, streamlined legal research process.

Establish your legal issue and your goal

Next, use your case’s critical information to pinpoint your legal issue. By establishing your legal issue and your client’s ideal outcomes before you start researching, you can construct a well-defined framework that allows you to:

See what you know about your legal issue—and what you need to find out
Narrow the field of potential search terms
Identify the jurisdiction you need to focus your research within

Learn and understand the precedent in your jurisdiction

While researching, pay special attention to the geographical location where your legal issue will be resolved. Is the precedent controlling already in your jurisdiction? Or is it merely a persuasive precedent that has not yet been adopted in your jurisdiction?

Determine the type of legal sources you need

Each of the three types of legal sources you’ll work with has a purpose in the legal research process. Here’s a quick overview:

Primary sources

Primary legal sources are key to legal research because they establish the current law on whatever legal issue you’re working with. Primary sources, which you can find by searching legal research databases like Fastcase or Casetext, include:

Federal and state constitutions
Statutes or legislation (such as laws enacted by legislative bodies like Congress and state legislatures)
Treaties
Regulations (such as rules or regulations made by either federal or state agencies)
Annotations
Case law (such as court opinions or decisions issued by federal or state courts)

Secondary sources

Secondary legal sources explain or interpret legal principles in detail, or summarize the current state of the law—giving a better understanding of a particular area of law. Secondary sources are also useful for identifying primary sources for your case (more on that later). Examples include:

Law review articles and journals
Practice guides
Legal treatises

Learn more about the best free legal research tools available.

Begin your legal research with secondary sources

When it comes to legal research sources, start in the middle with secondary sources.

In addition to providing important background information on your legal issue, secondary sources save time: Instead of starting from scratch, you can leverage the expert work that’s already been done.

Think of it this way: In order to create and publish the material, experts had to go through a legal research process themselves. If a secondary source is reputable, the writer reviewed all of the available primary resources to determine what was most applicable. So, by noting the primary sources that are cited in law reviews, journals, and case-law documents, you can take advantage of the research already done.

Note: Also keep in mind that useful cases don’t necessarily have to have the same legal outcome as your goal. If you find relevant case law where the outcome didn’t match your client’s desired outcome, you shouldn’t necessarily disregard it. If the laws are aligned, you can use that case to show how the fact patterns in your client’s case are different to strengthen your own argument.

Check that you’re using “good” law

Another key step to legal research is verifying that any cases you come across in your legal research are still “good” law—that is, that any legal decision you’re looking to is still valid and relevant. Using an overruled or unconstitutional statute won’t help you win your case.

Can older cases be “good” law?

While more recent cases are preferred (after all, they’re more likely to reflect the current legal changes that could impact the case law—and are thus less likely to have been rendered obsolete), recency isn’t mandatory.

A decades-old case could be considered “good” law—if it hasn’t been overruled or otherwise made irrelevant, an older case that fits with your case’s fact pattern and applicable law could be helpful.

Use a citator

How can you check if you’re using “good” law? Use a citator. Citators let you verify a case’s authority by giving you a cataloged list of cases, statutes, and legal sources—along with a history and precedential value for those sources—so you can then check that it hasn’t been overruled, questioned, or made irrelevant.

When using a citator, focus on the negative material (by checking a case in a citator, you can look for flags that indicate any negative history). Specifically, use a citator to check that you don’t miss a case that invalidates your argument—which could undermine your credibility.

Major legal databases all have their own citator tools. For example, Casetext offers SmartCite, which “uses a system of flags to indicate the treatment of cases.” Casetext can also “help you evaluate whether a case is good law and find other relevant cases citing that opinion.”

How can I improve my legal research skills?

Whether you’re new to legal research or you’ve conducted legal research for years, once you have a solid understanding of the process, take advantage of strategies and tools to maximize research efficiency. Here are three strategies to consider:

1. Conduct more efficient research remotely

In the past, the legal research process was arduous, partly because it tied the researcher to a physical location—whether that was a law library or a law office computer—to access legal databases.

Today, cloud-based legal research software lets you conduct research remotely when used with a legal practice management software like Clio Manage. Having the flexibility to research from anywhere streamlines the legal research process and enhances efficiency. Here are a few examples:

By signing into a legal research service like Fastcase with Clio, for example, you can remotely access primary sources like cases and statutes, as well as secondary sources like law review articles. In addition, Fastcase further streamlines the legal research process in your workday by helping you track billable research time easily and save data back to matters.
CourtTrax provides real-time access to State and Federal courts across the United States. With CourtTrax’s Clio integration, you can link your search results to specific client matters, and have the results injected directly into Clio as a document.
Cloud-based research software like Tracers lets you search for pertinent information (such as contract information or social media activity) remotely. You can also request a Tracers search directly from a Clio Matter for an even more efficient process.

2. Double-check your memos and briefs with advanced legal research AI

Casetext Logo

Effective legal research needs to be thorough and accurate—which, traditionally, is time-consuming. To speed that process up without sacrificing the quality of your legal research, legal research artificial intelligence can help.

Here are a few tools to help streamline your legal research process:

ROSS Intelligence is an AI-driven legal research platform with an automated review tool that allows you to do more thorough research in a fraction of the time. ROSS lets you highlight statements in your pleadings and briefs to instantly search for cases discussing similar points of law. You can also use ROSS to identify negative case treatment in your pleadings and briefs—without the manual searching.
Casetext’s CARA artificial intelligence search technology and automated review tool enhance and speed up your legal searches. You can use Casetext to start your research with a complaint or brief from a matter in Clio to find highly relevant, tailored search results. Casetext will not just find authorities on the same facts and legal issues—it will also find them in the same jurisdiction. Casetext’s citator functionality also makes it easier to check and flag any bad law.

3. Document your research with secure, cloud-based fact management software

Don’t let your research go to waste or let facts slip through the cracks because of a poor documentation system. By using secure, cloud-based fact-management software, you can record your research in an efficient, organized, and accessible way.

Software like Clio Manage and apps like FactBox, for example, keep you organized by connecting all the facts, notes, and ideas in your cases. Using this type of tool helps you prepare for depositions, hearings, client briefings, and trials faster—and with more confidence that you aren’t missing facts.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a law student or experienced attorney, learning how to do thorough legal research (or how to enhance your existing legal research process) is a skill that can give you a competitive advantage. Learning great legal research techniques—from developing a more efficient research process to adopting cloud-based tools to conduct better, faster, and smarter legal research—helps you better support your cases, and clients. If you’d like even more tips on conducting smarter legal research, you’ll find this blog post useful.

A Cloud-Based, Client-Centered Future for Law

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 12:00:15 GMT

Last week, we wrapped up our first virtual Clio Cloud Conference, the largest virtual legal conference to date, and by all accounts, the best one. And while this year was different from conferences of years past in so many ways, I still came away feeling energized, invigorated, and determined as ever to transform the practice of law, for good. Coming together virtually with 4,500 of the most innovative legal professionals in the industry, from every US state and over 40 countries, tends to have that effect.

Highlights from the conference are readily available from the Clio Blog and from top legal industry journalists such as Bob Ambrogi and Molly McDonough. You can also listen to interviews with some of our incredible keynote speakers on Clio’s Daily Matters podcast—New York Times best selling author, and business and marketing visionary Seth Godin, and #1 New York Times best selling author of Grit and TED Talk Sensation Angela Duckworth. Be sure to check out my upcoming interview with civil rights attorney author, speaker, and producer Ben Crump on the podcast as well. Every talk at the conference gave lawyers and legal professionals the tools they need to succeed in our increasingly VUCA world.

VUCA, an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, was first used by the US military to describe the nature of the world and challenges it faced after the end of the cold war. Today, it is often used in business and investment contexts to describe complex organizations, problems, or situations. We’ve been living in a VUCA world for some time now, and the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically increased this volatility and uncertainty. But with the right mindset, we can build a better normal for the legal industry than we had before—even if it’s not what we envisioned in the past.

A VUCA Prime mindset, one in which the acronym shifts to vision, understanding, clarity, and agility, is what law firms need to succeed. By leveraging VUCA Prime, one can counter volatility with vision, uncertainty with understanding, complexity with clarity, and ambiguity with agility. VUCA Prime is a framework for adaptability, and adaptability is everything in today’s environment. By steadying themselves and finding their own paths forward, lawyers can provide much needed legal services in this uncertain time, while also ensuring business success for their firms. And the best part is, there’s no need to do this all at once. Constant, small steps in the right direction, led by a VUCA Prime mindset, will lead to an aggregation of marginal gains and outsized benefits for lawyers and legal professionals.

Let’s take the rapidly deteroriating ability for consumers to afford traditionally priced and packaged legal services as an example. The 2020 Legal Trends Report found that 61% of consumers said they would not be able to afford to deal with a legal problem, and 66% of consumers say that if they had to hire a lawyer, they would want to pay their fees on some sort of payment plan. Offering alternative fee structures is just one way that law firms could open themselves up to more business and more clients, at a time when the report also found that 23% of consumers say they expect to need a lawyer in the near future, compared to just 16% at the beginning of the pandemic.

The findings from this year’s Legal Trends Report give us the data we need to make strong decisions, to create understanding out of uncertainty. 50% of consumers say they’re more comfortable with technology now than they were before the pandemic, and 56% believe that most legal matters can be dealt with remotely, and would prefer to do it over a video call. Plenty of lawyers moved to the cloud at the start of the pandemic, but the future demands a much more fundamental shift. I believe that the future for law firms is a cloud-based and client-centered one.

Cloud-based and client-centered law firms leverage technology to provide excellent, effortless client experiences at every stage of the client journey. Rather than simply using cloud-based practice management software and one or two other cloud-based tools, successful firms of the (near) future will run their entire firms in the cloud from end-to-end, including client intake, onboarding, meetings, billing, and payments. They will also find new meaning or purpose for their offices if they choose to keep them. And, they’ll put their clients at the center—a philosophy which, as I explain in The Client-Centered Law Firm, differs from putting clients first, in that it inspires law firms to focus on efficient, productive back-office processes as well as good client service. After all, each drives the other.

It’s clear that things are changing—but lawyers can drive change towards a better normal for the industry, rather than being at the whims of the changing world around them. By responding to client needs and driving further adoption of the cloud, law firms will contribute to a better normal both within the legal industry and beyond. I look forward to continued collaboration with innovative lawyers and legal professionals as we continue on the path to build a better normal, and I can’t wait to hear more stories of their success.

A Complete Guide to Naming Your Law Firm (With Examples)

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 12:00:56 GMT

What’s in a name? Turns out, it’s a whole lot—especially when you’re thinking about how to name a law firm. From ABA and state bar rules to website domain availability, choosing a law firm name involves plenty of considerations.

A law firm name gives potential clients a first impression of the business, and it also plays a key role in your law firm’s brand and marketing strategy. In addition, it can play a significant role in determining how easily prospects and clients remember your law firm. This brings us to the question: What should you name your law firm?

In this blog post, we’ll cover:

All the steps involved in choosing a law firm name.
How to choose the best law firm names.
Law firm name examples to get those creative juices flowing.

Whether you’re starting a new solo or small law firm, or planning on changing your law firm’s name, we hope this blog post will guide you through the big “how to name a law firm” question.

How to name a law firm

Naming your law firm requires some careful deliberation. You’ll need to consider the law firm naming rules and conventions in your jurisdiction, and determine your law firm brand and marketing strategy. To choose the best law firm name, brainstorm some law firm names, get third-party opinions, check the domain availability of your chosen name, and consider trademarking your law firm’s name. We’ll cover each of this in more detail below.

Law firm naming rules

The American Bar Association’s (ABA) Center for Professional Responsibility Rule 7.5 outlines the law firm naming rules you need to follow (The rule was deleted in 2018, but exists as enacted in many state implementations of the rules):

Your law firm should not sound like you are part of a government agency or charitable legal services organization.
If your law firm has an office in another jurisdiction, make sure you identify which lawyers are allowed to practice in each jurisdiction.
Don’t use a law firm name that involves a lawyer in public office.
Don’t falsely create a partnership with another lawyer or firm.

Basically, your law firm name should not be misleading. Don’t use your state or jurisdiction name like “Alaska Law” if you are not actually a public legal aid agency. Avoid using Obama’s name if he is not actively practicing law with your firm. If you happen to share an office with another lawyer but have not actually partnered with them to form a law firm, don’t use a name that sounds like you are practicing law with them.

As always, be sure to check your jurisdiction’s law firm naming rules as every state has different rules. Some states allow brand names, while others—like Georgia, New York, and Ohio—prohibit trade names.

Consider adding these to your law firm’s name

1. Add last names

Traditional law firm names tend to include the last names of partners. In some states, this is a requirement instead of merely a tradition. If you’re starting a solo firm, this will simply be your last name. If you have partners, think about how you will order the last names. Say a few possible combinations of the partners’ last names. Which version sounds the best? You may also want to try shortening the partners’ last names.

2. Add your practice area

Adding your practice area can let potential clients know right away how you can help them, or if you’re the right law firm for them. However, consider if you may expand your practice areas in the future as naming your firm this way may be limiting.

3. Make it clear that you are a law firm

We recommend that you consider adding “law” or “legal” to your firm’s public name. This shows right away that you’re a law firm, instead of an accounting or consulting firm.

4. Indicate your firm size

You could add “Group,” “Firm,” or “and Associates” after your law firm’s name, depending on what type of firm you are. Be careful though—always make sure your firm’s name is not misleading. For example, if you’re a solo practitioner, adding “Group” will be inaccurate as it suggests that you have more than one lawyer at your firm.

How to choose the best law firm name for you

The best law firm names take into consideration the firm’s brand and marketing strategy. As mentioned above, not all states allow law firms to have trade or brand names. However, even if you’re using surnames for your law firm’s name, you should think about what your law firm’s brand is and what you want it to be.

When you’re thinking about how to name a law firm, it’s important to determine who your target audience is. What are your buyer personas? What are your law firm’s marketing goals? As you can guess, your law firm’s name will appear all over your marketing—including your website, social media, and online profiles like Yelp and Google My Business. You’ll want to spend some time developing your marketing strategy if you have not already done so. We recommend using a law firm name that resonates with your target audience. Remember to consider cultural nuances as well.

Steps to developing a great law firm name

1. Brainstorm some law firm names

Write down whatever comes to mind. There are many popular and effective brainstorming techniques, including brainwriting, mind mapping, and rapid ideation. The brainstorming process can be a joy—whether you can spare an afternoon or just 30 minutes to focus on coming up with law firm name ideas based on the law firm naming conventions and methods mentioned above. For example, you can set aside 30 minutes to brainstorm.

Narrow down options for your law firm name. Some tips for doing this:

Sort your options into 3 different categories. Category 1 is the winning category made up of the top contenders. Category 3 names are the ones that are fun but may not be entirely suitable for your business. Category 2 names are the in-betweens—promising but not as good as those in Category 1.
Avoid unintended meanings. Keep in mind that people may shorten your law firm’s name to an acronym, so make sure your law firm’s acronym remains professional. The last thing you want is to realize, at the last minute, that your law firm’s name reads “BOO” for short. While these may sound funny, it’s probably not something you want your law firm to be known for.
Double-check your state bar rules. Since different jurisdictions have varying rules, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
When you have finalized the law firm names in Category 1, check the following: What are the cultural and geographical meanings of these names? Are the acronyms appropriate? Can these names be used as your law firm grows? Do these names fit your law firm brand?

2. Get some third-party opinions

Have you worked on something for so long that you get a little cross-eyed? In addition to taking a break and revising your list of top law firm name options, we suggest getting third-party opinions from friends, family, or colleagues. Naming a law firm is a huge undertaking. You’ll want to make sure your law firm’s name sounds great to everyone, not just you. Your friends, family, or professional peers may see things you don’t, or have additional good ideas. If you can, we recommend asking a professional writer for help with reviewing your options as well.

3. Check the domain and business registration availability

As our lives go increasingly digital, having a law firm website is an absolute necessity. This means you need to check if the URL and business name for the law firm name you want are already taken. Having the same name as another law firm or business poses some issues. Your clients may confuse your law firm with another business, and it’ll be harder to get your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts off the ground. As a refresher, a domain name is basically your website address.

You can check if a domain is available through companies like GoDaddy or Name.com. If it isn’t available, choose another law firm name. If the domain name is taken, chances are, there is a law firm or business operating with the same name. In that case, it would be in your firm’s best interest to use a different name to avoid confusion.

The same goes for registering your law firm’s business name. Check with your local authority to see if your business name is taken, and choose another law firm name if needed. If the domain and business name is available and you’re all set on the name, go ahead and purchase the domain and register your business!

4. Think about trademarking your law firm’s name

If you have a unique brand and law firm name (assuming you can use a brand name in your jurisdiction), you may want to trademark your law firm’s name. By trademarking your law firm’s name early, you can avoid having another law firm or business use your name in the future. Registering a trademark for your law firm involves submitting an application and a fee. You can do this online with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

5. Consider using a law firm branding consultant

The process of naming your law firm can be overwhelming. If you’d like to get some professional help with deciding how to name a law firm, you can use a law firm branding consultant. A professional branding consultant help you develop a law firm brand and name that’s right for you, your clients, and your business. You can find a consultant via our Clio Certified Constultants page.

Jog your creativity with these law firm name examples

Creative names for law firms

You can use these examples of non-traditional law firm names* to inspire your brainstorming process. Remember, always check if you can use a brand name or trade name for your law firm in your state:

Legally Grounded
Lawist
Justice Shields
Empire Gate
Wingtip
Sputnik
Dharma
Future Wise
Silver Wire
Blue Vault

If you’d like more law firm name examples to inspire your brainstorming process, below are some interesting names from law firms with great success stories.

*Note that these are not meant to be used as part of a law firm name.

You’re now ready to start developing a great law firm name

If you’re wondering about how to name a law firm, we hope this blog post has given you a good idea of the steps involved in making sure your law firm name is not misleading, meets all the law firm naming rules set out by the ABA and your state bar association, and fits your law firm’s brand. Don’t forget to check if your preferred law firm name has an available domain and business registration. And if you want to leave naming your law firm to a professional—that’s a great idea too. That will free up your time so you can focus on other parts of your business.

Note: The information in this “how to name a law firm” article applies only to US practices. This post is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, business, or accounting advice.

Highlights from the 2020 Clio Cloud Conference

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 01:05:20 GMT

The 2020 Clio Cloud Conference was without a doubt our biggest and most unique event yet. As lawyer, writer, and media consultant Bob Ambrogi wrote, “The 2020 Clio Cloud Conference [moved] to a venue apropos of its name—the cloud.” With 4,500+ attendees from over 45 countries joining remotely, the eighth annual Clio Cloud Conference—and the first virtual one—was as immersive, eye-opening, and thought-provoking as ever.

This year’s conference centered around rethinking and redefining how we deliver legal services, and around creating a VUCA Prime environment—one of vision, understanding, clarity, and agility—out of a period of extreme uncertainty. To that end, the conference featured insightful, inspiring, and educational talks, access to data-driven insights from the 2020 Legal Trends Report, and as always, plenty of exciting announcements from Clio. As a reimagined virtual conference, attendees this year also engaged with each other by bringing their thoughts and perspectives to every session via moderated chat boxes.

Read on for a high-level recap of our 2020 conference.

Jack Newton’s Opening Keynote

To kick off the conference, Clio CEO and Co-Founder Jack Newton delivered a powerful keynote that covered Clio’s vision for the future of legal services, recent additions to Clio’s product offering, and key findings from the newly released 2020 Legal Trends Report. Starting his keynote by acknowledging the current economic, political, and humanitarian landscapes, Jack invited lawyers and law firms to use this key moment in history to pivot as a society and legal profession. He encouraged law firms to rethink the future of legal services, to experiment and innovate, and figure out a way to navigate and thrive against the uncertainty.

To thrive against the enormous uncertainty of 2020 and beyond, lawyers need to use a VUCA Prime mindset to take advantage of the uncertainty. VUCA Prime is where law firms face an uncertain world by turning volatility to vision, uncertainty to understanding, complexity to clarity, and ambiguity to agility.

Jack was also proud to announce this year’s Reisman Award winners in his opening remarks (more on this below). Additionally, he spoke about new features and updates to Clio Manage and Clio Grow, finding the fit between product and market to help narrow the access to justice gap, the concept of marginal gains, highlights from the 2020 Legal Trends Report, and the blueprint for law firms of the future.

New to Clio

We were excited to highlight a number of recent additions to Clio Grow and Clio Manage to help lawyers connect with consumers and help them succeed as cloud-based, client-centered practices. Our big product update announcements include some early access features available exclusively to 2020 Clio Cloud Conference attendees—like the upcoming Clio for Clients app, the first-of-its-kind for legal clients, and Automated Bill Reminders, where lawyers can save time and get paid faster by automatically sending Outstanding Balances to their clients. Other major product updates include our new integrations—like Google My Business, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Dialpad.

Learn more about what’s new and improved in Clio.

The 2020 Legal Trends Report: The digital era of legal has changed consumer expectations forever

The 2020 Clio Cloud Conference marked the release of the fifth annual Legal Trends Report. As the legal industry’s most in-depth analysis of the state of legal, the 2020 Legal Trends Report uncovers what successful firms are doing to overcome the challenges of the pandemic, and how the move to a digital era of legal has changed consumer expectations.

One of the main findings was that consumers expect lawyers to provide more remote legal services. The 2020 Legal Trends Report brings to light that 56% of consumers believe that most legal matters can be dealt with remotely, and would prefer to do it over a video call. The full report is available now, for more insight into these findings.

Download the 2020 Legal Trends Report.

Celebrating our incredible Clio customers and the 2020 Reisman Award winners

Every year, we’re proud to honor our customers and the amazing work they do in the legal community. This year, The Reisman Awards was delivered a little differently—Jack was proud to announce this year’s winners in his opening remarks. Also, throughout the Conference, The Reisman Award winners were highlighted in featured spotlight sessions. A big virtual round of applause for this year’s winners:

Best Growth Story: Donato Law
Excellence in Client Service: Ceiba Fôrte Law Firm
Community Champion: Osborn Gambale Beckley & Budd PLLC
Legal Innovation: Roche Legal
Best New Law Firm: Law Offices of Kristen A Schneck, LLC

Learn more about winners of The Reisman Awards and watch their stories.

$100,000 Launch//Code Contest Winner: Documate

Our $100,000 Launch//Code contest focuses on the future of legal technology and brings together outstanding companies from across North America to celebrate innovation, impact, and customer-centric design as we seek to crown the best new integration with Clio. A huge congratulations to Documate, the winner of Clio’s $100,000 Launch//Code Contest, and Novara Search, winner of our Viewer’s Choice Award.

We are pleased to share that the 2020 finalists are:

Documate, which makes legal document automation easy by allowing users to create powerful document automation for custom Word documents or PDF court forms.
Novara Search, the first and only tool in the legal market that ingests social media posts from a custodians data export file for FaceBook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Slack, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok.
Discovery Genie, a tool that eliminates the burden and expense of manual document production without the prohibitive cost and complication of eDiscovery
Firmscribe, which makes it easy to sync your work texts with Clio by letting you text from your favorite app, like Messages on iOS or your default Android SMS app.
Kenect, an easy-to-use business texting platform built for law firms throughout North America.

Learn more about these partners and others in the Clio App Directory.

Inspiring keynote speakers

Ben Crump: Leading the Journey to Justice

Ben Crump Announced as Final Keynote Speaker for the 2020 Clio Cloud Conference

Benjamin Crump has established himself as one of the nation’s foremost lawyers and advocates for social justice, earning the nickname “Black America’s Attorney General”. His legal acumen has ensured that those marginalized in American society are protected by their nation’s contract with its constituency. He is the founder and principal owner of Ben Crump Law.

Crump’s tireless advocacy has led to legislation preventing excessive force and developing implicit bias training and policies. He has been nationally recognized as the 2014 NNPA Newsmaker of the Year, The National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Lawyers, and Ebony Magazine Power 100 Most Influential African Americans.

Angela Duckworth

Angela Duckworth is the Founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development. She is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change For Good initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics. A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Angela has advised the White House, the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs.

Duckworth has studied groups like the West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee competitors, rookie teachers, students from the Chicago Public Schools—all people performing in high-stress environments—to look at the correlation between grit and achievement. Drawing from these examples, and others, Duckworth explained what makes gritty individuals different from others, and shared her belief that grit “can be instilled and cultivated by anyone, anywhere, and at any time in life.”

Seth Godin

Seth Godin is the author of 19 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. He’s also the founder of the altMBA and The Marketing Seminar, online workshops that have transformed the work of thousands of people.

He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, and Purple Cow. His latest book, This Is Marketing, was an instant bestseller around the world.

Valuable educational sessions

In addition to our incredible keynotes, several other legal industry leaders took the virtual 2020 Clio Cloud Conference stage to give thought-provoking educational talks. Each gave conference attendees practical insights to take back and set in motion at their firms. Here are a few highlights:

Lawyer Forward: Filtering Ideas to Design Your Firm’s New Normal. In this session, Founder and CEO of Lawyer Forward Mike Whelan explored a method for brainstorming and filtering ideas. With these skills in hand, lawyers learned to design their own new normal. (Learn more in this e-book on Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal)
Inclusive Thinking: Neurodiversity for Lawyers. In this session, attorney, author, artist, and autism advocate Haley Moss shared firsthand the personal and the professional of what it is like to be part of a neurodiverse team, and how neurodiversity can benefit us and the folks we serve.
The Addicted Lawyer. Attorney, author, and addiction recovery advocate Brian Cuban discussed his experiences with mental health issues, both as a law student at the University Of Pittsburgh and a practicing attorney in Dallas, Texas for over twenty years. Brian also discussed his recovery, redefining his career as well as restoring family and passion for life.
Turning Volatility into Vision. In this panel discussion, lawyers Arleesha Wilson, Owner and Attorney of The Law Office of Arleesha Wilson, and Matthew Matechik, Owner and Attorney at Matechik Law Firm shared how they have managed their practices in the face of uncertainty and used 2020 to get clear on their business vision.
Through Difficulties to the Stars: Putting the Client Experience First. Managing Partner Katy Young of Ad Astra Law Group shared essential advice to help others lead with empathy, recognize the importance of first impressions, as well as offering transparency to build trust with clients.

Exhibitors: Innovative companies partnering with Clio to bring you an exceptional conference experience

Here is just a small selection of some of the incredible solutions for law firms featured at the Clio Cloud Conference, where attendees were able to visit digital booths to learn more:

LawPay

LawPay’s easy-to-use payment solution was specifically designed with the legal industry in mind, giving legal professionals the ability to accept client payments online both securely and ethically. LawPay is the technology behind Clio Payments, allowing Clio users to get paid faster without the need to run multiple applications.

Learn more about Clio Payments, powered by LawPay.

WiseTime

WiseTime is for attorneys with more important things to do than timekeeping. WiseTime and Clio work together to make billing more efficient, so attorneys can focus on their clients, not on admin. WiseTime passively captures your activity while you work and collates it in a private timeline. No manual tracking or start-stop timers, and importantly no compromise on user privacy. Using patented algorithms and AI technology, it recognises your Clio case IDs within your activity and automatically assigns the correct matter to the activity. Once you’ve reviewed your activity, you can send it seamlessly to Clio for billing. Magic.

Learn more about the WiseTime integration for Clio.

Ruby

Ruby has provided personalized live, virtual receptionist services to small businesses throughout North America since 2003. Their delightful receptionists paired with smart technology has made Ruby a platform by which small businesses can deliver exceptional customer experiences and grow their businesses.

Learn more about the Ruby integration for Clio.

LawYaw

Lawyaw provides affordable, end-to-end document automation for solo, small, and mid-size practices. Convert your existing Microsoft Word Documents into reusable templates. Save time and avoid mistakes with documents that you draft over and over again. Lawyaw is excited for Clio users to see the new and updated product which will roll out after The Clio Cloud Conference. Lawyaw’s app updates include questionnaires that will allow users to perfect remote intake and information gathering processes.

Learn more about the LawYaw integration for Clio.

Additions designed to help lawyers thrive

As always, the Clio Cloud Conference was far from just a legal conference. The event featured plenty of wellness opportunities to help attendees unwind, and meaningful additions to make the event live up to its reputation as a whole-person conference—even virtually. This year’s event included several lively, thoughtful, and enjoyable additions that made it one for the books. Highlights included Restorative Wellness Break with Barry’s Bootcamp, as well as rousing Clio After Hours sessions with Chef Stephanie Izard, singer and songwriter Ben Harper, singer and songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff, and DJ Questlove.

Join the Clio Customer Community

Don’t want the conference to be over? Still want to connect with amazing customers? Sign up to receive early access to the official Clio Customer Community!

Last but not least, as Jack mentioned in his final remarks for the conference, “If there’s one takeaway, take away this idea that you need to break down giant transformation into incremental smaller goals.” Little by little, we can work together to transform the legal industry and create a better normal.

This has been an interesting year so far, but we hope this year’s conference gave you a burst of inspiration and positivity to help carry you through.

Clio Cloud Conference 2020: Highlights From Jack Newton’s Keynote

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 17:24:18 GMT

With 4,500+ attendees from over 45 countries joining remotely, the eighth annual Clio Cloud Conference—and the first virtual one—is looking different this year. Acknowledging 2020’s sobering economic, political, and humanitarian challenges, Clio CEO and Co-Founder Jack Newton delivered an inspiring keynote that covered Clio’s vision for the future of legal services, recent additions to Clio’s product offering, and findings from the newly released 2020 Legal Trends Report.

The Reisman Awards

Every year, we’re proud to honor our customers and the amazing work they do in the legal community. Before starting his formal keynote, Jack revealed that Clio is delivering The Reisman Awards a little differently this year—he was proud to announce this year’s winners in his opening remarks. Also, Jack shared that throughout the Conference, The Reisman Award winners will be highlighted in featured spotlight sessions. A big virtual round of applause for this year’s winners:

Best Growth Story: Donato Law
Excellence in Client Service: Ceiba Fôrte Law Firm
Community Champion: Osborn Gambale Beckley & Budd PLLC
Legal Innovation: Roche Legal
Best New Law Firm: Law Offices of Kristen A Schneck, LLC

Learn more about winners of The Reisman Awards here.

Rethink and redefine how we deliver legal services

Starting his keynote by acknowledging the current economic, political, and humanitarian landscapes, Jack invited lawyers and law firms to use this key moment in history to pivot as a society and legal profession. He encouraged law firms to rethink the future of legal services, to experiment and innovate, and figure out a way to navigate and thrive against the uncertainty. Jack shared an impactful quote to drive home what he meant:

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

–Sonya Renee Taylor, award-winning poet, activist, and author

Create a VUCA Prime environment out of a period of uncertainty

How should law firms find a way to thrive against the enormous uncertainty of 2020 and beyond? By creating a VUCA Prime environment to take advantage of the uncertainty. VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—refers to coping in the chaotic and rapidly changing environment that businesses and organizations often find themselves in. VUCA Prime, on the other hand, is a model to help businesses and law firms thrive in a VUCA environment. It’s where law firms face an uncertain world by turning volatility to vision, uncertainty to understanding, complexity to clarity, and ambiguity to agility.

Why is creating a VUCA Prime environment key to thriving in 2020 and beyond? Despite its turbulence, a VUCA environment creates huge opportunities for innovation. Law firms need to recognize the amount of change happening in legal services—including massive shifts in client expectations—and adapt to meet those changes. This way, law firms will be able to find lasting success. As Jack shared:

“There’s an enormous opportunity to thrive on change. I know this is an enormously challenging environment to navigate. But there’s a concept called antifragility that Nassim Taleb introduced a few years ago. It is the concept that some things can benefit from big shocks. Some systems can thrive and grow when they’re exposed to volatility, disorder, and stressors. The VUCA Prime framework gives you the tools to thrive and succeed in this environment.”

Finding the fit between product and market

Jack invited attendees to view the access to justice gap—the inability for consumers to get the legal services they need—as primarily a product-market fit problem. The product is legal services, and the market is legal consumers who have a legal problem that needs solving. As Jack shared, 77% of legal problems don’t receive legal assistance. This highlights the extreme economic inefficiencies between the supply and demand for legal services.

What lawyers need to do now is to continue finding ways to bridge the gap between the legal product they provide (including both legal services and the client experience) and the market they serve, and build a blueprint for the future of their law firm.

The aggregation of marginal gains

The principle of the idea of the aggregation of marginal gains is that the adoption—and continuous application—of many small improvements will, over time, achieve meaningful, long-term change. The aggregation of marginal gains is a powerful framework that doesn’t just promise results—it opens up many paths to success. Any one action can create positive results down the road, but many actions can dramatically alter the course and speed toward improvement.

A positive tectonic shift amidst vast economic and human devastation

Against the enormous devastation of COVID-19, there is a positive tectonic shift. More than a decade’s worth of digital transformation has taken place in the last six months. For example, Zoom has gone from being virtually unknown to becoming a verb in the last six months. As Jack shared, 69% of consumers want attorneys to share documents with them online, and 37% of consumers now believe lawyers should be running their practice virtually. Jack also underscored that the most successful law firms have been aggressively pivoting and adapting to this new reality. A subset of consumers is similarly embracing and adapting to this new way of accessing/connecting their lawyers.

Highlights from the 2020 Legal Trends Report

As the legal industry’s most in-depth analysis into the state of the legal practice, the 2020 Legal Trends Report uncovers what successful firms are doing to overcome the challenges of the pandemic, and how the move to a digital era of legal has changed consumer expectations. Jack highlighted the following from the 2020 Legal Trends Report:

More consumers expect to need a lawyer soon. 23% of consumers say they expect to need a lawyer in the near future, compared to just 16% at the beginning of the pandemic. And 23% of consumers say they expect to need a lawyer for a COVID-19-related issue compared to just 13% at the beginning of the pandemic.
Consumers are putting off legal problems. 67% of consumers say they would put off a legal problem during the pandemic, creating a huge backlog of legal issues.
A significant portion of consumers think lawyers have stopped offering their services. In particular, at the beginning of the pandemic through April and May, 33% of consumers thought lawyers were not offering their services. In reality, only 2% of firms had stopped offering their services.
Consumers are using more and more technology in their everyday lives. 50% of consumers say they’re more comfortable with technology than they were before the pandemic.
Consumers expect lawyers to provide more remote legal services. 56% of consumers believe that most legal matters can be dealt with remotely, and would prefer to do it over a video call.
Consumers want lawyers to offer payment plans. 61% of consumers said they would not be able to afford to deal with a legal problem, and 66% of consumers say that if they had to hire a lawyer, they would want to pay their fees on some sort of payment plan. Jack emphasized that this does not mean that consumers necessarily want cheaper legal services. Instead, this data shows that traditional law firm fees are priced and packaged in a way that does not meet consumers’ needs. With electronic, fixed fee payment structures, you can track time, create and send a bill, and get paid quickly.

Download the 2020 Legal Trends Report.

The blueprint for your law firm of the future is cloud-based and client-centered

As Jack explained, the meaning of being cloud-based has shifted. No longer does it mean moving on-premise technology into the cloud. Now, being cloud-based means that your entire law firm has to operate in the cloud. This includes collaborating with colleagues, acquiring and connecting with clients, and getting paid all in the cloud. Moving to the cloud is no longer just innovative, it is now imperative to your law firm’s survival in this new environment. Jack acknowledged that although this goal won’t be realized overnight—it is what the legal industry is moving towards, and it is happening much faster in our current reality.

What’s new in Clio?

To better help lawyers connect with consumers and help them succeed as cloud-based, client-centered practices, Jack announced a number of new additions to Clio Grow and Clio Manage. With these new features, integrations, and updates, lawyers will be even better positioned to meet and service clients where and how they expect. Below are some highlights of what’s new and improved in Clio.

Clio for Clients (coming soon)

Jack also announced the upcoming Clio for Clients app, the first-of-its-kind for legal clients. This app is designed for clients to effortlessly and securely collaborate and communicate with lawyers, and easily share documents by using the built-in scanner. Once launched, your clients can simply download Clio for Clients from the App Store or Google Play.

Learn more about the upcoming Clio for Clients app.

*Clio for Clients is available for early access—exclusive to 2020 Clio Cloud Conference attendees. If you are a Conference attendee and the Primary Subscriber for your account, check your inbox for details and to opt in.

Google My Business integration

Now and in the future, consumers are going to be looking for lawyers online—specifically on Google, since Google is the market leader among search engines. As Jack shared, 57% of consumers rely heavily on online search, and 86% say Google is their first stop. Jack also highlighted that since consumers are also becoming increasingly reliant on Google reviews when choosing a lawyer, it is critical to create, update, and improve your Google My Business listing.

With Clio’s new Google My Business integration, lawyers can create a free Google Business Profile directly in Clio. Prospective clients can also reach out to your firm and book an appointment with a lawyer directly from your Google My Business listing—via Clio’s Scheduler feature. Lawyers can also get more business and more reviews directly in Google.

Learn more about Clio’s Google My Business integration.

Microsoft Teams integration

Law firms now need to be able to work remotely, and conversations that were previously held privately in person now need to continue in new channels that are secure and private. With Clio’s Microsoft Teams integration, law firms can stay connected and work collaboratively even in a distributed office environment. Microsoft Teams allows lawyers to deliver real-time collaboration where the work happens and see teams collaborating on a specific matter.

Learn more about Clio’s Microsoft Teams integration.

Zoom integration

Distributed or remote working teams of lawyers, paralegals, and assistants need an easy way to communicate with each other to ensure collaboration and productivity as they work together to complete legal work. Clio’s Zoom integration offers customers an easy way to communicate via video conference with colleagues and clients. This integration will enable law firms to:

Continue servicing clients and keep work moving ahead.
Offer a video conferencing solution that is easy for their clients to use so it is accessible to all.
Efficiently create and send meeting invites with the video conferencing details conveniently attached.

Learn more about Clio’s Zoom integration.

Dialpad integration

Instead of being tied to a physical phone system and landline—and manually recording and tracking time spent communicating on the phone—Clio’s Dialpad integration empowers your law firm to work remotely, while allowing you to rapidly scale the communication needs of your practice.

Jack explained that with Clio’s Dialpad Integration, Clio Manage will be able to automatically create records in the “communications” tab from phone calls made in either the Dialpad desktop or mobile application. This way, you can have all your calls show up directly in Clio Manage, and you can easily attach time to calls you’ve placed in Dialpad. Now, you can see what’s going on with phone communications in your firm at a glance

Learn more about Clio’s Dialpad integration.

Automated Bill Reminders

With the upcoming Automated Bill Reminders, lawyers can save time and get paid faster by automatically sending Outstanding Balances to their clients. Automated Bill Reminders will let lawyers bill recipients based on a customizable schedule.

Learn more about Automated Bill Reminders.

*Automated Bill Reminders is available for early access—exclusive to 2020 Clio Cloud Conference attendees. If you are a Conference attendee and the Primary Subscriber for your account, check your inbox for details and to opt in.

Updates and enhancements to Account Security

Jack was also excited to share that our new single sign-on functionality (SSO) lets you securely access Clio Manage, Clio Grow, and a subset of third party applications with a single username and password. With these updates and enhancements, you’ll no longer need to remember separate email addresses and passwords to access your Clio account.

For an added layer of security, Manage administrators can now also invite firm members to use two-factor authentication (2FA) and track who has it enabled from the new 2FA dashboard.

Learn more about the updates to Account Security.

Drive growth in your law firm flywheel with happy and returning customers

To close his opening keynote, Jack shared that law firms that lean into the cloud-based and client-centered way of thinking are better positioned to deliver better experiences to drive this growth flywheel—as explained in his book, The Client-Centered Law Firm. The goal is to provide a client-centered experience that results in more reviews, more referrals, and more new business for law firms—and even some returning clients. Law firms can do this by adapting and delivering experiences specifically calibrated to today’s changing consumer experience.

Order your copy of The Client-Centered Law Firm.

That’s it for Jack’s keynote! Stay tuned for more highlights from the 2020 Clio Cloud Conference.

How One Lawyer Practices While Traveling the Country in an RV

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 12:00:42 GMT

Is it really always possible to follow your dreams, even if those dreams involve taking on huge legal cases while traveling the country in an RV? For Crystal McDonough, owner of McDonough Law, the answer to that question is “yes.”

McDonough Law is based in Colorado, but they service clients in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska—and that’s just for now. We spoke with Crystal at the 2019 Clio Cloud Conference about how she designed the life she wanted around a successful practice, and how other lawyers can do it too. This is also the subject of Crystal’s course, Law Adventure.

While the pandemic may have put a damper on travel for now, Crystal’s spirit, clarity, and tenacity are certainly inspiring for lawyers looking for something better.

Teresa Matich:

So, officially, you’re based in Colorado. But you actually founded your law firm while traveling around the country in an RV. Can you tell us about that?

Crystal McDonough:

Yes, that is right. So I came to law a little bit later in life. I went to law school with three children. My youngest was three. They were three, five, and seven when I started law school.

So for me it was a challenge, to say the least, and so my husband and I determined that I would get through it as quickly as possible. The goal was to start a law firm and provide the flexibility and income that we needed for our family. All along we knew we wanted to travel and we wanted to experience as much as we could with our kids while we have our kids with us—because once they go off to college, they don’t want to hang out with mom and dad anymore. So I had this idea of traveling around the country in an RV and just exploring everything. Going to national parks, museums—anything we could see and experience. And we enjoy huge outdoor activities like mountain biking, kayaking, paddleboarding—anything we can do outside.

So once I graduated law school, I designed the firm around this concept of this flexible lifestyle and we bought an RV—a giant 40-foot fifth wheel—and took off and started exploring the country.

Teresa Matich:

Wow, that’s amazing. And what do people say when you tell them that that’s your life?

Crystal McDonough:

They’re very confused. They wonder, first of all, how I can work from the road. They want to know the logistics of, well, “How do you talk to your clients? How do you get your work done? How do you get paid? How do you …” There are all these questions that immediately come to their minds, but then the second comment is, “How cool! How do I do that?”

Teresa Matich:

So that’s cool. And you’re telling them exactly how to do that.

Crystal McDonough:

Yes. After about five years of getting phone calls, and emails, and Facebook messages from attorneys all over the country, I finally decided to go ahead and put my experiences into a book—not only to tell people about my experience, but also to help other attorneys achieve the same type of living the dream.

Teresa Matich:

That remains such a struggle for most attorneys. We know from previous Legal Trends Reports that such a high percentage of attorneys work outside of regular hours, and they say that it affects their mental health. So what do you think needs to change in the legal industry?

Crystal McDonough:

So, from my perspective, I think that it’s hard for attorneys, because you graduate from law school, you take the first job you can, and the jobs and your bosses and the path you take just kind of get defined for you—instead of you stepping back, defining your life and how you want it to be, and then designing that and then actually doing it.

Teresa Matich:

That’s so true. And what do your clients say about your law firm?

Crystal McDonough:

Most of our clients don’t even know that I travel.

Some of them do, and the ones that do think it’s really cool. And, in fact, I mean I’ve got clients all over the country. And so with some of our clients who’ve gotten to be friends, we’ll travel and we’ll go visit some of them in different locations. I’ve got a client in D.C., and we actually spent two weeks in D.C., staying at his flat in D.C. And it was a lot of fun. So a lot of our customers are business owners and they love the idea of flexibility. They understand the grind and they know that when you work hard you also need to play hard.

Teresa Matich:

So then what is your biggest challenge of running a remote law firm?

Crystal McDonough:

The biggest challenge was scalability. Because, when you’re a solo practitioner, it’s kind of easy. You run the show, you do all the work, you do everything. So if you take everything with you on the road and you travel or wherever you are, it doesn’t really matter. But when you start getting bigger than yourself, learning how to scale that and still maintain that lifestyle and that flexibility is the most challenging part.

It’s taken me years to refine it. You have to practice it. You have to continually work at it, because there are constantly new challenges. I mean, there are times when I have to miss the first leg of a trip because an emergency has come up and I’ve got to deal with it. Or there are times when I have to fly back from wherever my family is at the moment and deal with certain issues. So there are some tough things to overcome, but you can. You can certainly do it. It’s a matter of being creative and deliberate and just taking that step every day.

Teresa Matich:

It sounds like you can have that work-life balance, but it might not be exactly what you think it is. It might not be nine to five. You might have seasons of working very hard and seasons where you can take more trips, depending on how your business is going at your firm.

Crystal McDonough:

I actually find that I’m more productive when we’re on the road, because I don’t have as many distractions. When we’re on the road and we’re out in our RV, we live a simple life. We don’t have a lot of things around us. You have to be more purposeful with your day and your time. So without the distractions, I tend to get more work done, be more productive, and be more focused. When I’m in the office or when I’m at home working from my home office, there are all these distractions pulling at me constantly, all day, every day. So it’s an interesting experience when you do that, to see how it actually works.

Teresa Matich:

I guess you wouldn’t know until you’re in it.

Crystal McDonough:

That’s true. You don’t. The first time we took off in our RV for one month, my family was terrified. My kids thought, “Oh, we can’t do this. We don’t want to be gone from our friends this long.” And I told them, “Just trust me. Just trust me. It’s going to be great.” It was awesome. We went southeast. We started in Gulf Shores, Alabama and we essentially island-hopped all the way down to the Florida Keys. We were gone for an entire month. We stayed at these beautiful state parks all along the way. We kayaked every day. We mountain biked every day. And all of that while still practicing law and still working eight to 10 hours a day—I just worked around our activities.

Teresa Matich:

Amazing. And this type of practice of law that you’re doing, this doesn’t mean that you’re just doing some smaller unbundled services or something like that. You’re taking on really big opposition and things. Can you tell us about the type of law that you practice and what your typical clients and opposition would be?

Crystal McDonough:

Yes, so we practice some pretty substantial areas of law: energy, natural resources, business, and trust and estates. And within each of those buckets, as I like to call them, we have several sub practice areas. So we’re practicing in water, oil and gas, land-use easements, wind, solar, pipelines. We’re practicing in areas like business start-ups, all the way up to complex mergers and acquisitions. We’re also doing complex litigation related to business, and natural resources and energy. So we have this really fascinating practice and I’m never bored—let’s just say that.

Teresa Matich:

How do you collaborate with other people that work on these big projects while you’re traveling?

Crystal McDonough:

Most people communicate via email or phone. I mean, rarely do we have to have in-person meetings, but if we do, we’ll utilize an internal messaging system that we have in our firm that I’ve implemented, or we’ll use Skype or even Zoom with our clients if they want to.

But what I’ve done as we’ve scaled is I’ve had to maximize technology in every possible way. So I’m constantly looking for new technology that I can add to my team and to my firm so that we can communicate and collaborate, because collaboration on these big projects is critical. In most cases, you’ve got to have two attorneys working on a matter and, in some cases, three, because these projects are so big. And sometimes it’s an entire team effort and everybody’s working on a project.

Teresa Matich:

But it is possible to sort of have this life and practice law in a big way. I want to talk more about how other lawyers can do what you’ve done. And something that really stuck out to me when I read the first chapter and forward of your new book was that you decided you wanted to run your own law firm before you even took the LSAT. You also have a bit of a history in business. How much did that influence you? And is this still possible for other lawyers who maybe don’t have that background?

Crystal McDonough:

So I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I’ve always run my own businesses. I’ve owned multiple companies and had some really interesting opportunities, but I think that anyone can learn how to run and manage their law practice. Attorneys are not taught in law school how to be an entrepreneur and they’re not taught the business of law, but both of those things can be taught if somebody is willing to learn. And that’s the whole point of my book. I want to help other attorneys experience the same type of freedom and joy that I have in my life more personally and in my practice, because I’ve been able to blend the two into this adventure that just keeps me going every day.

Teresa Matich:

Okay. And what do you think needs to change in the legal industry to make this more possible?

Crystal McDonough:

Well, there’s still this huge traditional force that is driving law, and I don’t think that that’s going to change until law schools start bringing in some of these newer ideas of and newer practice models. I think that the industry as a whole needs to spend more time learning about these newer practice models and how they can be adopted, whether you’re a solo law firm or whether you’re a large firm. I think that they can be adopted. It’s just a matter of educating and then not being afraid to make a change, because we’re all afraid of change.

Teresa Matich:

Yeah, absolutely. What would be your advice for cultivating an openness to change and being able to embrace that after being in a culture that’s so traditional for so long?

Crystal McDonough:

I think that the bar associations in each state have a lot of power to create opportunities for attorneys through CLEs and other training opportunities and mentoring programs to teach other attorneys how they can achieve a work-life balance that’s created around a specific design for their life and their practice. Because it doesn’t have to be one or the other. It can be both, and it should be both.

Teresa Matich:

Right. You talk a lot about designing the life you want. Can you tell me more about that?

Crystal McDonough:

So when I’m mentoring other attorneys, the first thing I ask them is, “If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? Like anywhere in the world. I don’t care where it is.” And I tell them the story of one of my friends who lives in Morocco. She had this idea that she wanted to raise her kids in Morocco on the ocean, learning new languages. And she did. She just picked up her family. They sold everything in Texas and they moved to Morocco, and her family has lived there for seven years. Her kids speak three languages, they live on the beach, and she runs a really successful law practice. She’s a solo practitioner and she loves it. She loves it.

So if you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? Because I think as lawyers we’re so programmed to think logically all the time. We need to let ourselves dream. It’s okay to dream. And so dream—dream as big as you possibly can. And if you have trouble dreaming, get your partner or your friends, and have a glass of wine and sit down and start dreaming. Where do you want to most live? And that usually gets the juices flowing and then people start talking, saying things like “Well, if I could do anything, maybe I’d live in France and I would do social security law.”

And once people start understanding that it’s okay to dream, the next step that I always worked with when I’m working with attorneys is, “Okay, now let’s pinpoint that down.” And we look at what they enjoy in law. We look at the things that they’ve enjoyed in law school. Then we look at their personal lives. What do they enjoy in their personal lives? And what would they like to experience? And then we kind of pinpoint and we hone and we do this whittling process—and it’s a process. Then we get to a succinct phrase or sentence that defines their dream, their dream life. And then from there we work towards building a plan to actually get them there.

Teresa Matich:

Okay. Tell me more about the plan.

Crystal McDonough:

So it’s probably simpler than most people realize, but the plan is, generally, step one: All right, we need to look at the practice area that they want to work in. And if it’s not something that they’re currently working in, then we need to learn that practice area, find mentors and learn about it. I find that attorneys are practicing law that they may not enjoy sometimes. They would love to try new things, but either their law firm won’t let them or they’re afraid to learn new things. So the first step is looking at the areas of law that they want to work in and start learning those areas.

I have a whole process to help them really become proficient in those areas and work with them. And then we work on their personal lives. We look to see what changes we need to make in their personal lives to help continue this design. And we end up with an actual map or a path that has specific steps. Some steps could take a day, other steps could take weeks to months to accomplish, but it’s part of the process. And at the end of the process, their dream may change and shift a little bit along the way as they walk through the process and they learn how it works for them. And there are always tweaks, you have to be flexible, but that’s kind of what we do.

Teresa Matich:

How quickly do you find that attorneys pick up the entrepreneurial side of things and the entrepreneurial spirit that you have?

Crystal McDonough:

Well, I’ve actually found that that is harder for them to pick up. Because again, law school trains us so much in the theory of law and not the practice of it. And that seems to transcend in the entrepreneurial side, in the business side. So the business side, I spend a lot of time teaching them how to read data and graphs. And how to understand things like, what does their profit-and-loss look like? Some attorneys have never even looked at a profit-and-loss statement.

So teaching them how to understand the financial aspects of their firm and then turning that into a metrics system that they can use to measure their success and then measure their growth and plan for their growth is critical. That is probably the hardest part for the attorneys to learn, but they like learning it because no one’s ever taught it to them before.

Teresa Matich:

Interesting. Okay. What advice would you give to a lawyer who is hearing all this and maybe they want to start a remote firm of their own, other than reading your book?

Crystal McDonough:

I think the first thing anyone who wants to do this should do is, first of all, dream big. Define their dream first, and then from there find a mentor who’s doing what they want to do. Because I find that attorneys are very generous for the most part, though there are always a few curmudgeons out there. But find someone who is doing what you want to do and learn from them. Take everything you can from them. Read everything you can read. I’m constantly reading books and blogs and I’m learning constantly. It never stops.

Teresa Matich:

Absolutely. Just a couple more questions left, but I’m also curious what has been your proudest moment of running a law firm remotely?

Crystal McDonough:

My proudest moment was probably last year when my daughter was writing a paper. She started college early. We homeschool. That’s how we’ve been able to travel. So my two older children are already in college. They started their junior year and my now 16-year-old daughter had a project for writing last year for a college class and she said, “Mom, I’m going to write about you. Is that okay?” And she said, “You’re my hero. Everything you’ve done, you’ve taught me how to work hard and chase my dreams and never give up.” I mean, as a mom it doesn’t get any better than that, because I love my practice and I love my clients, but my family comes first. So that has probably been one of my proudest moments.

Teresa Matich:

That’s really inspiring. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you so much for joining me today, Crystal.

Crystal McDonough:

Thank you!

The Ethics of Law Firms Accepting Credit Cards

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 16:34:14 GMT

In 1969, when the American Bar Association’s Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility first looked at whether a law firm could accept payment via credit cards, they could not have been more disdainful.

The payment of legal fees using credit cards deemed unacceptable. The committee found it was ‘wrong’ to put professional services in the same category as ‘sales of merchandise and sales of nonprofessional services.’ (ABA Committee on Ethics and Prof. Responsibility, informal opn. No. 1120 (1969)).

This opinion set back solo and small law firm finances for the next 50 years.

So, today, do lawyers take credit cards? Even though the opinion was reversed in 1974 (ABA Formal Opinion 338, dated November 16, 1974), lawyers have been slow to accept payment of legal fees from credit cards. In a 2018 survey of law firms by Clio, checks were still the payment method most accepted by firms—44 years after the ABA approved credit card payments. This is in spite of checks being eclipsed by payments being made with credit and debit cards by hundreds of billions of dollars across other industries.

Still, many lawyers are accepting credit card payments—and are getting faster and collecting more because of it. In this article, I’ll take a close look at the ethics of accepting credit card payments for lawyers in every state, some specifics to be aware of, and how to manage them.

Read it through to the end, and you’ll feel secure about ethically accepting credit card payments at your law firm.

Credit card payments vs Check payments: Telling statistics

The US Federal Reserve has tracked payment methods since the year 2000. Checks accounted for nearly $43 billion in transaction value that year. Credit cards and debit cards for only $23.9 billion in that same year. In 2018, the most recent year of published data from the Federal Reserve, checks had declined to $14.5 billion in volume. Credit and debit cards have exploded to $117.4 billion. The use of checks has declined 118%. The use of credit cards has grown 392%!

Law firms not accepting credit cards have cut themselves off from a large pool of consumers.

Why don’t lawyers accept credit cards?

Part of the reason lawyers have not accepted credit cards is that they have very flexible uses. Not every state ethics committee has equally addressed all the issues surrounding this flexibility. Credits cards are just a funds transfer tool. Clients can use credit card charges to pay outstanding invoices, reimburse law firms for expenses, and deposit funds into a firm’s trust account. Lawyers can use charging capabilities to set up payment plans, create flexible billing options, and offer affordable options to clients. Because of these multiple uses, lawyers may need to consider how they are using credit cards before starting to accept them.

In general, there are four ethical questions surrounding the acceptance of credit cards by law firms.

Can I accept payment for legal fees and expenses via a credit card?
Can I accept the advance payment of fees via a credit card?
Can I pass a surcharge to my client to compensate for the processing fees charged by some credit card processors?
Can I set up recurring charges to customers once they have stored a credit card on file with my law firm?

State by state: Ethics opinions on lawyers accepting credit cards

Having researched the ethics opinions for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, you can see the status of your state’s ethical opinions surrounding credit cards here.

Only four states have issued ethics opinions expressly permitting law firms to accept credit cards in all four of the hypotheticals listed above. Four states have not addressed any of these ethical concerns.
Ten states have issued ethics opinions on accepting credit cards for fees and expenses, but have not addressed whether a firm can accept credit card transfers as an advanced fee deposit.
Eight states have ethics opinions forbidding passing credit card surcharges to clients.

So, do lawyers take credit cards?

The short answer is, “yes.” Almost every jurisdiction in the US has come out in favor of law firms accepting credit card payments for legal fees and expenses. Following the American Bar Association’s adoption of the Code of Professional Responsibility (the predecessor to the current Model Rules of Professional Conduct) in 1969, a cascading number of ethics opinions were published throughout the states endorsing the acceptance of credit cards.

At first, these opinions are products of their time. Accepting credit cards was treated as shameful conduct. Lawyers were not able to advertise that they accepted credit cards. For example, lawyers could not display promotional materials provided by a credit card company, ‘‘except possibly a small insignia to be tactfully displayed in the attorney’s office.’ Those Visa and Mastercard stickers on the doors to most retail businesses could not be displayed under these ethics opinions. Nor could firms participate in a directory of firms accepting credit cards.

Fast-forward to today, when Bates v. State Bar of Arizona has changed all that. Freed from many of the constraints on lawyer-advertising, firms can now advertise that they accept credit cards. In states that have not refreshed their ethics opinions on the subject, lawyers may still need to inform their clients about the chance of interest being charged on their payments.

Credit Cards, Advance Fee Deposits, and Trust Accounts

Ethics committees were quick to approve accepting credit cards in payment of legal fees. Those same committees have been slower to approve accepting credit card payments into trust accounts.

There are good reasons to accept advance fee deposits into trust. Clio’s 2017 Legal Trends Report found that firms that accept pre-payment of legal fees into trust accounts have a 18% higher realization rate, and a 15% higher collection rate. Firms that collected fees up front had an average value per case nearly twice that of those that did not.

When advance fee deposits are made via a credit card payment, there does exist the potential for ethical dilemmas.Credit cards have two functions that may impact deposits into trust:

Chargebacks
Processing fees

Chargebacks

The first issue when accepting credit card fees into trust is the issue of chargebacks. Lawyers are to hold client-entrusted funds inviolate. No other entity should be able to access funds held in trust.

If a client disputes a charge on their credit card, credit card processors will attempt to claw back money deposited in a disputed transaction. This means the credit card company will be accessing the law firm’s trust account.

Worse, if the funds in dispute have been already transferred, the credit card company may be seizing trust funds that belong to another client. Suddenly the law firm has two angry clients and an ethics complaint brewing.

How to solve

There are a variety of suggestions from ethics committees on how to prevent chargebacks from being an ethical dilemma:

Separate trust accounts:Firms may set up separate trust accounts for clients depositing funds via credit card. Firms may keep funds in trust until not only have they been earned, but the time period in which a client may initiate a chargeback has passed. This varies by credit card provider but is generally around sixty days.

Pull credit card fees from operating accounts. Firms may also contract with credit card processors which have a provision that chargebacks and processing fees are subtracted from an operating account instead. Having such an agreement protects a law firm from having chargebacks creating ethical violations, as the seized funds would not be a client’s but the law firm’s.

LawPay, a legal-specific credit card processor, uses this approach. Trust fund deposits remain untouched, with firms providing a separate account in the event of a payment dispute.

Processing fees

The second issue is processing fees. Most credit card processors charge a percentage amount per transaction, subtracting this amount from the net total deposited to the merchant. Most charge between 2-3% of a transaction. A client may deposit $1,000 into their law firm’s trust account. The lawyer receives only $980 to deposit into trust. Twenty dollars has been collected as a processing fee. This could create ethical issues if the client was relying on the full total being available for bills or expenses related to their matter.

How to solve

An attorney can skirt this problem by covering the cost of the processing fee themselves or passing a surcharge for the amount to their client.

Who Pays Credit Card Processing Fees in Legal Billing? Charging for Charging.

It is ethical in some jurisdictions for lawyers to pass on credit card processing fees to clients, but overall, it is not recommended. A reversal of previous ethics opinions has happened. It is better to accept these fees as the cost of doing business.

Processing fees may not seem significant when they are part of small purchases. 2% of the purchase price of a candy bar does not feel big. 2% of a $10,000 bill will definitely feel significant. (It is not significant. 2% of $10,000 is only $200.)

Aside from ethical issues, processing fees are probably the biggest reason lawyers have avoided accepting credit cards.

In jurisdictions that have adopted the language in the ABA’s 1974 ethics opinion permitting credit card payments, passing along surcharges may not be allowed.

The original language reads,

4. A lawyer shall not encourage participation in the plan, but his position must be that he accepts the plan as a convenience for clients who desire it; and the lawyer may not because of his participation increase his fee for legal services rendered to the client.

5. Charges made by lawyers to clients pursuant to a credit card plan shall be only for services actually rendered or cash actually paid on behalf of a client.

If your jurisdiction’s current ethics opinion contains this language, passing a surcharge onto your client may be an ethical violation. A charge would be either an increase in fees different than those paid by other means, or a charge for something other than fees or cash paid by a client. In either case, a surcharge is not ethical.

Other states, like Connecticut, expressly forbid surcharges. Lawyers are to treat credit card processing fees as ‘as an overhead cost or ordinary cost of doing business.’ When depositing advance payments into trust, law firms in that state must immediately deposit their own funds into the trust account to cover any charges that may have been incurred and deducted from the client’s payment.

Some states expressly permit passable surcharges for credit card fees. If a law firm is passing along the fees, Lawyers should notify their client as part of their written engagement letter or fee agreement that these charges will be imposed. Clients need to know what will be the basis for calculating these charges. In order for a charge to be reasonable, it should be no more than the actual processing fee amount.

Even in jurisdictions where passable surcharges are allowed, many ethics opinions recommend not imposing them. A reversal of previous ethics opinions has happened. It is now considered mercantile to chase after credit card fees. Just accept the fees as part of doing business, as these opinions urge.

Using Client Credit Card Data for Recurring Charges

Once a client has paid one invoice or trust deposit with a credit card, may the law firm continue to add new charges to the card? Eight states have ethics opinions that expressly permit recurring charges. No state has an ethics opinion forbidding repeating charges.

Some of these ethics opinions envision a lawyer imposing time limits for paying invoices. When the time limit is exceeded, the lawyer would like to charge the client’s credit card for the outstanding amount. Others simply anticipate automatic charges when bills are issued. In each of these opinions, advanced notice to the client is necessary at multiple times.

Clients should be notified when the credit card number is collected that it may be used for additional charges. Clients should also be notified prior to an additional charge being levied.

The basis for the second notice is to allow the client to make payment arrangements with different funds. A client’s economic situation may not support unanticipated payments coming from a debit card or credit card. Lawyers should be mindful of the client’s circumstances and let clients decide if the charge should continue.

Payment plans are one form of recurring credit card charges that can be useful for many law firms. Clio Payments has payment plans built in. Firms can set a total amount owed, and then automate recurring billing and credit card payments from clients. Clio’s Legal Trends research has found that 72% of consumers would prefer to pay their legal fees via payment plans.

What If My State Has No Applicable Ethics Opinion?

Do not assume that a lack of ethics opinions in your state means that you cannot accept credit cards. Every state in the US has adopted the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Most states have an ethical analysis that is intentionally similar to others reviewing the same rules. Citations to external jurisdiction’s approaches are common as supporting evidence for the opinion’s conclusions. If your state does not have an explicit ethics opinion, look to neighboring jurisdictions.

It is important to mention that most states’ rules are broadly permissive. When something is not permitted, such guidance is narrowly tailored to very specific actions. An absence of guidance is not evidence of an action being unethical. Lawyers can proceed with credit cards, provided they follow the Rules of Professional Conduct as written in their state. If you still feel a use case may be questionable, reach out to ethics hotlines available to you for direct guidance.

Another source of ethical compliance help may be your state bar’s member benefits. LawPay, the payment processor powering Clio Payments, is offered as a member benefit in every state. Their entire feature set might not be appropriate for your jurisdiction, but the inclusion of them as a bar member benefit means that you can safely choose them as a provider.

Compliance with Credits Cards Beyond Ethics Opinions

Accepting credit cards is not just an ethical issue, but also a compliance one. Businesses accepting credit cards are asked to comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards put forth by major processors. For businesses accepting credit card payments, there are five compliance goals suggested by the industry:

Build and maintain a secure network.
Protect Cardholder Data.
Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program.
Implement Strong Access Control Measures.
Maintain an Information Security Policy.

By powering Clio Payments with LawPay technology, Clio-using law firms are getting assistance in meeting these PCI goals. Clio and LawPay are helping build and maintain a secure network that protects cardholder data for you. Combine that with the security and strong access authentication features that Clio offers with user management, law firms using this system get a boost in meeting their PCI obligations.

Electronic payments are a permanent fixture for law firms

Despite a late start, 53% of law firms are new equipped to accept electronic payments. Consumers adoption of electronic payment methods is finally starting to penetrate the legal industry. Mostly this is due to client demand. Clio’s Legal Trends research shows that 50% of clients are more likely to hire a lawyer who takes electronic payments, 47% are more likely to hire a lawyer who accepts automated payments or fund transfers, and 40% would never hire a lawyer who didn’t take credit or debit cards. Accepting credit and debit cards as payment sources will enhance your law firm’s collection rate, and ability to attract paying customers. If ethical concerns have been preventing you from accepting credit card payments, use this guide to determine where your state stands and begin moving your firm’s billing into the modern age.

Note: The information in this article applies only to US practices. This post is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, business, or accounting advice.

A Guide to Document Automation for Lawyers

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 12:00:37 GMT

Legal professionals know that lawyering often involves tedious paperwork. That’s when document automation (also known as document assembly) and management come in. Document automation allows lawyers like you to save time—in particular, time spent on creating documents—by using information already collected about your client’s case to populate letters and forms. This can include information such as the name and address of your client, details about the opposing party, and key dates. Once a document is created, it’s saved and stored in a document management system. This way, the document is easily accessible, well organized, and secured for future access, edits, and sharing.

Document automation for lawyers is essential for improving and optimizing the way lawyers run their practice. This is because document automation streamlines the monotonous task of creating form letters, agreements, motions, pleadings, and more. Meanwhile, document management ensures those letters and forms are stored safely and conveniently.

What is the best type of document automation and management software system?

There are many different document automation and management software available to lawyers and legal professionals. There are two main types of software when it comes to document automation for lawyers: Standalone document automation software and legal practice management software with built-in document automation and management features.

Legal practice management software with built-in document automation and management features

When choosing the right legal practice management software for your firm, it’s important to consider how it will incorporate your document automation and management tools. Ideally, lawyers need to be able to easily originate, edit, and share documents from one location, like Clio Manage. This means having a “one-stop-shop” for all your document automation and management needs. For routine tasks like document creation and document assembly, the last thing you want to do is have to waste time switching between different software.

Standalone, third-party document software

For example, there are many standalone software available that lets you merge letters using prompts to input the information as you go. One issue with this is it doesn’t allow you to pull information from a database where the data is already stored.

Other examples include pulling information from a Microsoft Word document or Excel file, but this can be extremely complicated to set up and managing matters within excel sheets is not ideal. By storing documents in a standalone, third-party document management software, you cannot tag and easily associate those documents, letters, or forms with the matter that they belong to.

How to choose the right document automation software for your law firm

Determine your needs

There are four things to keep in mind if you’re a lawyer looking for the right software, for document automation for lawyers at your firm:

1. Budget

An important consideration with any decision is cost. When deciding on software for document automation for lawyers, keep in mind the other benefits that should be included with the cost. Is the software bundled with any other features? For example, is the document automation management software coupled with a document management system? You’ll save on cost by pursuing a system that incorporates different features, like Clio does.

2. The cost of switching to the new software

The cost of switching to the new software is the overall amount of time spent switching between different software or applications. If the document automation software you’re considering doesn’t integrate directly with your document management system or your legal practice management software, then you might lose time changing back and forth from each application.

3. Time and effort involved with the setup

Time is money, and lawyers understand this sentiment better than most. That’s why lawyers need to select a document automation system that is easy and intuitive to set up.

Consider the following questions as you explore different software for document management for lawyers at your firm:

How much time are you willing to commit to setting up the document automation software?
How much do you have to be involved in this process?
Will you need to hire someone to set this up for you, or can you or someone in your office handle this?
If you need to hire someone, what will that additional cost be?

4. How the document management system fits with your existing workflow

Lawyers with existing applications, operational processes, tasks, deadlines, and procedures in place need to examine how well a particular document automation software will mesh with their existing workflow. Software that fits well with your existing setup is necessary to keep your practice running smoothly.

Core features of good document automation software for law firms

Finding the right document automation software for lawyers can help you grow your firm—by streamlining the process of originating many different kinds of letters, forms, and other legal documents. Some core deciding features of a good document automation software should include the following:

Store an unlimited amount of legal documents

Lawyers have a lot on their minds as it is, the last thing they need is the lingering thought of a data limit and the concern of potentially running out of space. Many document automation software and document management systems available today charge by the amount of space used. This can become very expensive, very quickly. The right document automation software should offer unlimited storage and provide you with the peace of mind that comes with it.

Find files quickly

Attorneys need to be able to search for documents with ease and speed—this is a must-have feature of any software meant for document automation for lawyers. Apart from searching folders and titles, a good document management system should be able to search text within the documents themselves. It should also be able to find text or phrases within any PDF or Word document quickly and easily.

Let you use electronic signatures

Connecting and communicating with clients remotely is becoming the norm. Collecting signatures without needing to send physical documents or being in the same room as the client is essential. The perfect complement to document automation for lawyers and a key feature of any good document management software is the ability to quickly and easily send out newly created documents for signature collection.

Lets you access your documents remotely

Oftentimes, lawyers need to access their documents remotely and at any time. If your legal documents are stored on your computer at the office, or on local servers within your firm, it can be very difficult—or impossible—to access these files remotely. Finding a cloud-based software that allows you to access your documents remotely while at your home office or in court is an exceedingly important feature of any document automation or document management program.

Lets you prepare common/routine legal documents in seconds

This is an often-overlooked requirement of any good document automation software: The ability to quickly merge and populate a letter or form and export that information into a PDF or Word document within seconds.

File documents directly from the source

To get the most out of your document automation software, it’s best to find a solution that incorporates both automation and management under the same hood. This creates less work for lawyers by automatically filing documents in the correct place after they have been created.

Capture billable time from any document

By syncing your document automation and management software with your legal practice management software, you can easily bill time for a document. A good document automation software should be able to quickly bill time to any matter or client for any document associated with that matter or client.

Sync, share, and track documents easily

Lawyers should be able to easily send documents and track their use in a secure place. A feature that every document automation software should include is the ability to share letters and forms with clients and co-counsel, and sync any changes made along the way.

What is the best document automation software for law firms?

The best document automation software for law firms is one that includes the core features listed above. It should be able to store an unlimited amount of legal documents, find files quickly, let you use electronic signatures, access your documents remotely, file documents directly from the source, capture billable time from any document, and sync, share and track documents easily. This suite of core components makes the software much more powerful when combined with other features. Clio is a legal practice management software that does just that; it’s for this reason that makes it the best document automation software available to law firms today.

Document automation tools

Standalone document automation software such as Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Law Cloud have their strengths and weaknesses. These systems share the benefit of automating legal letters on a granular level. One example includes customizing pronouns when referring to a male or female client. However, this hyper-detailed amount of customization can become a hindrance to the setup and usage process as it can be very complicated.

Document management systems

Due to their popularity and widespread use among legal professionals, document management systems such as Google Drive, OneDrive, and Netdocs integrate with many other systems. When paired with third-party programs, they can provide a host of additional features as an extension of their software. This makes them much more as a powerful document management system than if they were to remain a standalone product.

However, many of these programs operate by charging for the amount of space you use. This can become expensive for lawyers with a lot of documents and files. Furthermore, when a standalone software is just linked to a third-party program, you can lose the ability to tag and easily associate documents and files with the matter of their origin.

Workflow automation tools

With workflow automation tools such as Zapier and PieSync, two separate programs can “talk to each other”—even if they don’t natively “talk” to each other. These programs help make up for the shortcomings or missing features of any cloud software. Zapier and PieSync do this by linking up with another software that is capable of handling those specific missing features. If configured correctly, these tools can help lawyers create some amazing automated processes. When they don’t work correctly, or if the link stops working, they can become a headache. This is especially true of software syncs that you rely on on a daily basis. When they stop working, your workflow can grind to a halt.

E-filing tools

Tools like InfoTrack, NextChapter, and Alt Legal can help simplify the e-filing process for lawyers. When integrated with document automation and management systems, these applications can expedite the court filing process by easily sending and receiving documents from one place. The drawbacks to these applications are the added cost to your existing legal practice management or document management budget.

Practice management tools

Clio Grow is a client intake-oriented legal practice management software that helps lawyers track, organize, and manage clients. Coupled with Clio Manage, the companion software that handles the case as it moves to a matter or litigation, this suite effortlessly handles the life of a case from cradle to grave while offering an abundance of industry-leading features.

Implement the right legal document automation software for a more efficient law firm

Document automation for lawyers may seem like a routine task. But lawyers looking to improve their practice need to consider the importance of automated legal documents. By implementing the right software for law firm document automation, lawyers can automate and significantly improve the process of creating documents, and more. A good document automation and management software includes the following:

Store an unlimited amount of legal documents
Find files quickly
Let you use electronic signatures
Lets you access your documents remotely
Lets you prepare common/routine legal documents in seconds
File documents directly from the source
Capture billable time from any document
Sync, share, and track documents easily

The best document automation software should offer the core suite of features mentioned above. When choosing the best document automation software for your law firm, consider how it integrates with your legal workflows. From document automation tools and document management systems to workflow automation and e-filing tools, Your chosen software should make running your firm easier, by being a “one-stop-shop” for all your document automation, management, and legal practice management needs.

Note: The information in this article applies only to US practices. This post is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, business, or accounting advice.

Clio This Month: Updated Intake Forms + Enhanced Account Security

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 12:00:41 GMT

Summer’s over, and the changing of seasons means an opportunity to refocus and recharge. This month at Clio we’ve been busy with plenty of updates to help your firm stay productive, secure, and organized as you get down to business this fall. There are new ways to streamline your intake forms, updates and enhancements to your Clio account security, resources to help you learn more about client-centered lawyering, and much more. Read on for what’s new at Clio this month.

Multiple contacts per intake form in Clio Grow

Client intake isn’t always the most straightforward process, and sometimes it involves more than one contact. To help you stay organized and further streamline your client intake process, Clio Grow’s latest functionality now lets you add multiple contacts to a single intake form.

If you’re doing intake for a new legal matter that involves multiple contacts, you can now capture details for each contact, and have them associated with the matter.

You can add multiple contacts to both public and non-public intake forms:

Public forms: Each contact on the form will be created as a new contact and will be associated with the new matter.
Non-public forms: You can select which contact (or contacts) from the existing matter should be updated by mapping them to the contact fields on the form.

And, if you want to collect custom field data, questions on the intake form can be mapped to any of the custom fields for each contact.

Learn more about multiple contacts per intake form in Clio Grow.

Updates + enhancements to account security at Clio

Clio has grown from a single product into a suite of software solutions, and—as our product solutions have evolved—we’re prioritizing accessibility, security, and overall ease of use for you as you work between Clio applications. With that in mind, we have a few upcoming updates and enhancements to your Clio account security:

My Account

We’ll be introducing a new home for your user security-related settings—My Account.

My Account will also feature updated password criteria to help you make sure that all users are using strong passwords for security.

Single Sign-On

We’re also working on creating single sign-on (SSO) functionality for the Clio Suite. SSO will let you securely access, and work between, all of your Clio products—while using a single username and password.

Firm Security Tab

We’re making it easier to see who has two-factor authentication enabled at your firm. The newly added “Firm Security” tab in Settings/Security in Clio Manage displays the two-factor authentication (2FA) status for your firm’s active users. If someone at your firm does not have 2FA enabled, admins can use the “Invite to enable 2FA” link to send that user an email requesting that they enable 2FA for their account.

Design your law firm’s new normal

Dealing with the unpredictability of 2020 has been a challenge for everyone, and many law firms are countering these times of uncertainty with innovation—but how can you know if your innovative ideas will really work for your firm? From adding a new practice area to creating a new service offering, change can bring success—but, if it’s not the right fit, it can also sink your firm.

To help you separate ideas that work on paper only from ideas that will actually be successful in your specific situation, legal industry expert Mike Whelan, Jr.’s new e-book, Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal, walks you—step-by-step—through how to test your ideas before you invest in them.

The free e-book provides a model to help you to effectively (and quickly) assess potential new service ideas for your law firm. You’ll learn how to:

Brainstorm—without burning out
Stress-test each idea from every angle
Check whether your idea will be profitable

You can get your free copy of Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal here.

And, while we’re talking about Mike Whelan, Jr., here’s an important reminder: Don’t forget to get your passes for next month’s Clio Cloud Conference ASAP—Mike, along with many other incredible industry experts, will be speaking at the conference!

The Client-Centered Law Firm: Audiobook now available

It’s going to be a busy autumn, and finding the time to sit down with a book—even one offering the valuable insights your law firm needs to succeed in today’s legal marketplace—can be a challenge. That’s why this announcement is perfectly timed: The book on client-centered lawyering, The Client-Centered Law Firm, is now available in audiobook form!

Whether you haven’t had a chance to read it yet or you want to enjoy it again in the convenience of audio form, it’s now easier than ever to take in the bestselling book by legal tech expert and Clio CEO and Co-founder, Jack Newton.

What will you hear in The Client-Centered Law Firm?

Jack’s book serves as a practical blueprint to help law firms access untapped demand in the legal market by giving legal customers the experience they expect in today’s experience-driven world. The Client-Centered Law Firm shows you how to deliver client-centered experiences, improve internal processes, and enhance profitability.

Available in both paperback, e-book, and—now—audiobook formats, The Client-Centered Law Firm offers:

The what, why, and how of running a client-centered practice
Examples from law firms
Practical strategies for implementation

Learn more about The Client-Centered Law Firm, and get your copy today.

Innovate Legal Presents: A Course in Client-Centered Lawyering

Want to learn even more about client-centered lawyering, and how it can be useful for your firm? Clio’s Course in Client-Centered Lawyering will help you learn what it takes to create a client-centered law firm and explain the benefits a client-centered practice can yield for your firm and clients.

The first three sessions are available now on demand, so you can catch up in time for the final session (on September 30) on implementing a client-centered approach.

Session 1: Introducing The Client-Centered Law Firm
Session 2: Understanding Your Client Journey
Session 3: Designing Client-Driven Experiences
Session 4 (Available September 30): How to Implement a Client-Centered Model at Your Firm

The best part: Attend all four sessions (live, or on-demand), and you’ll be able to get Client-Centered Certified—you’ll get a badge (like the one above) to put on your law firm’s website to let your clients know you’re putting their needs first.

Improving the Client Experience With Client-Centered Lawyering

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 12:00:06 GMT

What does it take to create a great client experience? For legal clients, as in any industry, this means providing clients with exactly what they’re looking for, and delivering their legal experience in the most seamless, effortless way possible.

Lori Beight and Kristin Gaston understand this well. They’re the owners of Cascade Legal Planning in Portland, Oregon, and the winners of the 2019 Reisman Award for Excellence in Client Service. We spoke to Lori and Kristin at the 2019 Clio Cloud Conference to find out how investing in the client experience has led them to a profitable and successful practice.

Teresa Matich:

Cascade Legal was our Reisman Award winner for Excellence in Client Service. I’m wondering if you can define what does good client service and creating a good client experience mean to you?

Lori Beight:

I think it means making it easy for clients to get the help that they need and to get explanations for how things are going to be done—and when—with regards to their legal matter. In particular, I think for us as estate planners, removing barriers to getting into the office in the first place is important. People don’t want to come in and have those really challenging conversations about estate planning. They delay that work. So, a big part of it, I think for us, is making it fun—and it is fun actually. We love our work. And they’re really important conversations, so making it easier for clients to talk about it is fun for us.

Teresa Matich:

You said something really interesting there, about getting people what they need. Jack was talking about that in his keynote—the importance of product-market fit and connecting clients with the kind of experience and service that they want. How do you see that playing into what you do and your business model?

Kristin Gaston:

I would say it’s really important to be a good listener. Clients don’t always know exactly what they need when they come in, but they know how they want to feel when they’re done. So, if we can really focus on listening to what they’re concerned about, then we’re able to help them find the right solution. It all begins with just giving them an opportunity and a safe place to really allow us to listen to their story.

Teresa Matich:

And how important is empathy to that process?

Lori Beight:

Empathy is essential. It’s funny because one of the presenters today was talking about the importance of stories, and, in our work, stories are 100% of how we spend our time. We’re finding out about people’s families and their history and their hopes and their passions, and then helping them put together an estate plan that really reflects their values. So, being able to draw that information out does require a tremendous amount of empathy.

When you ask good questions to learn about someone’s life and the things that they care about and then you reflect back to them, “this is what I heard you say” or, “these are the things that I’m hearing you prioritize,” then they really feel heard—and then they know that you’re going to be able to put together a plan that’s going to work for them.

Kristin Gaston:

And I think the clients really understand and feel that as soon as they start working with us. We don’t want to “educate” them on what they need to do. But, by our ability to let them talk and find the right solution, it’s really all about us having empathy for their story—not us teaching them what they need to do.

Teresa Matich:

You’re both talking a lot about listening to people. Do you think that’s something that the broader legal industry misses? Do you think you’re doing something different here, or is that essential to the practice of law?

Kristin Gaston:

I think there’s been a shift. I personally have a colleague who’s introducing more listening-type elements in her teaching as a law school professor, and it was met with a little bit of resistance. But I think that it’s definitely been a shift for attorneys who are focusing on the client perspective to have the client really feel heard, and then they feel satisfied at the end, because they have been able to tell us what’s important and we can reflect back to them that we have heard them.

Lori Beight:

I will also say that listening to clients well is time-consuming. So, I think that’s one of the things that has been a barrier in a traditional law firm. Lawyers want to spend time telling the client about the law, and they don’t spend enough time asking questions and listening. And then the clients, if they’re being billed in six-minute increments, they’re watching the clock and they don’t want to pay more than they have to. So they’re not as forthcoming, they don’t want to spend a bunch of time talking about themselves and their situation. They want to be as concise and factual as possible, and so you miss a lot of what’s really important. We find something like flat-fee billing is one of the ways that we remove that barrier, so that clients and their lawyers can get to know each other.

Teresa Matich:

One of the big services that you offer your clients and that you talked about in your Reisman application was that you can create wills very quickly for end-of-life patients who haven’t thought of it ahead of time, sometimes in as little as 24 hours. How important is it for you to be able to provide that service?

Lori Beight:

I think that’s one of the most important things we do. It’s a small portion of what we do—we like to be more proactive and have plans in place for family as well before it comes to that. But to be able to be responsive to needs when someone is in crisis mode, that’s the highest level of satisfaction I think that we get in this job. We’re able to quickly and effectively put together a plan and get out and do a bedside signing for someone who is in hospice. Our whole team, I think, comes away from an experience like that really understanding how important this work is.

This is also where relationship is so important. If we haven’t spent the time getting to know them and the things that they care about, then when a crisis situation comes up like this, then you don’t have enough trust to developed to be able to say, “All right, well we have to do these two things,” without having to provide a big explanation about why those things are important. So, moments like that are really when building that relationship with the client pays off.

Kristin Gaston:

I would add to that, that sometimes the family has a sense that they need to do something right now and we can help them realize, “Okay, it’s not the time to do A-through-Z planning right now because you are going through a difficult emotional situation with your family. But if we could do one or two small things right now, that will make a lot of things easier, and it will give you some peace of mind and you don’t have all this worry that you didn’t do this before.” We can help them find the most important tools that they need for that moment and still have plenty of personal time with their family.

Teresa Matich:

You’ve really created this seamless process from end-to-end, from when someone first calls your office saying, “Hey, I have this problem. I have this loved one who is in this situation,” to when they get that final bill and it’s a flat fee. The whole experience is made to be painless for clients. What made you think through their entire legal experience in this way?

Kristin Gaston:

I think we just have a holistic perspective on the practice of law. Again, it just starts with building the relationship with the person, so that impacts how you first meet them and how you then carry that whole experience through to making it efficient and painless for them at the end. But it does really just start with building that relationship, and then everything else kind of builds around that.

Lori Beight:

It’s been a real transition in our practice though, because having that as a goal and having the tools to be able to do that are two very different things. So, I think for a long time we’ve understood the importance of being able to have empathy and create a holistic experience, but it’s only been in the last few years that we’ve really had the tools, and that’s extraordinary.

Teresa Matich:

Can you walk us through how you came up your process and client-service model?

Kristin Gaston:

I think we had to be willing to experiment. We had talked about the possibility, for example, of the efficiency of taking credit cards, and there are pros and cons to what we had heard about that. But at a certain point, you just have to give it a try. And as soon as you do that and you have clients saying, “Hey, that’s great, I can put miles on my Alaska Card. This is really convenient, I can pay right now.” You don’t know that until you try it, and then you hear from your clients that it’s working. If you sit too long with an idea without trying it, then you don’t have that feedback from the clients and from your team about whether that’s going to work. So, you do have to be willing to just kind of jump in and do a little bit of experimenting with different tools and different technology to see if it’s really going to increase your efficiency and make this process better for the client, or whether its an idea you need to throw out the window.

Teresa Matich:

And do you update your process based on feedback from your clients often? Do you actively solicit feedback from your clients?

Lori Beight:

Yes, I would say we update our process really frequently based on our own experience, what we’re hearing, and the staff experience. We have weekly meetings and we sit down and we talk about what’s working and what’s not working. And then we set aside time for strategy sessions where we sit down and ask, “What does our intake process look like?” or, “What does our design sheet or our checklist look like?” And then we collaborate on how to tweak it and make it better.

Kristin Gaston:

And with that too, even the decision to go flat fee, that’s something we revisit often just to make sure that the service that we’re providing matches the fees that we’re quoting. If we’re adding new services, are we appropriately charging the right fixed fee for that? So, that’s a continual topic to revisit.

Teresa Matich:

Absolutely, because the way that you’re able to help these clients is to stay in business and ensure that things are profitable and efficient, and that you’re creating a good experience for your staff as well. So, how has this drive towards creating an amazing client experience impacted the success of your law firm?

Lori Beight:

We have happy clients and over 60% of our new clients are referred by old clients. So, I think it builds on itself, absolutely. Your reputation is really how you build a practice.

Teresa Matich:

Yeah, and reputation is so important in the legal industry. I always hear referrals being such an important part of many law firms. Do you ask clients to refer you, or do they do that of their own accord?

Kristin Gaston:

We sort of do. It’s not a formal request. Often we’ll say, “If you had a great experience, you can share our name with your friends and family.” But we find that they’re doing that anyway. And I think it’s that experience that they’ve had that makes them want to tell friends and family about us. That’s so important.

Lori was talking about barriers earlier. If you know you need to do something because for so long you’ve heard someone say, “You need to have a will, you need to have a trust,” but you just don’t know where to start, and you ask your neighbor or someone in your community, or your book club, or your community group, and someone says “Oh, I have this great woman I went to and she was really easy to work with, and her team is really great, and it was easy to get in and take care of the work and …” That says it all, and you don’t have to start from scratch with a Google search or some other thing. You’ve just got a nice warm referral from someone who had a great experience—that’s what makes a difference.

Lori Beight

I had two funny experiences last week. I had one client who, a friend of his had inquired on Facebook, “Hey, we need to get a will done. Who should we use?” They’re not even in our state, and my client writes back, “Oh my gosh, you should come here because I have this awesome estate planner and you would love her.” Now, nevermind, I’m not going to be able to help that person, but he’s broadcasting it out there. “I have this estate planner and I love her. If you need that help, then call me because I’ll hook you up.” Which was awesome.

The other one was, we had gotten a referral and it was the sister of somebody that we had already worked with. She sent a message and said, “Oh my gosh, I’m sick. I can’t come in.” And I called her and I said, “I just wanted to check-in. Are you okay? I’ll have Esther call to reschedule with you. Looking forward to meeting you.” And I still haven’t met her, but she’s already referred somebody to us.

Teresa Matich:

Wow.

Kristin Gaston:

Yes, and I think that speaks to the experience that they have with our team, including scheduling a consultation, reaching out and getting the information, and even first getting connected right away. I had a similar experience with a same-sex couple that is trying to decide whether they want to get married before they do their estate plan or not. And in the meantime, we had a phone call to talk about some introductory matters. They’re going to wait and they’re going to get married. But, in the meantime, one of them referred her sister to us. So there is a lot of that really important time before clients even come in where they are having an experience with your firm that can be positive and impactful to them—enough that they’ll refer you to someone else.

Teresa Matich:

How important is the first impression when you first meet one of these clients, in terms of sparking these relationships and being able to create that trust?

Kristin Gaston:

The first meeting? I think, kind of harking back to what we said at the beginning, we do ask them to send us some information ahead of time so we have a little bit of framework to understand their family. Are they single? Do they have minor children? What essential information we will be collecting from them. But we also ask them, “What brought you in today?”

Maybe they just lost a loved one, or they had a friend who lost a loved one and they had an experience that could have been better if there had been some planning around it. That really is important to understand—whether they had a really positive experience and they want to replicate that, or they had a negative experience and so they’d like to do something different so that they can leave a legacy for their kids in a way that is really straightforward and not as emotional and easy to understand. So, just that first meeting, having them come in and again, letting them tell the story of why they’re there and what they hope the outcome will be, allows us to help them get there.

Lori Beight:

The first meeting is when they decide whether or not they’re going to work with us. That’s pretty important.

Teresa Matich:

Absolutely. Your website is also very clear, you have your fees listed right there and what’s included in the plan and everything. Did you put a lot of work into that as well?

Lori Beight:

Yeah, yeah. Again, I think because our value is to make sure that people are making an informed choice, it’s important that they know about fees up front. And we do feel like it’s not an especially transparent field, the legal field. So, it is a way that we differentiate ourselves.

Teresa Matich:

And how does having this focus on client service impact the internal cultural and morale at your office? How does it feel working at a place that you know provides these great experiences to people?

Lori Beight:

We’re happy. We have people who are happy, and we feel like the work is meaningful. Clients leave happy. I think they come in a little bit anxious and they leave with hugging us. It really is a very personal experience. It’s very satisfying work.

Teresa Matich:

Based on your experience, what number one advice would you give to other firms who want to improve their profitability and growth by improving the client experience?

Kristin Gaston:

I would say you have to see your experience, you have to see your process from the client’s perspective, and it can be really hard to do that without a conscious dissection of the process because we’re so used to seeing it from our side. How could this be faster for us or how can we improve it from our perspective? But you really have to sit on the other side of the table and see every step of the way from their perspective, and that will undoubtedly improve some aspect of your process so that the client feels like they had responsiveness when they needed it and they were heard when they needed to be heard.

Lori Beight:

I would agree with that. I think you really just have to be client-centered.

Teresa Matich:

Absolutely. Are there any stories of people you’ve helped that really stick with you where you were able to provide them a good experience that maybe really significantly helped them through a difficult time?

Lori Beight:

We had an open house recently, and I had a client come in—it was a couple for whom I had created a supplemental needs trust for their disabled adult son. They were really excited that we were having an open house, because it was a way for them to bring him in and they could tell him it was a party. So, they brought him to the office and then they introduced him to me, and they introduced me by saying, “This is the woman who’s helping us to make sure that if anything ever happened to us that you’re taken care of.” That felt amazing.

Teresa Matich:

Amazing! It seems like sometimes the perception is that providing a great client experience is too expensive. Whether in terms of time or effort or energy, the perception is it’s going to take away from your law firm profitability. I wanted to get your thoughts on that, because at least from my perception, that seems like that’s not the case at Cascade Legal at all.

Lori Beight:

Some things aren’t worth the money. I will say that, but if you’re thinking about ways to improve efficiencies and to provide better work faster for your clients, the tools that you need to do that are worth the investment. I think one of the things when we were first practicing, we found it was really stressful having to sort of create everything from whole cloth. You would have really sort of bare-bones tools, but if you were customizing a document, you had to create it new or you had to go out and research things like, “What clauses can I insert here?” It was stressful. You just weren’t ever really sure it was going to be consistent all the way through. God forbid you’re in a traditional firm where they’re still doing find and replace in their documents. I do not get that at all.

The ability to be able to put together a plan, to have confidence that it’s really good, and to be able to do it really quickly and consistently is money really well spent. It’s not only good for the client, that’s good for us. That’s good for everybody.

Kristin Gaston:

Absolutely. There was a quote in a session yesterday, about how if you’re focused on making the money, you’re not going to be profitable. If you’re focused on the client experience, you’re going to be profitable.

Teresa Matich:

That’s true, and that’s so essential. Do you have anything else you’d like to add?

Lori Beight:

One of the things I love about being a lawyer is all the different ways that you can use a law degree. I think if I had to say anything, if you’re not happy with the practice that you’re in, do something else. You can still use your law degree to be helpful in so many ways. I think that the level of dissatisfaction still in our profession is really worrisome. But it’s also a good time to be a lawyer.

Kristin Gaston:

Yeah, I would say that there’s technology available now to create a unique kind of law firm that can work for the younger generation—flexible work schedules, virtual possibilities, the use of social media and technology to reach out to clients. You can be really creative thinking about what you want your practice to look like. And that I think is really exciting for people that are coming into the profession.

Teresa Matich:

Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me.

Kristin Gaston:

Thank you.

Lori Beight:

Thank you.

Creating a Better Normal For Your Law Firm

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 12:00:07 GMT

At this time of year, most businesses including law firms are usually starting to plan for the year ahead. The most successful law firms set goals for the upcoming year, draft budgets, and think carefully about how they’ll improve both the client experience and firm efficiency. This year, with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing, that process won’t look the same. Still, setting goals and planning to make improvements, even if they’re small ones, will help your firm succeed in our uncertain world.

One of my favorite concepts is the idea of the aggregation of marginal gains, most recently popularized by James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits. He talks about the story of British cycling coach Dave Brailsford, who took the British Cycling team from one of the worst teams in Europe to the dominating team at the Olympic Games in just five years. How? He looked at everything directly and indirectly related to the performance of his athletes, and found a way to make a small, 1% improvement in each facet of performance. Taken individually, each of these improvements had a negligible impact, but taken together, the improvements delivered an outsized impact: the aggregation of marginal gains. You can apply this powerful concept to your law firm.

Our reality has fundamentally changed, and the future is still unknown. Many of us underwent a tectonic shift in our daily lives earlier this year, and some of us are still finding ways to adapt. No matter where your law firm is today, making small changes will help create a better normal, one that will set you up for success in the long run.

Take the client experience, for example. Our world is now more digital than ever, so creating an exceptional, effortless online experience at every stage of the client journey is critical to your law firm’s success. This might look like making small changes to your website to make it easier for new clients to contact you, or making sure intake forms are easy to fill out online. Law firms who focus on a strong online presence and remote client intake experience will be positioned to win in our new reality. I speak more about this in a recent episode of Clio’s Daily Matters interview with Gyi Tsakalakis of AttorneySync.

You can look at behind-the-scenes opportunities for 1% gains as well. Maybe you start using a document automation tool to help your staff complete tasks more efficiently. Or maybe you automate follow-ups on unpaid invoices to streamline your collections process.

You could even go beyond 1% gains and add a new practice area or a new service offering to attract a new client base and help your firm thrive. If you go this route, stress test your idea to ensure market viability before investing time, money, and energy into a larger shift. In an e-book recently published by Clio, Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal, author and legal industry expert Mike Whelan, Jr. lays out a clear and actionable framework to enable law firms to quickly model and test their innovative ideas to ensure they’ve got a winning concept, and I highly recommend giving it a read.

The important thing, as always, is to stay relentlessly committed to a client-centered approach. Looking at the myriad tiny ways you can improve both the client experience and your law firm’s performance will yield success, even if it takes a little longer than expected, and even if you need to recalibrate and take a few detours along the way. Right now, the most successful law firms are the ones taking small steps, looking for incremental gains, and staying committed to carving a path forward in a way that’s sustainable for their law firms, clients, and families.

I’ll talk more about the idea of the aggregation of marginal gains, and about the 1% improvements successful firms are actually making right now, at this year’s virtual Clio Cloud Conference. This is just one of the many incredible findings we’re including in this year’s Legal Trends Report, and I can’t wait to share more with you—I recommend getting your passes to the conference now, so you can hear these insights first hand on October 13.

As your law firm plans for 2021 and beyond, don’t rush, and don’t overwhelm yourself. You don’t have to have it all figured out right now, and the most important thing is to take care of yourself. Even after the current world situation passes, the world will continue to change, and lawyers must continue to adapt. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so consistency is important. Little by little, with persistence and patience, you’ll create a better normal for your law firm.

Blog â Clio

Your Complete Guide to Effective Small Law Firm Management

Rethink your pricing and payment models

Go beyond reducing prices or offering discounts for your legal services

Consider offering alternative methods of billing and payment

Hire the right staff with the right roles to improve productivity

Focus on relentlessly improving the client experience

Meet clients where they want you to be—online

Reduce friction in payment options by offering payment methods that clients want

Quick case studies about law firms streamlining their payment process

Improve and streamline your law firm’s billing process

Have a clear understanding of your law firm’s financials

Run your small law firm virtually with cloud-based legal practice management software

Grow your client base with cloud-based client intake tools

Develop a strong personal and law firm brand

How to manage a small law firm team

Create procedures for everything

Streamline your processes

Leverage the technology available

Invest in training your team

Hire Expert(s)

Set team members up for success in their legal careers

Devote time to personal and professional development

You’re ready to start managing your small law firm effectively

Helpful resources for managing a small firm

Clio This Month: Bill Message Templates + Google My Business

Bill Message Templates in Clio Manage

Trust check printing with QuickBooks online integration

Matter Dashboard in Microsoft Teams

Google My Business integration

Redesigned documents experience

New types of in-app notifications

Highlights from the 2020 Legal Trends Report

Building a better normal from a period of crisis

The importance of creating a VUCA Prime environment

Focus on creating a positive-growth trajectory for your law firm

Work on aggregating and celebrating marginal gains

Prioritize clients to survive and ultimately succeed

Find the fit between product and market

Addressing the affordability issue in legal services

Consider offering alternative payment and billing structures

The future of law firms will be cloud-based by design

What this means for law firms

Build a better normal for the future of legal services

The Future of Law: A New Vision for Legal

Your Guide to Year-End Law Firm Accounting

What is law firm accounting?

1. Identify and collect on outstanding balances

Step 1: Ensure time entries and bills are current

Step 2: Run an accounts receivable report

Step 3: Identify large and/or old outstanding balances

Step 4: Collect!

Tips for improving your year-end collections process

2. Review your trust accounts

Ensure all of your client ledgers are balanced

Reconcile your trust accounts before year-end

Use tech to simplify the process

3. Review your financials

Putting it all together

4. Get ready for tax season

5. Consider hiring a law firm accounting professional

You’re ready to get your year-end law firm accounting in order

A Guide to Creating a Law Firm Disaster Recovery Plan

Ethical obligations when creating a law firm disaster recovery plan

Highlights from ABA’s model rules

What are the features of an effective law firm disaster recovery plan?

How do I create a law firm disaster recovery plan?

Steps to creating a law firm disaster recovery plan

Steps to creating a law firm disaster response plan

Step 1: Conduct an inventory.

Step 2: Do a risk assessment.

Step 3: Identify critical services, systems, and data.

Step 4: Define your recovery objectives.

Step 5: Identify supporting tools.

Step 6: Assign responsible individuals.

Step 7: Review SLAs (service level agreements) with vendors.

Step 8: Determine how to handle sensitive information.

Step 9: Create a communication plan.

Step 10: Document the plan.

Step 11: Test the plan—annually.

Blog â Clio