Blog â Clio

How to Work With a Virtual Legal Assistant

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 13:00:51 GMT

If your law firm has not hired a virtual legal assistant before, you may be wondering why you should work with one. But if you’ve ever been overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work involved with running a legal practice, delegating work to legal virtual assistants can significantly free up your time. Since the 2020 Legal Trends Report found that law firms only spend an average of 2.5 hours each day on billable work, it’s more important than ever to find ways to do more billable work and improve your law firm’s profitability.

Also, legal virtual assistants can help your law firm increase efficiencies, scale more rapidly, and provide a client-centered experience. They can complete routine administrative tasks and improve customer service by managing client calls, coordinating important meetings and deadlines, and more.

Legal virtual assistants are also a great option for your legal practice if you are not ready to add another full-time in-house staff member. Ultimately, virtual assistants save your law firm money, since hiring a virtual legal assistant costs less than hiring another lawyer or in-house employee for your firm.

In this blog post, we’ll share how you can choose and work with a virtual legal assistant for your law firm, including what virtual legal assistant services are available.

What is a virtual legal assistant?

Think of a virtual legal assistant as an extension of yourself for administrative tasks, allowing you to focus on lawyering and billable work. A remote legal assistant can take care of a wide range of routine tasks. These include managing client communication (calls, live chat, email, etc.), scheduling appointments, legal researching and writing, managing contracts, and accounting.

How to choose a virtual legal assistant

Regardless of whether you’re using virtual legal assistant companies or hiring individuals, you’ll want to set up a thorough hiring process to choose the right virtual assistant for your law firm. Below are the main ways you can select the right remote legal assistant for your law firm’s needs.

Vet potential virtual legal assistants thoroughly

As you start researching your options for outsourcing legal administrative tasks to virtual assistants, you’ll likely get overwhelmed with the number of options. You should thoroughly vet potential candidates and companies to narrow down your options. Make a list of all the qualities you need in a virtual assistant. Be sure to check their previous experience and ask for references. Some key qualities to consider:

Work ethic
Personality and rapport
Flexibility and adaptability
Availability
Writing and communication skills
Project management skills
Legal research skills
Technology experience
Experience in your practice area
Special skills in areas like marketing and accounting
Willingness to learn

Consider how they fit your work style

If you are used to managing the administrative tasks at your law firm, you may find it challenging to delegate work to someone else. After all, you’ll need to spend time onboarding your virtual legal assistant and getting them used to your law firm’s processes. That’s why finding a virtual assistant who fits your work style is critical. This helps ensure a smoother transition for your firm, while increasing their chances of success.

Determine what virtual legal assistant services you need

Think about all the non-billable work you’re currently doing and determine exactly what help you need. In addition to routine law firm tasks like billing clients, document management, managing client communication, do you need your virtual legal assistant to do more? Do you require your virtual assistant to also help with accounting and marketing?

Set expectations

To avoid miscommunication and disappointments on both sides, be sure to set expectations with your virtual assistant from the beginning. This could mean having a written contract or agreement so both parties are clear about what’s expected of the professional relationship. Some points you should consider including in your agreement include:

Clear and regular communication. In a virtual law firm environment, having clear and regular communication is a top priority. This will help you stay in the loop with project and task updates, and will ensure projects stay on track.
How you will communicate. If you prefer communicating via email, make that clear. You don’t want your virtual assistant assuming that video conferencing works at all times. Agree on the communication platforms you will use as well since there are many communication tools available.
Your law firm’s processes and workflows. Not all law firms work the same way. To ensure your virtual assistant works seamlessly with your existing processes and workflows, spend time onboarding your virtual assistant. This way, they will have a clear understanding of how things work.
Your management style. Do you expect your virtual legal assistant to work mostly independently? How will you delegate tasks to them? Is there a project management system you use? How often do you expect updates and reports on their work? How often and in what way will you provide them with feedback?

Tips for working with virtual legal assistants

Get to know your virtual legal assistant

To facilitate a more successful working relationship, it’s important to get to know your legal assistant. This way, you’ll understand them better on a personal and professional level. It’ll also help you build two-way trust and get them invested in your law firm’s success. Virtual team-building games like online escape rooms or even simple icebreaker games done over video conferences can be lots of fun.

Be prepared to project manage

Although virtual legal assistants should significantly free up your time, you should still be prepared to spend time working with them and managing projects. Another option is to delegate the task of project management. If you do end up delegating project management, you should still spend time introducing your virtual assistant to your law firm, its processes, workflows, and technology stack.

Set clear expectations

Be sure to communicate clearly and regularly with your virtual assistant. Also, discuss how you will communicate and on what platforms. Let them know what reports you expect to receive and how often. Make it clear what your virtual assistant’s priorities are. For example, do you require a weekly report on your remote legal assistant’s tasks? Are you using a project management platform for visibility into their task list?

Give clear instructions

In a virtual law firm environment, walking to a colleague’s desk to ask a question isn’t quite possible. However, that doesn’t mean your virtual assistant should be guessing how you want them to complete each task. By giving them clear instructions for each task—whether it’s emailing clients according to your law firm’s messaging guide or collecting payment from clients—the higher the likelihood of them completing the task successfully.

Be consistent

This goes hand-in-hand with having an organized law firm. Since your virtual assistant is not an in-house employee, they will not have full visibility into what goes on at your law firm every day. That’s why sticking to consistent schedules, timelines, and deadlines will help your virtual legal assistant work successfully. For example, if you normally only do legal client consultations in the morning, let your virtual assistant know. If you’ve given your virtual assistant a deadline for a legal research task, try to stick to it as much as possible.

Use software to collaborate and communicate

Legal software like Clio can help your law firm manage tasks and collaborate more effectively. Your virtual assistant will benefit from being able to create standardized task lists and automatically set task deadlines based on case start dates or previous tasks. However, be mindful of permissions within each software. This is especially important if you are used to previously handling all tasks on your own. There are certain permissions you want to limit for your virtual assistant due to security reasons, and you may need to keep information confidential for cases your assistant isn’t working on.

Virtual Legal Assistant Services

Now that you understand how to choose a virtual legal assistant and how to work with one, what kind of virtual legal assistant companies or individuals should you choose? While hiring independent virtual legal assistants is an option, working with a company may give you more peace of mind. This is because you can usually rely on the companies to vet their virtual assistants for experience and professionalism. Also, if you need any additional support, a good virtual legal assistant company should be there to help.

Equivity

From virtual administrative, marketing, paralegal, and bookkeeping professionals, Equivity can support your law practice with either a single dedicated specialist or an entire outsourced team. They can also provide an entire legal support team for your firm. Equivity features flexible plans and offers on-demand support.

Learn more about how Equivity can help your law practice.

Hire an Esquire

With on-demand freelance legal staff, Hire an Esquire hires qualified candidates who go through their rigorous screening and vetting process. This ensures you will only match with highly qualified staff. You can also tailor talent to your needs with guided tools and built-in matching algorithms to find over 12,000 qualified legal staff.

Learn more about how Hire an Esquire works with Clio.

Back Office Betties

Back Office Betties provides specialized virtual legal receptionist services for solo and small law firms. When you hire Back Office Betties, you get a team that is an extension of your law firm. The team can complete client intakes, scheduling appointments, and seeing every call through to completion.

Learn more about how Back Office Betties works with Clio.

You’re now ready to improve productivity and efficiency at your firm

If you run a law firm, you probably rarely feel like there is enough time to complete all the tasks on your to-do list. From responding to prospective and existing clients promptly to client intake, document management, billing, and accounting, virtual legal assistants can help you run your firm more effectively and efficiently. When hiring a virtual legal assistant for your firm, be sure to vet potential candidates and companies thoroughly. Also, think about how they fit with your law firm. Make sure you communicate clearly to set expectations from the start. With clear instructions, consistency, and the right software, virtual legal assistants can help you focus on doing more billable work. Ultimately, this helps you become a more profitable law firm. Consider using virtual legal assistant services like Hire an Esquire and Back Office Betties, where you can rely on hiring qualified, vetted, and experienced candidates for your firm.

A Guide to Non-engagement Letters (Sample Included)

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 13:00:28 GMT

New business is key to your law firm’s growth, but that doesn’t mean that every prospective client is a good fit for you and your firm. If you consult with prospective clients but don’t move forward with representing them, you should close the loop with a non-engagement letter. This ensures all parties are on the same page.

A non-engagement letter may feel like a formality, but notifying a potential client—in writing—that you won’t be representing them is important. Letting them know explicitly that you will not represent them will help you avoid or successfully defend malpractice claims. Also, clear client communication is essential for your law firm to provide a client-centered experience to everyone you interact with as an attorney. This includes those who don’t ultimately become your firm’s clients.

In the following guide, we’ll review the fundamentals of non-engagement letters, and go over why you need them. We’ll also provide a sample non-engagement letter that you can refer to as an example when creating your letter. Let’s begin by considering a few key questions about non-engagement letters.

What is a non-engagement letter?

A non-engagement letter informs prospective clients that the attorney will not be representing them. Lawyers prepare this type of correspondence to clarify and document the status of the relationship. This is done after consulting with a potential client—formally or informally—and deciding that they will not or cannot represent them.

Why do you need a non-engagement letter?

There are many valid reasons why you or your firm may choose not to take on a specific client. Sometimes, a client may decide to not move forward with using your legal services. You may need a non-engagement letter due to a conflict of interest, a lack of capacity at your firm, or the client’s inability to take on your fees. You could also just not be the right fit. When one of these instances arises and you won’t be representing someone that you discussed a matter with, you need to formalize that decline with a non-engagement letter. Here are three reasons why:

1. To avoid malpractice claims

Unintentional miscommunication about representation is a common cause of malpractice claims against attorneys.

When a prospective client has a conversation with a lawyer (whether it’s formal or informal), they may think that the discussion in itself means the lawyer will represent them. If the attorney does not formally notify the client they will not be representing them, the client may assume that they are taking care of their legal matter—when they’re not.

The prospective client could then miss a statute of limitations or get an otherwise unsatisfactory legal result, for which they could blame and sue the attorney.

A non-engagement letter removes that ambiguity in a similar situation. It makes it clear that you will not be representing the client. This way, there is no confusion for the prospective client. This also helps you avoid the potential subsequent malpractice claims. Should the prospective client then try to sue an attorney, a copy of the non-engagement letter can be useful in helping to resolve the conflict.

How non-engagement letters help you avoid potential malpractice claims

For example, let’s say an attorney has a discussion with a prospective client about a time-sensitive transaction. The client shows the lawyer a copy of their documents during a consultation. The lawyer looks at the documents and decides they will not take on the client. However, the attorney does not send a formal non-engagement letter. The attorney assumes that the client will find another lawyer when they don’t follow up, but the client assumes that the lawyer’s silence means they are handling the case. Nothing gets done, and the client misses the deadline, loses on their real estate transaction, then sues the attorney for malpractice.

Alternatively, in the same situation, the attorney read the documents and decides not to take on the case, but returns the client’s documents along with a non-engagement letter to the client. This way, the client understands they are not represented and needs to find another lawyer. Another attorney deals with this client’s matter and the original lawyer avoids a potential malpractice claim.

2. To communicate clearly with prospective clients

Any time that you’re communicating with clients—whether prospective or existing—it’s best practice to communicate clearly. Be sure to set realistic expectations from the start. Even though you’re not moving forward with a client, you should still take the opportunity to communicate clearly. This guide to better client communications for law firms offers some helpful review of these principles.

3. To avoid miscommunication in a remote environment

To build on the above point of communicating clearly with prospective clients, you also need to set clear expectations when working remotely. This is because it is easy for a prospective client to assume a law firm is representing them when all the communication is done over email or online. To avoid miscommunication and unclear expectations, make sure you document when a lawyer-client relationship does not exist.

4. To provide a client-centered experience

Just because you are declining to represent someone now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t provide them with a client-centered experience and practice being a client-centered lawyer. After all, you never know when someone will become a client in the future.

Clients expect to be treated with clarity, not ambiguity. Don’t leave people, even those that you will not be representing, wondering about the status (or lack) of your professional relationship with them. Even though you’re not representing the person now, they’ve started their client journey with your firm. As a legal practitioner, you need to use a non-engagement letter and clear communications to provide them with the best possible client experience.

Non-engagement vs. disengagement letters

While the terminology is similar, there’s a difference between a non-engagement letter and a disengagement letter:

Non-engagement letter: Makes it clear to a prospective client that the lawyer will not represent them.
Disengagement letter: Terminates an existing client relationship.

When should attorneys use a non-engagement letter?

Every time you want to decline to represent a prospective client, you should use a non-engagement letter. Otherwise, you risk the possibility that the prospective client could mistakenly think you’re their attorney on a matter.

How to use a non-engagement letter?

The key to successfully using a non-engagement letter as part of your workflow is to have a plan. These tips can help:

Establish procedures. Create procedures for what happens if you decide not to represent someone, and write a template for the general structure of your non-engagement letter. If you have a plan and follow it, you’re less likely to accidentally forget to inform someone of non-representation.
Determine a method of communication. Will you send the letter through physical or electronic mail, or use another method of communication?
Confirm receipt. A non-engagement letter is only effective if your client receives, reads, and understands it. Make sure you have a way to confirm that they receive the letter and understand its contents. For example, you could send a non-engagement letter through certified mail and request a return receipt. To help ensure that the letter is easy-to-read, make it clear and concise, write in plain English, and avoid legal jargon.
Keep a copy. Retain documentation of all non-representation letters sent and received by prospective clients—just in case there you need it as evidence in a potential lawsuit filed against you.

Sample non-engagement letter content

You need to tailor your non-engagement letter to each situation, including the client and your firm. However, all non-engagement letters should address the following general elements:

Identifying details. Address the letter to the specific person, by name. Sign the letter by your name, and include your firm’s name.
Purpose. Clearly state why you are writing—to confirm that you will not be representing the person on the specific matter.
Consultation details. Note the date when you consulted with the potential client, and whether it was a formal consultation or a conversation. Also note, if possible, the subject or matter that was discussed.
Reason for declination/non-engagement. If it’s appropriate to state the reason for non-engagement, briefly mention it. If you are declining because of a conflict of interest, you may have to disclose this to the potential client (check your jurisdiction’s rules).
Timelines. Call out matters that are time-sensitive or could have a statute of limitations. Be careful to be clear that your note is not an opinion or advice on how they should proceed.
A recommendation to find legal representation. Although the letter confirms that you are not acting as legal representation for the client, you can recommend that they seek legal representation elsewhere.
Legal advice disclaimer. State that the letter does not indicate any of your legal opinions on whether they will win or lose their case. The letter should include that you are not providing any legal advice on the client’s matter. Also, add that anything discussed in a consultation should not be considered legal advice.
Status of client documents. If you do not have any client documents or materials in your possession, state that. If you do and are returning them, describe what is enclosed and confirm that you are returning all copies.
Confidentiality. You can also note in the letter if the client’s matter has not been discussed outside of your law firm.

Always do your due diligence

While you should always do your research and craft a letter that’s specific to your situation, sample non-engagement letters can be useful as examples. Start by researching bar-provided sample non-engagement letters for your jurisdiction. Here are samples from the State Bar of Nevada and the State Bar of Georgia, for reference).

Below, we’ve drafted a fictional sample non-engagement letter. While this is just an example, it may help show what a non-engagement letter could include:

Sample Non-Engagement Letter—Example Only

Re: Declination of Service

Dear Ms. Prospective Client:

I am writing this letter to confirm, based on our conversation on April 1, 2021, that Example Law Firm will not be representing you in the matter of your medical malpractice claim against Dr. XYZ. We are not able to represent you due to the number of current pending cases at our firm: we would not be able to devote the necessary time to your matter.

Our decision to not represent you should not be interpreted as an opinion on the merits of your case. We would like to be clear that this letter does not indicate any of our legal opinions on whether you will win or lose your case, that we are not providing any legal advice on your matter. Also, nothing discussed in our previous consultation should be considered legal advice.

Please also be aware that the law’s statute of limitations could limit the time within which action in your matter must be filed. We have not researched the time limitations applicable to your matter, and as we are not representing you, are unable to advise you on this. However, with this in mind, we suggest that you consult with another lawyer as soon as possible concerning this matter, if you wish to do so.

You will find enclosed all of the materials that you left with me for review during our consultation. We have kept no copies, and have not discussed this matter outside of our law office.

Thank you for contacting Example Law Firm. We regret that we cannot act further on your matter, but hope that you may consider Example Law Firm for future legal work.

Sincerely,

Ms. Lawyer,

Example Law Firm

Conclusion

Not every prospective client is going to become a new client. But it’s still important to treat everyone you consult with clarity and communicate effectively. Using a non-engagement letter to confirm that you will not be representing someone allows them to move forward with their matter with someone else. It also helps save you and your firm from potential lawsuits that can arise from unclear non-representation situations.

Create procedures for how to handle declining representation at your law firm. Include a customized, well-documented non-engagement letter in every instance. Make sure the potential client receives and understands the letter, and close the loop.

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 Complete Guide for Lawyers Texting Clients

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 13:00:23 GMT

Undoubtedly, communicating via text is part of daily life. So if you’re a lawyer who isn’t texting your clients yet, you could be missing out on a powerful way to reach clients and streamline your client communication process. Lawyer texting could make all the difference in a client-lawyer relationship, as it helps you communicate quickly, clearly, and often. When used correctly and under the right circumstances, business texting for lawyers means faster, more effective communication—while also giving clients a better client-centered experience.

In the following guide, we’ll cover the pros and cons of lawyer texting. We’ll also outline important ethical, security, and compliance best practices for attorneys to consider before you start texting with clients. Finally, we’ll highlight some of the top tools that can simplify and enhance security for lawyers texting clients.

Should lawyers text their clients?

While texting isn’t appropriate in every situation, lawyers should text their clients when they can. It all comes down to serving clients in the best way possible for them: Today’s clients expect convenience. Texting is already part of our daily lives and it’s the preferred method of interaction for many people. Lawyers should take advantage of this communication platform while taking the necessary steps to ensure they can reap the most benefits from it.

The benefits of lawyers texting clients

Before we look at best practices for the when and how of business texting for lawyers, let’s review the reasons why texting could be useful to today’s attorneys. When you text your clients, you:

1. Provide your customers with a client-centered experience

As Jack Newton’s book, The Client-Centered Law Firm, explains, today’s most successful law firms are client-centered—which means that they prioritize their clients’ experience. When it comes to client experience and communication, texting can give clients what they want. This is because texting is already part of clients’ daily lives, people expect and prefer it.

Lawyer texting doesn’t just benefit clients. It can also enhance overall efficiency at your firm by speeding up responses from clients, who are more likely to reply via text.

Specifically, recent data by Soprano Design published in PC World noted that the response rate of texting is significantly better for texts. Specifically, 90% of people open a text message within three minutes, while 20% of people won’t open an email.

2. Save time and communicate with clients from anywhere

Texting is fast, easy, and convenient. The best part—you can do it from virtually anywhere. The ability to send quick communications via text when you’re working remotely improves your efficiency and makes clients feel better served. Texting also requires a lot less effort than sending an email or phone call.

This increased efficiency for quick communications can be a boon for your firm, as increased productivity ultimately saves law offices money as well.

3. Improve engagement and client satisfaction with clients

It’s just reality: People prefer texting to calling. As Soprano Design’s findings in PC World noted, the majority (85%) of smartphone users prefer mobile messages to emails or phone calls. By giving customers what they want (i.e. texts) when you can (for example, sending a client a text reminding them of a meeting), you deliver a more client-focused experience. This makes clients more likely to respond quickly and feel like they’re getting good client service.

4. Drive new leads and online reviews

Offering the option to text, when appropriate, instantly makes clients more likely to engage with you and respond. This can be key to driving new leads and acquiring new business.

Automating lead nurturing texts for potential clients who visit your law firm website, for example, gives people the ability to initiate contact with your firm via their preferred method of communication.

Similarly, you can also use texts to send review requests in a method that people are more likely to respond to and take action. Consequently, having more positive online reviews means you are more likely to show up where people are looking to hire a lawyer (online and on Google).

Before you start texting your clients

Lawyer texting offers clients and lawyers many benefits as mentioned above. But lawyers need to ensure they are abiding by the rules and their ethical responsibilities. Texting is only one of the many methods of communication for attorneys. It may not work in every situation. Consider the following points before you hit send on any texts to clients.

Are text messages privileged?

Privilege exists when there is an attorney-client relationship. This means potential and current clients should be able to expect communication—through any channel, including text messaging—to remain secure and confidential.

With this in mind, it’s also important to be careful about communicating via text with non-clients about legal matters, as attorney-client privilege could also apply.

Learn more about privileged information, confidential communication, and attorney-client privilege.

Ethics in text messaging

Texting clients carries risks, and there are ethical elements to keep in mind.

As this ABA TECHSHOW article notes, the following considerations are important for lawyers before texting clients:

Security: Will the text message be digitally secure?
Documentation: Can you document every text communication in the client file?
Client needs: Does texting serve the client’s best interest and communication needs?
Certainty of receipt: Can you be certain that your client received an important text message?
Lawyer health and safety: Will texting (if you give out your number) negatively impact your personal life and work-life balance?

As Comment 8 of ABA Rule 1.1 notes, it’s a lawyer’s responsibility to stay on top of changes related to the law and the practice of law. This includes the “benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.” With texting becoming a method of communication for clients, lawyers should look for ways to use that technology, while understanding the pros and avoiding the risks associated with lawyer texting.

Of course, text messaging can also help lawyers meet their ethical obligation to keep clients informed. When it comes to client-lawyer relationships, for example, ABA Rule 1.4 (a) requires a lawyer to keep their clients informed on the status of their matter and promptly comply with reasonable requests for information. Because text messaging is fast and more likely to be read, a quick text can help keep a client well-informed and help ensure that you maintain regular communication with clients.

Ultimately, it’s your duty as a lawyer to keep client information secure, so be sure to check and abide by the guidelines for communication for your jurisdiction.

Understand the types of attorney texting

Not all business texting for lawyers is created equal. In general, there are two main types of business texting for lawyers:

Automated texting: Automated texts help attorneys send out simple communications (such as meeting notifications or providing directions) via text message. These texts save lawyers time while giving clients a good client experience by conveying information in a medium that makes sense for them.
Two-way texting: Two-way texting means clients can also text lawyers back. With two-way texting, you have more flexibility with what you say. This can be an advantage, but also brings additional considerations: Make sure you use professional language and avoid being too casual when texting clients.

Determine what appropriate lawyer texting looks like

For example, text messaging can save time and be an appropriate way to communicate with clients about topics like:

Scheduling or sending reminders about meetings
Court date notifications and times
Case status updates
Payment reminders
Requests for online reviews

Discuss with clients

As with any type of client interaction, it’s important to manage expectations from the start. Clear, open communication is key to successful business texting for lawyers.

Discuss texting with clients and clearly establish which topics are appropriate ( and which are not appropriate. For example, texting to confirm a meeting time works, but you should not be texting clients about complex legal issues or personal problems. This ensures that clients are aware that you may text them (and under what circumstances), while also establishing boundaries and making it clear how they might text with you.

By being open to send and receive text messages, you must also help protect your clients from texting inappropriately with a lawyer or from accidentally threatening their client confidentiality. As their lawyer, you must provide clear direction to clients about how and when lawyer texting can work for them.

One way to ensure—in writing—that you and your clients are on the same page with lawyer texting is to add texting to your representation agreement. This sets a solid foundation for lawyer-client communication so that neither you nor your client is surprised, confused, or upset by text communication. Make sure clients know that—just as you would for any other method of communication—you can and will charge for time spent communicating with clients via text.

Security and compliance

It’s your responsibility to protect your clients’ data. Business texting for lawyers—as with any communication channels you use—requires some extra precautions. You need to ensure the data stays secure, client information stays confidential, and you stay compliant.

Here are a few tips to consider:

Disable message previews. Disabling message previews could also potentially allow others to see messages when they come in. Something as simple as changing the settings on your phone to prevent message previews from appearing on your lock screen can help protect your clients and avoid unwittingly violating attorney-client privilege. Be sure to remind your clients to do the same if they’re texting with you.
Get a work-only phone. To help keep your work and personal communications separate, you can also consider getting a work-only phone or setting up a work profile (if you have an Android phone).

Use an encrypted text messaging service. Encryption (i.e., a type of cryptography that scrambles and unscrambles data via an algorithm) isn’t just for emails or secure data storage. It can also help protect text communications. You can start by learning about the basics of encryption for lawyers, then use an encrypted text service instead of regular SMS messaging. See below for potential text message platforms you can use.

Use a business texting service instead. A secure business texting service such as Signal or Kenect takes the heavy lifting out of keeping your text messages secure. Using tools like encryption, business texting services enhance text security while making the process easier for you.

Documentation and data ownership

It’s essential to save text messages securely in a client file for later reference. While text messaging may feel more informal, lawyer texts are still considered client communication. So, it’s your responsibility to retain copies just as you would with emails or written correspondence.

In addition to your ethical duty to preserve communication for client files, you should also have access to the data. This is in case of investigations or disputes. You can’t rely on your cellular carrier to have copies.

Before you text clients, ensure that your firm has defined procedures for text message documentation. This could be a process for screenshots or using a third-party platform to help automatically archive text messages. Note that taking screenshots to document text messages can be time-consuming and leave room for manual error. Secure legal document management software like Clio Manage can also help by providing storage and organization for data.

Text messaging is part of your communications with clients

All communications with clients are client communications, so keep their best interests in mind when deciding how to communicate with them.

While business texting for lawyers is great for quick communications, it isn’t ideal in every exchange. In certain situations, texting may not be appropriate (even if it’s more convenient). This includes situations like sending documents and sensitive information or discussing a complex issue in a case. Conveying short messages are great for text. But long exchanges are best kept to other mediums. For example, indicating that you’re on your way to a meeting.

A client may also text you with a complex question, with information that you need a more formal record of. They may also text you with something you don’t have time to look into at the moment. In situations like these, don’t be afraid to text them back. Mention you will get back to them later in another method and communication channel. For example, if a client texts you that they want to accept a deal, you could respond to a complex question via text. The text could say, “I’ll look into this and get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.” This way, you can still ensure that clients feel heard, but also respect the limitations of lawyer texting.

Business messaging tools for lawyer texting

Lawyer texting can be an effective way to communicate with clients, but it’s also more complex than texting with your friends or family. Tech tools can help make lawyers texting clients more effective and ethical.

Here are three reasons to consider using a third-party platform:

Recordkeeping. Some texting platforms can track your communication history.
Privacy. Platforms that let you use your office number to text keep your personal number private. This helps protect your privacy and work-life balance.
Security. Keeping client information secure is essential when business texting, so it’s wise to take advantage of top-notch security provided by certain platforms.

If you’re interested in using tech to simplify the lawyer texting process, the following apps—which are integrated with Clio for added efficiency—can help:

Corvum Texting

Once a client has access to your personal phone number, it can be difficult to establish boundaries and prevent clients from reaching you during your downtime. Corvum Texting lets you use your firm’s business phone number for texting. This way, you can communicate via text with your existing clients while keeping your personal number private.

Corvum Texting’s cloud technology also helps with text message record-keeping. The service works with Clio to automate posting your text messages to Clio or allow you to download them as CSV/excel files.

ESI-Legal

With attorneys working remotely now more than ever, ESI-Legal’s Cloud Phones for Lawyers offers solutions to streamline and enhance the security of phone communication between lawyers and clients. This includes lawyer texting. ESI-Legal Cloud Phone for Lawyers’ systems include secure text messaging that protects your personal phone numbers. This makes it easier to serve clients from anywhere while maintaining work-life boundaries.

EZ Ring

Platforms that work together streamline procedures and make tasks more efficient. With EZ Ring and Clio, for example, RingCentral users can text clients directly from the Clio interface. This saves you time and making the process of lawyer texting easier.

FirmScribe

Keeping copies of texts (and keeping them organized) is important. But hunting through screenshots of texts isn’t practical. FirmScribe enables lawyers to send business texts from their favorite app (like Messages on iOS or a default Android SMS app) and then sync work texts with Clio. FirmScribe also lets you assign text threads directly to matters in Clio, so you can keep messages organized and easy to find.

Jubilee TextMessaging

Engage with clients via text with two-way text conversations as well as quick appointment reminders or document requests. You can also keep those text messages archived and attached to the corresponding matter or contact in Clio with the Jubilee TextMessaging tool. Created for law firms specifically, Jubilee’s web-based interface is useful for lawyer texting. You can use Jubilee with current and prospective clients in real-time or via scheduled messages. Jubilee is also flexible—you can send messages from your existing office line or through a dedicated text-only phone number. To ensure you don’t miss any text messages, Jubilee also lets you get in-app notifications when you receive a text message.

Podium

Whether you want to use lawyer texting to better communicate with existing or potential clients, or both, Podium can help. Podium converts your firm’s landline into a textable number. Then, the platform’s messaging functionality collects messages from all channels in one convenient inbox. This includes texts, Facebook Messenger, Google Click-to-Message, and Podium’s Webchat. Users can access this inbox from their desktop or mobile device.

These days, reviews are a key part of growing your law firm. Podium assists by enabling you to send automated invitations through Clio and manage your reviews in one spot.

Kenect

Kenect helps law firms leverage business texting for lawyers to increase efficiency, new leads, and client satisfaction. The Kenect platform lets prospective clients text your business via a customizable website widget. Then, it routes those messages to the right person in seconds. This way, you easily capture new leads, but without having to give out your personal cell number.

Kenect also unlocks a key advantage of text messaging—it makes requesting reviews easier and more effective. According to the platform, 35% of customers will leave a review if you request one via text.

Heymarket

Tracking your text history is important, but doesn’t have to require a lot of extra work. Heymarket makes it easy to keep track of business text messaging with your Clio contacts. This lets you view your SMS history of sent and received text messages with clients within each Clio contact’s communications log. And, when you’re texting with new or prospective clients, Heymarket automatically adds incoming text messages to your Clio account. Using Heymarket also lets you export text message history for easier, more accurate billing.

Proclaim

According to the 2019 Legal Trends Report, 57% of clients search on their own for a lawyer. More and more potential customers search online when they are looking to secure legal help. That’s why it’s important to make it easy for clients to initiate a connection with your firm.

Proclaim does just that by making it easier for customers to connect with you via text straight from your law firm website. How? When potential customers visit your law firm website, they can click on a “Text Us” button to connect with your firm via text.

Conclusion

To provide a great client-centered experience for your clients, you need to put their needs and expectations at the forefront of your practice. This includes how you communicate. Since texting is the preferred method of communication for most people today, look for ways to take advantage of business texting services so that you can be more responsive to your clients.

While texting is not suited to complex legal discussions, lawyers texting clients can save time and better serve clients. This is because lawyer texting helps with providing quick communications, setting up logistics for meetings, and requesting online reviews. Carefully consider your responsibilities and having procedures for handling data security and storage (and by using the help of the right business texting services and tools). This way, you can successfully integrate texting into your communication toolkit.

Live Chat for Law Firms: 10 Best Apps

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 13:00:46 GMT

What is live chat for law firms and should lawyers like you pay attention to it? These days, a firm’s website is the new storefront. Instead of being greeted by a receptionist upon arrival, a firm can extend a virtual handshake to a potential new client via live chat through their website. This can provide potential new clients with immediate responses to commonly asked questions, support with their cases, and internal or external resources.

Oftentimes, chatbots for lawyers are responsible for securing leads from “window shoppers” since the potential client can instantly engage with the firm in real-time. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report highlights, when potential new clients were asked to rank what factors were most important to them when speaking with a law firm, responsiveness was ranked highest overall.

Clients are also more likely to reach out to more than one firm when experiencing a legal problem—according to the 2019 Legal Trends Report, more than half of clients shop around when experiencing a legal problem. With this in mind, it’s important to be the first to respond to potential clients. This is because having quick responses helps your law firm make a better impression to clients and stand out from your competitors.

Since 79% of potential new clients expect a response within 24 hours of reaching out to a lawyer, live chat for law firms has become increasingly essential in client communications. Using tools like lawyer live chats can provide potential new clients with a better client-centered experience with instant responses. Below are 10 of the best live chat services being offered for attorneys.

1. Ruby

Ruby is a service that works with Clio’s practice management system—Clio Manage—and provides firms with virtual receptionists and online chat specialists that operate 24/7, 365 days a year. In our highly digital world, this is extremely important as it means your potential clients can get responses from your law firm anytime. Starting at $199/month, Ruby answers incoming calls from potential, new, and existing clients. This frees up your office’s phone lines while tracking all the important information. Calls, voicemails, and messages received through Ruby automatically sync with your Clio system to ensure your time is tracked for accurate client billing.

Learn more about how Ruby works with Clio.

2. LawDroid

LawDroid does the chatting for you with automated conversations using a chatbot on your law firm’s website. Also, LawDroid can be used with several systems to optimize its performance such as Acuity Scheduling, Calendly, WordPress, Infusionsoft (now Keap), and Clio Grow. With automated tasks and conversations, you can be sure all of the right questions are asked and recorded for every interaction. LawDroid also populates data into Clio to eliminate duplicate data entry.

Learn more about how LawDroid works with Clio.

3. Client Chat Live

Does your firm require more of a personalized touch to your website’s live chat? Client Chat Live provides operators 24/7 who speak both English and Spanish. With great data capture and powerful integration, all data exchanged in the chat is automatically synced with Clio for both potential and current clients. Potential clients can also interact with Client Chat Live via text for information that is convenient to them. Client Chat Live also features flat-rate monthly pricing, so you know what you’re going to pay each month with predictable pricing.

Learn more about how Client Chat Live works with Clio.

4. Smith.ai

Smith.ai Live Chat is a great live chat for law firms. By combining the personable touch of live receptionists with the fast and automated benefits of chatbots, Smith.ai determines if potential new clients have qualifying cases and schedule them for consults directly on your law firm’s website. If a potential client does not qualify, Smith.ai can automatically refer them to other firms on your recommended list. Beyond the chat box, Smith.ai features text messaging and chat-to-call for your website’s visitors.

Learn more about how Smith.ai works with Clio.

5. Apex Chat

Apex Chat offers live, receptionists available 24/7 to potential and existing clients. Combined with their software, Apex Chat will automatically capture your firm’s leads and sync them with Clio. Apex Chat also offers pay-for-performance pricing for those who are looking to try something new without committing to being all-in.

Learn more about how Apex Chat works with Clio.

6. LexReception

LexReception is a live receptionist service that answers all of your firm’s incoming phone calls. Also, LexReception’s live chat for attorneys transfers and screens phone calls, relay messages, answers questions about your firm, and book your appointments and meetings. Available 24/7, LexReception ensures that you answer and account for every call.

Learn more about how LexReception works with Clio.

7. Ngage

Ngage Live Chat allows your website’s visitors to interact with highly trained live operators that create a relationship with your legal practice. Also, Ngage provides chat-to-call with instant callback as well as text-to-chat. To reach potential clients beyond your website, Ngage also handles the live chat with visitors to your firm’s Facebook page. In addition, Ngage’s live chat for law firms provides Spanish-language chat and 24/7/365 chat services.

Learn more about how Ngage works with Clio.

8. Intaker

Intaker approaches your website’s live chat from a different perspective and looks to increase your law firm’s advertising ROI. With ultra-responsive chatbots, your firm can qualify your leads on autopilot. Intaker also offers callbacks and instant calls in both English and Spanish and offers easily customizable conversations. You can also receive instant notifications when a new client is qualified by Intaker. With Intaker’s live chat for law firms, you can customize it to become a true extension on your firm by changing conversion settings based on the campaigns you are running at the time.

Learn more about how Intaker works with Clio.

9. Gideon

Gideon allows your firm to replace your outdated intake forms with real conversation powered by artificial intelligence. By using your website, directory profiles, and social media platforms, Gideon interacts with potential and existing clients. At the same time, Gideon provides real-time analytics and reports. If you’re a skeptic about letting a robot handle client acquisition, Gideon allows you to follow the live engagement and jump into the conversation at any time. Also, Gideon links with data from Clio to provide you with accurate predictions of case results.

Learn more about how Gideon works with Clio.

10. Podium

With Podium, potential clients spend very little time on your website’s live chat and become almost immediately mobile with text chatting. Your potential client isn’t tied to your website and your office can answer questions, book appointments, and qualify leads conveniently. If a visitor interacts with your live chat after business hours, they can still be reached with an autoresponder and have their common questions answered with smart responses.

Learn more about how Podium integrates with Clio.

What to look for with live chat for law firms

Outline the critical features your live chat app should have

Not all live chats are created equal. When considering a live chat option for your firm, there is a lot to compare, such as price and offerings. Some of the most important features to consider when choosing your live chat service include:

24/7 access. This ensures that every visitor that interacts with the live chat on your website is a true potential client, and interaction creates a relationship.
Potential for live operator interaction. Sometimes a potential client needs more interaction than a chatbot can offer before they hire your firm. A personal touch to your live chat can turn a lead into a client.
Chat-to-call. Chat boxes aren’t an attractive interaction option for everyone, so the inclusion of a call option is very helpful for many firms.
Data and analytics integration. Your live chat needs to track who is interacting with your website, and when and how your firm can help them so that you never miss out on a lead.

Live chat for law firms is becoming an essential part of lawyering

In a world that’s getting increasingly accustomed to instant responses, modern law firms can’t afford to neglect potential new clients. Law firms must also recognize that potential clients can quickly get the answers to their inquiries from other law firms. This is especially if they do not make an effort to offer instant or quick responses to potential clients’ inquiries. According to the 2019 Legal Trends Report, 64% of potential new clients said they contacted a law firm that never responded which contributed to the reason they didn’t hire that firm. If you’re considering improving your law firm’s response time and client acquisition, you should consider implementing a live chat box on your website.

10 Tips to Improve Law Firm Profitability

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 13:00:59 GMT

Law firm profitability has always been essential to your legal practice’s success. But now, increasing your law firm’s profits is now more important than ever. This is especially in the wake of an unpredictable 2020 and as we continue to adapt to the impact of COVID-19 on the legal industry in 2021. A more profitable law firm has the resources to better serve clients, ensure partners and staff are compensated, and attract high-level employees.

In this post, we’ll provide tips for ways to improve your law firm’s operations, increase revenues, and make more for what you bill. This way, you can learn how to grow your law firm profits and be more successful now and in the future.

How do law firms make a profit?

Maintaining healthy law firm profitability requires effort, but the concept is straightforward: Law firms make a profit when they make more than they spend on overhead costs.

Revenue vs. profitability

We focus a lot on revenue, which is essential for your law firm’s success. But revenue alone is not the same as law firm profitability. Boosting law firm revenues helps, but you need to increase your firm’s net profits to be successful in the long term.

If you’re increasing revenue without increasing profitability, you’re leaving money on the table. For example, if your revenues go up because you’re serving more clients, but the overhead and administrative costs of serving each client are high, that undercuts your profit margin. To maximize law firm profitability, firms need to balance maximizing revenues with minimizing costs.

What can a law firm do to stay profitable?

To help your law firm become or stay profitable, look critically at whether there’s a healthy return on investment (ROI) on all of your efforts. Then, adjust if necessary. This means ensuring you’re following best practices when it comes to your law firm’s processes and tracking those efforts. These firm processes include your firm’s operational, billing, and collection rate efficiency. In addition, take a look at your law firm’s goals and stay focused on them.

Learn more about improving your firm’s ROI, collections, billing, and setting law firm goals.

Consider the following 10 tips to improve your law firm operations, make more for what you bill, and be as profitable as possible.

1. Fire yourself from jobs you shouldn’t be doing

You have a limited amount of time and energy each day. To boost your law firm’s profitability, you need to focus your time, energy, and attention on billable work—and outsource the rest.

Unless it’s a task that you really enjoy and only you can do, or there’s something that’s non-billable but leads to more profits, you need to let it go. Learning to delegate allows you to work to your full capacity. This might mean leveraging technology and handing off work to non-lawyer staff like paralegals within your firm. You could even outsource legal services to other local lawyers or freelance lawyers.

When everyone at your firm is focused on their highest-value work, you maximize revenues while reducing overhead costs. This makes a great recipe for law firm profitability.

2. Use legal technology

If your focus is on boosting profitability, using tools and legal technology can help your law firm be more efficient. At the same time, technology helps with keeping costs low and freeing up your time to work on billable matters (to bring in more revenue).

Using legal technology increases law firm revenue by helping firms run more efficiently, streamlining processes, and making it easier to bill and collect on invoices. Legal technology is especially valuable during times of crisis, like having to work remotely during a pandemic.

Let the statistics speak for themselves

As the 2020 Legal Trends Report shows, law firms using technology brought in more revenue. Specifically, the report found that in 2019, per lawyer:

Lawyers at firms using electronic payments collected 7% more revenue. In 2020, that difference increased even further—up to an 11% difference in February and the early summer months, and 16% more per lawyer in August.
Lawyers at firms using client portals collected 11% more revenue. Again, the revenue difference for lawyers at firms using the technology increased further in 2020—with a 15% advantage or more after March and up to 21% in August.
Lawyers at firms using client intake and CRM solutions saw 9% more revenue. In 2020, this difference also grew, achieving a high of 26% more revenue in August.

As helpful as legal tech can be for increasing law firm efficiency and profits, remember to do your due diligence. There are many technology options to choose from and it can be tempting to jump in with every software that crosses your path.

To use technology to its fullest, however, you want to be strategic and choose tech that is as secure as possible and addresses the specific issues your law firm deals with. Start by reviewing this article that covers the tech your practice needs, and how to select the best software for your firm.

3. Automate what you can

If you’re spending a good portion of your day on non-billable tasks, then you’re missing out on potential revenue and undercutting your law firm’s profit potential. The 2020 Legal Trends Report indicates that lawyers dedicate an average of just 2.5 hours per day on billable work. This proves that most lawyers are indeed missing out on potential profits each day.

Using technology to automate essential. But non-billable—administrative tasks like client intake, practice management, time and expense tracking, legal billing, and more saves you time and effort. With more time to put towards billable work, you can raise your revenues and ultimately, law firm profitability.

To learn more about how to leverage automation at your law firm, read our guide to law office automation here.

4. Set clear goals—and stay focused on them

It’s all well and good to set a general intention of “increasing law firm profits,” but vague goals are more likely to bring vague results.

If you’re serious about growing your law firm profitability, take the time to set strategic goals that are SMART. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This article on successful goal setting for lawyers can help show you how to set them.

Defined, SMART goals do more than just give you and your team focus and accountability. Good goals also give you tangible targets to measure your progress and results against. This ties in with our next tip: tracking key metrics.

5. Track key metrics for law firm success

You can’t just assume that your efforts are working. From monthly revenue billed to net overhead, what gets measured gets managed—so track, evaluate, and adjust accordingly.

Intentionally monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) related to law firm profitability provides accountability and data that you can use to make more informed decisions. For example, if you uncover data that something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to change it. This data could be something like your law firm’s website landing page conversions. You can learn more and see examples of useful law firm KPIs with our guide.

When it comes to law firm profitability, it could be helpful to track KPIs like your firm’s:

Utilization rate (the number of billable hours worked divided by the number of hours in the workday)
Realization rate (the number of billable hours invoiced divided by the number of billable hours worked)
Collection rate (the number of hours collected divided by the number of hours invoiced)

While tracking KPIs is key to making data-driven decisions with law firm profitability in mind, manually tracking KPIs can be time consuming and counterintuitive. Instead, use reporting tools to give you the metrics you need to know at a glance. Clio Manage’s Law Firm Insights Dashboard, for example, makes it easy to quickly access your firm’s key metrics in one central, easy-to-understand visual dashboard. These metrics include how many billable hours your firm has captured, billed, and collected.

6. Keep your cash flow healthy

Healthy cash flow is essential for your firm’s financial survival and profitability. If your firm’s cash flow needs a boost, there are numerous options to consider. For example, you can look for ways to reduce expenses, follow up on unpaid invoices, or make it easier for clients to pay you with online and alternative payment options (more on that next).

Learn more about how to improve law firm cash flow.

7. Offer alternative payment options

To be profitable, you need to get paid. This means you need to bill your clients and make it easy for them to pay you. Consider integrating different ways to bill and let clients pay into your law firm billing, such as:

Credit card and electronic payments. According to the 2020 Legal Trend Report, convenience pays off, with the majority—65%—of clients prefer to pay through electronic payment methods. This includes credit cards, debit cards, or online payments like Clio Payments, PayPal, or Apple Pay. Accepting payments via credit card can also speed up the rate at which your firm gets paid. The 2020 Legal Trends Report found that 57% of law firms accepting credit cards get paid that same day that they bill, and 85% get paid within a week of billing.

Alternative ways to bill. In 2021, the billable hour isn’t necessarily the best way to bill to optimize profits. Consider alternative billing arrangements. This includes subscription-based legal services, sliding-scale fees, unbundled services, flat-fee billing, contingency fees, and evergreen retainers.
Payment plans. When set up correctly, implementing payment plans can lets clients pay for your legal services in installments. For clients low on funds, this allows them to pay overtime—so that you get paid—while making it more manageable for them.

Learn more about alternative payment options in our Guide to Law Firm Billing.

8. Leave no billable hour un-tracked

Un-tracked and un-billed hours directly impact law firm profitability. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report explains, we can look at revenue potential through the content of the lawyer’s funnel. A lawyer starts with an eight-hour workday, of which an average of just 2.5 hours are spent on billable work—narrowing the funnel. Of that time spent on billable work, only 81% is invoiced—narrowing the funnel even further.

Looking at this funnel, it’s easy to see where profitability is leaking away from a lawyer’s workday. But closing the gap between billable hours worked and hours invoiced can help. One simple way to improve this metric is to use technology to more accurately track your time. Clio Manage’s legal time tracking software empowers you to capture billable time, no matter where you’re working. By recording your working hours in real-time, you can reduce untracked—and unbilled—hours.

Even if you don’t use the billable hour at your law firm, you should still track your time to ensure your rates are profitable. This applies whether you use a flat-fee method, subscription model, or other billing methods.

9. Streamline your collections process

You’ve done the work and you’ve billed for it. But are you actually collecting that revenue or are you leaving money (and law firm profits) on the table? As we noted, according to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, an average of 14% of the hours lawyers invoice to clients don’t get paid. When it comes to law firm profitability, the key is to collect on more of what you bill—but without spending more time on it.

By taking action to improve the collections process at your law firm, you can bring in more revenue (and, subsequently, profits). For example, you can start accepting online payments to make it easier for clients to pay you.

10. Take a client-centered approach

As Jack Newton’s bestselling book, The Client-Centered Law Firm, explains, providing a client-centered experience goes hand-in-hand with running a profitable law firm. Specifically, satisfying your clients and giving them a positive experience is critical to your law firm’s success, and thus it impacts your law firm’s profitability. This means doing good legal work and providing the level of service that they want and need.

How can you know if your firm is doing a good job from a client’s perspective? The first step is simply to ask your clients for feedback. (This episode of our Matters podcast offers insight on the topic.) Once you have a system for regularly collecting client feedback, take that feedback and use it to fuel improvement and fine-tune your firm’s services to give clients what they want. This is especially as we all learn to adapt to a virtual world.

For example, the 2020 Legal Trends Report found that 37% of consumers prefer to meet their lawyer for the first time virtually. By taking that into account and offering consultations via videoconference, lawyers can give clients a better experience that can lead to a chain reaction of new business, revenue, and profits.

To learn more about how to implement (and measure) a client-centered approach at your law firm, you can watch our course here.

How to Hire a Paralegal: A Complete Guide

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 18:06:59 GMT

Do you need to hire a paralegal? Many lawyers consider hard work to be a badge of honor, but doing all the work yourself isn’t always the smartest play—or the most profitable way to run your practice. Finding a paralegal with the right experience to support your practice frees up your time. This way, you can focus on doing more billable work and running your practice.

While paralegals are not lawyers since they can’t practice the law, they are legal professionals. Paralegals have the skills and experience to help with substantive legal work that’s assigned and supervised by an attorney. From conducting legal research and communicating with clients to drafting memos and letters, trained paralegals can take numerous non-billable tasks off of your to-do list. But how do you find a paralegal for your law firm?

In this blog post, we’ll cover how finding a paralegal can benefit your law firm’s productivity, profitability, and client service capabilities. We’ll also discuss the different types of paralegals that can support your firm and provide tips for how to hire a paralegal.

Why you should hire a paralegal

Not sure about whether you should hire a paralegal? Consider these seven ways a paralegal could benefit your firm.

1. Save time and do more billable work

Improving productivity is a great way for improving law firm cash flow. Most lawyers lose a significant portion of their workdays to administrative tasks that don’t bring in revenue. In fact, according to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, the average lawyer spends just 2.5 hours on billable work per day.

By finding a paralegal to take care of legal administrative work, legal research, or other non-billable work, you can free up your time to focus on billable work, grow your practice, and boost your firm’s bottom line.

2. Increase efficiency with a more specialized team

Successfully running a law firm means balancing your day-to-day activities with enough billable work, delivering a client-centered service, and making sound business decisions. It’s almost impossible for one person to be an expert and have enough time to do all these successfully. But a specialized and efficient team—where different members each focus on doing a few things well instead of doing everything just okay—can lead to economies of scale.

When you focus on billable work and your paralegal focuses on support tasks, you’ll both become better at your respective tasks. This would likely lead to better overall productivity and efficiency.

3. Expand your team in a cost-friendly way

While it may seem counterintuitive to invest in hiring another staff member, adding a paralegal to your team is cheaper than hiring more lawyers. The work that paralegals do can free up your time to serve more clients and bring in more revenue.

4. Pass on cost savings to your clients

When you hire a paralegal, you gain an opportunity to better accommodate your clients with lower fees. By delegating administrative and research tasks to a paralegal—who requires a lower fee than a lawyer—you can reduce your cost of service. Charge your clients accordingly, and everyone wins.

5. Increase your team’s flexibility with outsourced paralegals

If you have some support needs in your law office, but not enough for a full-time paralegal, consider outsourced, freelance, or virtual paralegals. These options are more flexible and allow your firm to add extra support during busy times when you need it—and not when you don’t.

Freelance paralegals and virtual paralegals give you the ability to divide the workload at your law firm, without adding someone permanently to your payroll. Because virtual paralegals work remotely, they can be a big help if your firm is cloud-based or working from home.

Services like Hire an Esquire can help you connect with one.

6. Experienced paralegals are great at legal research and law office administration

For many lawyers, tasks like legal research and administrative work are a time-consuming but necessary part of running a legal practice. You can use tech (like Clio Manage’s legal practice management software) to significantly streamline and automate many routine tasks. But there are still some administrative duties that take time and effort to complete.

For well-trained paralegals, these tasks are their area of expertise. Chances are, paralegals can tackle these tasks more quickly and effectively than you can, and at a lower hourly rate.

7. Most paralegals have specialized training in a legal practice area

Paralegals do so much more than just administrative work—with specialized training and experience in a practice area, paralegals can help with legal work such as:

Conducting legal research
Organizing client files
Drafting pleadings and discovery notices
Interviewing clients and witnesses

Don’t overlook the expertise of paralegals when it comes to the growth of your firm, either. Because paralegals have a finger on the pulse of what’s happening at your firm, paralegals can lead innovation when it comes to business decisions, technology adoption, and other growth opportunities.

When should I hire a paralegal?

Though hiring any staff member or freelancer is always a big business decision, there are two clear signs that you need a paralegal’s help as soon as possible. First, you should hire a paralegal if you—or other lawyers in your practice—are feeling overwhelmed with work and non-billable tasks. Second, if you’re having trouble keeping costs down at your firm, you could probably use a paralegal. Basically, if you’re struggling with time-management issues, your clients aren’t satisfied, or you simply need more support dealing with the work overload, then it’s time to consider hiring a paralegal.

How to hire a paralegal

Not sure where to start when it comes to hiring a paralegal? The following tips can help:

Understand the different types of paralegals

There’s no single job description for a paralegal because the role varies from firm to firm. A big part of what makes paralegals so useful is their versatility and variability. There are many different types of paralegals and different paralegal specialties, so you can look for the best fit to support your law firm’s unique needs.

Here are some of the common types of paralegals:

Practice area: Some paralegals focus on just about every area of law. A paralegal with experience in your practice area will be familiar with the ins and outs of the types of cases your firm works with.
Paralegal specialists: In certain cases, paralegal specialists can provide legal support and assistance to lawyers and judges (as opposed to regular paralegals, who just assist attorneys).
Generalist paralegals: Smaller firms with just one or two paralegals may benefit from a generalist paralegal that can perform a wide variety of paralegal tasks.
Freelance paralegals: While freelancers are not full time and aren’t always on hand, they can help ease your workload as needed.
Virtual paralegals: Like freelance paralegals, these paralegals can help when needed. However, they work remotely and are even more flexible, given that they work virtually.

Familiarize yourself with what a paralegal can and cannot do

What can a paralegal do:

According to the American Bar Association, paralegals can do pretty much any task normally performed by a lawyer, except work that is proscribed by law—as long as the lawyer supervises the work.

This means paralegals—when properly supervised by attorneys—can perform tasks on behalf of lawyers. This means a paralegal’s workday could include tasks like conducting law office administrative work, conducting legal research, drafting pleadings and discovery notices, assisting in lawyer’s closings and trials, and more.

What a paralegal cannot do:

While paralegals can do a lot to support your legal work, that they are not lawyers. Therefore, there are rules you need to follow and ethical responsibilities to adhere to. In general, paralegals must avoid the unauthorized practice of law since they are not lawyers. This means that a paralegal cannot represent any clients, establish an attorney’s relationship with a client, set fees, or give legal advice.

The ABA also offers guidelines for the utilization of paralegal services, which outline when and how attorneys should introduce paralegals to clients, courts, and other lawyers.

It’s important to know that the exact parameters of what a paralegal can (and can’t) do vary by state. Be sure to check your jurisdiction’s rules to ensure you’re not inadvertently breaking them.

Determine what type of paralegal you need

“Okay,” you’re thinking, “I need a paralegal—but what kind of paralegal do I need?”

Look at the common types of paralegals, and think about what type of help you could benefit from in your practice. Do you need the paralegal to specialize in certain areas of law? Do you want someone who is freshly trained (and might have more recent technology training)? Or do you need someone who already has a lot of experience and might know more of the ins and outs of your practice area?

Create a job posting and share it

If you’re ready to recruit a paralegal, consider what tasks a paralegal would focus on at your particular firm. Then, draft a job description and start sharing it and publishing the posting on job boards.

Here are a few tips for creating an effective paralegal job posting:

Be clear. As we’ve discussed, the role of a paralegal can cover a wide variety of tasks. Don’t be vague—explain what type of paralegal you’re looking to hire, and what their main roles will be. Do you want a paralegal who thrives doing a lot of legal research? Or do you want a paralegal who is a pro at speaking with clients, first and foremost?
Explain how to apply. If you want to get quality applicants, be sure to include clear instructions on how to apply. You don’t want to lose out on the perfect candidate because of a confusing posting on your part.
Share and post it strategically. Post your job where paralegals will see it. Try sharing it on legal and paralegal job boards and paralegal associations (like NALA (National Association of Legal Assistants) and National Federation of Paralegal Associations (NFPA).
Tap into your professional networks. Share your posting with your network—positive references are a powerful way to find quality new staff members.

Vet through your potential candidates

Once you’ve amassed a list of applicants, vet any potential candidates to put the best at the top of your list. Look for:

Experience. Check a potential candidate’s resume for their experience level, previous experience, and where they’ve worked in the past. If you’re a new lawyer, a paralegal with extensive hands-on experience in your practice area could be a big help.
Are they certified? Not all states require paralegals to be certified, so check your state’s rules. But if your state requires it, you need to as well. Whether or not it’s required, it’s good to look into a candidate’s level of training.
What type of certification do they have? There are many paralegal certifications out there, and not all are made equal. If a candidate’s resume mentions certification, check from where—NALA and NFPA are two of the most reputable certification programs.

There’s also a difference between a certificate of completion and a paralegal certification:

Certificate of completion means that someone has completed a paralegal educational program.
Paralegal certification means that someone has completed a certification exam or a certifying organization’s requirements to become a certified paralegal.

Keep in mind that while a bar-sanctioned program represents a higher level of achievement, these candidates would also require a higher salary.

Conduct an initial phone interview with your applicants

Once you have a list of vetted candidates, conduct phone interviews to narrow down your candidate list even further.

Phone interviews are a good way to get a better picture of a candidate’s spoken demeanor while learning more about their experience and achievements. After all, they may be speaking on the phone with your clients. The phone interview is also a good time to ask about what they’re passionate about professionally, to get a better sense of their goals.

Conduct a face-to-face interview with your potential candidates

Whether you’re able to meet in person or virtually via video conference with a tool like Zoom, take the time to interview your shortlist of candidates face-to-face.

To help your paralegal interviews run smoothly:

Be prepared. The interview is your last chance to get to know if someone is the right fit, so come prepared with a set of questions to help determine their experience level, work ethic and style, and goals to see if they align with your firm.
Schedule interviews. Especially if you’re interviewing multiple candidates, it’s important to stay organized. Use appointment booking tools like Calendly to help you schedule interviews easily and keep track of them.
Ask for samples. If you are looking for a paralegal to assist with a lot of correspondence or writing tasks, you can request writing samples to help assess their skill level. And if a candidate is certified, you may also want to use the opportunity to ask to see any certification.

Make client-centeredness one of your top requirements

Part of running a client-centered law firm is considering your clients’ needs and experience at the center of your thinking—even when finding a paralegal.

Your paralegal is an important part of your law firm and business, and will likely be the first point of contact with customers. When interviewing a potential candidate, keep in mind that your paralegal will likely have a lot of face time with your clients. Remember to consider a candidate’s personality and how they will fit into your team, represent your law firm, and interact with your clients. (You can take a course to get your law firm Client-Centered Certified here).

Conclusion

If you’re a lawyer who spends a lot of your day juggling billable legal work with the non-billable and administrative work that comes with running your practice, your time is probably diluted and stretched thin. This could translate into a loss of potential revenue and less time to focus on your clients. By supporting your law firm with legal tasks, a well-trained paralegal can ease that burden—while helping you cut costs and freeing up time to focus on billable work.

Finding a paralegal takes a bit of effort—from figuring out what kind of paralegal your firm needs to vetting and hiring the best fit—but the long-term benefits outweigh the work. Whether you hire a paralegal full-time or opt to add a more flexible freelance paralegal to your team, adding an experienced legal professional (who isn’t a lawyer) to your firm can go a long way to help your firm grow.

Accounting and Bookkeeping Best Practices for Law Firms

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:00:45 GMT

This blog post has been reviewed by Amanda Aguillard, CPA of Aguillard Accounting.

While you’ve spent years honing your skills to become a great lawyer, you didn’t learn about accounting or bookkeeping for attorneys at law school—which might make thoughts of law firm accounting and legal bookkeeping pretty intimidating for even seasoned attorneys.

Still, if you’re the owner of a small law firm, you need to know the essentials of legal accounting and bookkeeping. This way, your firm can stay compliant with ethics rules—and so that you aren’t inadvertently leaving money on the table.

Here’s the good news: We’ve done a lot of the leg-work for you.

Whether you don’t know where to start or you’re unsure of what you know (and what you don’t), this guide gives you a practical overview of the fundamentals of bookkeeping for attorneys and legal accounting for small law firm owners. We’ll introduce the basics of law firm accounting and attorney bookkeeping, including the difference between bookkeeping and accounting, legal accounting terms you need to know, mistakes you should avoid, and the best practices to follow.

We’ll also show you how legal accounting software can make the whole process easier (and more effective).

Ready to dive in? Let’s start with the basics.

Accounting vs. bookkeeping for attorneys

Before we go any further, it’s important to distinguish between two terms that can sometimes be used interchangeably—but shouldn’t be—bookkeeping and accounting.

Legal bookkeepers and legal accountants work with your firm’s financials, with the shared goal of helping your firm financially grow and succeed. But what they do with that data (and when) is different. Each serves a purpose at your firm.

Bookkeeping

Bookkeepers record the financial transactions and balance the financial accounts for your firm. Legal bookkeeping takes place before any accounting can occur and is an important administrative task for any law firm. Without proper attorney bookkeeping, it’s impossible to track what money is coming (and leaving your firm). This can cause serious issues and stunt your firm’s growth (more on that later). Reliable bookkeeping for attorneys also provides accurate financial data for legal accountants to work with.

Accounting

Legal accountants then use the data that a bookkeeper records as a foundation they can build on to help your firm make better, more informed financial decisions. Accountants analyze, interpret, and summarize financial data. Legal accountants work for law firms by tasks like preparing financial statements, providing financial forecasting, and capturing expenses.

Why bookkeeping and accounting matter for law firms

“Legal accounting and bookkeeping are important.”

This statement is obvious… and, yet, a bit nebulous. You know you should care about law firm accounting, but is it clear why you should care, and how much?

The answer? As the owner of a law firm, you should care about legal accounting and bookkeeping—a lot.

Effective legal accounting is critical to your firm’s success. To ensure your firm’s financial statements are accurate, complete, and up-to-date, you need to use sound bookkeeping for attorneys. To get a rich financial picture and meet your obligations to your firm, clients, and the state bar, your firm needs a clear, accurate accounting system. Here’s why:

You need to stay compliant

Every law firm has a responsibility to stay compliant with ethics regulations, and your firm is no exception. Ethics rules vary in each jurisdiction, but there are definitely some accounting basics that lawyers need to follow.

For example, Rule 1.15 of the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct outlines key responsibilities for lawyers with regards to holding funds in trust, recordkeeping, and notifying clients of the receipt of funds or property.

Whether intentional or through neglect, violations of compliance regulations—like mishandling client funds—can lead to serious repercussions.

Responsibilities can vary depending on where you practice law (be sure to check the requirements in your jurisdiction), but violating legal accounting rules could lead to:

Harsh penalties,
Licence suspension, or even
Disbarment.

You need to grow your business

Remember: Your practice is a law firm, but it’s also a business. Legal accounting lets you collect and analyze information, and make data-driven decisions based on what money comes in and leaves your firm—so it’s worth it to pay attention.

Knowing exactly what your firm has coming in (through collections) and going out (through expenses) means you’re less likely to miss out on revenue by accident (i.e., due to billable hours not being recorded, or missing out on tax deduction opportunities). You can also use this information to identify what parts of your practice are most and least successful—so you can more thoughtfully allocate resources to stimulate future growth.

You could be harming your reputation

In the law—as in life—reputation is everything. In addition to threatening your firm’s compliance or losing your firm money, accounting mistakes also look unprofessional—and a lack of professionalism can lose you clients, referrals, and opportunities for growth.

Accounting terms you need to know

No one expects you to moonlight as a CPA, but—if you want to know how accounting impacts your law firm—it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with legal accounting lingo. We’ve collected a few of the essential terms to know:

Chart of Accounts

This is a list of all your firm’s financial accounts, giving you a framework for where to record every transaction. While the chart of accounts is customized to your law firm’s size, jurisdiction, and practice area, it typically includes five core categories—assets, liabilities, owner’s equity, revenue, and expenses—in addition to numerous subcategories.

The chart of accounts for law firms should include the IOLTA or trust account, as well as a trust liability account (to offset and show that the funds in the IOLTA account are not the law firm’s).

Client Trust Ledger: A statement of activity that shows all of the transactions (beginning balance, deposits in, payments out, and ending balance) for each client.

Double-Entry Accounting

Double-entry accounting is a system of bookkeeping where every entry to an account (i.e., every financial transaction) requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account. A double entry system, therefore, has two equal and corresponding sides—or debits and credits—and creates a balance sheet consisting of assets, liabilities, and equity.

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

So, with double-entry accounting, every financial transaction gets sorted into a specific category (assets, liabilities, or equity), and once those transactions are sorted, the two sides should match. Double entry accounting is a helpful practice for lawyers to know about, as it provides an extra guard against errors.

Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA)

While the specifics vary from state to state (it’s important to check the details for your jurisdiction), an IOLTA account is a type of bank account from which any interest earned on the account is collected and forwarded to the state bar (usually to funds for social justice). Lawyers are not allowed to collect interest on money held in trust for their clients.

IOLTA accounts are designed to keep client funds separate from your typical business or operating account—where you are allowed to accrue interest. Lawyers also can’t deposit their own funds into an IOLTA account, except to pay service charges (though it’s wise to create a separate operating account or designated credit card to cover fees—so that there’s no risk of accidentally touching client money).

Trust Accounting

The practice of keeping client funds given in trust (including unearned fees paid as a retainer, settlement funds, court fees, or advanced costs) in a separate account from law firm operating funds.

3-Way Reconciliation

Checking and verifying your financial data periodically by checking the following three things. 3-way reconciliation checks can be done manually, or with the help of legal trust accounting software:

Bank account reconciliation: Check the bank’s version of your balance against what you think your balance should be. If there are any differences, document them.
Trust reconciliation: Check how much money is owed to other people—that is, ensure you know which client every dollar belongs to.
Client trust ledger: Check statement of activity about your trust accounts.

Law firm accounting best practices

At her Clio Cloud Conference presentation explaining key accounting concepts, Amanda Aguillard, CPA, kept things simple: “Accounting is really about organization.”

If you start organized, you’re much more likely to stay organized. By establishing—and following—best practices for your law firm accounting like the examples below, you’ll be better able to help your firm stay on track.

Set a budget

You can’t expect your firm to succeed financially if you don’t set a law firm budget to:

Set revenue benchmarks
Create expectations for cash flow and expenses
Make it easier to set aside funds for big-ticket expenses like annual bar dues

While there are many ways to build your budget, the most important thing is to have a strategy. A few general guidelines?

Consider your firm’s mandatory expenses and resources—make a list and write it down.
Set goals, including personal (How many vacations do you want to take in a year?) and business (How fast do you want your firm’s revenues to grow?).
(Honestly) project your revenues.
Use software such as Clio Manage to help track your billable time, expenses and revenue, and keep your financial records in check by syncing to an accounting system like QuickBooks Online.

Stay on top of trust accounting

Trust and IOLTA accounts are among the most common—and most dangerous—areas of legal accounting to make an error. Without careful adherence to best practices, it’s all too easy for you or your staff to accidentally commingle funds and put your firm at risk. To follow best practices for trust accounting, you should:

Keep meticulous records. While the exact requirements vary by your jurisdiction, most State Bar association rules require law firms to keep and maintain detailed records for client trust accounts (you can check your state’s requirements through the American Bar Association’s list here).
Keep separate accounts. Most recordkeeping rules require attorneys to keep at least two bank accounts—an operating bank account and a seperate IOLTA bank account (again, check the specific requirements for your area).
Use technology to help. Clio Manage’s trust accounting features makes it easier to manage client funds in trust accounts in accordance with legal industry regulations by:
- Setting up separate ledgers for trust and operating accounts.
- Creating invoices that explain what funds were removed from a trust, and what remains in their trust account.
- Generating trust accounting reports.
- Making it easier to conduct 3-way reconciliations of accounts.

Be consistent

“When we’re looking at the importance of solid accounting,” Amanda said, “we are really talking about looking at financial data on a regular basis. And we can’t do that if we’re not gathering and sorting it on a regular basis.”

Think about it: While most law firm owners recognize the importance of year-end law firm accounting and being prepared for tax time, it’s relatively easy to procrastinate on getting financials in order until it’s time to file.

By using bookkeeping for attorneys to keep accurate records and consistently review the firm’s financial statements on a monthly or weekly basis, you’ll see your firm’s true financial picture. This way, you’ll be better equipped to identify growth opportunities.

Use financial reporting to identify opportunities

Beyond just staying organized and compliant, following best practices for accounting helps you identify growth opportunities.

A byproduct of good law firm accounting is valuable data on the state of your firm. Using financial reporting information, you can make data-driven decisions to positively impact your firm, and find:

Opportunities to reduce overhead
Opportunities for financial growth

5 Common legal accounting and bookkeeping mistakes

Lots can go wrong when it comes to law firm accounting—especially if you’ve put your firm’s accounting on the backburner. Below, we outline five common legal accounting mistakes (so you can avoid them).

1. Mismanaging trust accounts

Trust accounts are one of the most common places where it’s easy to make a legal accounting mistake. Whether you mismanage the accounts, put funds in the wrong account, accidentally use funds, or fail to report correctly, trust accounting errors are a big deal, as they can lead to penalties, suspension, or even losing the right to practice law.

Fortunately, Amanda has a simple rule of thumb to help keep trust account errors at bay:

“The trust account is not your money,” she said. “It is your client’s money. You can’t mix them. No commingling of funds ever. Like never ever, never ever commingle client funds. You can’t do it, not even for a second.”

Moreover, tools like Clio Manage’s trust accounting features can help by setting up separate ledgers for trust and operating accounts and by simplifying reconciliation.

2. Incorrectly differentiating income and revenue

Whenever an invoice is paid, the incurred costs of a matter must be allocated first. This portion is not income, so it should be logged separately. However, if a firm fails to separate revenue that covers incurred costs from actual revenue, their records will be off.

The result? The firm could meet compliance issues, and their books will be inaccurate (skewing the value of any accounting data derived from them).

3. Data entry errors

To err is human, and to manually input data … is to err. Entering numbers manually often leads to mistakes and duplicated data entry. This results in wasted time, mismatched records, billing complications, and even compliance violations.

4. Leaking money

Poor accounting practices—like struggling to track billable hours or sending out invoices late (or forgetting to send them at all)—can lead to money leakage. Money leakage occurs when funds that should have come in as revenue are lost or not collected, and it’s more common than you may think (According to the average collection rate reported in the 2018 Legal Trends Report, lawyers only collect 85% of what they bill). If your firm is not keeping good books or reviewing financials regularly, these leaks could go unnoticed—which means your firm loses out on hard-earned revenue.

One way to help get your payments on track? A tool like Clio Payments, powered by LawPay, allows you to bill clients via email, accept online credit card payments, and simplify your billing workflow—making collections simpler and more secure, so your firm can get paid faster.

5. Avoiding professional help

Just as your clients turn to your expertise when it comes to the law, there comes a point when you need to call in the professionals for legal accounting. Whether it means using legal accounting software to simplify and automate your accounting, hiring a professional legal accountant, or both—don’t be afraid to delegate when you need to.

How to choose an accountant for your firm

While it’s important to understand the fundamentals of legal accounting, you still aren’t an accountant or bookkeeper. Hiring professionals is a common practice for law firms, and it’s an easy route to peace of mind. This is because a professional legal bookkeeper and accountant can help you manage your firm’s revenue and ensure that your firm’s financial transactions are handled ethically and accurately.

Though your firm will benefit from hiring a legal accountant or a legal bookkeeper, enlisting professional help with both tasks can go a long way towards ensuring that your firm’s financials are accurate and handled in your firm’s best interests.

For administrative help with your firm’s finances (like recording transactions, balancing accounts, and creating invoices), a bookkeeper could be helpful. But, when it comes to using that data that a bookkeeper records to help your firm (by tasks like preparing financial statements, financial forecasting, and capturing expenses), you need an accountant. Your best bet is likely to hire both a legal bookkeeper and a legal accountant.

What legal bookkeepers do

Bookkeepers deal with the administration of financial record-keeping at your law firm. Core tasks include:

Recording financial transactions
Balancing financial accounts
Bank reconciliations
Creating invoices
Administering employee payroll

What to look for in a legal bookkeepers

Choosing the right legal bookkeeper can have a huge impact on your firm’s success, so don’t just choose the first person who crosses your path. Here are a few other things to consider:

Law firm experience. While certain traits make an individual a good bookkeeper in general (the best bookkeepers are extremely diligent and have high attention to detail), it’s wise to look for a bookkeeper with experience working for law firms.
Referrals. Don’t be afraid to ask around. Other legal professionals may have had a great experience with a particular bookkeeper, and that can guide your search.
Familiarity with your software. Be sure to check that any potential bookkeeper for your firm understands the accounting software you use.

What legal accountants do

A professional legal accountant’s role generally focuses on collecting, interpreting, and using financial data to help a firm stay compliant and grow. Core tasks include:

Financial data management—including preparing financial statements
Capturing expenses
Completing tax returns
Client trust accounting
Case cost accounting
Payroll
Separating revenue from income

What to look for in a legal accountant

While the person (or people) you hire should be tailored to the needs of your unique practice, there are some general questions you can ask:

Are they familiar with the specific rules and regulations for your jurisdiction?
What technology do they use as part of their accounting process?
Does your firm require an employee or a contractor?
How often will you require their services?
What level of bookkeeping will they require from you?
Are they experienced with accounting with firms your size?
Can they offer guidance (through reporting or advice) to help your business grow?

Using tech to make legal accounting easier

One of the reasons that accounting has traditionally been such a hassle for law firms? It involved a ton of inefficient, manual work—involving a lot of spreadsheets, paper invoices, inputting data entry, and struggles with collections.

Luckily, as Amanda noted, “Technology can be used to ease these pain points when it comes to legal accounting.” Here are a few examples of options that can do just that:

Xero: For easier online accounting

Designed specifically for small businesses and their advisors, Xero’s online accounting software simplifies financial management for your law firm, letting you:

Take care of accounting from anywhere, anytime while you’re on the go.
Get paid faster with customized online invoices.
Make better business decisions with the help of a real-time view of your firm’s cash flow.
Reconcile accounts in seconds.

And, with the Clio and Xero integration, your firm can automatically connect client invoices and expenses logged in Clio with Xero—creating a seamless link between the accounting and billing process. For attorney Andrew Legrand of Spera Law Group, this integration is so useful, it’s eliminated his need for a bookkeeper altogether.

QuickBooks Online: For streamlined legal accounting

Working alongside Clio, QuickBooks Online streamlines the process of legal accounting by keeping your law firm’s client and financial data perfectly in sync—letting you quickly and easily sync your firm’s contacts, bills, and transactions from Clio’s practice management software to QuickBooks’ cloud-based accounting platform. With QuickBooks and Clio, you can:

Sync contacts, invoices, financial information, and transactions to eliminate repeat data entry
Manage amounts in both Operating and Trust accounts
Sync payments and credit notes applied to bills in Clio to QuickBooks Online
Use an automated trust workflow to ensure that amounts in trust are reconciled between Clio, QuickBooks Online, and your associated bank accounts
Ensure simple and accurate data management and reporting

InvoiceSherpa: For automating payment reminders

Save time and energy, increase your cash flow, and get invoices paid faster by automating your accounts receivable with InvoiceSherpa’s invoice reminder and collection software. Because InvoiceSherpa integrates with Clio, you can bring contacts and invoices from Clio directly into InvoiceSherpa.

Clio Manage: For legal practice management that supports legal accounting

To effectively manage your legal accounting, it’s smart to start with a foundation that works for all aspects of running your firm. Clio Manage’s cloud-based legal practice management software helps you run your firm—allowing lawyers to track their time and expenses, collaborate with clients, accept credit card payments, and conduct core accounting tasks—all from one platform.

Integrations to link general and trust accounting

Both general accounting and trust accounting are necessary for your firm’s success—and integrations seamlessly tie the two areas together.

Integrations connect Clio’s trust accounting management features (like setting up separate trust and operating account ledgers and generating reports for trust accounting compliance) with the general accounting features (like creating financial reports and reconciling accounts) of online accounting software programs QuickBooks Online and Xero. This gives you the best of both worlds, while making your law firm’s comprehensive accounting situation easier to manage.

Better legal billing

When it comes to legal billing, software like Clio Manage can make the process run smoother, too. Clio’s legal billing features let you bill securely, create branded invoices, and automate billing, so you can get paid faster—as Chris Trebatoski of Treblaw LLC can attest to: While Chris used to labor for days over billing at a larger firm, Chris now gets all his bills out each month in a matter of 15 minutes with Clio.

How to succeed at law firm accounting and bookkeeping in 2021

Keeping your firm’s accounts in order may not be glamorous. But having up-to-date and accurate law firm bookkeeping records and leveraging professional law firm accounting is key to unlocking law firm growth and financial success for your practice. While there are a lot of factors to balance, here are the essentials for law firm accounting and bookkeeping success that you should get a handle on ASAP.

Develop a clear bookkeeping system

If you want your firm to stay compliant, be financially successful, and grow, you need to have an accurate and clear bookkeeping system for your law firm to follow. This could mean taking on bookkeeping tasks in-house or hiring a professional bookkeeper with experience working with law firms.

When it comes to accounting and bookkeeping for attorneys, whether you handle it yourself or hire someone, your bookkeeping system must maintain a consistent schedule for carrying out bookkeeping tasks. This could be daily, weekly, or even monthly.

Keep strict records

Accurate bookkeeping—and, subsequently, accounting—requires accurate records. To make this happen, you must keep and organize documents related to firm financials and attorney bookkeeping, including (but not limited to):

Receipts and proofs of payments
Bills and invoices
Credit card and bank statements
Any canceled checks
Previous tax returns and tax forms
Time reports and billing data

While this may seem overwhelming, software like Clio Manage can help keep records of many of your bookkeeping documents (Clio tracks your legal time and expenses, for example), securely in the cloud.

Track your tax deductions

Taxes are a fact of life and business, but tax deductions can ease the burden when used correctly—yet not all lawyers are up-to-date on their tax deductions. Why? Many lawyers go to one or the other extreme—they either claim everything (and possibly more than they’re allowed to) or they’re so afraid to overstep that they miss out on tax deductions that they’re entitled to.

When it comes to tax deductions, don’t wait until tax time: Learn about the possible tax deductions that apply to you and your firm, and then track related expenses throughout the year. In doing this, you can help make doing your taxes easier, and potentially maximize your return for all that you’re entitled to.

If you’re not sure what tax deductions you should be watching for, our post covering the top tax deductions for lawyers and law firms is a good place to start.

Ensure you have the right bank accounts set up

While this mostly applies to new law firms, ensuring that the basics are determined and set up correctly is critical.

If your law firm doesn’t already have business bank accounts, it’s time to open them. Most firms will need three business bank accounts at minimum—checking, savings, and a separate IOLTA or trust account. Without the right business accounts, you risk inaccurate bookkeeping, messy records, and potentially violating compliance when it comes to trust accounts.

Choose your method for accounting

Similarly, new firms need to choose their preferred method of accounting. This must be done before the firm files its first tax return. Consider what’s best for your particular firm (and likely consult with an accounting expert) before making your choice. It can’t be changed in the years to come, and it impacts how you carry out your legal bookkeeping, tax filing, and more.

In the US, you can go with an accrual or cash accounting method—and the difference is mostly about timing.

Accrual method accounting. With the accrual method, you record revenue when it’s earned and expenses when they’re incurred—whether they’re paid right away or not. This creates a better matching of costs to the revenues earned in a given month or year. It allows for more meaningful financial management, that isn’t influenced by the ups and downs of cash flow.

Cash method accounting. Conversely, cash basis accounting recognizes revenue when you’re paid (i.e. when the cash is received) and expenses when they’re paid. The tax implications of this method also allow your firm to pay tax on income once it’s received and in the bank.

There’s no one “right” method (though at a certain level of income, you may be required to take on the accrual method). In fact, some software platforms allow you to use accrual-based books for monthly management of the firm, while also creating cash-basis statements for preparing tax returns. Look into the pros and cons of both methods for your firm, then be consistent going forward to ensure your records are accurate and easy to track.

Conclusion

Legal accounting may be new to you, but it doesn’t have to be scary. At the end of the day, what’s most important is that you get the details right so that you can stay compliant with ethics rules and help your firm grow to its full potential.

Once you understand the basics, consider hiring an accountant, as a contractor or as an employee, to your team to help you level your firm up, and make the legal accounting process even smoother by adding legal accounting software and legal practice management software to your firm’s toolkit. By using legal technology, you can ease your workload of manual tasks while helping to your firm meet its goals—avoiding errors, ensuring compliance, and staying organized.

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.

How to Successfully Organize Your Legal Files

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 13:00:41 GMT

Why is it important for law firms to have effective legal filing systems? From correspondence to discovery, legal documents are the foundation of any law firm. Keeping those documents organized and accessible can make a huge difference to your law firm’s success. When you have a good legal filing system, you can find and access legal files easily. This makes you more productive, efficient, and effective as a lawyer. But how do you create a strong law firm filing system?

In this post, we’ll cover the key points you need to know to organize your files successfully in 2021. We’ll review the essentials of the best legal filing systems—like why you need a structured system, what makes a law firm filing system effective, and how a paperless legal filing system can help your firm level up (while making your life easier).

Why you need an effective legal filing system

Have you ever been frustrated from digging through files looking for a document? Or have you been late to a client or court appointment because of how long it took to find a file? These scenarios are preventable. They also make it clear that you need an effective legal filing system to do your best legal work, and efficiently find files and save time.

If your law firm’s filing system lacks structure or you’re still dealing with a mass of paper files, switching to a more effective legal filing system will save you time. In the short term, it will let you more easily access documents when you need them. In the long term, it will allow you to work remotely, grow your firm without worrying about physical storage space, and implement further time-saving measures like electronic signatures.

What are the best legal filing systems?

The best legal filing systems make it easy for anyone at your work to effectively and efficiently find the files you need. Your law firm filing system should be easy to use, searchable, and future-proof. This means your files should be logically organized and you should be able to quickly search and find legal documents. You also need to develop a filing system that will not become obsolete a year from now.

How to manage paper files

If you’re dealing with paper files, these legal filing system ideas can help you get them organized:

Before you start developing your legal filing system

Taking the time to prepare before you start working on your filing system can save you a lot of time and hassle later.

Figure out what you have. If your existing legal file system is not organized, do a rough inventory and sort through all your files. This makes it easier to develop your legal filing system. You can do this by categorizing them according to correspondence, motions, pleadings, or even client names.
Clean up old files. Check your jurisdiction’s rules for retaining files to see if there are old documents or files that you can responsibility get rid of. In New York, for example, lawyers must retain closed client files indefinitely unless the client or third party requests their return. But there are exceptions in New York where a lawyer may dispose of certain attorney-client books and records after seven years.

Once you’re clear on your legal and ethical responsibilities, create a file retention policy for your firm. Make sure you outline the rules and policy for what needs to be kept and for how long, and how files will be disposed of when appropriate. By disposing of unnecessary files where possible, you can free up space to organize what does need to be kept.

Determine your law office filing system

When you’re ready to start building a better system for organizing paper files, ask and answer the following questions for guidance:

Do you have enough storage space?

Consider your physical office space: Is there enough space to house all the documents and files? Or do you need more office space and/or more storage furniture?

When it comes to furniture, a large cabinet (or series of cabinets) equipped with hanging files is essential. But this can quickly lead to physical space issues. If you need more furniture, what type of cabinets or drawers do you need? Or can you rearrange your current furniture?

Remember to think ahead. If your goal is to grow your law firm, you’ll need space to accommodate the extra documents and files that come with law firm growth.

How will you name your files?

Take time to decide on a file naming system before you start shifting your files. This determines how you’ll categorize your files and how effectively you’ll be able to find them.

Depending on what makes the most sense for your firm, you can arrange files by client name, case or matter number, the date the file was opened, the name of the lawyer, or a numeric indexing system. Willie Peacock suggests that something as simple as “date, keyword description of the file, and initials of the responsible party” works well.

Remember that you’re not the only one who needs to access files. So, you should have a file naming system that’s consistent, logical, and easy to understand. This means skipping any shorthands that only make sense to you.

How will you identify files?

Once you’ve decided how you’ll name your files, decide on a system of file labeling and identification. Clear identifiers (like color-coded file labels) and expanding files can go a long way towards organizing paper files more easily.

Could you go digital?

Think about using a digital legal filing system. As you’ve likely realized, paper files will only take up more and more space, which will be costly. Working with paper files today is becoming less practical and efficient for lawyers. This is especially when a pandemic or natural disaster could require a more remote work environment.

Why you should consider a cloud-based law office filing system

The thought of taking your legal filing systems digital might seem like a lot of work at first. But transitioning to a paperless law office can save you time, money, and a lot of effort almost immediately and in the long term.

If your firm is still using a paper legal filing system, you can make an effort to organize your documents better. But ultimately, that’s a short-term solution. To position your law firm for success in today’s legal marketplace, consider going paperless. Here’s why:

Save time and increase time spent on billable work

According to the 2019 Legal Trends Report, the average lawyer spent just 2.5 hours on billable work each day. This means most lawyers are losing a lot of time on administrative tasks—like sifting through paper files.

A cloud-based law office filing system moves your document management online in the cloud. This dramatically reduces the need to manually manage paper systems. With the time saved, you can dedicate more of your valuable hours to billable work and your clients.

Work from anywhere, at any time

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, the ability to work remotely as a lawyer is always useful—and sometimes it’s essential.

When your law office filing system is in the cloud, you can access documents remotely. This means you can work effectively in the office or from home. This added flexibility goes a long way to improving your work-life balance and quality of life.

No space and furniture issues

As we mentioned earlier, a big part of managing paper files is physically navigating where you’ll put everything. From expensive cabinets and drawers to storage rooms, physical file management can be expensive and take up a lot of space. When you take your legal filing system digital with a cloud-based file management system, all you need for file storage is your computer—which saves money and space.

Transfer the benefits to your clients

Going paperless isn’t just good for you and your firm. When you save time by accessing legal documents digitally, you can bill your clients less—even while increasing your time spent on billable work. In a courtroom situation, the ability to quickly pull up documents by searching through a cloud-based document management system can save valuable time and give you a competitive advantage—which ultimately benefits your clients.

By spending more time on meaningful work while charging clients less, you deliver a better customer experience—and you have more time to grow your business.

How to go paperless

Deciding to move forward with a paperless law firm filing system is a smart choice Here’s how to make the transition to going paperless as smooth as possible:

1. Commit.

Going paperless is not as difficult as it seems—especially if everyone is on board and committed to the process. Get your entire law firm to buy into the process from the start. Explaining the reasons why you’re going paperless (and the benefits they’ll reap) will help.

2. Take client intake online.

It’s much easier to work with digital files from that start than it is to digitize paper files. Switch to a paperless client intake system—such as Clio Grow—to start new clients off with digital files. This will make keeping their files organized easier for you, and sets them up for a paperless experience with your law firm from the start.

3. Have a system (and write it down).

Just as with paper files, having a clear, defined law office filing system is essential for success when you go paperless. With this in mind, establish a system for ensuring files stay paperless (including specific procedures and protocols) and outline it in writing.

Having your paperless legal filing system in writing gives everyone at your firm a consistent and reliable document to refer back to so they can follow it and use it properly—better ensuring the ongoing success of the system.

Can you go partially paperless?

If you can see the benefits of taking your legal filing system digital, but you’re not sure if your law firm is ready, you may think about going partially paperless. Starting by using cloud-based client intake software could cut down on paper files for new clients, for example.

However, keep in mind that the only way you’ll successfully go paperless (and truly future-proof your law office) is to fully commit to it.

Essential tools for effective legal filing systems

Maintaining a law firm filing system is, by nature, complex, but the right tools and technology can help the process run smoother and easier—especially if you’re moving towards a paperless legal filing system. Here are three essentials to consider:

Searchable PDF software. One of the key advantages to going digital with your law office filing system is that you can search through legal documents electronically (instead of wasting time flipping through papers). Software like Adobe Acrobat DC or Foxit PhantomPDF lets you convert multiple files at once to powerful PDFs.
A scanner. If you want to digitize your law firm’s files and documents, hardware like a scanner is a must. A user-friendly scanner like the Fujitsu ScanSnap (which integrates with Clio for added efficiency) uses features like one-button scanning, shortcut buttons, easy profile selection, and document organization to make digitizing a simple, quick process.
Cloud-based document management software. A cloud-based document management system like Clio Manage and its Legal Document Management Software stores your files, helps you organize them, and then lets you access them securely, from anywhere. With unlimited document storage (with automatic file backup) and easy search functionality (you can find the file you need in seconds via keyword search), using the cloud for your legal filing system levels up your firm’s productivity and efficiency.

Conclusion

A good legal filing system may not seem glamorous, but it can make a huge impact on your law firm’s productivity, efficiency, and success.

Taking the time to get organized by creating a filing system will undoubtedly help improve your law firm’s filing system. Going digital with a paperless system is your best bet—and a smart investment in your law firm’s future. When your law firm’s files are paperless, you give yourself the flexibility to work remotely. This way, you can benefit from being able to search, access, and collaborate on legal documents faster and easier.

Law Firm Marketing Strategy: Top 8 Ideas to Grow a Legal Practice

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:00:57 GMT

Do you have a law firm marketing strategy? Even if you’ve created one in the past, it’s always a good idea to revisit and update it annually. To grow your law firm so that it’s thriving and more profitable, you need to attract new clients and cultivate new business. Having a solid law firm marketing strategy and plan helps you grow your law firm by ensuring your firm’s marketing efforts will be as effective as possible.

In this post, we’ll walk you through how to grow your law firm to the next level by creating a law firm marketing strategy and execute an effective marketing plan based on your goals.

What is the difference between a marketing plan and a strategy?

While the terms law firm marketing strategy and marketing plan may sound similar, understanding the difference between the two is important for streamlining your marketing efforts.

Law firm marketing strategy

Essentially, your marketing strategy explains the whys behind your firm’s marketing and drives your marketing efforts forward. Your law firm marketing strategy captures your firm’s marketing goals, target audience, services offered, core message, and more. By highlighting your firm’s marketing goals, defining your target market, analyzing your competitors and market, and shaping your core message, your firm will be in a better position to create an effective marketing plan.

Always start with a solid marketing strategy for your law firm before working on your marketing plan. You don’t want to start executing your marketing tactics, like creating social media marketing content for your law firm’s Twitter page, only to realize your target clients for your practice area respond to a completely different type of message.

Law firm marketing plan

Once you’ve determined your overall law firm marketing strategy, you can use that to guide your firm’s marketing plan. Your law firm’s marketing plan defines the specific actions you will take to execute your strategy and achieve your marketing goals. Your attorney marketing plan will also outline the types of marketing you’ll use for your firm. This includes social media marketing or search engine optimization. When developing your marketing plan, you’ll also consider what results you want from your marketing efforts.

Law firm marketing strategy

What goes into a law firm marketing strategy and how do you create one? The section below outlines the different sections you need in your marketing strategy, and what they mean:

Executive summary

Summarize your overall marketing strategy based on the following sections. Keep it clear and concise. If one of your employees or another stakeholder wanted the lowdown of your marketing strategy, this brief section should tell them what they need to know.

Marketing goals

Define your marketing goals and make sure they align with your firm’s business goals. Make sure they are SMART goals. For example, one of your firm’s marketing goals could be to increase your law firm newsletter open rate by 20% by the first half of the year. Ask yourself: Why have you decided on these goals and why are they important to your law firm?

Target audience

This is one of the most important foundations of a good marketing strategy. Understanding and defining your target audience—including their characteristics, purchasing habits when it comes to legal services, and pain points—will go a long way in helping you execute an effective marketing plan.

Market analysis

“Market” here refers to the people, businesses, and organizations that are your actual and potential clients. Think about the size of the business opportunity your law firm has, based on your practice area(s), geographical location, target audience, etc.

Competitive analysis

A good marketing plan helps you stand out from your competitors and get the clients your law firm needs. But first, you need to understand how and what your competitors are doing. What are the characteristics of your competitors? What is their market share? How do they try to differentiate themselves from other law firms?

Services offered

Outline what type of legal services you will offer, in what practice area(s), and what type of clients do you offer these services to. Are you providing legal help to individuals with accident injuries? Or maybe you provide legal help to families going through difficult divorces? What are the benefits of those services and how will you provide those services?

Core message

This is the key message you want your target audience to know about your law firm. Your core message should go beyond letting your ideal clients know what services you offer—it should speak deeper to their legal and personal pain points and needs.

Pricing and promotion

How will you price and promote your services? What is your law firm pricing model and what do the different prices include? What marketing channels will you utilize and why have you chosen them?

Law firm marketing plan

Taking the time to create and execute a detailed law firm marketing plan gives you a clear roadmap to refer to throughout the year. A detailed marketing plan can also save you time, effort, and marketing budget in the long run. By having a defined plan, it becomes clear who on your team is responsible for what. This helps you stay on track and accomplish your firm’s legal marketing tasks that might otherwise fall through the cracks.

Plan structure overview

Just as you would write down your law firm business plan, having a good structure for your law firm marketing plan is important. This way, everyone at your firm can be on the same page. Having an official marketing plan also lets you measure and track your progress.

Overall, a successful law firm marketing plan means three steps:

Define your marketing goals.
Write down how you plan to achieve those goals.
Execute the plan.

1. Goals and purpose

What do you want your legal marketing plan to achieve?

Without set, quantifiable goals for your law firm marketing, it’s impossible to track and measure your success. If you’ve already created a solid law firm business plan, the good news is that you aren’t starting from scratch. Look at the overall marketing goals you laid out within your business plan, and modify them if needed.

Make sure that any goals you set are SMART and measurable. You should be able to set an objective and a time frame for your marketing goals, so you can reasonably measure how well you’ve achieved them in the future.

Examples of achievable marketing goals include:

Growing your legal practice’s client base. For example, you could set a goal of gaining a certain number of new, active clients by the end of the quarter.
Raising firm pricing. You may want to set the goal of increasing the pricing of some of your legal services to a specific number by the end of the year.
Elevating brand awareness for your law firm. More subjective goals like growing brand awareness are harder to measure. But one of the ways you could evaluate brand awareness is by looking at your firm’s organic web traffic—which is the number of visitors that arrived at your website from search results, and not from paid advertising.

2. Plan components

When it comes to putting your law firm’s marketing plan to paper, keep in mind that you’ll likely have more success if you keep it concise.

While the details of your law firm’s marketing plan will be customized to your specific goals, it should include the following general sections:

Overview. Your plan should outline the how and why of your law firm’s marketing. You may want to include:
- A statement of purpose. Why are you marketing your firm? What do you want to achieve by marketing your law firm?
- Your law firm marketing goals. Write down specific SMART goals for marketing your firm.
Financial investment. How much will your firm budget to invest in marketing?
Marketing activities. What specific marketing tactics, campaigns, and activities will you take on to achieve your goals? When listing the specific marketing tactics your firm will use, make sure they connect with one of your marketing goals. For example, if your goal is to generate five new clients each month, and your strategy to achieve that is through social media, the marketing activities could be a social media campaign through Facebook ads.
Measurement strategies. How will success be measured? For each marketing activity listed, have a way to measure success. For example, for content marketing, a measure of success could be a 20% increase in organic search traffic to your law firm’s website.

3. Execution

When planning or updating your marketing plan, assign individuals to roles. Who does what? Don’t forget to consider who will project manage—if it’s up to the individuals assigned, or if another person will be responsible for it.

Consider outsourcing to a law firm marketing agency or experienced freelancers

When you’re looking at what needs to be done to achieve your law firm marketing goals, be honest about whether your firm can achieve all your goals internally. If handling marketing internally isn’t feasible, consider outsourcing some (or even most) of the marketing tasks. You can hire an expert to help with everything from SEO to content creation—so don’t be afraid to outsource where you need it. Clio’s global network of Certified Consultants is a good place to start.

Law firm marketing plan example

Your law firm marketing plan should be tailored to your firm’s goals and strategy (more on law firm marketing strategy below), but here is an example of how one firm may write out its marketing plan.

Law firm marketing tactics

Today, there are so many ways to market your law firm. Because of this, creating your legal marketing plan can feel overwhelming. Remember to keep your firm’s goals in mind, and choose marketing tactics that you can successfully execute in your marketing plan.

Here are eight types of legal marketing tactics to consider for your law firm:

1. SEO

According to the 2019 Legal Trends Report, 57% of people look for a lawyer on their own. Now more than ever, potential clients prefer to find lawyers themselves. More and more of those clients are turning to online searches (according to the 2019 report, 17%). This means being easy to find online is one of the most critical marketing strategies for any law firm. Search engine optimization (SEO), can help with just that.

SEO strategies can increase your law firm website’s position in search engine results pages (like Google) to drive more visitors to your website. This is a powerful marketing tactic because if you’re easier to find, your firm will be more top-of-mind for potential clients. Many law firms put a lot of time, money, and effort into creating high-quality content for their websites. However, without a good volume of web visitors and potential clients looking at your content, your website will not help you gain the clients you need.

Jordan Couch, an attorney at Palace Law, explains how they use SEO as an important component of the firm’s marketing strategy. “At our firm, Palace Law, we have taken steps to build our internal SEO and external SEO. We have videos on our website introducing who we are and offering free information to potential clients. The latter (often called freemium services) is one of the most important things lawyers can do. Offer up valuable information to potential clients for free, form contracts, legal research, and instructional videos, and you’ll find that this not only increases your SEO, but also draws in a lot of clients. We also advertise and maintain profiles on paid and free sites.”

2. Local SEO

SEO is important for ensuring your law firm shows up in online searches, but general searches aren’t the primary way potential clients will find you—especially if you’re a small law firm. To ensure nearby clients can find you online, you also want to optimize your firm’s ranking in local search results, aka local SEO, as part of your law firm marketing strategy.

Local SEO tactics

Set up a Google My Business page. To show up in local search results, establishing a Google My Business page should be your first step. Your Google My Business page should include details like contact information, photos, and a link to your law firm website.
Ensure your website has local keywords. To help improve your law firm’s website ranking in local searches, add local keyword data to your website. For example, if you’re a Bellingham criminal lawyer, you would want to ingrate terms like “Bellingham criminal lawyer” on your law firm website.
Be consistent with your NAP. Your NAP (your Name, Address, Phone data) should be consistently formatted anywhere it appears online (like your website, Facebook page, etc.) to optimize your local SEO.
Get backlinks. Backlinks from other websites of authority can enhance your law firm website’s search rankings by building up your site’s authority online.
Generate client reviews. Positive reviews are key to building your law firm’s reputation. Good, authentic customer reviews for your Google My Business page and sites like Yelp and Avvo are a great local SEO marketing strategy. As Kari Petrasek, attorney at Petrasek Law, PLLC, says: “My free profile with Avvo has … been a truly great marketing tool. I have received so many inquiries for legal help and many have become clients. I also utilize a strong referral network, and I am very involved in my state and local bar associations as well as the ABA where I have speaking opportunities.”

Learn more about local SEO strategies.

3. Search advertising

While SEO is an organic way to drive visitors to your law firm’s website, you can also employ a paid online search advertising campaign to help bring potential clients to your website.

Examples of search advertising strategies include:

Pay-per-click (PPC). With PPC advertising, you can set up an online advertising campaign where you pay a set amount each time an online visitor clicks on your ad. This can be an effective way to increase your website’s traffic—but it costs money for each click. This guide to PPC advertising success for lawyers explains the essentials of the model.
Google Advertising. Depending on your practice area, a pay-per-click Google Ads campaign could be an effective way to drive traffic to your law firm online. You can learn about Google Advertising 101 for lawyers here to determine if it’s a viable marketing strategy for your firm.

4. Law firm website

If you’re investing in SEO strategies, PPC strategies, or both, your goal is to drive potential clients to your law firm website. Your law firm website is a powerful marketing tool in itself.

Think of your law firm website as your law firm’s online real estate, and prioritize its user-friendliness (this how-to guide for law firm website design can help). Your website must be:

Easy to navigate and accessible. Images should be properly sized and content should be easy to read. Contact information should also be easy to find.
Mobile friendly. You want people to be able to navigate your website on any device, and the mobile-friendliness of your website impacts its search ranking.
SEO optimized. Content on your website should be clear, keyword-optimized, and aligned with your law firm brand.

“I’ve found that the best leads come straight from my website,” says Simon Borys, principal lawyer at Borys Law. “People Google ‘Kingston criminal defense lawyer’ and I come up in the top three results. I think I have a good website compared to the other people who also come up on the first page and it draws people in to contact me. By this time they’ve already checked me out and, I think, like what they’ve seen. I’ve found these clients are easy to land, even on the first phone call.”

5. Social

When done right, social media can be a powerful marketing tool for your law firm, helping your firm:

Reach a large audience for little to no financial investment. Today, the majority of your firm’s potential clients use social media, so having a social presence means a valuable opportunity to connect with people.

Combining social media marketing on platforms like Facebook with paid advertisements can help you reach new clients for a relatively low cost. As Barry Walker, Managing Partner at Walker Law notes, “Social media marketing is the future for lawyers. Most people perform research on their smartphones. I get one to two significant cases per year from paid marketing efforts on Facebook for a minimal investment.”

Build community and brand authority. By sharing quality content with your targeted audience on social media, you can organically boost your connections with the community and showcase your position as an expert in the field. A strong presence on social media can also help expose your firm to new networks of people—and potential clients.
Give your clients another way to find your firm. Being online and on social media in a professional content also makes it easier for clients to find your law firm. As mentioned previously, the easier you are to find online, the more potential for new clients to seek you out and go to your firm’s website—which is key to successful law firm marketing.

Read our guide for more tips on social media for law firms.

6. Law firm branding

Finally, how your law firm differentiates itself from competitors—or your law firm’s branding—is an important element of your legal marketing strategy. Finding ways to differentiate your firm to your target audience can also help you grow your law firm by gaining new, ideal clients.

Build your law firm’s brand

As Katy Goshtasbi of Puris Consulting writes, it’s essential for law firms and lawyers to resonate with the right clients. Here are some steps you should take to develop your law firm’s brand::

Establish a unique selling point. What sets your firm apart from the competition? What do you do better than competitors? Figure out what makes your firm unique and what speaks to your potential clients, and then showcase that point in your firm’s marketing to establish a distinct brand. Take the case of attorney Erin Levine’s startup, Hello Divorce. Erin created Hello Divorce as a sister company to her established law firm, and dedicated the company to a unique market: subscription-based divorce navigator services. Hello Divorce has a clear mission and branding which translates to clear marketing from the start.
Clarify your target audience. Your target audience must be narrowed down as much as possible. If you’re targeting everyone with your outreach, few people will be interested, and you could also alienate potential clients with watered-down messaging. The easiest place to start is to stop and think about what attributes your best/favorite law firm clients have. Write these down, and use them to build a profile of your law firm’s target client.
Determine your core messages. Think about what you want to “say” to the world/your audience. It’s not enough to say, “We care and we are good at what we do, so hire us.” Use concise, authentic, unique, witty language that grabs your audience’s attention. Have a brainstorming session with your team, then zero in on the key messages that feel right to you.

7. Content marketing

Content marketing involves creating quality content related to your field of practice and sharing it online via multiple mediums. It is a marketing tactic that can help build your brand and establish expertise, offer value to potential clients, and help drive more people to your website. Content marketing could include content like blog posts, videos, infographics, or even podcasts.

Matthew J. Tuller, Principal Attorney and Owner at the Law Office of Matthew J. Tuller, explains how this strategy works at his firm: “For our law firm, we have found that we gain the most traction through writing timely educational articles about estate planning-related issues. While we post these articles to our firm’s website and social media sites, we have found the most immediate results from posting to LinkedIn.”

Embrace thought leadership

Thought leadership is a big part of content marketing. To establish your firm as a thought leader or subject matter expert for your target audience, your firm could create and share authoritative and educational content like videos (here’s a guide to law firm video marketing), blog posts, or even answers on forums like Quora. As Mandy Woodland of Mandy Woodland Law, PLC Inc. says of her firm’s marketing, “For us, (and I work in digital marketing as well as law) it’s all about internal and external SEO, and inbound marketing. The content (whether it’s videos on your site, monthly newsletters, etc.) will depend on your ideal/target clients. Setting yourself up as a subject matter expert through inbound is the most cost-effective lead generation tool out there!”

8. Email marketing

Email marketing for lawyers is an online marketing strategy that offers a lot of bang for minimal effort (especially if you use tools like Mailchimp to help). Sending out targeted and consistent marketing emails to your network can help you build your brand, establish your law firm’s expertise, and bring value to readers. Email marketing is also easy to measure, with marketing platforms offering analytics like how many people open your email. This way, you will know how well your marketing efforts are received.

Sending out a law firm newsletter can be an effective use of an email marketing strategy. Here are tips for how to start an email newsletter at your law firm.

Law firm KPIs to monitor and measure success

You’ve created a targeted law firm marketing strategy and you’re executing a killer marketing plan to bring that strategy to fruition. What’s next?

If you want to grow your law firm while maximizing your marketing budget, you must monitor and measure your marketing key performance indicators (KPIs).

Tracking your efforts is critical to success and can’t be overlooked. Without measuring, you won’t know what’s working, what’s not working, or what marketing efforts are giving you the best return on investment. When you have a clear picture of your results, conversely, you can make informed, data-driven decisions for better, faster marketing results.

How to track and measure the success of your law firm marketing plan

Ask for feedback. “How did you hear about our firm?” is a simple question, but the answers can be extremely valuable. You could train your law firm’s assistant to ask and note the answer on the phone, or you could customize your intake form in Clio Grow with a field to ask when new clients are filling out their paperwork.
Analyze website analytics. If your law firm’s website is the main point of contact for new clients, looking at your website’s traffic analytics (you can install Google Analytics on your site to help gather this data) can show you details like:
- Referring domains: Knowing what website clients were on before they came to your site can show where your marketing efforts are working and how effective your online advertising is.
- Bounce rate. How long are people staying on your site? If they leave or “bounce” quickly, that lets you know that your website can use some improvement to improve new lead conversion (for example, it may appear spammy and need a refresh).
- Traffic. Look at the raw traffic to your website, and compare it to the number of new clients who come in for a consultation—if there’s a large gap, that can reveal marketing areas that are tripping you up.
Source data from your client intake software. Your firm’s client intake software can provide valuable insights for your marketing efforts too. Clio Grow’s client intake insights software, for example, lets you identify referral sources for new clients and enables you to create custom reports on lead sources. This way, you can quickly and easily pinpoint where your marketing plan has worked, and where it hasn’t been as successful.

Conclusion

New business is key to a thriving law firm. To get new business, you need to let people know that you’re out there—this is where your law firm marketing strategy and plan come in. There are many ways to market your law firm, but you’ll have the most success if you start with a law firm marketing strategy and SMART goals, which you can put into a marketing plan for your law firm. By executing marketing according to a structured plan—and measuring the results—you can help potential clients reach you and help grow your law firm.

Top Tech Tools for Lawyers in 2021

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 13:00:08 GMT

What are the top tools for lawyers in 2021, to help them set their firms up for success this year? After the global pandemic sparked a year of change and challenges for the legal profession, many lawyers are now operating in a virtual reality—whether they’re working remotely part of the time or they’ve embraced a fully virtual law firm.

Many firms have rapidly adopted more technology throughout the past year, and consumers have also done the same. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report found, 58% of consumers said that technology is more important to them now than before the coronavirus pandemic. The report also found that the shift towards remote work is not likely to disappear once the pandemic is over. What does this mean for law firms? It’s now more important than ever to embrace technology and tools that support remote work for lawyers.

In this post, we’ll cover the top tools for lawyers based on data from industry reports and trends we’ve observed in the legal profession. By understanding what lawyer tools and equipment other legal professionals are using in our new, more virtual world, you can decide what your firm can use to help it operate as effectively as possible.

What tools do lawyers use?

The most successful law firms today use technology tools to work more efficiently and securely in an increasingly remote workplace. Since what works best for your firm depends on factors like your firm’s size and practice area, not every firm needs the same tech stack. But it’s a good bet to start with the basics, then add in tech tools to fill gaps, enhance productivity, and better serve your specific client base. For example, legal practice management software is an essential starting point for most modern law firms (more on that below).

Let’s look at the key types of tools for lawyers that thriving firms are using today.

Learn how to work remotely as a lawyer and make sure your clients continue to receive great legal service.

Online file storage

Whether you’re working remotely or just want convenient, streamlined access to documents to work and collaborate from anywhere, online file storage tools for lawyers are key. They’re also incredibly common, with 79% of lawyers noting in the 2020 Legal Trends Report that they rely on cloud technology to store their firm’s data. Look for online file storage tools that are cloud-based, secure, and easy-to-use.

When it comes to online file storage, Dropbox—one of the world’s most popular document storage apps—is likely your first option. In fact, according to the 2020 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, Dropbox was the most popular cloud service—with 67% of survey respondents indicating that they were Dropbox users.

Word processors

As a lawyer, you’re constantly drafting documents and letters, so a word processor is a highly necessary lawyer tool. But we recommend using a cloud-based word processor to take your document and letter drafting up a notch—by having the ability to work and access your legal documents remotely.

Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365) is a popular business tool for lawyers that offers word processing via Word, as well as numerous other productivity tools. Did you know that Microsoft 365 came in second place for being the most-used cloud-based service for lawyers, at 49%, in the 2020 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report? This shows that cloud-based word processing tools are quickly becoming an indispensable part of a lawyer’s arsenal of tools. Microsoft Office 365 also connects with Clio Manage, for even more streamlined productivity between tools.

Scanners

The ability to digitize documents is essential for lawyers in 2021, so a scanner (or scanner app on your phone) is key. From legal documents to expense receipts, lawyers deal with papers and documents daily that they need to easily and access on demand, from anywhere.

For a physical scanner, this guide for choosing a scanner for your law firm can help you pick the right model. If you go the app route, Evernote is a good option. The app integrates with your smartphone camera to empower you to capture (and organize) notes and documents.

VOIP phone provider

No matter where you’re working, you need to be reachable at your business phone number. A Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone service (options like Vonage, Corvum, and GoToConnect are good choices) lets you answer phone calls remotely by forwarding calls made to your business line to wherever you are.

Virtual receptionist service

Missing a call—whether because your law firm office is working remotely or you’re just away from the phone—means lost business. A virtual receptionist service like Ruby (which offers live virtual reception and chat options) eliminates unanswered calls. This means better service for clients (and cuts the cost of having a full-time in-house staff member fielding calls).

Document management

Paperwork is an inextricable part of practicing law, but dealing with documents doesn’t have to be as tedious or time-consuming as it has been in the past. Document automation tools for lawyers streamline document creation (like letters and motions) by using information you’ve already collected (like key dates or contact information) to populate forms for you. Document management tools then help you safely store and access those documents.

While legal practice management software like Clio Manage offers a simple, all-in-one solution for dealing with legal documents, document automation tools for lawyers like LawCloud streamline document creation. Clio Manage lets you compile documents with easy-to-use templates, then keeps documents secure in the cloud, so you can edit, store, and organize files as needed.

Time tracking and billing solutions

Accurate time tracking and billing are key to law firm profitability. But spending a lot of time manually monitoring time and dealing with billing takes away from your productivity.

If you aren’t using lawyer tools to help with time and billing, start by looking at your practice management software, which may offer features to cover this. Clio Manage, for example, includes legal time and expense tracking and billing features.

eDiscovery tools

Now more than ever, the majority of discovery is electronic, or eDiscovery. While the move towards more electronic discovery saves time in itself, you can also use tech tools for lawyers to streamline your discovery process.

Logikcull’s cloud-based Instant Discovery software, for example, automates thousands of previous-manual steps (such as Bates Stamping and virus scanning) while also offering smart filtering options to save you time and effort.

Learn more about conducting eDiscovery effectively at your law firm.

Legal research tools

High-quality legal research is essential for your law firm’s success. Today’s tools put searchable law libraries, decisions, and other key details right at your fingertips. This way, you can conduct your legal research faster and more effectively.

Fastcase, for example, has one of the largest online law libraries in the world. Using Fastcase, which integrates with Clio, gives you remote access to documents like case law, statutes, regulations, constitutions, and more.

Effective legal research doesn’t have to be expensive, either. This post covers a few of the best quality free legal research tools you can find today.

E-signature tools

Electronic signatures are more convenient to coordinate (and less back-and-forth means less room for human error). They also make legal work faster and more efficient for lawyers and clients, and save paper (which is key as more firms are going paperless). While e-signatures don’t work in every situation, e-signatures are legally binding in many situations, as long as they meet the right criteria. However, some states require wet signatures for documents like wills.

Tech can help make e-signatures easier and more secure. The Clio Suite, for instance, offers easy online document signing tools as part of Clio Grow’s client intake and legal CRM software and Clio Manage’s document management functionality. Clio’s mobile e-signature functions also empower clients to sign legal documents remotely—which means a more user-friendly experience.

Video conferencing software

Communication and collaboration are central to a lawyer’s success, but in-person communication isn’t always possible, or preferable. According to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, 37% of consumers now prefer to meet virtually with a lawyer for a consultation or first meeting. Even more (50%) would rather follow-up meetings be via video conference.

As our guide to video conferencing for lawyers explains, the best video tools for lawyers should be secure, easy to use, and clear (in both audio and video quality). Legaler is a good option that fits the bill with end-to-end encryption and simple online meeting solutions.

Mobile apps

Mobile apps, whether they’re designed specifically for lawyers or just support a lawyer’s needs, can instantly give your productivity a boost by allowing you to work from anywhere—a must for 2021.

A few of our favorite mobile apps that double as tools for lawyers?

iAnnotate. Review and mark-up documents from anywhere with iAnnotate, which also lets you sync documents from multiple sources online.
Feedly. Stay informed on the industry’s trending topics and must-know content (without getting overwhelmed or wasting time sorting through social media on your own) with easy-to-consume (and share) content streams.
Clio for Lawyers and Law Firms. The Clio mobile app lets you track time, view client information, create new matters and contacts, and more—all from your mobile device.

Practice management software

Legal practice management software is an essential tool for law firms in 2021, especially for smaller firms. The ABA’s 2020 Legal Technology Survey Report noted that the use of practice management software was trending upwards for solo attorneys (with an increase from 1% to 29% in 2020) and smaller firms. In fact, the percentage of people personally using practice management software rose 2% over the last year to 45% for law firms with 2-9 attorneys.

While many law firms likely took on cloud-based software as a result of the pandemic, it appears that they’ll continue using them in the future. The 2020 Legal Trends Report noted that 96% of lawyers are planning to use practice management software beyond the pandemic.

Running a practice is complex, and practice management software makes managing a firm easier. Cloud-based practice management software like Clio Manage, for example, centralizes and streamlines running your firm, organizing cases, and collaborating with clients.

Online payments

Online payments—that is, accepting credit card payments through an online platform such as Clio Payments, LawPay, or PayPal—make it easy and more convenient for clients to pay, so lawyers can get paid faster.

The 2020 Legal Trends Report looked at data from tens of thousands of legal professionals to assess the impact of tech solutions like online payments on business performance. During the pandemic’s social distancing recommendations, online payments helped firms maintain business continuity. Firms that accepted online payments saw more growth in 2020 than those that didn’t. Specifically, firms using electronic payments saw up to 6% more growth compared to firms not using electronic payments in the early months of 2020, and collected 2% to 3% more through the summer.

Client portals

Client portals like Clio Connect allow lawyers to securely share information like documents, bills, and calendar details with clients. Making this information accessible to clients helps them stay in the loop on their cases—with less manual updating from lawyers.

Client portals are especially important tools for lawyers during remote work, as the 2020 Legal Trends Report showed by looking at data during the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report found that firms using client portals mitigated the negative impact on caseloads by 5% in April, during the pandemic’s initial onset. Firms using client portals continued to outperform firms not using client portals by at least 2% in the following months, and saw positive growth in June. In terms of year-over-year growth in revenue, firms using client portals saw consistently higher performance than those not using them, both during the months leading up to and during the pandemic’s outbreak.

Client intake and CRM

Client intake and CRM solutions like Clio Grow help firms coordinate the communications and intake that take place before a contact becomes a client. This enables firms to create a more efficient and smoother intake experience for new clients via the ability to take care of initial tasks—like filling out forms, paying up-front fees, or booking consultations—online.

As the 2020 Legal Trends Report showcased, client intake and CRM software are food for law firm growth, even during remote work times. Firms using online client intake and CRM solutions saw better year-over-year performance compared to those that didn’t, both leading up to and during the initial months of the coronavirus outbreak. Revenue wise, in the first months of 2020, firms using client intake and CRM solutions saw nearly double the growth than other firms; they then maintained better annual performance during the pandemic’s initial months, and achieved positive growth from June onward.

Security and ethics considerations for lawyer tools

Remember: As with any measure involving law firm data, it’s critical to vet any tools for lawyers that you’re considering for their security before using them. Know (and abide by) your ethical and regulatory obligations when it comes to security. Always follow best practices for keeping law firm and client data secure to ensure that no lawyer tools will do more harm than good. Using this Cloud Due Diligence Checklist may be helpful, but it’s your responsibility to properly evaluate any potential tools for your firm.

Conclusion

Using the right tools for lawyers can make all the difference when it comes to law firm growth. Adopting some (or all) of these types of tools could help your law firm be more efficient, profitable, and client-centered.

While there are plenty of tools for lawyers available, you don’t have to do it all at once and can start with just a few tools. You can always reach out to a consultant if you need help setting up a tech stack for your firm.

Whatever tools you choose, ensure that they’re secure, and then watch your firm become its most efficient, profitable, and best self this year and beyond.

Best Law Firm Logo Designs [with Tips and Examples]

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 13:00:07 GMT

What makes law firm logos exceptional? From choosing the best law firm logo colors and fonts to hiring the right designer, creating a great legal logo design involves thorough research, thought, and understanding how to make it unique—and an accurate reflection of your brand. Not only does a great law firm logo speak volumes for your brand, but you will also be proud of using it everywhere—from your website to advertising and social media. Your law firm logo is often the first element of your brand that a client sees and should reflect the dedication, polish, and professionalism your firm stands for.

The 2020 Legal Trends Report highlights that McKinsey & Company found the majority of consumers have adopted more technology in the last year—specifically, 73% of consumers have adopted new shopping behaviors since the start of the pandemic. Consumers are also expected to continue to adopt more technology. Legal clients are increasingly shopping for lawyers online. This means it’s more important than ever to have the best possible law firm logo so you can represent your firm in the best light at every interaction with potential clients.

To inspire you to create the best law firm logo for your business, in this blog post, I’ve curated the top law firm logos that uniquely represent each law firm’s brand. I’ll also provide insight on how to create a law firm logo, including how to make your law firm logo unique, how to work with a designer, and how to translate your vision into a truly memorable design.

Best law firm logos

Although this list is by no means exhaustive, you can use it as a starting point and source of inspiration for your law office logo.

1. Ben Crump Law

The serif font paired with the sans serif font creates an elevated brand for Ben Crump Law. When paired with the glyph (symbol), the brand is recognizable at every touchpoint.

2. Civil Resolution Tribunal

The simplicity in the shapes of the glyph (symbol) is complemented by a sans serif font.

3. Hello Divorce

This custom wordmark is truly unique and reflects the brand’s tone and personality. While technically not a law firm, the mix of fonts in Hello Divorce’s logo is attention-grabbing.

4. Osborn Gambale Beckley & Budd

This unique glyph is simplified with a two-tone palette and a sans serif font.

5. Cotney Construction Law

The simple shapes in the chevrons of the logo create visual interest and draw the eye towards the wordmark.

6. Hamra Law Group

This unique emblem paired with the italicized serif font creates a sophisticated brand for Hamra Law Group.

7. Tate Law

The simple, geometrical shapes in the glyph are complemented by a sans serif font.

8. Levine Family Law Group

This logo is elevated with the subtleness of the birds flying off of the “I” and is grounded by a sans serif and serif font pairing.

9. Vela Wood

This custom glyph is unique to Vela Wood and works equally as well stacked with the logo or as a standalone element throughout the firm’s branding.

10. Vanst Law

A sans serif font is paired with a custom glyph that compliments the round elements of the font.

11. California Innocence Project

The use of a horizontal line element visually separates the sans serif and serif fonts.

12. myvirtual.lawyer

A bold and memorable font, this logo works at any scale.

13. The Daswani Law Co.

Using strictly serif fonts, hierarchy is achieved through scaling of the font and horizontal lines to separate the elements.

14. Donato Law

Using a simple shape, Donato Law’s glyph is memorable and can scale across various brand elements.

15. Jackson & Wilson Trial Lawyers

This condensed, sans serif font is balanced by varying the size of Jackson & Wilson above “Trial Lawyers.”

How do you create a law firm logo?

Creating a law firm logo may seem complicated, but when done well, it can be very rewarding for your brand. To create a logo for your law firm that stands out, consider if you need to trademark your logo, how to make your logo unique, top attorney logo design tips, and outsourcing the design portion of the project. I’ll go into more details in each of the sections below.

Do you need to trademark your logo?

Trademark vs. copyright

Before we discuss trademarking your logo, it’s a good idea to clarify the difference between copyrights and trademarks.

While they both provide legal protection for original creations, copyrighting refers to any work across mediums—whether creative, artistic, musical, or intellectual. A trademark, though, refers to words, phrases, symbols, and logos that are used commercially—usually, these are tied to a certain business.

Is trademarking a law firm logo recommended?

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, federal registration of a logo is not required. In fact, using your trademark in commerce—when you’re providing legal services—establishes your legal rights to the logo. These rights are known as common-law rights. But trademarking your law office logo will enhance your rights, as common-law rights are limited. This means that those rights may only apply in a specific geographic location, and enforcing those rights in other states may be more difficult.

By federally registering your firm’s logo on the Principal Register, you get to enjoy several rights. These rights include but are not limited to: having the exclusive right to use your logo throughout the US and its territories and proving you are the owner of the logo.

For example, if another law firm happens to have the same logo as you and decides to dispute that they have the right to use the logo, you’ll have the advantage of enforcing your registration.

Learn more about whether you should register your law firm logo in this video from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

How to make your law firm logo unique

A unique law firm law logo design contributes to a unique visual identity for your law firm, which helps you stand out in the crowded, modern marketplace. Not only does a distinctive logo communicate your law firm brand’s core purpose and values, but it also helps you maintain consistent brand presentation—which could increase your law firm’s revenue by 23%.

For small firms, do some research into your competitors’ brand and visual identity. Look at their logo design, color palette, font, shapes, and if their law firm names are included. Doing thorough competitive research into firms in the same state and practice areas can go a long way to help you determine how to create a unique law firm logo.

It’s a good idea to gather your inspiration by writing down what you like and dislike about each competitor law firm’s logo and what you think would help you stand out to your target clients. You could even go further by analyzing how your firm can learn from the strengths and weaknesses of each reference logo. Writing down your thoughts sets you up for success in briefing your designer on what your desired outcome for your logo is. The goal is to be as unique and polished as possible so your logo will be memorable.

Law firm logo design tips

Learn all about color

If you’re not familiar with color theory, InVision provides some insight into the color wheel, color theory, and the psychology of color. If these sound foreign to you, don’t worry. Learning about color theory is exciting, rewarding, and isn’t as time-consuming you think. You’ll be amazed at what colors you already associate certain emotions with.

Essentially, all colors can evoke certain thoughts and feelings—the beauty is that these human experiences are universal. Colors—and how you arrange them together—can also symbolize different personalities and have different psychological effects. To understand the power of color, it’s important to familiarize yourself with color theory, the color wheel, using complementary colors to create an impact, and the psychological effects behind those colors. For example, you may notice blue appearing in many law firms’ logos. This makes sense, as blue is often linked to trust, peace, and calm—all the things you want your client to experience when working with your firm.

Learn more about color theory from InVision and color psychology from Canva.

What color is associated with law?

Although purple is traditionally associated with law, blue currently represents the majority of law firm logos. Since blue is a neutral color that may evoke a sense of calmness, it’s no wonder why many law firms have chosen it as their main brand color. Regardless of what color you choose for your firm, consider adding a secondary color to your firm’s brand to make your logo stand out.

Choose a web-safe font

Since your logo will appear primarily online, stick to a web-safe font. A web-safe font is a font that will display consistently on any device and browser. This helps ensure you can match your font with your logo throughout your website and marketing materials, for brand consistency. After picking a web-safe font, you can customize the typography in the font to create a custom wordmark. A wordmark or logotype is essentially a logo that only contains text. If you’re working with a designer, this is when their expertise will come in. An experienced designer can adjust the kerning and leading (the spaces between the letters and lines), and customize the wordmark to be truly unique to your brand.

Whether you choose a serif or sans serif depends on your law firm brand and what you want your brand to convey. A serif font like Garamond typically has a decorative stroke at the end of each letter, while a sans serif font like Helvetica does not. It’s also nice to have complementary serif and sans serif fonts to match throughout your website.

For example, as seen in the image above, Vela Wood Law matches the serif font Lora with Montserrat, a san-serif font.

Learn how to pair fonts thoughtfully from Canva.

Go with simple shapes

Using simple shapes in your logo is a great foundation to build your brand off of. From a young age, we are introduced to the design systems using shapes and we learn how they can connect and create patterns. Simple shapes help make your legal logo design scalable, by working for different ratios in different use cases. For example, you’ll need a small logo when creating branded law firm pens, and you’ll need a large logo for a large banner ad for a bar association event.

Think about the most famous brand logos you know, like Facebook and Instagram. Over the years, they have evolved to be a lot simpler and easy to remember. Now, the most famous brand logos are based on simple shapes. Law firm logos are no different. Keep it simple, and don’t overcomplicate it with textures and gradients. This makes your logo flexible and usable in many situations, like your law firm’s letterhead, social media, website, and event backdrop.

In the image above, the Civil Resolution Tribunal employs three hexagons creatively intertwined with each other, with triangles within the hexagons. The logo is simple yet memorable, thanks to the blue, red, and yellow colors.

Create logo versions with and without names

It’s good practice to create both wordmarks and glyphs for your lawyer logo. Wordmarks are logos with your law firm’s name in them, while glyphs are symbols that represent your law firm’s name. By having both wordmarks and glyphs, you will have appropriate logos for different uses.

Consider including law firm partner names in one logo, but also have a simplified version.

Get the right file types for your logo

This may sound technical, but it’s essential to ensure your law firm logo will remain sharp and high-quality regardless of medium—whether online or print. The formats you’ll need to ensure your logo stays sharp in all cases include:

Vector (.eps)
Transparent (.png)
JPEG (.jpg)
Scalable Vector Graphics (.svg)

If you’re working with a designer, try and get an accompanying glyph so you can create a complimentary favicon for your law firm’s website.

Outsourcing law firm logo design

Outsourcing your law firm logo design creation is a good idea because you’ll need a vector file with high resolution, and possibly a GIF for an animated logo. This requires specialized technical design knowledge and skills. That’s why it’s good practice to hire an experienced visual designer for the job.

Before you approach a designer

Working with a designer can be exciting. After all, they’re going to help you bring your brand vision to life! But first, it’s important to have a good understanding of your law firm’s brand, mission and vision, and brand strategy. Having this clearly documented in a brief will help the designer have a better understanding of your law firm and what it stands for, so they can create a law firm logo that accurately reflects your brand.

If you’re wondering if it’s necessary to work with a designer or if you can create a DIY logo, it’s a better idea to rely on the experience of a professional graphic designer. Remember, there are many options for choosing designers—even if you have a limited budget.

How to choose a designer

Go with an experienced designer or branding agency. Specifically, choose someone who specializes in brand logo design, so you can trust their design expertise. While you don’t necessarily have to choose a designer that specializes in law firm branding, it’s a plus if they already have an understanding of the legal industry. With a branding agency, it’s easier for them to make sure your brand is scalable and consistent, as they can help with more than your logo—like your website and ads.
Make sure they can provide you with a detailed contract. Any designer who is invested in creating a great logo for your law firm should have a detailed contract in place for what is being delivered. Your agreement should include an overview of the process, the number of revisions you can request, and which file types you will be receiving.
Look at their portfolio and their design style. This helps you determine if the designer’s style will fit your law firm’s brand.
Think about your budget. Remember, similar to what people are looking for in a lawyer, the investment reflects expertise. It’s best to go with someone with a portfolio that you really like—and someone who is very experienced. If you have a smaller budget, freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr Pro are some places to find designers for your project. But make sure you do your due diligence to check their portfolio, take the time to speak to them about your brand, etc.
Work with the same designer for marketing materials. Working with the same designer to create your law firm’s letterheads, business cards, envelope, stationery etc. ensures brand consistency.

How to work with a designer

Share information about your law firm brand. Your law firm’s brand, mission and vision, and brand strategy are critical in helping your designer make informed and thoughtful design choices that fit your brand.
Ask about revisions. Ask how many rounds of revisions they provide based on your feedback, and how much extra revisions may cost. While it’s normal to expect some revisions to make sure you receive a logo you’ll use for years to come, you don’t want surprise invoices at the end of the project.
Share your inspiration with them. Remember the competitive research you did previously? Your designer will find it very useful to know what types of logos you like, don’t like, why, and how to create one that you’ll love.
Provide effective and detailed feedback. Refrain from simply saying “I don’t like it.” To make sure you have a logo you love, provide detailed feedback by providing reasons as to why something works or doesn’t. Ask your designer if they want to jump on a call and ask them to explain their design decisions. If you prefer, this can also be done through email or a document. But this type of feedback is typically best received when vocalized to avoid any misinterpretations.

Buy a logo from a stock image site

Another option for smaller budgets is to buy a law firm logo from a stock image site like Shutterstock or iStock. Note that you may run the risk of another law firm or company using the same logo for their business.

You also need to purchase a custom license to go with your stock image logo. According to iStock, unless you buy a custom license, you won’t be able to use any part of the logo or image as a brand logo for your law firm. You also need to purchase a custom license to register any part of the logo or image as a trademark.

You’re now ready to create a great law firm logo

The thought of creating a great law firm logo can be daunting. After all, you want to be able to use it for years to come. But with the right process and by working with an experienced brand designer, you can have a logo that is unique, memorable, flexible, and consistent with your law firm’s brand. Feel free to refer to the list of law firm logos above for inspiration. Also, take note of our design tips and the steps to take before and when working with a designer.

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 SEO Services for Law Firms

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 13:00:25 GMT

Why should you pay attention to SEO services for law firms? In today’s digital world, people shop for almost everything online —from groceries and insurance to legal services. With more and more potential clients using online search to help them choose their legal representation, your law firm’s business success increasingly depends on how easily potential clients can find you online. But standing out in the vast online landscape isn’t easy—it requires expertise and time that most lawyers don’t have to spare.

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps drive more visitors to your firm’s website so that potential new clients can find you. Although the goal is SEO is straightforward enough, it’s a technical, time-consuming, and ongoing process. Just as your clients turn to you for your legal knowledge and expertise, you can turn to SEO experts to elevate your law firm’s search engine performance to the next level—and ultimately bring in more business.

In the following blog post, we’ll explain what SEO services for lawyers are and outline how your firm could benefit from using them. We’ll also review the different types of SEO services for law firms, so you can decide what might be the best fit for your firm’s situation.

What is law firm SEO?

SEO is all about harnessing organic (as opposed to non-organic or paid search traffic from search ads) search traffic from search engines (like Google, Bing, or other search engines) to increase your website’s position in search engine results pages (SERP). So, when your website is search engine optimized, it will appear higher (preferably, at the top of the first page) in the results when someone searches for terms related to your firm.

For law firms, SEO is critical for garnering new business. Why? People can’t hire lawyers if they don’t know they exist. According to the 2019 Legal Trends Report, 17% of legal consumers looked for a lawyer via online search. When clients are looking for lawyers online) and your firm appears higher up in the results due to SEO, they’re more likely to click on your website. Once on your website, potential clients can find out more about your firm—and potentially contact you.

Why is law firm SEO important?

If you are a law firm operating in 2021, you need a law firm website. But having a website is not enough—you need to optimize your website to drive reliable and sustainable traffic to it. With SEO, you can increase awareness of your law firm’s brand and drive potential leads to your website, which could in turn help your business grow.

What are the benefits of SEO services for law firms?

So if SEO is key for law firm growth, what’s the best way to manage it? While it’s possible to learn the basics of SEO for lawyers and implement a strategy on your own (this guide can show you the basics), SEO may be a process that’s worth outsourcing to the expertise of SEO services for lawyers. Here are a few reasons why:

You’ll leverage their expertise. SEO consultants are already SEO experts. SEO is a complex, time-intensive, and ever-evolving process. It takes a lot of energy to learn and maintain the degree of expertise that you’d need to take your firm’s website to the next level. But SEO consultants and agencies have invested time into honing their craft and providing SEO services for lawyers.
You’ll save time. As a lawyer, you’re already busy with many other aspects of running your firm. By putting your firm’s SEO in the hands of an expert, you free up time to focus on running other areas of your law firm.
You can ensure you’re following best practices. SEO experts know and can help make sure your website follows all of Google’s SEO best practices. This way, you can avoid being penalized by search engines, which can happen if your website fails to observe SEO best practices.

What are the available SEO services for law firms?

SEO is a complex field and there are many different kinds of SEO services for law firms to choose from. Here are some examples of the services that an SEO expert may be able to help with:

Site audit

To develop the right SEO strategy for your law firm, you need to know what’s working and what isn’t. A site audit analyzes your existing website and identifies strengths and weaknesses.

Content marketing

For content (such as blog posts) on your law firm website to be effective for SEO, it needs to be search engine optimized with relevant keywords (based on competitive keyword research). Your content also has to answer the right search intent. For example, if you’re a family lawyer in New York, an SEO content expert can guide you to focus on certain keywords relevant to your practice and geographical location. They can even help you create high-quality SEO content after analyzing the top search results for “new york family lawyer.”

On-site SEO

For your law firm’s website to rank high in search results, the structure of the website itself should also be optimized so that search engines can easily recognize it. On-site SEO could include ensuring elements like titles, headers, and tags on your website are correct and maximize readability.

Local SEO

For most law firms, showing up in the search results for your local area is critical. Local SEO services could include things like setting up a Google My Business page, optimizing your website with local keywords, and even building up authentic client reviews to bolster your firm’s credibility in local searches.

Link building

Getting lots of links from popular and high-authority legal websites (websites that have a strong domain) can help your website rank higher in search engines (this requires great content). Link building can be beneficial to your firm’s SEO, but it’s time-consuming and labor-intensive. Think of link building for your website as similar to real-life networking for your professional brand, except you have to do it in a way that adheres to Google’s best practices and gains results. Otherwise, link building can quickly become an expensive and time-consuming burden.

Technical SEO

By measuring how user and “Google-friendly” your law firm’s website is, technical SEO is key to your law firm’s SEO performance. Effective technical SEO can be complex and involves ensuring that your website follows Google’s guidelines, is set up property, is mobile-friendly, and is easy to navigate. This is why it’s a good task to pass to SEO experts.

SEO strategy

The legal SEO services expert could create a customized overall SEO strategy for your law firm. Your law firm SEO strategy should be focused on ways to improve search rankings for your law firm’s target keywords—which usually involves your practice area and types of legal services you offer.

Working with a law firm SEO expert

Embracing SEO can bring new business to your law firm, but the reality is that most lawyers don’t have the time to effectively learn and practice search engine optimization. If you’re considering hiring an expert to help boost your law firm’s SEO, here are a few factors to consider:

Determine your budget

Quality SEO services for law firms come with a cost, so it’s important to determine how much of your firm’s marketing budget you can devote to them. A good SEO expert will likely charge a similar hourly rate to your legal services, so keep that in mind when budgeting before you hire.

Ask your professional legal network for a referral

Ironically, the best SEO experts may be so busy optimizing their clients’ websites that they don’t have time to work on their own websites—which means they may not be easy to find online. Your best bet? Ask other lawyers in your network for a referral to someone who specializes in SEO for law firms. You can also look for an SEO expert among Clio’s Certified Consultants.

Check their qualifications and experience

SEO services for lawyers are specialized, so take the time to make sure the expert you find is a good fit for your firm. The right legal SEO specialist should be well-versed in the industry and its pain-points when it comes to SEO. They should also be able to discuss the role of content, backlinks, and technical SEO, and explain their approach. Don’t be afraid to check references with other law firms, their portfolio, and any available case studies.

Look out for red flags

You can also look for red flags that a law firm SEO expert isn’t right for your firm, such as:

They guarantee results.
They’re ultra-focused on clicks, traffic, and leads.
They can’t (or won’t) explain their process.

What practice areas can benefit from SEO services for law firms?

Whether your practice area focuses on commercial law, family law, or media law, you need potential clients to be able to find you easily online—which means your firm could benefit from better SEO, and SEO services for lawyers.

Conclusion

If you want potential clients to be able to find you in 2021, you need a law firm website—and one that’s search engine optimized. While the art of SEO is learnable, it’s time-consuming, evolves constantly, and takes time away from other important areas of focus at your firm. That’s why hiring SEO services for law firms could be a great solution. By staying on top of the latest in SEO and implementing smart strategies, a good SEO expert can help bring your firm’s SEO to the next level so you can grow your business faster and easier in the year to come.

Lawyer Advertising Rules You Need to Know

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 13:00:40 GMT

New business is key to any law firm’s success. That’s why finding ways to reach potential new clients is essential—but you need to follow the rules when it comes to advertising as a lawyer. Following the lawyer advertising rules for your area isn’t just a good idea: It’s mandatory if you want to avoid unethical attorney advertising and the potential consequences.

Knowing the lawyer advertising rules that apply to you is also critical in today’s digital age. From social media to law firm websites, advertising online to connect with clients is increasingly common for lawyers. And, with more business being conducted remotely, the ability to attract clients using digital marketing strategies is more important than ever.

No matter what medium you use to advertise, the first thing you need to do before implementing any marketing or advertising strategy is to know the lawyer advertising rules and responsibilities that apply to you—and follow them. This blog post will help give you a general understanding of best practices and advertising rules for lawyers, but it’s critical to find your own jurisdiction rules.

Are lawyers allowed to advertise?

In short, yes. Lawyers are allowed to advertise, but they need to follow legal advertising rules and ethical obligations. The American Bar Association (ABA) Rule 7.2 on Communications Concerning a Lawyer's Services specifies that a lawyer can communicate information about their services through any platform, but there are rules about what they can share.

It’s a good idea to review the ABA rules, then look to your state’s bar association.

Below, we’ll review eight legal advertising best practices to consider.

1. Never say you’re an expert

Words matter, so be careful what you call yourself. Even if you have a high level of expertise, it’s generally against the rules to call yourself an “expert” or “specialist” unless you have been formally certified or accredited as such. According to the ABA Rule 7.2, lawyers should not imply that they are a specialist in a legal practice area, unless they have actually been certified as so by an ABA-accredited organization authorized by their state, district, or U.S. Territory.

So, while it may be okay to say that you are focused on a certain area of the law such as appellate law, you can’t say you are an appellate law specialist or expert in appellate law unless you’ve been certified as such in your area. For example, the requirements to be considered a legal specialist in California include practicing law continuously for a set number of years, with a set portion of time dedicated to practicing in the specialty area, and having attorneys and judges that know you evaluate your work in your specialty area of law.

2. Don’t make false or misleading statements

Outright lying when advertising your law firm is a big no-no. But it’s not just blatant lies that could be perceived as unethical attorney advertising. False, misleading, or misdirecting statements about things like the services you offer, the results you’ve received, or even the fees that you charge can also break legal advertising rules.

Using superlatives like “the best,” “the most,” or “the lowest” when advertising could be construed as deceptive. While you may feel that your firm is truly the best, saying something that cannot be quantified could mislead potential clients—and break legal advertising rules. For example, posting on your law firm website that your firm has “the cheapest fees anywhere” is misleading. But if your firm allows clients to pay with credit cards and payment plans, you could say your firm provides clients with flexible payment options.

In California, for example, the rules on statements in lawyer advertisements are clear. The State Bar of California’s rules on advertising note that communication or solicitations should not contain statements (in any form) that are untrue, confusing, deceiving, or misleading to the public.

Be careful with making technically true statements, but omit information that could still make them misleading. For example, it’s misleading to advertise free consultations if you offer free five-minute consultations, but charge a fee for anything longer (and your average consultation time is 30 minutes).

3. Know whether you need an office address

Cloud-based software like Clio Manage and Clio Grow make it easier to conduct business and work effectively remotely. But you may still need a physical office address to advertise (whether through a traditional ad, a law firm website, or other digital marketing methods)—even during the COVID-19 pandemic. For these reasons, we recommend checking the advertising rules for lawyers in your area to avoid unintentionally breaking the rules.

In Florida, for example, according to Rule 4-7.12(a)(2), all lawyer advertisements must have a real office location in the same city, town, or county of the lawyer performing the advertised legal services.

Lawyer advertising rules related to a geographical office location may also require you to include the address in your advertisement. This could mean you need to post a physical office address on your law firm’s website.

4. Make sure testimonials follow the rules

Positive recommendations from past clients can be a powerful tool for attracting potential new clients, but it’s again important to know and follow the correct lawyer advertising rules for your jurisdiction before posting testimonials on your law firm website.

While the rules may vary for your area, ABA Rule 7.2 (b) offers a good best practice, noting that lawyers cannot compensate anyone for recommending their services in any way. Essentially, anyone recommending your legal services should be doing so on their own accord.

This means that you cannot pay or compensate clients in exchange for testimonials. You should also check for any specific rules about using testimonials on your law firm website or in advertising. This could include testimonials that might be considered misleading (and thus considered an advertisement with a false or misleading statement).

The State Bar of California’s Comment [4] to the new Rule 7.1 for attorney advertising, for example, specifies that testimonials also can’t make potential clients expect the same results. Lawyer advertisements should not lead potential clients to expect to receive the same results as the person giving the testimonial.

5. Know whether you can use a trade name before using one

Because many jurisdictions have rules for identifying information that must be included in attorney advertisements to prevent misleading the public, it’s important to know if it’s permitted to use a trade name before you try to.

In New York, for example, practicing under a trade name is not allowed. For example, The New York State Bar’s Ethics Opinion 1017 highlights that law firms can use the law firm partners’ first initials of the last names, as this would not be violating the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.

6. Don’t directly solicit your services

There’s a difference between advertising your legal services—which is allowed if you follow the rules—and soliciting your services—which is generally prohibited.

What’s the difference between attorney advertising and attorney solicitation? Attorney advertising and solicitation are both used to try to retain business for a lawyer or law firm—but they differ in how directly they are targeted.

Attorney advertising is a communication made by or on behalf of a lawyer or law firm about a lawyer or firm’s available services.
Attorney solicitation is an advertisement made by a lawyer or law firm that is targeted to a specific person or group—which may be unethical. According to the ABA Rule 7.3 regarding Solicitation of Clients, a lawyer or law firm cannot direct any advertising communication to a specific person who needs legal services for a certain matter, and offer to provide legal services for that particular matter.

While advertising your services is permitted (as long as rules are followed), you can’t use advertising communications to directly solicit your services. The ABA Rule 7.3 highlights that lawyers cannot solicit their services in person towards a targeted individual if the lawyer’s goal is financial gains for the lawyer or law firm. If the advertising communications are directed to the public, it is not considered a solicitation.

This means that lawyers can advertise their services to a general audience online or through traditional advertisements. Responding to information requests or having their law firm’s website show up organically on search engines is also allowed.

7. Know what information can and can’t be included in advertisements

When it comes to advertisements, there may be minimum requirements for information that must be included—as well as specific types of information that can’t be included. Here are some examples of types of information that you may be able to include (be sure to check the rules for your area!):

Identifying details. Certain identifying information, for example, may be required for the lawyer advertising rules in your jurisdiction. In the case of Florida, the Florida Bar’s advertising rules (Rule 4-7.12(a)(1)) specify that lawyer advertisements must call out the name of at least one lawyer (or name the law firm), while ads for providers (like lawyer referral services) must name the qualifying provider. Some states may also require advertisements to be explicitly identified as advertisements (New York, for example, has rules for certain ads that must be labeled “Attorney Advertising.”)
Publications and awards. Law-related or legal industry publications or accolades may be allowed.
Memberships. Current bar association or other professional association memberships.
Rates and prices. You may be able to post the hourly or fixed rates you charge.

When it comes to what can’t be included in advertisements, it’s important to know the specific lawyer advertising rules for your area so you can stay compliant. Here are some types of information that may not be allowed:

Pending case information. Rule 7.1 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct specifies to avoid including testimonials from clients with pending matters (unless you have received informed client content in writing).
Fictitious details. Rule 7.1 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct also prohibits lawyers from using made-up or fictitious law firms or lawyers in their advertisements.
Faux documents. Don’t include fake legal documents in your lawyer advertising.

8. Know how long you need to keep copies

Depending on your jurisdiction, advertising rules for lawyers may require you to retain copies of advertisements (both physical and digital) for a certain amount of time.

In New York, for example, Rule 7.1 requires lawyers and firms to keep copies of advertisements for at least three years after their initial dissemination, and copies of ads in computer-accessed communications for at least one year. For law firm websites containing advertising, New York requires that the site’s content (initial or after any major redesign or content change) be preserved at least every 90 days.

Conclusion

The way that lawyers conduct business is rapidly changing, and so is how they advertise. As more and more lawyers use digital communication to connect with potential new clients, they must be up-to-date on the lawyer advertising rules that apply to them—so you don’t accidentally violate them. By knowing the correct legal advertising rules, you can create effective, ethical advertising—and attract new clients, new business, and greater success in the future.

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.

How to Start a Law Firm Newsletter

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 13:00:24 GMT

Think about your personal email inbox: when you receive a regular newsletter with useful or interesting information, you open it. You may even save it for later reference. When you receive a sporadic, boring newsletter, you delete it. Law firm newsletters are no different. They need to add value for your audience or may end up deleted and forgotten.

Maintaining strong relationships and establishing trust is key to a law firm’s growth, reputation, and success. Law firm newsletters can be an effective way to stay in touch with clients, build trust, and share news—but only if they’re done right.

In this post, we’ll show you how, when, and why you should write and send an effective law firm newsletter that recipients want to read. We’ll also explain how email marketing software makes it easier to send and track the performance of your law firm newsletter. Once you’re equipped with the right tools and know-how, your newsletter will become a great way to build your network, promote your services, and grow your brand.

Why start a law firm newsletter

The cost-benefit of law firm newsletters is hard to pass up. Here’s why:

It’s an inexpensive, targeted way to reach your target audience. Email marketing is a proven method for promoting products and services online in any industry—including legal. Social media is too noisy and crowded to get your word across. Snail mail is too slow and expensive. Phone calls or text messages are too invasive. When done right, email marketing is personal and private, but not overly annoying or intrusive.
It can help build your brand over time. The more frequently people hear your firm’s name and interact with you, the more likely they will remember you when they are ready to hire a lawyer or refer one to a friend.

How do I write a legal newsletter?

Map out who your audience is, how often you’ll send your newsletter, what content it will contain, and who will write it. Then, pick a reputable email marketing software and follow email rules in your readers’ jurisdiction. After that, you need to build your email list by getting subscribers. Read on for more details on the aforementioned points, tips for creating the most effective law firm newsletters, and how to set goals and track results for your newsletter.

Who should you send your lawyer newsletter to?

You need to know who you’re sending your lawyer newsletter to. This is fundamental to starting a law firm newsletter. It also ensures you aren’t breaking any anti-spam laws or marketing laws.

Your target audience will likely be your clients, past clients, other legal industry professionals, or a mix of all of the above. Once you know who you want to read your newsletter, you can better tailor the content to make it useful and interesting to the newsletter’s readers.

Whenever a lawyer uses email to communicate with clients, they need to be careful to know and follow the correct rules—even when emailing a lawyer newsletter.

Have a clearly defined audience

It’s also important to have a defined, subscribed audience when building your mailing list according to the rules for email marketing in your readers’ areas. In some cases, for example, your readers may need to opt-in to receive your lawyer newsletter. In the US, it’s important to know and follow the rules of CAN-SPAM Act. Before sending your newsletter, be sure to also observe and meet the correct anti-spam laws and marketing rules for your readers’ jurisdiction. In the US, it’s important to know and follow the rules of CAN-SPAM Act. How often should you send your newsletter?

Communicate consistently

Consistency is the key to establishing brand recognition for your law firm, which is ultimately what you’re going for by starting a newsletter for your firm.

Create a schedule and do your best to stick to it. By sending out law firm newsletters regularly (once a month or once a quarter are good goals), your audience will grow to know when to expect it—which may encourage them to read it (or even look forward to it!).

Be realistic about how often you can regularly put together an accurate newsletter with high-quality content. Remember that someone needs to write it. Whether the writer is you, a staff member, or an outsourced legal writer, someone will need to allot time to create the newsletter, so choose a manageable timeline.

How to write a law firm newsletter

You’ve figured out who will write your law firm’s newsletter, who you want to read it, and how often you want to send it out. Here are the four basic steps for creating your first newsletter:

1. Customize your template

If you’re using email marketing software like Mailchimp (more on email marketing software below), creating a professional-looking email newsletter is easy. With great email marketing software, you should be able to choose a pre-designed template. Customize the template to your firm by adding your logo, changing the color schemes, and adding text boxes, videos, images, buttons, and other types of content. It’s a good idea to include your logo and some images to make your newsletters more engaging.

2. Add your content

With your basic template set up, the next step is to add the actual content (We’ll have tips on what to include in your newsletter in the next section.). This should include some text (but not too much), as well as images, links to your website, your social media accounts, and more.

3. Preview and test

It’s always a good idea to preview your newsletter and send yourself an email test to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes. Mailchimp has a built-in preview feature to see what your newsletter will look like on different types of devices.

4. Send it out

Finally, when your template and content has been finalized, and you’ve double-checked to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes (be sure to proofread!), you are ready to send out the newsletter to your email list.

What to include in your newsletter

What should you include in your law firm newsletters? The content of each newsletter should vary to keep readers interested and offer value. After all, you want to give your readers a reason to open your email. Remember: The best kind of content to put into your newsletter is something that your readers will find useful.

The key is to remember your audience and your goals. If the majority of your newsletter subscribers are new clients, you might want to focus on things like case studies to showcase your firm’s area of focus. If your newsletter reaches mostly existing or ongoing clients, you might include updates to changes to the law that might impact them. Whatever you include, be sure to make it clear that your email contains newsletter content—and shouldn’t be mistaken for legal advice.

Start with some of these types of content

Consider a mix of the following types of content, depending on your firm’s focus and your attorney newsletter’s audience:

Case studies. Showcasing successful or interesting cases that your firm has worked on is a great way to grab readers’ attention—since people love to read real stories. This way, you can also highlight your firm’s expertise and credibility. Make sure you never violate client confidentiality—always omit identifying factual details.
Listicles. Easy-to-skim content tends to get read, so listicles (like numbered or ranked lists of ideas, like “10 Best Law Firm Newsletters”) tend to be a useful way to quickly share interesting or useful information. Listicles are also faster to write than longer-form content.
Newsjacking. Newsjacking” describes the concept of adding your thoughts or ideas to a trending news topic to create new content. For your law firm newsletter, you could use the idea of newsjacking to write about a topic relevant to your firm. For example, if there’s a prominent policy change or lawsuit in the news, you could use that to create content that relates to your firm.
Attorney profiles. People love learning about people, so a quick profile of a new lawyer or staff member at your firm is a great way to connect with your readers Whether it’s a Q&A or interview format, including details about their training, their legal background, and their interests.
Video content. Your newsletter doesn’t have to be all written content. In our digital age, short video content is easy-to-digest for your audience. Consider outsourcing video production to an experienced team within your budget. Be sure to keep the content on brand and useful (i.e. a video explaining a new law change is more useful than a video promoting your firm).
Curated content. Show your expertise and save your newsletter subscribers time by creating curated content roundups on topics of interest. If you know that your audience might be interested in a new regulation, for example, you could research the five best posts about that regulation, and then create a curated list with links to each.
FAQs. Do you get a lot of the same questions over and over? Answer the question in your lawyer newsletter. Since many people have the same question, you’re likely providing useful content to your subscribers while showing your expertise. And, as a bonus, you might save yourself from having to answer the same question in the future!
Changes in the law. If there are any new updates or upcoming changes to the law that may impact your audience, your newsletter is a great place to briefly explain them to your readers.
Educational guides and resources. Does your firm have a blog? Have you created a guide or free resources that may be of interest to your clients or legal industry colleagues? Link to these resources in your law firm newsletter to add value for subscribers.

What email marketing software to use

Many beginners make the mistake of thinking they can just BCC a few hundred contacts on an email newsletter sent through their normal email account. This is a surefire way to get your domain blacklisted for sending spam. (Remember: You must follow email rules in your readers’ jurisdiction before just sending out emails.)

Email marketing software can help you:

Send professional-looking emails. Pre-designed templates and layouts let you focus on creating the content, while delivering a polished email newsletter to your readers.
Manage your contacts. If you have multiple audiences for different versions of your newsletter, email marketing software can help you stay organized. You can even have different email lists so you send only the most relevant content to the right audience.
Track your email’s effectiveness. Analytic tools and reporting can give you data on what’s working—and what isn’t—so you can adjust future lawyer newsletters to deliver what your audience wants.

There are many email marketing software options, but Mailchimp is among the most popular. Not only is it free up to 2,000 contacts, but it is also easy to use. They also offer tastefully designed email templates which are great for non-designers and if you’re new to email marketing. Because Mailchimp integrates with Clio Grow, using Mailchimp for your email newsletter makes it easy to sync law firm contacts, track leads, and monitor growth that arises from your law firm newsletter.

You can also consider other email marketing options like Constant Contact, AWeber, or Autopilot. Each one has something unique to offer, so do your research upfront to determine which one will meet your specific goals the best.

How to build your law firm email list

Your law firm newsletter’s email list is as important as the newsletter itself. The more subscribers you have, the more people you can reach—and the larger your potential network for new clients and referrals will be.

But you shouldn’t just throw everybody onto one all-encompassing email list. Instead, target your law firm newsletters based on people’s specific interests, or their relationship to you. The more relevant your content is, the more your message resonates with the reader, the more engaged they will become with your firm, and the less likely they will unsubscribe.

For example, if you are a transactional attorney providing estate planning, business, and real estate services, you may split your email list based on those three segments of your practice. This way, you aren’t sending out irrelevant estate planning content to your business or real estate contacts, and vice versa.

Once you have created your lists in your email marketing software, here are the two main ways to start adding people to the lists:

Add people to your list manually

All email marketing software should offer the ability to upload contacts in bulk from a spreadsheet. But there are a few things to be aware of when manually adding people to your email list. If you are adding them yourself, you need to have their permission first—so be careful about who you are adding to avoid spam complaints (and be sure to know the specific rules for your jurisdiction).

You may want to consider using automation to keep your email lists up to date.

For example, Clio Grow’s Mailchimp integration lets you tag and categorize your contacts and send them to a corresponding email list automatically when they are entered in your CRM database. This eliminates the need for double data entry. You could also use a tool like Zapier to streamline this process.

Get email subscribers from your website

Building email lists organically from blogs and websites requires a lot of work, but it is also an effective marketing strategy because you don’t have to do anything to manage your lists. Your network will also begin growing on its own.

To start getting email subscribers from your blog or website, you need to:

Embed signup forms to capture people’s contact information (name and email)
Produce a steady stream of helpful content to generate web traffic and subscribers

Mailchimp and most other email marketing software will give you the option to embed a signup form on your website. You can just copy/paste the embed code into various pages of your website or blog, and this will enable people to easily opt-in to your mailing list.

If you use WordPress, there is also a free Mailchimp plugin you can install.

Still, getting people to subscribe takes a bit of work. The best strategy to get email subscribers is to start a law blog and publish high-quality content frequently. If you come across as helpful and demonstrate that you are an authority on a certain topic, people will be inclined to subscribe to receive future updates.

Offering “gated” and free downloadable templates or how-to guides in exchange for an email address is a great way to encourage people to opt-in to your mailing list. It can also be an excellent strategy for law firms due to the inherent value in your knowledge.

Top tips for creating the most effective law firm newsletter

Want to make your law firm newsletter the best it can be? Keep it clear, readable, and valuable to your audience with these top tips:

Write in plain English. Keep the legal jargon and complex language for the courtroom. It won’t impress your readers, and may even make them unsubscribe. Instead, write and explain complex cases simply—this is the value that you and your lawyer newsletter can add.
Proofread. You don’t want obvious typos or grammatical errors to take away from your authority. Proofread and double-check for errors before hitting send.
Be brief. It’s a newsletter, not a novella. Keep the content concise, and break things up with headings, lists, and images where you can.
Showcase clear design. The look of your newsletter matters, too. Professionally designed templates via email marketing software can help with this. But keep in mind that you want your newsletter to look consistent (using only a few fonts, colors, and styles), uncluttered (don’t try to jam too much content in a small space), and visually pleasing (no one wants to read a big wall of text—use pops of color, images, and contrast to break things up).
Add value. The point of law firm newsletters is to build your brand, showcase your expertise, and give readers something of value that’s worth opening—it’s not a sales email. With this in mind, resist the urge to get too “salesy” with your lawyer newsletter. Instead, include content that you know your audience wants—whether you write it yourself or whether you’re curating articles.
Be open to questions. While you don’t want to use your newsletter to sell your firm, you can (and should) invite readers to contact the firm with any questions. This is a less pushy, more organic way to drive business.

How to set goals and track results for your law firm newsletter

In the end, creating a law firm newsletter requires effort. That’s why it’s important to know what you want to achieve by sending it out and tracking how well you achieve those goals. While the core goal of your lawyer newsletter is to slowly build your brand and your audience’s trust in your brand, you can also set other long-term goals for your newsletter—like helping to secure new customers, secure repeat customers, build your profile, or get media mentions.

These types of goals are a long game and can be challenging to mark as “achieved” (you won’t see quick, direct results in the form of sales like you might with an ad), but you can track them with the right tools. CRM software like Clio Grow, for example, can help you see the source of leads—so you can monitor growth that arises from your law firm newsletter.

Conclusion

Reaching your clients and building your brand doesn’t have to be complicated or costly—thoughtful, consistent law firm newsletters can do the trick. By following best practices and using tools like email marketing software to help, you can create a lawyer newsletter that gives your clients and legal industry peers useful content, while also establishing your firm’s brand, building trust, and creating a way to share firm news.

2020 at Clio: A Year in Review

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 13:00:45 GMT

2020 was a difficult but transformative year for all of us. In our increasingly volatile and uncertain world, we saw incredible resilience from the legal profession. It made us so proud to serve the lawyers and legal professionals who use Clio as we work together to transform the practice of law for good.

Here’s a look back at the past year at Clio, from the first virtual Clio Cloud Conference, to new product updates to support lawyers working remotely, and much, much more.

COVID-19 Legal Relief Initiative

As the situation surrounding COVID-19 continued to evolve, it became clear that clients needed their lawyers—some more this year than ever. Accordingly, Clio committed $1 million to help law firms navigate the challenges of COVID-19 in an initiative that included direct financial support as well as free education and support resources, like weekly workshops and a hotline for questions around how to apply for government aid through the CARES Act and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The program also supported work-from-home resources to help lawyers adapt to our rapidly changing environment.

Through this initiative, over 1,000 law firms received financial assistance, and many more received access to additional resources.

Partnering with the ABA to support lawyers

This summer, the American Bar Association (ABA) and Clio partnered to assist legal professionals in navigating the significant and unique challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis.

For annual Clio customers, this partnership included:

A complimentary one-year ABA Membership for new or renewing ABA Members for each Clio license, which includes access to their Law Practice and Solo, Small Firm, and General Practice Divisions.
A 10% discount on Clio’s annual plans for ABA Members.
Access to the ABA’s exclusive library of content that includes enough CLE to meet all U.S. State and Territory MCLE requirements as well as a vast archive of ethics CLE that can be tailored to your practice area and interests.

Learn more about the Clio + ABA Strategic Partnership.

Increasing access to justice with pro bono legal portals

To further increase access to justice during this difficult year, Clio partnered with the American Bar Association (ABA), Paladin, and LegalZoom to launch the ABA’s pro bono portal. This portal connects attorneys with pro bono opportunities, including unemployment benefits, housing, and domestic violence issues. Additionally, Clio partnered with the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) to launch an unemployment insurance relief program to assist New Yorkers with unemployment benefits and appeal denials.

Keeping a pulse on the legal industry with the Daily Matters podcast

To keep a pulse on the state of the legal industry as the situation surrounding COVID-19 evolved, we launched Clio’s Daily Matters podcast, hosted by Clio CEO Jack Newton. Together, the podcast team produced 101 episodes exploring how lawyers could find success in a remote-first world, best serve clients amidst an unprecedented situation, and build a better normal for the legal industry.

Guests included lawyers, bar leaders, and incredible keynote speakers from this year’s Clio Cloud Conference, so we recommend catching up on the episodes.

Listen to Daily Matters.

Tracking the impact of COVID on the legal industry in real time

In a volatile and rapidly changing environment, lawyers and legal professionals needed the right information to make decisions about how to adapt their businesses. To help the industry better understand changing demands and the barriers consumers faced in accessing legal services, Clio released ongoing research into the impact of COVID-19 on the legal industry, including regular research briefings and real-time industry data.

This research featured valuable findings regarding consumer demand for legal services, perception of the legal industry, and more.

Read Clio’s COVID-19 Impact Research here.

Our most in-depth Legal Trends Report yet

Building on our COVID-19 impact research, Clio released its most in-depth annual Legal Trends Report yet. The 2020 Legal Trends Report covers 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. Some highlights from the 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.
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.

Read the full 2020 Legal Trends Report.

Updates and additions to Clio to help law firms succeed

As lawyers moved their practices increasingly online to better support and serve their clients, the need for a cloud-based, client-centered approach clearly became key to law firm success. Accordingly, we launched updates to Clio and new partnerships to help legal professionals succeed and build a better normal. There were too many new additions to cover here, but we’ve included a few customer favorites:

Working remotely

Zoom integration. Improve client satisfaction by staying connected with clients safely and efficiently through Zoom. Make any meeting a Zoom meeting with one click and launch Zoom meetings from your web or mobile calendar apps.
Microsoft Teams integration. With a Matter Dashboard in Teams, it’s easy to collaborate with firm members by syncing your Clio Manage matters into Microsoft Teams. When discussing ongoing work or planning for events, key details of the matter are on hand and easily accessible–without needing to leave Teams. And, with Teams Creator, you can create and access Teams from Clio Manage where you can collaborate effectively in a distributed team—by discussing updates, action items, questions, or blockers efficiently and securely.
Notifications in Clio Manage. Stay on top of updates and changes to matters easily with in-app notifications. The in-app notification panel in the web and mobile apps give you visibility into work being completed.

Getting more business

Google My Business. Stand out on Google with a free Business Profile and engage with clients where they’re searching for firms like yours–on Google Search and Maps–directly from Clio. With a quick setup experience built directly into your Clio Manage account and instant verification of your location, you can now create your Google Business Profile and connect with clients for free when they’re searching online. Plus, clients can book appointments right from your profile in Google via Clio Scheduler. When you make it easy to do business, your business grows.
Clio Scheduler + Payments. Schedule paid consultations in the cloud and attract new clients while working remotely. Offer a booking process that’s convenient for everyone—you, your firm, and your clients. Reduce the risk of no-shows, collect payments, organize your client intake process, and save time and costly overhead.

Delivering a better client experience

Clio for Clients (coming soon). Clio for Clients is a mobile app designed for legal clients to securely communicate and share information with their lawyers. Clients can receive updates, documents, and communicate with their lawyer via a secure app.
E-Signatures in Clio Manage. Save time by preparing, sending, and electronically signing documents directly from Clio Manage. Reviewed and signed documents are saved automatically in Clio.

Keep an eye on what’s new and improved in Clio here.

Over 40 new integration partners, and the launch of Clio’s App Partner Program

To further support lawyers in building out their tech stack in a distributed world, we were proud to add over 40 new partners to Clio’s app directory. Additionally, we launched the Clio App Partner Program to help app developers build new experiences, launch their apps with impact, and reach more customers. Apps and services looking to help lawyers are encouraged to join our community of high-growth partners, including Google, Microsoft, Intuit, Ruby, and more.

Visit the Clio App Directory to find tools and services that will help your firm operate more efficiently.

The first-ever virtual Clio Cloud Conference—and our biggest event yet

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.

Highlights included a rousing keynote from Jack Newton, who underscored the need for a cloud-based and client-centered approach and a VUCA Prime mindset to build a better normal for the legal profession, as well as impressive entrants to our Launch//Code contest, inspiring stories from our Reisman Award Winners, and much more.

Read highlights from this year’s conference here.

Another impressive showing at this year’s Launch//Code

Each year, 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. This year, our finalists put on an impressive showing as they took to the virtual stage to pitch their solution at the Clio Cloud Conference.

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.

Finalists included:

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 custodian’s 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.

Inspiring stories from this year’s 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 at the Clio Cloud Conference. 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.

Empowering lawyers to design a better normal

In 2020, many solo and small firm lawyers needed to pivot, adapt, or add a new business area to get back on their feet. But for many, it was hard to know where to begin. One great idea can bring success—but a bad one can sink your firm.

To help, Clio partnered with legal industry expert Mike Whelan, Jr. to produce Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal, a free e-book that includes a step-by-step guide on how to test your ideas before you invest in them. Whether you want to add a new practice area or a new service offering, this e-book has what you need to make the right choice.

Get your copy of Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal.

534 Clions strong

This year Clio hit an important milestone: We passed the 500-employee mark and are now over 530 employees strong. While moving to a distributed environment across our global offices this year, we added over 100 new team members and worked to keep Clio’s internal culture strong so that every one of us could best support the legal community during this time.

We aren’t done growing, either! To help us transform the practice of law, for good, we’re on the lookout for more amazing people to join our teams as we transition to a workplace that is distributed by design.

We’re hiring! See open positions at Clio.

Outstanding awards and recognitions

We’re proud of our people, our innovation, and our award-winning culture and leadership—and we’re honored to be recognized for it. Here are some of the awards and recognitions we received in 2020:

The Client-Centered Law Firm becomes a bestseller upon release

This January marked the release of Jack Newton’s The Client-Centered Law Firm. The book was a bestseller upon its release and was praised by industry leaders as the blueprint for success in a changing legal marketplace. By March, the book had become essential reading for lawyers looking to best serve clients and thrive in the midst of this volatile year, and we were pleased to further support legal professionals through our Course in Client-Centered Lawyering.

The Client-Centered Law Firm is now available in hardcover, paperback, e-book, and audiobook formats. Get your copy at clientcenteredlawfirm.com, where you can also read or listen to the first chapter for free.

That’s it for 2020! Stay tuned for more exciting updates from Clio in 2021.

Legal Technology Trends to Watch in 2021

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 13:00:05 GMT

What will it take to be a successful lawyer in 2021? With the world becoming increasingly digital in response to the COVID-19 pandemic—and with that change expected to continue even after a vaccine is distributed—it’s now more crucial than ever to stay up to date with legal technology trends.

To find the most useful legal tech trends that lawyers need to know, we reached out to top industry technologists, lawyers, legal professionals, and consultants. We asked them this question: “What will be the most important legal technology trend for lawyers and legal professionals to follow in 2021?” Read their answers below to set your law firm up for success in 2021 and beyond.

1. An acceleration towards digital

“We are seeing an acceleration of consumer behavior to digital. Businesses that are best suited to thrive in this new reality are those who are embracing digital and meeting clients where they are searching.

This would mean ensuring that you are discoverable and reachable on the tools (such as Google my Business) in which potential clients are using for their research. Therefore, making sure that your information is up to date and accurate is vital.”

Ben Patterson, Strategic Partnerships at Google

2. More focus on the client experience

“Any technology that makes the client experience more convenient, seamless, and transparent will increase both the quantity and quality of cases for law firms. Against the backdrop of consumers choosing convenient experiences through companies like DoorDash, Uber, Shopify, and Podium, the question is, will law firms evolve or fall behind?”

Joseph Jenkins, Head of Legal Growth, Podium

3. A higher bar for how we communicate

“Even with the vaccine on its way, I think it’s pretty clear that the status quo for how we meet and communicate has changed permanently. If lawyers haven’t already pivoted to find new ways to engage with current and prospective clients, they need to do that. Focus on new, seamless communication and collaboration channels for every part of the client engagement—from sales through to invoicing.”

Nicole Bradick, Founder and CEO, Theory and Principle

4. The automation of basic administrative work

“In 2021, legal professionals should be following the technology that transforms how basic administrative work can be automated. While less sexy than things like AI and blockchain, the legal industry remains bogged down by work performed by people that is better handled by good technology. Any technology that changes the one-to-one model of lawyers to allow lawyers to serve a much larger market will be a game changer.”

Lori Gonzalez, CEO of RayNa Corp, @RaynaCorp

5. More interest in digital interfaces from courts and government agencies

“For lawyers that regularly work in contact with courts and other government agencies, keep an eye on the providers of digital interfaces, both with legal professionals and the public. Right now there’s a pretty small pool of vendors doing it and COVID-19 has pushed many courts into online worlds that they didn’t think they would ever be forced to do and stress-tested many systems (e.g. online unemployment applications). We could really use more competition in the space, greater adoption of open source technology, and more knowledge around purchasing decisions (such as data ownership) by governments.”

Sarah Glassmeyer, Legal Innovation Enthusiast, @sglassmeyer

6. A more deliberate, thoughtful approach to remote work

“With 2020 in the rearview mirror, it will be important for legal professionals to embrace how technology can make the new distributed workforce model work more seamlessly. Many firms took a ‘just make it happen’ approach to collaboration, mobility, virtual meetings, and working remotely. The opportunity now is to revisit the tools firms are using, and the training the legal professionals need to be able to leverage the technology, making the experience as good as—or better—than it was when everyone was in the office. The ROI for doing this right will be high, and will benefit the firm for years to come.”

Debbie Foster, Partner, Affinity Consulting, @debbiefoster

7. The prioritization of empathy in tech

“2020 proved the importance of human connections. Consumers are more wary and anxious than ever; they want quick responses to their concerns but in a compassionate and empathetic way. To stay competitive these days, attorneys must always be ‘on’—available to answer questions, ease client’s anxieties, capture new leads—all while trying to manage their own lives.

We’ve already seen an increase in firms investing in solutions that provide that human touch, and I think we’ll see that expand in 2021. Attorneys can’t work 24/7, but websites and phone numbers do, so identifying a partner that can be there for your clients when you can’t, providing that empathetic voice, is going to be a critical factor in determining who survives and thrives in the coming years.”

Kate Winker, CEO at Ruby, @callruby

8. Further improvements to document automation

“The most important trend will be document automation. Lawyers are already moving beyond wet-ink signatures; now they need to move beyond wet-ink document preparation.”

Ed Walters, CEO, Fastcase, @EJWalters

9. Greater industry-wide technology adoption

When the world (and particularly courts) is reopened the tide will swing against video conferences and remote hearings, depositions, mediations, etc. This will only be temporary. By the end of 2021, we will begin seeing the positive impacts of the 2020 tidal wave of technology adoption in how court procedures and other legal events take place. The lessons learned this year will open the door for distributed, asynchronous legal proceedings and if done right, the positive impact on access to justice will be greater than anything we have seen before. Many legal consumers who had been barred from justice due to financial, physical, intellectual, or even emotional barriers need not be barred in the future.

Jordan Couch, Partner at Palace Law, @jordanlcouch

10. Using tech to deliver easier experiences

There’s no doubt that technology will grow in importance, but technology alone won’t save the practice of law. The biggest gains will be made by lawyers who integrate technology with human service to deliver the easiest experience for their clients.

John Strohmeyer, Proprietor of Strohmeyer Law PLLC, @JohnTheLawyer

11. Increased comfort with non-legal-specific technology

In 2021 I think the biggest legal technology trend should be for lawyers to become comfortable with … non-legal technology. It’s just technology. Just because it wasn’t specifically made for a lawyer, does not mean that we can’t use it.

Shreya B. Ley, La Presidente of LayRoots, @layyourroots

12. Modernized communication methods

“More firms will be looking to modernize their office phone systems so their distributed workforces can continue to communicate with each other, and with clients and callers, from anywhere. They’ll look for and to cloud-based systems with softphones, sophisticated features, and direct integration into their practice management systems. Alongside this trend, they will really dig into being able to text with clients via a platform that allows anyone in the firm to participate and also integrates with their PMS. Finally—and hopefully more than anything—more firms will start to recognize the benefits (and ease!) of portals and encourage their every day, every communication use.”

Adriana Linares, Legal Technology Consultant & Trainer, @AdrianaL

13. Increased focus on data for performance tracking and profitability

“As 2020 winds down, an area we have gotten a growing number of requests for and which I think will carry over into 2021 relates to capturing data and building reports that identify what work is getting done, by whom, and how efficiently to answer questions like: “How profitable is this practice area or attorney/ paralegal?” In 2020, law firms realized they can get work done with less. In 2021, they will now want to see how this transfers into more profit. The technology behind not only capturing the data but building meaningful and easy-to-understand reports to help measure these areas will help drive decision making to lead to a more profitable business.”

Peggy Gruenke, Founder, CPN-Legal, Helping Lawyers Manage Their Finances, @PeggyGruenke

14. A focus on business model innovation

“I tend to think in hopes rather than predictions, so let me tell you what I hope happens: I hope we focus on business model innovation.

This sounds like a cop out. It’s not about A.I. or blockchain or sexy robots doing our laundry. Business model innovation has none of the shiny gloss of those subjects. But without the skills to generate new models, none of those other advances will be useful.

Nearly all the momentum created by the “overnight successes” of the last decade came from rethinking the customer value chain. They didn’t focus on buttons and lights, but rethought how they get people what they want, when they want it, with a great experience. The legal space is in desperate need of that kind of imagination.

This year, start small. Test an idea. Use the brainstorming and model-testing methods that I wrote about in Designing Your Law Firm’s New Normal. You may just create the habits the industry needs to deliver better on its promises.

As regulations change and markets are opened, no effort will impact the industry as much as rethinking the connection between what you offer and what some specific customer needs. My hope this year is that we’ll all be crazy enough to engage in that rethink.”

Mike Whelan, author of Lawyer Forward: Finding Your Place in the Future of Law, @mikewhelanjr

15. Lawyers taking a more active role in cybersecurity

“The most important tech trend for lawyers and legal professionals to follow in 2021 will be cybersecurity. As more of our work transitions to an online or virtual format, we will have to take a more active role in the security of our firms and our client’s confidential information.”

Alycia Kinchloe, Esq., Owner of Kinchloe Law, @aakesq

16. Videoconferencing to better serve client needs

“Videoconferencing will not die with the pandemic. It has quickly become the preferred method of communication for our clients who don’t want to spend the resources to meet in person if they don’t have to. So be prepared by streamlining your video conference scheduling to auto-populate and disseminate video conference links to your clients and equip yourself with the tools to present yourself professionally on that call. Both of these things can have a huge impact on the client’s experience and turn them into raving fans.”

Melanie Leonard, Esq., Founder, streamlined.legal, @bestreamlined

17. Tech that supports subscription law services

“The trend will be towards a suite of tech tools to support subscription-focused law firms and the elimination of hourly billing.”

Kimberly Y. Bennett, Founder at K Bennett Law, @kbennettlaw

18. Learning to use the tools we already have

The most important trend will be learning to use the tools we already have. Because of the pandemic, most firms will be struggling to recover economically for a year or two. So firms will look for ways to do more with less—but rather than turning to new tools and new expenses, firms will finally learn to get more value from the tools they have. I hope that what will start as a belt-tightening response will prompt an overall interest in learning and training in your everyday tech, like case management systems and Microsoft Word.

Ivy B. Grey, VP of Strategy and Business Development, WordRake, @IvyBGrey

Lawyer Statistics for Success in 2021

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 13:00:14 GMT

Given the events of the past year, preparing for success in 2021 can feel overwhelming for lawyers. But with the knowledge based on key lawyer statistics, preparing for 2021 can be a whole lot easier. From knowing the current number of lawyers in the US to how (and how much) attorneys across the country are billing, knowing up-to-date lawyer facts and statistics can give you a clearer picture of where you stand, and which direction you may want to head.

Whether you’re currently contemplating law school, starting your career as a new lawyer, or trying to guide your business in the right direction as a seasoned legal professional, we’ve compiled the following statistics about lawyers to illuminate where the industry stands today—and help you make key decisions for success in 2021.

1. There are 1.3 million lawyers in the US

Exactly how many lawyers are there in the US? According to the American Bar Association’s 2020 ABA Profile of the Legal Profession, there are currently about 1.3 million lawyers in the US. Specifically, for every 1,000 residents in the US, there are only four lawyers. Knowing the status and size of your industry helps you understand your playing field in the legal marketplace.

2. The states with the most lawyers are New York, Maryland, and Massachusetts

Where are the majority of those lawyers located? The ABA’s Profile of the Legal Profession reports that New York (with 9.5 lawyers per 1,000 residents), Maryland (with 6.7 lawyers per 1,000 residents), and Massachusetts (with 6.2 lawyers per 1,000 residents) were the states with the most lawyers per residents based on 2019 population data.

If you practice in these states, you’ll know that competition is tough. Making sure you have a strong law firm brand is one of the key ways you can stand out from your competitors. And if you don’t practice in these states, you can look into easing the access to justice gap and accessing more of the market in your area.

3. 37% of lawyers are female, and 86% are white

The American Bar Association’s 10-year look at lawyer demographic trends shows some movement towards equality (in 2010, only 31% of lawyers were female and 89% of attorneys were white), but the statistics about lawyers show that the profession still has work to do.

What does this lawyer statistic mean for your law firm? As Lawline highlights, diversity has many benefits, including increasing innovation at your firm and bringing more diverse clients. To improve law firm diversity and inclusion with your firm’s brand, Katy Goshtasbi underscores a powerful 4-step process to reimagining your law firm brand with diversity and EQ in mind.

4. Women outnumber men in law schools

Looking again at the ABA’s Profile of the Legal Profession, the number of female law students is rising: Of the 112,000 law school students in the US, 53% are women (and, at four law schools, women actually outnumber men two-to-one).

Comparing this to the statistic 3 above, there seems to be a disconnect between the number of women in law schools, and the number of women moving on to becoming legal practitioners. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) indicates that in the US, the top barriers women face in the workplace include getting a job and protecting women from violence. It is worth examining how your law firm can foster a better environment for hiring more women and improving diversity.

5. Jobs for lawyers are expected to grow 4% in the next decade

The job outlook for lawyers—according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook—is overall positive, with a 4% projected growth rate for lawyers between 2019 and 2029, which is in line with the projected average for all jobs.

6. In 2019, the median pay for a lawyer was $122,960

As of May of 2019, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook reports that the median annual wage for lawyers was $122,960. While it varies by region and practice area, knowing the lawyer statistics for average pay can help you assess where you stand when it comes to income.

7. The average hourly billable rate for lawyers is close to $300 per hour

Billable rates for lawyers are rising. As reported in Clio’s 2020 Legal Trends Report, the average hourly billable rate for lawyers has been on the upswing in recent years, and was nearly $300 by the start of 2020.

8. The highest average hourly billable rate by state is $380 in DC

When it comes to hourly rates by state for lawyers, the 2020 Legal Trends Report shows that lawyers in DC charge the highest hourly rate, followed by $338 per hour by lawyers in California.

9. The lowest average hourly billable rate by state is $166 in West Virginia

At the other end of the spectrum, the lowest average hourly billable rate for lawyers in the US is in West Virginia, according to the 2020 Legal Trends Report. The report also looks at rates adjusted for cost of living, which is worth looking at if you’re deciding where to practice.

10. The highest average hourly billing rate by practice area was $347 for bankruptcy

Different practice areas charge vastly different rates, as well. The 2020 Legal Trends Report found that bankruptcy was the practice area with the highest average hourly billing rate—in some cases, by a great amount.

11. The lowest average hourly billing rate by practice area was $88 for juvenile

The practice area with the lowest average hourly billing rate for lawyers? Juvenile law, according to Clio’s 2020 Legal Trends Report.

12. Billable hours make up 31% of a lawyer’s work day

Tracking performance and productivity impacts your success as a lawyer, so lawyer facts and statistics that highlight how attorneys spend their time are invaluable performance indicators. The 2020 Legal Trends Report, for example, reports a utilization rate (i.e. the number of billable hours worked divided by the number of hours in a day) of 31%—which means that 69% of a lawyer’s work day is spent on non-billable activities.

13. Lawyers don’t collect on 12% of the hours they bill to clients

The 2020 Legal Trends Report also notes a collection rate (that is, the percentage of hours collected divided by the number of hours invoiced) of 88%—which means that lawyers are not paid for 12% of hours that they’ve worked and billed to clients. Finding a way to increase this rate could mean more potential revenue coming in for the hours already worked.

14. 37% of legal professionals say most if not all lawyers should run their practice virtually

Circumstances related to the global pandemic have changed how—and where—many lawyers work, with working virtually becoming the norm (whether temporarily or more permanently). While that move may have been unexpected or earlier than planned for some, survey data from the 2020 Legal Trends Report shows that more and more legal professionals foresee virtual work becoming the norm. In fact, 37% indicate that most—if not all lawyers—should run their legal practice virtually in the future.

15. 72% of consumers would prefer to pay their legal fees via payment plans

Another key statistic about lawyers from the 2020 Legal Trends Report is that today’s consumers want convenience and options when it comes to paying their legal fees. The majority of consumers surveyed indicate that they’d prefer to pay their legal fees on a payment plan. The Legal Trends Report also found that 65% of consumers prefer to pay electronically (that is, via electronic forms of payment like credit cards, debit cards, or online payment systems like Clio Payments, PayPal, or Apple Pay) over cash or check.

This data reveals an opportunity for lawyer success in the year to come: If the majority of consumers want to pay their legal fees via payment plan and electronically, but fewer lawyers are set up to offer them, setting your firm up to offer legal payment plans could make you stand out positively to potential clients.

16. 40% of consumers would never hire a lawyer who didn’t take debit or credit cards

Reinforcing these lawyer statistics, as Clio’s 2019 Legal Trends Report noted, the ability to make payments electronically can be a deal-breaker for some clients—with 40% of consumers who had dealt with a legal issue in the past two years indicating that they’d never hire a lawyer who didn’t take credit or debit cards. This means that law firms who offer legal credit card payments could have an edge over their competitors by letting clients pay the way they want to.

17. 57% of electronic payments to lawyers get paid within the same day they are billed, and 85% get paid within a week

While the statistics indicate that electronic payments are a benefit to consumers, it also seems to be in lawyers’ best interests, with the 2019 Legal Trends Report showing that electronic payments help lawyers get paid faster. Specifically, 57% of electronic payments get paid on the same day that they’re billed.

18. 59% of lawyers are using web-based software solutions

Cloud computing continues to be significant for business success, with the majority of lawyers using online solutions—59% of participants in the 2020 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report said that they used web-based software services or solutions.

19. 62% of law firms budget for technology

This is a slight increase from 2019, where only 60% of firms indicated to the ABA Legal Technology Survey Report that they budgeted for tech. We expect this number to increase significantly in years to come.

20. 68% of law firms say their website is mobile-friendly

When looking at the use of technology in the legal profession, the ABA 2020 Legal Technology Survey Report finds that the majority of respondents knew that their websites were mobile-friendly—which is key when you consider how prevalent internet use is among consumers. As the 2020 Legal Trends Report notes, 90% of adults in the US use the internet and 81% own a smartphone. With this in mind, adopting technology like a legal client app could provide opportunities to better reach and better serve increasingly tech-savvy consumers.

21. 59% of consumers seek a referral for their lawyer

When it comes to finding a lawyer, referrals are key to who clients choose. As the 2019 Legal Trends Report shows, 59% of clients look for a referral. Friends and family are the most common source, followed by referrals from other lawyers or referrals from non-legal professionals—like an accountant or real estate agent. Networking and can help you stand out in these groups, while providing client-centered services can help ensure positive referrals.

22. 57% of consumers look for a lawyer on their own, and many search online

While referrals are important, the 2019 Legal Trends Report also shows that the majority of clients look for a lawyer on their own—a trend that will likely continue to increase with the pandemic moving more and more searches for services online. Make sure you provide a client-centered experience in all aspects of your business, starting by making it easy for potential clients to access your legal services online (and specifically, via Google). By tailoring your practice around client experience, you can better serve potential clients and have more success.

Learn more about getting found online and creating a great law firm website.

23. Firms using multiple technologies collected 20% more per month per lawyer in 2020

Using some technology can be advantageous to lawyers. But using multiple technologies is shown to be better when it comes to drawing in revenue. Clio’s 2020 Legal Trends Report looked at the use of three key cloud technologies for lawyers: online payments, client portals, and client intake and CRM software. The report’s analysis shows that, as of 2020, firms that used all three technologies averaged a higher volume of casework per lawyer and earned over 20% more revenue.

For example, using custom reporting tools like myFirmData to help you assess and track data for your firm can help you monitor your firm’s growth and add to your law firm technology stack.

24. 37% of consumers now prefer videoconference when meeting their lawyer for the first time

With COVID-19 moving many aspects of life online, more clients are willing—and in many cases, prefer—to conduct legal meetings virtually. The 2020 Legal Trends Report shows that 37% of consumers prefer to meet via video for their first meeting with a lawyer, and 50% prefer to meet via videoconference for follow-up meetings as well. In fact, the report shows that 52% of consumers believe that most legal matters could be handled remotely.

25. 89% of legal professionals believe court systems can be improved with better access to technology.

One benefit of the sudden need to rethink meeting in person is that it’s shown that technology could be used to improve court processes. As the majority of legal professionals indicate in the 2020 Legal Trends Report, using more technology could lead to opportunities for positive changes in the courts. Moving processes like case management and court files to electronic systems could increase efficiency and affordability for the people they are meant to serve—and ultimately help improve access to justice.

26. 45% of legal professionals believe technology can help create a more equitable justice system.

Technology adoption isn’t always a cut-and-dry topic, but the 2020 Legal Trends Report shows that legal professionals see opportunity to use tech to promote more equality in the justice system. This is an inspiring and encouraging statistic for the future of the legal industry.

Staying Connected in a Year of Transition

Thu, 10 Dec 2020 13:00:03 GMT

2020 has certainly been a year filled with volatility and uncertainty, making it perpetually difficult to plan for the future.

Through it all, we’ve seen incredible resilience and adaptability in the legal industry, when clients and legal professionals needed it most. We saw law students graduate in one of the most bizarre school years imaginable. We saw lawyers come up with creative ways to connect with and serve their clients, even when wet signatures were still required. We saw firms of all types, including highly traditional firms with dated on-premise technologies and traditional bricks-and-mortar offices, make a transition to a cloud-based, fully distributed way of working with almost inconceivable speed and agility.

The legal industry has rapidly moved online in a meaningful way, allowing firms to keep their staff and families safe while continuing to serve clients. According to the 2020 Legal Trends Report, 85% of law firms are now using software to manage their practices, with 79% relying on cloud technology to store firm data, and 83% meeting with clients virtually. These changes will last well beyond the pandemic, creating a new reality in which legal services are more convenient, accessible, and efficiently delivered.

But there’s still work to be done—lawyers and legal professionals must strive to stay connected with those they serve. The Legal Trends Report found that many lawyers have moved their practices online, but it also found that this new, online reality wasn’t the perception amongst consumers. Only 26% of consumers see lawyers meeting with clients virtually, and only 29% see them storing information in the cloud. Most troubling of all, Clio’s COVID-19 Impact Research found that as many as 33% of consumers believed that lawyers had stopped offering services altogether through April and May, while in reality, just 2% of law firms had stopped offering services.

Meanwhile, as of July, 67% of consumers surveyed were putting off handling a legal problem during the pandemic, but 23% expected to need a lawyer in the near future, and 22% of respondents said that this would be due to a coronavirus-related issue. In other words, there is a clear and imminent demand for legal services.

Clients need legal services, and lawyers must make it clear that they’re available in order to secure new clients for their firms now and into 2021. The key, as always, is product-market fit. Connecting with clients and what they truly need is key to success.

Develop deep empathy for your clients’ current mindset and where they’re at. This doesn’t need to be difficult, and will in fact better serve your firm too. The key is using the right technology to create new connections with clients and meet them where they want to be served.

Make sure your law firm is discoverable online, through your website and online listings like Google My Business, and make it easy for worried clients facing a legal issue to quickly book a consultation via streamlined online scheduling. Clear and succinct communication at this stage of the client journey is imperative for being found, being hired, and building trust with clients who now need to operate in an online environment.

And, consider that to better connect with and attract more clients, your firm may have to reimagine the way it bills clients and collects payments. According to our COVID-19 Impact Research, 61% of surveyed consumers said they could not afford to deal with a legal issue. This certainly makes sense amidst the struggles of a global pandemic, especially considering that, in 2018, the Federal Reserve found that 39% of Americans would not have the funds available to pay for an unexpected $400 expense. Offering payment plans would certainly help solve this issue, but while 72% of consumers want to pay their law firms this way, just 53% of law firms offer payment plans in comparison. Law firms willing to adapt and offer this alternative payment method stand to connect with a huge subset of clients and capture a substantial market opportunity.

As we head into 2021, the bottom line is that empathy, adaptability and resilience will be key to success. Law firms who can stay tuned into what clients need and find new ways to meet them where they are will be positioned to succeed. Only when we stay connected can we build empathy for each other and thrive as an industry and a society.

How to Set Lawyer Goals for Success in 2021

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 13:00:20 GMT

If you think back to this time last year, chances are that much of what you envisioned for your firm and career in 2020 has turned out different from what you expected. But that’s all the more reason to start setting your lawyer goals for 2021 now.

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. Law firms are now operating in an increasingly uncertain and rapidly changing world.

Attorneys who adapt can thrive and create a better normal for the legal industry. Having a game plan—via clear, meaningful goals—gives you a benchmark from which you can adapt and adjust to be as successful as possible. As we look forward to 2021, it’s the ideal time to think about what you want—and how you plan to achieve it—in the year to come.

Still, setting career goals can be tricky. How specific should they be? What goals should you focus on when you’re an experienced lawyer, and what are the best goals for new attorneys? How will you know when you reach a goal?

The adage is true: What gets measured gets managed. Start by setting SMART goals. Then measure, assess, and adapt them if necessary.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to set SMART lawyer goals for the year to come, so you can boost your professional development and help your firm succeed. We’ll explain what it means to set SMART goals for lawyers, review what types of goals to consider for each stage of your legal career, and give ideas for tools to help you measure and manage your lawyer goals.

What are SMART goals for lawyers?

Not all goals are created equal—some are SMARTer than others. Lawyer goals need to be clear and measurable to be effective, which is why SMART goals for lawyers are so important.

Based on an approach by Peter Drucker—who also coined “what gets measured gets managed”—SMART goals help lawyers with goal-setting to keep lawyers on track. SMART goals result in goals that are easier to track, monitor, and assess—in the short and long term. Whether regarding your career or any other area of your life, a SMART goal is:

Specific

Broad wishes like “make my law firm better” may be worthy dreams, but they aren’t actionable, so they aren’t goals. Goals must be specific and defined—something that can be accomplished. While “make my law firm better” is a dream, “increase law firm collection rates” is something that can be accomplished——which makes it a goal. If a goal is specific, you should be able to identify:

Why you want to accomplish it
How you will accomplish it (that is, what resources you’ll need)
Any potential roadblocks that could challenge you

Measurable

How will you know if you’ve accomplished your goal? Or how will you know how close or far you are from achieving it? A SMART goal for lawyers must be measurable. This means you can track and assess the goal’s progress with quantifiable milestones. For example, if your goal is to increase firm collection rates, make it measurable by setting out to increase firm collection rates by a number—say 5%. Then, by tracking changes in collection rates, you’ll know with certainty when you’ve reached the goal.

Achievable

Setting big goals is a worthy endeavor, but setting unrealistic and unattainable goals makes them demoralizing and less meaningful. Using our example, if your goal is to increase firm collection rates by 2,000%, you aren’t giving yourself a realistic, achievable framework. This erodes the goal’s effectiveness. On the other hand, you don’t want to set goals that are so easy that they’re equally meaningless. For example, a goal to increase collection rates by 0.0005% may not be challenging enough to follow through. Consider both ends of the spectrum and set a goal that balances being challenging with being attainable.

Relevant

While, as we previously noted, career goals for lawyers should be specific, they also need to tie in with your larger vision. Look at the goal of increasing firm collection rates by 5%: This goal is relevant to the larger goal of increasing firm revenue and business success. Setting a goal of learning to play the guitar may be a goal, but it’s not relevant to your career—so it shouldn’t be part of your career goal setting.

Time-bound

Set a time-frame for each goal that you want to accomplish within. Set an honest, realistic deadline from the outset to boost your chances of success. Choosing an unrealistic time limit for your goal reduces its effectiveness. In our example, you could give your goal of increasing firm collection rates by 5% a time limit of one year. This way, at the end of 2021, you can assess, evaluate, and tweak your goal accordingly.

Examples of SMART goals for attorneys

Think about the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for lawyers that are important to you and your firm. SMART goals for lawyers go hand-in-hand with KPIs for lawyers because both value measurement, tracking, and accountability.

For example, let’s apply SMART goal setting to the client-acquisition KPI of the number of consultation appointments set. Here, our SMART goal could be “Setting four new client consultation appointments each month for 2021.” Ask yourself:

Is it specific? By defining a trackable achievement (setting a new client consultation appointment), this goal is specific.
Is it measurable? Adding a number (four per month) to the goal makes it measurable—you either do or don’t set four per month.
Is it achievable? If you averaged two consultations per month in years past, then four per month is a challenging, but attainable goal. You would need to put in the effort to reach it, but it’s not inconceivable.
Is it relevant? This goal is related to the overall topic of client acquisition, which could bring a positive benefit to firm growth, revenues, and overall success—so it is relevant.
Is it time-bound? By creating a time limit (four per month for the year), the goal is time-bound.

Learn about law firm KPIs you should measure.

More examples of SMART goals based on KPIs

You can use these as a starting off point, and then customize them to you or your firm’s specific situation:

Marketing KPI: Email marketing performance.

SMART goal: To increase the firm’s email newsletter click-through rate by 10% by the end of Q1.

Client-acquisition KPI: Number of new cases opened.

SMART goal: To increase each lawyer at the firm’s number of new cases opened by 5% by year end.

Productivity KPI: Number of billable hours.

SMART goal: To increase my billable hours by 10 hours each month in 2021.

Career goals for lawyers

The career goals and objectives of a lawyer are key at every stage of your legal career—though they may look a bit different depending on if you’re a new attorney or an experienced lawyer with many years of practice.

A common mistake and misconception when it comes to setting lawyer goals at every stage? Hyper-focusing only on performance goals like getting good grades as a law student or making a lot of money as a lawyer.

To be your most successful self and to keep you fulfilled and well-rounded as a lawyer and as a person, it’s important to widen the scope of your career goal-setting. Focus on multiple aspects of your legal career—consider goals around improving your personal knowledge (like reading one inspirational book each month), business knowledge (like creating a law firm strategic plan), your clients’ experience (like offering simple online intake forms to new clients), and personal wellness (like getting a full eight hours of sleep each weeknight).

Whatever goals you decide to focus on this year, the key comes down to three factors:

Be clear about why you’re pursuing a goal.
Measure your progress.
Stay accountable.

What are the career goals and objectives of a lawyer?

There’s no one set of best career goals for lawyers. The best lawyer goals need to be personalized and customized to your unique situation and what’s most important to you, taking into account factors like your practice area, the size of the firm you work at, and even your personal and family goals.

For example, for some lawyers, the ultimate goal could be making partner, while others may strive to win a legal award. Others may want to start their own remote law firm. The variability is the advantage—and the challenge. To help, let’s look at common goals for different stages of legal careers.

Goals for law graduates

If you’re a recent or upcoming law graduate in 2021, your top priority is to likely get a job—and to get a job that you like.

With this in mind, goals for a law graduate typically revolve around finding the right first legal job and getting your legal career started. This is the time to consider your why when setting goals—why do you want to be a lawyer, and what do you want your legal career to look like? Consider goals like finding a job that:

Is at a firm with values that align with your values (For example, your goal could be to find a job at a firm that offers a certain amount of community outreach in their mission.).
Pays a certain threshold salary.
Offers a level of work-life balance (For example, your goal could be to find a legal job that offers a certain number of weeks of vacation or provides flexible hours to allow you to spend time with family.).

Defining goals in these areas can simplify your job search and help focus it on a legal career path that is best suited to your unique strengths and weaknesses.

Goals for new attorneys

New lawyers are under a lot of pressure to develop their careers, so goals for new attorneys tend to be more focused on performance and on learning as much as you can as you grow your legal career. With this in mind, you may consider goals that focus more on:

Networking. When you’re a new attorney, you want to soak up as much guidance as you can from more experienced lawyers. Your goal for this stage could be to find a mentor and connect with them monthly.

Performance. Setting financial and performance-based goals—like goals focused on getting more clients and getting organized to get more done—can help you stay focused on growing your legal career.

Specialization. Now is a good time to create goals to develop your expertise, such as getting an article published in a law publication, or writing a series of blog posts on a legal topic.

Professional development goals for lawyers at any stage of practice

No matter where you are in your legal practice, it’s essential to set professional development goals for lawyers to help you improve your practice and continue to grow. To identify what your goals should be for 2021, start with a clear-eyed assessment of your current situation.

Honestly assess the different areas of your legal career in areas like fulfillment, financial success, business efficiency, client satisfaction, and your reputation. Also, look at your career situation, and assess areas like your mental health and work-life balance. What’s working? What could use improvement?

Focus on the areas that need work. Set SMART goals in these areas, stay accountable, and measure your progress—more on that next.

How to measure goals for your law firm and career

Measure, measure, measure: It may seem obvious, but it bears repeating because when it comes to lawyer goals, measurement is critical to success.

While the best method of tracking may vary from person to person, tools and technology can help take the manual effort out of goal tracking and measurement—which makes you more likely to keep it up, while also giving you valuable data about your goal progress down the road. Here are a few useful tools to consider:

Law Firm Insights Dashboard

SMART goals for lawyers require measurement, and Clio Manage’s Firm Insights Dashboard tracks firm performance metrics (such as billable hours and revenue) in one place.

myFirmData

This reporting tool uses your firm’s information in Clio to create and run custom reports. By using myFirmData to track your firm’s progress using custom fields, you can create a report to easily and regularly track progress related to financial goals (like collections by attorney) or firm growth (like the number of matters opened).

Client Intake Insights software

If your goals for 2021 are centered around law firm growth and new clients, you need to be able to see and assess your firm’s client intake process. Clio Grow’s Client Intake Insights software offers in-depth client-intake reporting from an easy-to-use dashboard, so you can track firm-related goals like referrals, new client types, and top-performing staff members.

Measurement isn’t just for career goals for lawyers—tracking your personal goals makes it easier to stay on top of your goals in all areas of your life, too. For measuring your personal goals, something as simple as reflecting in a journal regularly or having an accountability partner would be great.

If you like the ease and data of using tech to track your personal goals, consider a personal goal-tracking app. Strides, for example, helps you track any habit you choose while providing a dashboard and progress reports for useful data and more accountability. You can also use wearable technology like personalized fitness trackers.

Conclusion

Even with much currently in flux, you can (and should) set lawyer goals for 2021 if you want the next year to be as successful as possible. Setting career goals and objectives can help give you a playbook that you can refer to—to measure, adapt, and, ultimately, succeed. Without a clear plan, adapting to circumstances—whether it’s the normal ebb and flow of business or an unexpected global pandemic—is more difficult.

The key to successful lawyer goal-setting is to stay adaptable. Know why you want to pursue a goal, make it measurable, use tools to help you track your progress, and then watch and reassess as needed—based on your progress and what’s happening in the changing world around you.

Best Holiday Gifts for Lawyers

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 15:00:44 GMT

It’s the season of giving, but what are the best gifts for lawyers? The end of the year is a busy time for legal professionals—for many, even moreso this year—but that doesn’t mean you need to default to gift certificates or generic presents that will only collect dust.

This year, give the lawyer in your life something interesting—or at least something they’ll use. We’ve updated our annual list of the best gifts for lawyers for 2020. Whether you’re shopping for a special present for a coworker, friend, or family member in the legal sector, we’ve got you covered with practical (and playful) gift ideas.

What is the best gift for a lawyer?

The best gifts for lawyers—who are perpetually busy—are ones that save them time, increase productivity, or help them unwind from a stressful day at work. When looking for gifts, make sure they are thoughtful and most importantly, useful. In the following section, we’ll go over a list of 25 best gifts for lawyers for that special lawyer in your life.

1. Instant Pot

Lawyers often have to deal with long days and late nights and, foodie or not, cooking might be the last thing on their mind when they get home. But, they still need to find a way to eat healthy and keep a balanced diet.

Instant Pot to the rescue! This made it to the top of our “best gifts for lawyers” list as it’s a programmable electric pressure cooker that monitors and adjusts cooking temperatures and times depending on the volume of food being cooked. In other words, you can cook meals in a flash, or program the pot to cook later.

It might just be a lawyer’s new best friend.

Instant Pot Duo and Instant Pot Ultra on Amazon

Price: $139.95 – $149.95 (depending on pot size and model)

2. Noise-cancelling headphones

For anyone who needs to concentrate for extended periods of time, noise-cancelling headphones can make all the difference—especially when working from home. For lawyers trying to review complex briefs in our current environment, this gift just might be at the top of their list!

There are plenty of options available, so you could choose a basic set or something more high-end.

Bose noise cancelling headphones on Amazon

Price: $349

TaoTronics noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones on Amazon

Price: $65

3. Nest thermostat

The last thing a busy lawyer thinks about is the temperature of their home. But for those in colder climates, coming home to a toasty house after a long day of work would be much better than coming home to a frosty one.

The Nest thermostat learns your schedule and the temperatures you like, and then turns itself off to save energy when no one is home. That means you’ll give the busy lawyer in your life one less thing to worry about.

And, if you have an Alexa device—like the Echo Dot—you can use it to enable voice control with the Nest thermostat.

Nest thermostat on Amazon

Price: $199.99

4. Meal-prep service subscription

If you know a lawyer who likes cooking but hates shopping, a subscription to a meal kit delivery service might be the perfect gift. Services like Blue Apron and HelloFresh deliver fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and tantalizing recipes—right to your door. That means you can cook Chicken Khao Soi without an 8 p.m. trip to the grocery store to pick up limes and curry powder.

Meal kit companies typically deliver your groceries—complete with the necessary spices and herbs—in insulated boxes, so busy lawyers don’t need to be home to receive them. Be sure to research the meal kit delivery service beforehand and choose one that supports sustainable food systems. This way, your gift recipient can feel good about what they’re eating.

Blue Apron (or similar) subscriptions

Price: Meal kit delivery services usually cost $7.50-$10 per serving, depending on how many recipes you want to receive per week, and how many people are in your household.

5. Espresso machine

For law firms, as with any business, it’s the little things that contribute to a great client experience. It’s becoming more and more important for law firms to take a client-centered approach to stay competitive.

Help the lawyer in your life make a great first impression on new clients with an espresso machine for their office or lobby.

Price: Varies. You can get a Nespresso machine or similar for under $200, or spend up to a few thousand on a professional unit.

6. Favorite mug

Sure, a mug isn’t exactly revolutionary, but think about it—everyone has a go-to mug that they use every single day, and you could be the person who buys your fellow lawyer that mug!

What’s more, there are some seriously cool mugs out there. Case in point: Just check out the Disappearing Civil Liberties Mug. Fill it with hot water, and watch the text disappear!

Disappearing Civil Liberties Mug

Price: $15.95

7. Home office greenery

Plants are a great way to liven up any office—including your lawyer’s. The calming effects of nature are well documented, and some plants even make the air more pleasant to breathe! A winning gift all around: Consider succulents are another variety that is easy for busy legal professionals to care for.

Price: Varies.

8. LAWSUIT!—the board game

Learning about the law can be fun for the whole family, especially during the holidays. LAWSUIT! is a board game that was created by a parent who wanted to teach her children about the legal profession. Since then, the game has grown in popularity, and we’re reasonably confident that any legal professional would love to play it.

Consider: The LAWSUIT! website boasts that you can “Run your own law office and be a master of the courtroom all while moving around the game board!” Amazing! And while they’ll only be playing with members of their own household this year, we’re sure the lawyer in your life will still love this gift. Read more about the rules here.

Lawsuit

Price: $34.95

*Note: At the time of writing, the game is currently out of stock. Keep an eye out for updates!

9. Foam gavel

What better way is there to relieve stress than with a foam gavel? Help the lawyer in your life hammer out their stress and bring order to their mind with one of the best gifts for any lawyer: a delightful foam gavel.

Foam gavel on Amazon

Price: $6.99

10. Yoga mat

A little work-life balance can make all the difference in a lawyer’s life. That’s certainly been true for Clio customer Patrick Palace.

Buy a lawyer a yoga mat, and they’ll be one step closer to meditating, doing sunrise salutations, or any number of other practices to keep themselves healthy and focused—even when working remotely.

Yoga mat on Amazon

Price: $15.99

11. Virtual dance class

Dancing isn’t just fun—it keeps you healthy, and it also improves brain function. Indeed, Chris Trebatoski has grown his solo firm while simultaneously starting a competitive salsa dancing career with his wife, Inna.

Sign the lawyer in your life up for a dance class, and who knows where it may take them. Today, many options are taking place safely over Zoom.

Price: Varies based on location

12. Echo Dot

Voice-controlled devices can do a lot to make one’s life easier. That said, make sure lawyers take precautions to protect client confidentiality if they’re using a live-mic listening device. Keep it in your office, but not in a meeting space or boardroom, for example.

Echo Dot on Amazon

Price: $39.99

13. 2-in-1 portable battery / charger

For the lawyer who constantly needs to work remotely from different sections of the house, a 2-in-1 portable battery that is also a device charger will definitely be a welcome gift. This type of charger charges both your device and itself when plugged into a wall. Never get stuck with a dead battery again!

Anker PowerCore Fusion 5000 2-in-1 Portable Charger on Amazon

Price: $25.97

14. Cross-cut paper shredder

Sometimes, the best gifts for lawyers are the most unassuming ones. When lawyers dispose of client documents, they can’t just throw them in the recycling bin. Confidential information must be kept confidential, so these documents need to be shredded.

If the lawyer in your life doesn’t have one for their home office yet, a cross-cut paper shredder could be the perfect gift.

Cross-cut paper shredders

Price: $43 – $3,390

15. ScanSnap scanner

More and more lawyers are going paperless, but they’ll still need a way to bring paper documents into the digital world. A portable ScanSnap scanner is the answer!

Weighing in at just 14.1 ounces, the ScanSnap is ideal for lawyers with not a lot of space. It’s battery-powered, and scans documents wirelessly to PC, Mac, Kindle Fire, and iOS or Android devices. The best part? The scanner integrates directly with Clio, letting you scan documents directly into a Matter in Clio.

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX100 Wireless Mobile Scanner on Amazon

Price: $254

16. A journal

This may be a surprisingly simple gift, but journaling is more than just writing down your thoughts everyday. Journaling is an art with wide-reaching benefits for lawyers, including improving professional performance, well-being, and communication, and boosting cognition. You could also opt for a guided journal like The School of Life’s Who Am I? Who Am I? Includes psychological exercises to develop self-understanding.

Find a journal of your preferred style in your local bookstore or from The School of Life.

Price: $20

17. Digital course

When thinking about the best gifts for lawyers, don’t forget about the magic of digital courses. The best part about digital courses is that the lawyer in your life can sign up and go through the courses at their own time, even remotely. Popular online education sites like coursera and Udemy contain a wide array of educational topics to choose from—including business, personal development, and computer science. If the lawyer in your life runs their own firm, this is the perfect opportunity and the perfect time of year to learn a new skill, or improve an existing one.

Digital courses are available on coursera or Udemy.

Price: Varies, but you can find options between $20 and $100

18. Lawyer socks

There’s no doubt about it, lawyers covet awesome socks. And with a need to stay cozy while working from home during the winter months, a fun pair of socks might just be the perfect gift to keep a lawyer warm this winter.

Lawyer socks on Amazon

Price: $14.99

19. Home office art

Lawyers conducting meetings while working from home need to look professional, and that includes their background. Whether they’ve got a home office, or are working from their living room, a tasteful yet interesting piece of art in the background can help them make a good impression on clients and colleagues.

There are many options depending on the taste of the lawyer in your life, but consider this simple option.

Lawyer office poster

Price: $12.95

20. Wool blanket

Keep heating bills down and comfort high when working from home with this thoughtful, practical gift. A good quality wool blanket will keep lawyers warm as they power through briefs and documents.

Wool blanket on Amazon

Price: $225

21. Scented candle

Calming scents are key to helping stress melt away, and candlelight helps us all feel cozy during the winter months. For lawyers under extra pressure this year, the gift of relaxation may be the most welcome one.

Scented candle on Amazon

Price: $18.99

22. Jeena Cho and Karen Gifford’s The Anxious Lawyer

It’s no secret that lawyers work in high-stress, high-performance environments. When looking for good gifts for a lawyer, consider Jeena Cho and Karen Gifford’s acclaimed and life-changing book, The Anxious Lawyer. Not only will you be looking out for the mental health of the laywer in your life, you will also be giving them a gift that does not stop giving. If you have not heard about Jeena Cho and Karen Gifford, they are practicing attorneys who have firsthand knowledge of the difficulties and rewards of legal practice. In addition, they’ve experienced how meditation and mindfulness help them run a more effective legal practice. Their book contains a straightforward 8-week program on meditation and mindfulness, created by lawyers, for lawyers.

The Anxious Lawyer available at various bookstores.

Price: $29.90 at Barnes and Noble

23. Kim Scott’s Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Here at Clio, Radical Candor™ is a big part of our company culture, more than ever in a remote environment.

Among many of the principles discussed in Radical Candor, we believe that timely, honest feedback is key to shaping a successful working environment. Kim Scott pulls from past experiences in her positions at Google and Apple, telling funny, painful, and embarrassing stories that are delightful but constructive.

For the legal professional that’s fresh out of school, to the lawyer who’s the boss of their own firm, Radical Candor offers tips on how to build a better workplace for both managers and colleagues.

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity on Amazon

Price: $23.40

24. Jack Newton’s The Client-Centered Law Firm

The best gifts for lawyers are the ones that provide long-lasting and intangible benefits, like a book that helps you understand how to provide your clients with an improved client-centered experience.

All lawyers want to give their clients the best experience possible—especially in today’s experience-driven world—but it can be hard to navigate how to apply those ideas at your firm. Clio CEO and Co-founder Jack Newton’s new book, The Client-Centered Law Firm, explores how legal professionals can run a profitable, successful law firm while also offering a client-centered experience.

The Client-Centered Law Firm: How to Succeed in an Experience-Driven World on Amazon

Price: $14.95 – $28.92 depending on format

Blog â Clio

How to Work With a Virtual Legal Assistant

What is a virtual legal assistant?

How to choose a virtual legal assistant

Vet potential virtual legal assistants thoroughly

Consider how they fit your work style

Determine what virtual legal assistant services you need

Set expectations

Tips for working with virtual legal assistants

Get to know your virtual legal assistant

Be prepared to project manage

Set clear expectations

Give clear instructions

Be consistent

Use software to collaborate and communicate

Virtual Legal Assistant Services

Equivity

Hire an Esquire

Back Office Betties

You’re now ready to improve productivity and efficiency at your firm

A Guide to Non-engagement Letters (Sample Included)

What is a non-engagement letter?

Why do you need a non-engagement letter?

1. To avoid malpractice claims

How non-engagement letters help you avoid potential malpractice claims

2. To communicate clearly with prospective clients

3. To avoid miscommunication in a remote environment

4. To provide a client-centered experience

Non-engagement vs. disengagement letters

When should attorneys use a non-engagement letter?

How to use a non-engagement letter?

Sample non-engagement letter content

Always do your due diligence

Sample Non-Engagement Letter—Example Only

Conclusion

A Complete Guide for Lawyers Texting Clients

Should lawyers text their clients?

The benefits of lawyers texting clients

1. Provide your customers with a client-centered experience

2. Save time and communicate with clients from anywhere

3. Improve engagement and client satisfaction with clients

4. Drive new leads and online reviews

Before you start texting your clients

Are text messages privileged?

Ethics in text messaging

Understand the types of attorney texting

Determine what appropriate lawyer texting looks like

Discuss with clients

Security and compliance

Documentation and data ownership

Text messaging is part of your communications with clients

Business messaging tools for lawyer texting

Corvum Texting

ESI-Legal

EZ Ring

FirmScribe

Jubilee TextMessaging

Podium

Kenect

Heymarket

Proclaim

Conclusion

Live Chat for Law Firms: 10 Best Apps

1. Ruby

2. LawDroid

3. Client Chat Live

4. Smith.ai

5. Apex Chat

6. LexReception

7. Ngage

8. Intaker

9. Gideon

10. Podium

What to look for with live chat for law firms

Outline the critical features your live chat app should have

Live chat for law firms is becoming an essential part of lawyering

10 Tips to Improve Law Firm Profitability

How do law firms make a profit?

Revenue vs. profitability

What can a law firm do to stay profitable?

Blog â Clio