Law Firm Management: A Guide to Growing Your Small Firm

While law school did an excellent job teaching you substantive law, note that one thing it probably did not prepare you for is the issues and challenges associated with running a small law firm. You may know that law firm management is no simple task.  

You are not only dealing with the changing and rising expectations of demanding clients, but you’re also handling the financial, administrative, and ethical demands of keeping your small law firm up and running. If you are concerned about how to best attract as well as retain clients, or often find yourself spending way too much time and resources on non-billable tasks, then you are not alone.

Let’s take a look at a couple of barriers and problems that stop transitioning law firms.

Problems that Small Law Firms Face

Little Market Knowledge

Note that once your small law office tries to compete with midsize and big law firms, keep in mind that you are competing with better resourced and more experienced law firms that fully understand the local market.

When it comes to small law firm management, the problem is that many lawyers usually target clients merely based on hunches, gut feelings, intuition, and a cursory knowledge of what the market for their various legal services needs and wants.

And it is worth noting that failure to adequately research market dynamics while focusing on niche offerings can make it challenging to successfully transition from a small law firm to a midsize law firm.

Attracting Quality Clients

One of the biggest obstacles in running a small law firm is attracting and retaining quality clients in your specific practice area, such as personal injury law. You may be the best lawyer in the world, but you’ll go nowhere without clients. The good news is that the strategic and savvy use of the Internet can help level the playing field for small law firms.

The foundation of an excellent internet presence is a great website. Note that a great website will let your target audience and clients evaluate you based on case results, reviews, videos, and informative articles and posts that educate the public. And, your website must also be optimised so that you can rank on page one of Google and other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo.

If you aren’t on the first few pages of the search results, your law firm has little likelihood of being found. So, you also have to hire a great webmaster in order to optimise your website so that it stays on the top of SERPs for the key areas of your law practice.

Lack of Team Skills

If your small law firm wants to grow from small to a midsize firm, having a solid and efficient team is important to making the transition. Note that core team members comprise individuals who have specialised expertise and knowledge in sales, management and process development, and customer service.

Also, having the ability to effectively pass legal cases to savvy and capable team members will allow your small firm to take on more work, and this will help increase revenue. So, do not make the mistake of overlooking the crucial task of carefully vetting all your team members.

Referrals are one of the best ways of finding talented team members. Referrals can come from your current team members or even via other reputable and experienced lawyers.

Effective and Visionary Leadership

There is no doubt that success starts at the top. So, effective leadership is essential to the growth of your firm. Every member of your law firm looks to leadership for direction and guidance on how to best conduct themselves when handling various office matters. Note that as a firm leader, you have to provide a positive example that your lower level attorneys, as well as other staff members, can follow. Whether speaking with clients or heading a staff meeting, firm leaders are often being watched and emulated.

Invest in Software

By investing in law practice management software, you can streamline your daily operations and also manage all aspects of your small law firm, such as client and case records, appointments, documents, schedules, and deadlines, etc.  

If you or your legal team is trying to manage all of these things manually or using several programs, having a comprehensive legal software solution can transform how your law firm operates. With everything in one software solution, your staff will know where to look for information without having to contact a colleague to send the file over.

Devise Office Management Policies

Note that this is one of the most effective ways to manage your law office, employees, and work processes. You have to set and enforce policies that clearly define how you would like the work to be handled, what ethical standards you want to be followed in the office, as well as the efforts and results that you expect from your marketing, social media, billing, and other teams. Also, set clear policies for dealing with the clients, with suitable measures in place if someone breaches any of the policies.