Being part of a solo or small law firm has significant rewards — both on the personal and professional level, but it also has its fair share of struggles. With a small and lean staffing model, everyone is forced to wear multiple hats. The constant jumping from one task to the next makes it nearly impossible to think about anything beyond the specific task at hand. Getting through each day can feel like a feat of strength. Over time, it becomes exhausting and you quickly start making tradeoffs — or skimping on things you know you should do but don’t because of time constraints.
How You Manage – It Matters
Many lawyers start law firms without business management experience. They get by thanks to their superior legal skills but could earn more, serve their clients better, and have more free time if they ran a tighter ship. Unfortunately some lawyers don’t realize that the way they choose to manage their business has a huge impact on their ability to practice law. If lawyers ignore the importance of managing the business or at the very least don’t develop effective work processes for the firm, they have to repeatedly work through the associated muck resulting from the lack of planning on a daily basis. This eats into the time they have to actually practice law to the best of their ability, how much time they spend with clients, and it cascades into how much of their working time is billable. Ultimately, the dysfunction shows up in how clients rate their overall satisfaction with the firm. This can result in lower levels of repeat business, fewer referrals, and tarnished reputation. Yes, how you manage your firm matters.
Take Control of Your Time
Time is one of the most critical resources you have. Unfortunately, you don’t have an infinite supply of time to work on or bill for each of your matters. You need to work efficiently to satisfy your clients and to manage all you have to juggle. So, it is important to evaluate how you spend your time in order to make the most of it. If you reflect on where you spend your time, you can then evaluate if there is a better way to get the work done — especially on those non-billable/administrative activities that take so much of your time.
According to the 2016 State of U.S. Small Law Firms Study by Thomson Reuters, solo and small law firms are spending up to 31% of their time on administrative tasks. That statistic on its own may not sound so bad, but when you calculate the impact of administrative time over the year, the result to profitability is staggering:
- 40 hour work week * 31% of time on admin tasks = 12 hours of unbilled work
- 12 hours of unbilled work * $230 hourly rate = $2,760 in lost billables/week
- $2,760 unbilled work a week * 48 weeks per year = ~$132,480 lost billings/year
What if you could recover much of that unbilled time? Imagine what that impact would have on your profitability! There is good news here…
Get Work Done Like a Boss
Start evaluating what you spend your time on, and try to look at your processes with a fresh set of eyes.
- Are there activities that you dread or that you have just accepted as “the way it is?”
- Are there certain tasks you can delegate to others at your firm?
- Are there activities you can outsource?
- How can you reconstruct — and in some cases eliminate — the non-value-add tasks that take up your day? You know, the things that don’t drive client satisfaction or increase your billings?
Asking these questions should not be a time-intensive exercise. Identify your top goal. Then, identify your biggest challenge that stands in the way of achieving that goal. From there, you can start making improvements, which should help you minimize the time you have to spend on non-value-add, non-billable activity. Doing so will help you earn more, better serve your clients, and improve your work-life balance.
Work Like a Boss! Need some help getting started? Take the Like a Boss Challenge to see how you measure up and get helpful tips on how to get on the right path to succeed with ease!