Running a small law practice in today’s competitive legal market is no small undertaking. Without the right tools in your arsenal, juggling both the business and practice sides of things can feel like an uphill battle. The key to success is simplifying the management of your business, so you can focus on the important work of serving your clients. Firm Central by Thomson Reuters supplies the tools you need to efficiently run a small firm practice.
From managing deadlines to tracking your billable hours to running a mobile office, the challenges facing small firms are constantly evolving, and Firm Central is evolving along with them. The goal is to find workflows that best remove the administrative inefficiencies that can bog down your practice, and have them all in one integrated, user-friendly practice management solution. Firm Central was specifically designed to give small firms the tools they need to perfect the constant balancing act between running a business and practicing law.
Sound too good to be true? Don’t just take our word for it. Real-life small firms and solo practitioners are boosting their practices every day by turning to Firm Central. While change can be daunting, these firms are saving time and money by moving past the status quo and seeing what the right practice management tool can do for them.
Roeder Smith Jadin (RSJ) is a small Minneapolis-based firm that specializes in litigation, insurance, construction, real estate, and community association issues. Formed in 2013, they built their new firm on the principle that starting with a better business model would be more cost-effective in the long run and allow them to better serve their clients, even if it meant making changes and spending money up front. After quickly outgrowing their basic, piecemeal practice management tool, RSJ turned to Firm Central for an integrated practice management platform that would allow them to run all aspects of their practice in one place. Doing the cost-benefit analysis, they determined that the initial investment would be far outweighed by reductions in overhead and other cost savings.
Since adopting Firm Central, RSJ has grown from three people to a 12-person firm. In that time, they’ve seen a decrease in time spent on administrative tasks, as well as increased flexibility, with the ability to serve their clients from anywhere. Because Firm Central is cloud-based, RSJ was able to move to a call-based office, drastically reducing the amount spent on office space, supplies, technology, and servers. Remote, flexible work further drove down costs. For RSJ, the main objective was to control costs without sacrificing work quality or client satisfaction. Firm Central allowed them to do just that.
While Firm Central is great at keeping down costs, it can also make your life infinitely easier when it comes to handling administrative tasks. Solo bankruptcy attorney Cheryl Bergian from Fargo, North Dakota, is a perfect example. After years of wasting precious time, energy, and money backing up emails and important documents to hard drives, she was determined to find a more efficient way to manage her documents and client communications. After attending a Firm Central seminar, she decided to give it a try. The result was a new way of operating with the efficiency required to make a small practice successful.
In a document-intensive practice area like bankruptcy, you can only truly be efficient if your system can integrate your communications and documents into the same platform where you handle your calendaring, billing, and other administrative tasks. That’s exactly what Firm Central was designed to do. Being cloud-based means you can access all parts of your business from anywhere, and the ability to customize your platform allows you to create the exact workflows that work best for your individual practice. For Cheryl Bergian, Firm Central not only increased her efficiency, but also entirely transformed the way she manages her time and runs her business.
On top of the current cost savings and increased efficiency, Thomson Reuters continues to add to Firm Central’s capabilities as firms’ needs evolve. Coming soon, new reporting enhancements will be tackling some of the biggest pain points that stem from the fact that small law practices have limited resources and staff. The following enhancements will be available soon:
- Marketing: With limited marketing budgets, small firms must spend wisely. Firm Central’s improved reporting metrics identify top clients and practice areas by revenue, allowing firms to effectively target marketing.
- Bookkeeping: Small support staffs mean fewer people to handle accounting matters like billing, payroll, and bonuses. The enhanced reporting tools in Firm Central can analyze large amounts of data, making these tasks more efficient and less labor-intensive.
- Collecting: At the end of the day, law firms are businesses, and collecting on bills is crucial to keeping the firm open. Firm Central allows you to see which clients are paying their bills on time, how much money is outstanding, and whether current collection methods are sufficient.
- Managing: The more information you have, the better you can manage your matters. Firm Central’s reporting enhancements give you the information you need to effectively plan your cases, manage costs, handle scheduling, allocate resources, and choose which cases to take on.
With Firm Central, your important business information is reported to you in whatever way is most useful to you. You can customize the information that goes into the reports and chose from seven different formats when you export them. Alternatively, you can simply review the reports without leaving Firm Central if you’d prefer. A new and improved dashboard lets you access all your crucial revenue information right where you do the rest of your work.
The new reporting enhancements are just another way that Thomson Reuters is helping small law practices tackle real-world challenges with Firm Central. Many small firms have already reaped the benefits of lower costs and increased efficiency by making the switch. Why shouldn’t your firm be next? Start your Free Trial today.