Law office management Archives - Page 32 of 45 - The Attorney Marketing Center

A high school class that has earned me a fortune

December 5, 2013 by David M. Ward

I took a typing class in high school. I think we learned on Remingtons, ancient mechanical monsters that made typing a labor-intensive chore. The keys would get stuck, corrections were slow and frustrating, and typing line after line of “f-f-f-space, j-j-j-space” barked out by our instructor made the experience anything but enjoyable. But I learned to type.

Still, in my practice, I used a dictation machine and had a secretary do the typing. Even on a fast and forgiving IBM Selectric, typing was frustrating and it was better to let someone else do it.

Not anymore.

Today, with the computer I am able to type quickly and errors are no bother at all. I can get the words down “on paper” as soon as I think them. There’s no need to have someone else do the typing. In the time it would take to dictate, I can have it done myself.

I think that’s true of many attorneys today. But not all. Many attorneys never learned how to type, or if they did, they don’t do it well. If that’s you, I encourage you to do something about it. Take a typing class. There are many available online. Increase your speed and accuracy.

For the record, we’re talking about “touch typing” here–typing without looking at the keyboard. The two-finger jab, no matter how fast you are, doesn’t cut it.

The other day, I wrote about the value of practice for improving our skills. Typing is a skill with a huge return on time invested. The thought of spending 40 hours practicing typing may seem ridiculous when you bill $400 an hour, but it’s not ridiculous at all if it allows you to save 30 minutes a day for the rest of your career. You’ll be in the black in less than 90 days.

And, what if improving your typing skills allows you to lower your secretarial costs?

The idea is to “slow down so you can speed up.” Invest time to learn, practice, and improve. There is a cost, but there is a greater return.

I bought a new laptop last week and it arrived a few minutes ago. It’s my first experience with Windows 8 which I hear is not very intuitive. If I can’t figure it out, I’ll go online and learn what I need to know. I’ll take a class if I have to. Or. . . I might just trade that sucker in on a Mac.

Want more referrals? Quickly?Â Here’sÂ what to do.

Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Leverage, Personal development Tagged With: practice, typing

5 simple steps for improving productivity

November 19, 2013 by David M. Ward

I’m going to give you a simple checklist for improving productivity. To use it, first make a list of everything you do in your work day. Do this over the course of a week so you don’t leave anything out.

Include everything: seeing clients, paperwork, calls, meetings, administrative. Include your commute and errands. Also include things you do during work hours that aren’t work related (e.g., playing games on your phone, coffee breaks, watching videos, etc.)

Once you have your list, go through every item. Look at the checklist and make notes. For best results, go through the list several times.

CHECKLIST FOR IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY

1. Eliminate. Ruthlessly purge anything that is unnecessary or does not contribute enough value to continue doing. Peter Drucker wisely said, â€œThere is nothing less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.â€

2. Delegate. Just because something must be done doesn’t mean you are the one who must do it. Assign these tasks someone in house or outsource them, so that you can do, “only those things that only you can do.”

3. Do it less. What could you do less frequently? If you do something daily, could you do it once a week? Once a month? What can you consolidate with other tasks? For example, can you do some of your reading or dictation during your commute?

4. Do it faster. What could you do in shorter chunks of time? If you routinely take an hour to do something, find ways to do it in 30 or 45 minutes. How? Eliminate or delegate parts, use forms and checklists, improve your skills, or get help (i.e., do it with a partner).

5. Do it later. Are you doing anything during prime time you could do after hours? What can you do when your energy is lower? Which tasks are routine or low priority and don’t require your full attention?

Improving productivity means improving effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right). 80% of your improvement will come from steps 1 and 2 which focus on effectiveness. Eliminating and delegating things that don’t need to be done or could be done by someone else frees you up to do more high value tasks. The remaining steps will help you become more efficient at everything else.

The Attorney Marketing Formula shows you how to earn more by working smarter, not harder.

Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: 80/20 principle, effectiveness, efficiency, peter drucker

How to deliver a great presentation

November 7, 2013 by David M. Ward

If you’ve never seen Simon Sinek’s TED Talk on inspiring action you’re in for a treat. In it, Sinek explains why companies like Apple captivate and dominate their market when legions of other companies sell boxes that do essentially the same thing. He tells us why the Wright Brothers were first to flight with no funding or credentials that would have predicted their success.

Sinek also helps us to understand the difference between a leader and those who lead, and why great ideas and great products often languish while smaller ideas catch fire.

His talk is filled with wisdom. In a few minutes, he will help you understand the key to success in marketing your services and building a firm that sustains and grows.Â I heartily recommend that you take the time to watch his presentation and learn why it is the second most popular TED Talk with more than 12 million views.

But there’s another reason to watch it. Not only will you learn great insights about marketing and business, you’ll also see a great presentation. As you know, a presentation isn’t just what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s how the information you deliver is packaged and staged. A great presentation connects with the minds and emotions of the audience, and this is a great presentation.

If you want to know how to deliver a great presentation, study this one. See how he packages and presents his information. Learn how you can make your next presentation more effective.

This postÂ makes it easier. It analyzes the structure, style, and delivery of Sinek’s talk, helping us to understand why in a world of presentations, this is one of the greats.

Do you know The Attorney Marketing Formula? Check it out here.

Filed Under: Communication, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Personal development, Presentations, Writing Tagged With: Simon Sinek, TED Talks

Friday is pink, Saturday is yellow

November 1, 2013 by David M. Ward

When I was a kid, each day of the week had a different color. Friday was pink, Saturday was yellow (sunny?), Sunday was white. I don’t know why. Maybe I had seen a calendar with the days displayed in different colors.

Mondays were blue. Not because it meant going back to school. We had a housekeeper come on Mondays who often wore a blue dress. Tuesdays and Thursdays were dark gray, probably because on those days I attended an after school event I didn’t like. Wednesdays were Orange, a bright color signifying a respite between the dark gray days, no doubt.

Whatever the origin of these colors, my attitude towards each day of the week was slightly different. That’s true even today. Today is Friday and I’m looking forward to the weekend. I’m more relaxed, more likely to write something light, maybe even fun.

How about you? You may not see the days of the week in different colors, but I’ll bet you see each day a bit differently. Your energy is different on different days. You probably get more billable work done on certain days than others.

Of course the same is true throughout the day. Clearly, we have times when we are more productive than others. I think this is also true throughout the year. During summer and during the holidays, we work a bit less, play a bit more.

So, what does this mean? It means we’re not machines. It means we have cycles. Our energy ebbs and flows. There is a natural rhythm to our lives. Unfortunately, we’re often out of sync with that rhythm. We have school and work five days a week and we have to show up and produce, whether we feel like it or not.

I’m not suggesting we abdicate our responsibilities, only that we be a little less rigid about our schedules and a little more open to going with the flow. Listen to our inner voices instead of always doing what’s next on the list.

When we don’t feel like doing something, we usually push harder, “because we have to”. The work has to get done. But maybe the resistance we feel towards the task means something. Maybe if we put the task aside temporarily, when we came back to it we could get it done faster, with better results.

Anyway, too much thinking for one day. Today is pink and I feel like having some fun.

Filed Under: Law office management, Personal development Tagged With: flow, natural rhythm

How to prioritize your daily tasks

October 10, 2013 by David M. Ward

I use my own version of GTD (Getting Things Done) as the backbone of my productivity system. Every day, when I sit down to prioritize my lists and choose what to work on for the day, I chooseÂ three “MIT’s” (Most Important Tasks). If I get my MITs done, I call it a good day.

Some people recommend the 1-3-5 system: 1 big thing for the day, 3 medium things, and 5 small things. Others use the 3-2 method: three big things, two small things. And then there’s the ABC/123 method.

For me, “three things” is about right.

Many days, it’s just one or two MITs. The number really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am effective because I’m getting important things done.

But how do you decide what’s important? How do you look at a long list of tasks and projects and select three Most Important Tasks?

I don’t know. I just do it.

Sure, there’s a certain amount of logic in the process. I look at deadlines and appointments and reminders. But more often than not, it’s my gut that tells me what to do.

In “The 4-Hour Work Week,” Tim Ferriss offers a suggestion for deciding what’s important. He says, “Imagine you’ve just suffered a heart attack and are allowed to work only two hours a day. What would you do during those two hours? And if you had another heart attack and were allowed a maximum of two hours of work per week, what would you do?”

Ferriss also says, “. . .requiring a lot of time does not make a task important,” and I agree. He is also a proponent of making a “don’t do list,” ignoring things that aren’t important so you can focus on what is, which I wrote about recently.

I like learning about new productivity systems. But most of them are too complicated and time consuming to learn and use. I like the simplicity of focusing on just “three things”.

If you want to know how to prioritize your daily tasks, start by acknowledging that some things are much more important than others. Think 80/20. A minority of tasks, perhaps 20%, will contribute to the majority of your results.

You’llÂ never get everything on your list done, and trying to categorize and prioritize hundreds of things that aren’t important, or as important, as your three things, isn’t efficient or effective.

This post is one of my MITs for today. Next for me is to finish another writing project. I’ll get to that right after I check my calendar.

I explain my productivity system in my Evernote for Lawyers ebook.

Filed Under: Law office management, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: effectiveness, efficiency, evernote-for-lawyers, getting things done, gtd, most important tasks, prioritizing, The 4-hour work week, the 80/20 principle, the 80/20 rule, Tim Ferriss

Grow your law practice today by getting excited about tomorrow

October 7, 2013 by David M. Ward

Your employees (and you) come to work every day knowing pretty much what to expect. You’re going to have documents coming in, you’re going to produce documents and send them out. You’ll open some new files and close others.Â You’ll be on the phone talking to people about the same things this week as you talked about last week, and the week before.

Same old, same old.

Where’s the excitement? Where’s that something new that gets people out of bed in the morning with their pulse beating a little faster? Where’s that something different that people can talk about and look forward to?

You need to find that something.

Something you can promote to your team so they can get excited and creative and work harder than they’ve ever worked before. Something that makes them look forward to coming to work each day, glad to be a part of your team.

What are we talking about?

It could be money. A bonus for achieving certain results. A trip. A weekend. A dinner. (You do know that your employees can bring in a lot of business, don’t you?)

It could be recognition. Employee of the month, who gets featured on your blog and gets the last Friday of the month off, with pay. Recognition is powerful. Men die for it. Babies cry for it.

It could be a cause. Something in the community you are passionate about. Something you want to change or build.

It could be new tools or techniques. Cool new tablet computers. A new training program. A new way of doing what you’ve always done.

Create an environment that’s fun and exciting, where your folks don’t know what’s going to happen every day.

Every day, you should either have something to promote or something to recognize. It could be progress reports on something already announced. It could be something new. Or it could be something that’s not yet here but is coming next week or next month.

How do you make things fun and exciting for yourself? Set a goal and a reward for reaching it. If you bring in so many new clients this month you get to take that trip to Tahiti. If you really want to make it exciting, tell your team (or family) about the goal and the reward so they will hold you accountable.

Same old, same old may get the job done, but if you really want to grow your law practice today, you have to get excited about tomorrow.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Personal development Tagged With: leadership, promoting

Lawyers: your messy desk is costing you business

October 2, 2013 by David M. Ward

I’ve written before about how to clean up a messy desk and how doing so can make you more productive. But there’s another reason why a messy desk is bad for business: It gives your clients (and others in your office) a negative impression.

A messy desk implies that

You have an equally messy (confused) mind
You are inefficient and waste time
You are disorganized and may forget things
You take longer to do things, costing your clients money
You don’t pay attention to detail
You have too many other clients and don’t have time for new ones
You are sloppy in other areas (i.e., billing, deadlines, negotiating, drafting, research, personal hygiene, etc.)

Most of all, a messy desk tells people you don’t care.

Yes, you want clients to know you are busy. Busy means you are in demand, that other people value your expertise and want to give you money to help them. But you can be busy and organized. You can be busy and care about making a good impression.

If you have a messy desk, some clients won’t hire you again. You make them nervous. Neither will they refer their friends.

Clients want to know that you know what you’re doing, that you do it efficiently, and most of all, that you care about them. Why give them cause to think anything else?

Marketing is everything we do to get and keep good clients. Everything. Here’s the formula

Filed Under: Client relations, Image, Increase your income, Law office management, Productivity, Referrals Tagged With: cluttered desk, first impressions, messy desk versus clean desk

Creating an operations manual for your law practice

October 1, 2013 by David M. Ward

Early in my career I rented space from an attorney who had a very lucrative high volume personal injury practice.

He had half a dozen employees, including one attorney, and everything ran very smoothly. The office was busy but quiet. Everything was orderly. They never seemed to miss deadlines or suffer a major crisis.

One reason why the office was so successful was that the attorney had prepared an operations manual. Every aspect of the practice was documented. Every employee knew what they were supposed to do.

He created the manual, I was told, so that if someone quit or went on maternity leave or got sick, the new hire or temp would be able to quickly get up to speed.

The manual explained how to open a new file, how to close a file, and everything in between. There were forms and checklists for every stage of the case, and fill-in-the-blank form letters, too. The calendaring procedure was spelled out in detail.

As a result, nothing fell through the cracks. The cases got worked and settled or tried. Things moved quickly. Mistakes were rare.

I never saw the actual manual but hearing about it inspired me to create my own. I started by making extra copies of every letter I wrote and putting them in a separate file. I created checklists for repetitive tasks. I asked other attorneys I knew for copies of their forms and form letters and re-wrote them to suit my style and work flow.

I was also able to build a sizable practice with a relatively small staff, in part, because of my manual.

One of the benefits of going through this process is that it forces you to think about everything you do, allowing you to find ways to do them better. You find holes in your procedures, places where mistakes can happen, and you can patch them. You find wasteful tasks and can eliminate them. You see opportunities for doing things faster.

You also find ways to improve client relations. For example, you may discover gaps in communicating progress to clients about their case, or find ways to make their experience less stressful. Repeat business and referrals will increase because you always send welcome letters and thank you letters and remember clients’ birthdays.

The bottom line is that creating an operations manual for your law practice will save time, save money, help you avoid errors (and malpractice claims), and make your practice run more smoothly and more profitably.

If you don’t have an operations manual for your practice, I encourage you to start one. If you have staff, enlist their aid. If you do have a manual, make a note to review it periodically, so you can update it with changes in the law, new forms, and new ideas.

You’ll thank me later.

For more on creating an operations manual, see The Attorney Marketing Formula

Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Client loyalty, Client relations, Communication, Increase your income, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Productivity Tagged With: avoiding malpractice, client satisfaction, creating an operations manual, law practice management, managing your law firm, training new employees

Increase Productivity with a Don’t Do List

September 23, 2013 by David M. Ward

Most people say they don’t like meetings. They’re boring. Nothing gets accomplished. The same information could have been delivered by memo.

The leaders say, “We’ve got to make our meetings better.” They read books and attend seminars. They hire consultants. They buy better equipment.

The meetings improve. They pat themselves on the back. Success.

Or not.

Instead of trying to improve their meetings, maybe they should have eliminated them.

One of my favorite Peter Drucker quotes is, “Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”

Go through your calendar. What meetings or conference calls could you safely eliminate?

Go through your tasks and project lists. What are you planning to do that should not be done at all?

Observe your daily work flow. Which steps could be eliminated? Which parts could be delegated?

Efficiency means doing things better. Effectiveness means doing the right things. It matters not how well you do things if they should not be done at all.

So try this: for the next seven days, compile a “don’t do” list. Write down everything you do that isn’t necessary or doesn’t contribute to your most important goals.

Take stock of whatever is left, whatever should be done. Look for ways to do them quicker, better, or more efficiently.

Make sure your partners and employees do the same. At your next office meeting…wait, never mind. Just send a memo.

Earn more and work less. Click here.

Filed Under: Law office management, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: effectiveness, efficiency, getting things done, getting-the-right-things-done, peter drucker