To get where you’ve gotten in your career you’ve needed to be a cut above the rest. That’s commendable. But to get where you want to go, there’s even more you can and should be doing in terms of efficiency. Cut the fat to streamline your days, weeks and months, and watch the number of billable hours you can accommodate start to roll in.
Tried-and-True Tactics to Boost Efficiency in your Law Firm
Lawyers, paralegals and other office staff manage myriad things in a given day. Of those tasks, you want as many as possible to be billable. That’s really what efficiency is all about at a law firm – reducing unnecessary or repetitive tasks so you can focus your efforts on what pays the bills. Here are some tips:
- Streamline repetitive administrative tasks – Conducting an internal time audit can be a productive exercise to see where and how your employees are spending their time. Any tasks that can be automated, should be automated. Pronto!
One tool some law firms have used with success is Teramind. While it does a lot of things, two of note are 1) it can track idle time and 2) it can track where you go on the web / what applications you have open. It can even record your screen during these events (or simply send an alert).
Most people use this tool to “monitor” their employees, but they’re incredibly practical if you’re trying to figure out where an employee’s time is being spent. Meaning, you could legitimately have an employee who gets interrupted by phone calls all day long or spends a bunch of time going through your (terrible) documentation. Teramind is not an easy-to-use, ready out-of-the-box tool, but it’s something that works wonders when there’s a strategy behind it (even if it’s just as a security tool).
- Eliminate unproductive meetings – If you can’t eliminate them completely, at least reduce the number of unproductive meetings you attend. Every email, phone call, and meeting should have a purpose. If there isn’t one, cancel it.
- Organize your documentation – No one should have to waste even a second searching for case files. Institute a naming convention everyone follows and turn to a solution like Notion to get organized so you can work faster, smarter, collaboratively and with a clear purpose.
- Check your tech – Is your day being thwarted by slow technology? Poor tech performance can have a significant impact on your ability to do your job, so don’t wait if it’s time to upgrade. Here are some things to consider as you evaluate the best time to upgrade your firm’s tech.
Becoming a more efficient lawyer may require some changes to personal habits, but you can also turn to technology. For help understanding how tech can boost productivity at your law firm, turn to us at Honeycrisp. We work exclusively with lawyers who rely on Apple technology to power their firm.
