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Law firm management is the bane of most
attorneys. I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard my attorney client
say "I hate the administrative stuff."
Unfortunately, most attorneys are
"technician minded" - not surprisingly since they went to law
school, not business and psychology graduate school like I did. I am
reminded of my Business 101 course in college where we learned that law
firm management is composed of
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Planning
-
Organizing
-
Staffing
-
Directing
-
Controlling
This definition has not changed to this
day over 35 years later. Oh yes, the ways we carry out these management
functions have changed, but not the overall functions.
Earlier on this site we discussed the
benefits of law
firm consulting, where we identified the three main roles in
any business – Technician, Manager and Entrepreneur. Only to the extent
you have the Manager and Entrepreneur roles present will
your business will be sustainable and grow.
With that in
mind…
Law Firm
Management Must Measure Up
If you want to:
then
becoming a student of law firm management is critical. And, the manager
role is critical. Reminds me of a quote again:
"Drive
thy business, let not that drive thee."
-- Benjamin Franklin
To deliver good results, law firm
marketing is a process that must be
-
consistent
-
persistent
-
well
targeted over time
You see why the manager role is critical
in the legal marketing process. This is why many larger law firms have a
Director of Marketing, CEO, or Firm Administrator these days. This person manages
the process of law
practice management and legal
marketing.
Now even the solo or smallest firm can
have these key law firm management roles in place by contracting for
it.
You can learn tons and tons of marketing
skills, yet you are unlikely to implement them without learning how to
manage yourself and others. You also will need to learn a new mantra
that sounds like this:
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"If you can't
measure it, you can't manage it." |
So add this to your concept of law firm
management. This is one reason learning about marketing begins with time
management/productivity skill sets.
You'll need to get my FREE series of
articles on Time
Management/Productivity. Besides, we want you to reduce your work
hours as fast as possible!
Go
the Right Direction with Employee Selection
"You
give me the right people, and I don't much care what organization you
give me. Good things will happen. Give me the wrong people, and it doesn't
matter what you do with the organization. Bad things will happen."
-- Colin Powell
Employee recruitment, selection,
supervision, and development are also critical factors in law firm
management. It is even more critical in the solo and small firm. The
so-called "hidden costs" of employee turn over are
devastating to the prosperity and business development of your firm.
There are techniques for employee
recruiting that will go a long, long way to assure success in law firm
management:
| One of the best
specialist resources for law firm recruitment and selection
is The Omnia Group. They have developed law firm specific testing
instruments that are second to none, which are affordable even to
the solo firm. You can get my free
special report on recruitment skills right now. |
In reading this you might get the
impression that law firm management is complex or difficult. Not really,
is my experience in working with over 500 attorneys, mostly on an
individual basis.
You can learn all you need to know
about law practice management very quickly. You can even implement much of
it, if not all of it, in three to six months. After all, it is a lot
easier to become a good manager than it is to become a lawyer!
Can you stand another quote I like?
"Become
the kind of leader that people would follow
voluntarily, even if you had no title or position."
-- Brian Tracy
Next let's look into how law
firm marketing associations fit into the picture… so read on!
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