Laura Lee Sparks
Monday - Friday | 9am - 5pm Central
Laura Lee Sparks
Spring is a unique marketing time for attorneys that serve parents with disabled children.
Autism Awareness Month is just around the corner, and local organizations and groups are looking for legal experts to help educate their members on the importance of legal planning. There are events and workshops being planned RIGHT NOW that you should be apart of!
High school seniors with disabilities are getting ready to graduate soon, and many parents are beginning the process of filing for guardianship. Now is a great time to start educating parents and schools in your community on the steps to take when a child with disabilities turns 18 to retain complete legal and financial control.
These same parents of high school seniors are making plans for adulthood. They need your help to put legal plans in place that ensures their child is able to stay as independent as possible after graduation, that they are financially protected, that they are accessing resources and benefits as a soon-to-be-adult, and that their transition to the next phase of their life is a smooth one.
We know that your service to parents in these areas is an important one; we have loved ones with disabilities and special needs here at Legal Marketing Maven and can’t imagine life without a trusted attorney by our side. We want YOU to be able to give this same peace of mind and confidence to others in your community.
As one of our marketing services, we create campaigns that help you build relationships and reach more prospects effectively. We have seen the results of more conversions to appointments when we use these with our private clients. These campaigns work, and they provide piece of mind by helping guide prospects in the areas where they need guidance – whether that be caregiving, navigating probate, or knowing where to start in creating a special needs trust or estate plan.
We’ve created everything in such away that you can be ready to roll with each piece in under two hours. No need to hire designers, no need to hire copywriters, and no need to distract your staff with the task of create marketing materials when they could be serving your clients.
Would you like to talk about how we can help you save time on your marketing and help you build relationships within your community? Simply schedule a time on my calendar for a no-strings virtual cup of coffee.
Legal project management systems can be a great way to increase efficiency in your law firm, which leads to more clients and more revenue. Introducing project management strategies to evaluate your practice, identify strengths and weakness, and implement a plan for strategic growth may be one of the best investments you could make in your law firm. But as with any practice management change, you’ll have to get buy-in from your staff. Here are 5 tips for presenting legal project management to your staff in order to get the best outcome possible:
Guidance
Let’s face it, even if your staff needs help in becoming more efficient, it doesn’t mean that they’re completely incompetent – in fact, no one knows how your law firm works better than your staff. That’s why any project management approach should not be about teaching your staff things they already know, but more about guiding them to the path of more efficient outcomes. Acknowledge that your staff is aware of the basic tenets of project management, and explain that you’re merely putting their knowledge and experience into a more structured and streamlined approach in order to become more efficient and effective.
Simplicity is Key
Don’t try to achieve grand goals all at once, or take up copious amounts of work time on training sessions. Instead, focus on the simple aspects of the practice that you can turn around and make more efficient through proper project management. In fact, in order to get better buy-in from your staff with this approach, you should come to your staff and ask them what they need help with or what processes they’d like to see improved.
Concentrate on One Thing at a Time
As stated before, simplicity is key. That means you should focus on improving just one process at a time when engaging in project management in your law firm. This way your entire staff can focus on improving one aspect of the firm without losing track and getting caught up with other projects. Once this pattern sets in, your staff will become more efficient at identifying issues and – more importantly – discovering effective solutions.
Follow Up
Track your staff’s progress and follow up with them so your project management strategies don’t fall through the cracks. It’s very easy for new initiatives to fall by the wayside, especially when there is a glut of day-to-day work to contend with, but it’s important to stay on track in order for your law firm to grow.
Discuss and Debate
The most valuable information you’ll receive during the project management process is the feedback from your staff. Allow them the opportunity to discuss and debate the effectiveness of their undertakings and learn from what they’re saying. However, it’s extremely important to make sure that discussions and debates have a positive focus and that the end goal is about improving your law firm – there should never be a discussion or debate that ends without a resolution.
Would you like to learn more about implementing project management strategies in your law firm or discuss how we can save you time on your marketing? Schedule a no-strings virtual cup of coffee so we can discuss how you can become more efficient and gain staff buy-in!
Constantly having to replace employees who quit is a huge drain on your time, money, and patience. Training team members only to have them leave within a year can be painful and demoralizing, and your practice will suffer because of it. Below are some things to think about if you want to keep your employees happy and reduce turnover:
Compensation: The Be-All End-All?
When asked, most employees say that compensation is the most important factor when staying at job. And it is – but it’s not the only factor. Make sure you’re paying your employees a decent wage for the type of work they’re doing, and compare the wages you pay with what your colleagues pay their employees. If you notice that you’re paying much less than everyone else, you might want to consider upping your pay scale before your employees become their employees. But like I said, money isn’t the only factor. I’ve heard stories about plenty of employees who were making decent money at their law firm jobs, but left because they just couldn’t deal with the stress, felt like they had no work-life balance, or didn’t get any additional benefits like flexible PTO. Find out what’s important to your employees (besides money) and do your best to provide it. You can only work within reason, but it will mean a lot to your employees if you go the extra mile trying to provide them with a good workplace environment.
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Don’t wait for the exit interview to ask employees why they’re leaving; instead, conduct interviews with current employees to ask them why they’re staying, what might motivate them to stay longer, and what might make them leave. You’ll get valuable information on your strengths and weaknesses as an employer, and you’ll be getting it straight from the people who it applies to. Most importantly though, you need to act on this information where possible, because in a year from now, it could be the difference between a stay interview and an exit interview.
It’s the Little Things
Small gestures of kindness can go a long way for your employees. Does it seem like one of them is having a bad day? Take a couple minutes to ask how you can help or even just give some encouraging words. Do your employees come in early or stay late consistently in order to keep your firm running smoothly? Buy them lunch or dinner to let them you know you appreciate it. You never know how much a tiny gesture will mean to someone, so it’s a good idea to always be aware of what’s going on and how you can help, even in the smallest of ways.
If you have more questions about lowering turnover in your office or you are interested in implementing some of the strategies listed above, please feel free to schedule a no-strings virtual cup of coffee. We can also talk over how we can help you save time on your marketing.
The Joy of Delegating
No one needs to tell you – lawyers are busy people, especially if they run their own practice. Sometimes, they’re so busy running their practice, they don’t get to spend too much time doing what they got into law to begin with: helping people achieve the best outcomes possible and providing peace of mind that their affairs are in order. And that’s where delegating comes in.
Building a confident, cohesive team that you can depend on to run your law office while you focus on helping your clients will put you on the path to success. In order to do that, though, you need to learn which tasks you can delegate and choose the right people for the job. Here are some of the key tasks you’ll want to delegate in order to build that successful law firm you’ve always dreamt of:
Accounting
One of the most important tasks to delegate in a law firm is accounting. Why? Because that’s how you get paid! I don’t know how many lawyers I’ve spoken to who are constantly seeing clients, but their cash flow just doesn’t reflect that fact. Managing invoices, accounts payable, trustee accounts, and payroll is a huge task – especially on top of all the legal work that comes along with being a lawyer. Hire a bookkeeper – full-time, part-time, or even virtual –and you may see an increase in your finances and, just as important, a decrease in your stress levels.
Phone Calls and Paper Work
How much of your day is spent taking phone calls or filling out paperwork? A competent administrative assistant can definitely help in this regard. You need someone who can handle difficult phone calls, answer a wide range of questions (and also know when not to answer a question), and take care of the mountain of paper work that comes with running a law office. If you’re running your office on a budget, consider hiring a virtual receptionist to pick up the phone for you.
Intakes
Separating the good potential clients from the bad can be a time-consuming process, and one that requires a person skilled at intakes. You don’t want to bring in every person who calls – you’ll spend all your time in initial consultations that never go anywhere. And obviously, you can’t be TOO picky otherwise you’d never see any clients. A good intake specialist can make or break your business, so fill this role carefully.
HR
You went to law school to become a lawyer, not a manager. Let someone else handle employee disputes, vacation requests, and all the other little day-to-day things that keep you from focusing on the practice law. Give them enough input so they know how you want your firm to run, then let them have at it!
If you want to talk more about delegating tasks in your law office and freeing up your valuable time, along with how we can save you time on your marketing, then schedule a no-strings virtual cup of coffee with me and let’s chat about how many hours we can save you each month.
