How to Hire the Right People and People to Beware of!

By on March 4, 2012

All but the very largest law firms are like any other mid-size businesses; they can become very people-dependent
therefore small changes in staffing can have much larger effects on the business.

Here are some helpful tips on hiring the right people.

  1. Start with a comprehensive job description for the position. Also determine the career path and level of training you are willing to provide.
  2. Almost completely disregard a person’s references and resume, other than to put them in the generally qualified category for further evaluation. References provided by the applicant are going to give you nothing but the very best qualities and resumes are well known to puff a person’s real accomplishments.
  3. Before taking a lot of time with candidates, have them tested for various competencies, including analytical skills. Can the candidate solve problems, are they extroverts and you are looking for someone with communication skills?  Testing will quickly find personality traits that match your needs.
  4. Only hire the smartest people, assuming they have the basic skills to do the job. Make sure they have problem solving skills and can adapt to constant change.
  5. Provide the new hire with early hands-on training and a well-defined on-boarding process, this helps make sure you have the right candidate.

Beware of these People.

  1. Beware of people that have been doing the same exact job for a very long time. Why. Because it may have taken them a very long time to learn simple, basic tasks. Secondly, they may be unwilling or unable to accept constant changes. We all admire employee loyalty, just make sure this loyal candidate also passed through the 5 steps above.
  2. Beware of hiring “victims”, these are people who never take any responsibility for their own actions. Everything that ever happens in their department, office or business was someone else’s fault. They couldn’t do their job because of others, constantly. If in doubt,
    read the book called The Oz Principle.
  3. Beware of people who have inappropriate or strange postings on their Facebook, or LinkedIn site. I would use anything here to hire a candidate, but I would surely use it as a reason to disqualify a candidate.

If you follow these guidelines you might even find and keep a valuable employee. Next we’ll talk about how to keep valuable employees.

 

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Categories: Best Practices, Management, Productivity

The Top 10 Technological Trends of 2012

By on February 5, 2012

A la David Letterman, here is my own Top 10 2012 Technology Trends and a few concerns:

10. Collaboration: Firms have jumped on the collaboration bandwagon using tools such as Microsoft SharePoint to collaborate both on a firm and client-facing basis. This collaboration enables firms to stay on top of things such as productivity, etc. In the 2010 ILTA Purchasing Survey, 49% of respondents utilize SharePoint internally for collaboration, while 24% use it as a collaboration tool for client and other external communications.
Concerns: Not a lot; perhaps just a continued slow roll-out time and the challenge of keeping the information up to date.

9. Social Networking Increased: With the increased use of social networking, decision making has become easier both for firms and clients.  Almost all companies are socially networking one way or another and it gives firms more exposure overall.
Concerns: This increase has made people and companies more vulnerable. Larger firms want to make sure to control their message; social networking can do just the opposite. We just aren’t sure if attorneys twittering all day are really productive.

8. Technology Creating Technology: Smart technologies are spurring on a new slew of technology that tie in to existing technology to speed up processes. Many organizations are making the creative process to develop this technology more scientific by recording the process.
Concerns: Technology was developed to make lives easier. Sometimes the learning curve and implementation can create more work with a higher degree of complexity.

 7. 360 Degree Security (Accountability): With all of the information flying in and out of organizations, firms are becoming increasingly cognizant of the integrity of their information and how it is being protected, especially within the cloud. A 360-degree security plan is granular in nature and includes doing a lot of small things to ensure the maximum security.
Concerns: None.

 6. Workflow to Save Clients Money:  Workflow applications are a sure bet to improve internal efficiencies and productivity. Firms are looking for ways to reduce their internal costs that then allows them to potentially pass these savings along to clients. This may not mean rate reductions, but possibly lower increases.  
Concerns: Nothing really. Process improvement is smart business.

 5. Green: Going green is in and it will stay in for good reason. Technological advances such as paperless billing and workflow routing are saving countless resources.
Concerns: Going Green is getting a little tired, it’s a process, not a single event..

4. Video Conferencing: This has become a must-have in every larger, multi- office firm. It enables people to engage and communicate on a higher level. Video conferencing encourages collaboration as both firm associates and clients can increasingly meet face-to-face while saving on cost and going green.
Concerns: Video conferencing can be somewhat easier to implement than it was just a few years ago. Firms with VOIP phone systems may be more prone to also implement video conferencing.

 3. Blackberry out iPhone are in: The use of Blackberry’s in law firms is rapidly dropping as attorneys are quickly moving to iPhone and Android devices.
Concerns: IT must support these devices whether they like to or not.

2. Cloudiness: Firms further embraced cloud computing and saved on maintenance and expense both in hardware and in time. The law firms have not embraced cloud computing, in general at the “enterprise” level such as time and billing. However, all other applications have started the move to the cloud.
Concerns: Can I really get my data back if I switch vendors, in what format? These are becoming major issues as firms move from cloud to cloud.

 1. Mobile Apps: Savvy firms are already rolling out mobile apps for iPads, and Android tablets (in some cases). These apps allow attorneys to enter time, inquire on contacts, documents and overall client information.
Concerns: IT needs to quickly get on board with how to handle mobile apps, provide security and support users. This is only going to expand exponentially over the next few years.

 

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Categories: Productivity, Sharepoint, Technology

Survey – Wide Disparity in Billing Efficiency Causes Cash Flow Issues

By on January 22, 2012

In my last post I revealed the details on a study I conducted to see how successfully firms were able to get attorneys to get their time in from the prior month. The results were not bad, 74% reported they had attorney time posted no later than the 2nd business day of the month.

Now we’ll really separate the firms with a new survey that reveals how quickly firms can get edited pre-bills back from attorneys and bills out to clients.

Question #1:

From the time you give attorneys pre-bills hope long before they are due back in business days?

  •  33%    1 – 3 Business days
  • 33%    4 – 7 Business days
  • 20%    8 – 14 Business days
  • 14%    15 Business days or longer

Note: One firm reported that the “billing assistants” bill all month long and there is no requirements; the busiest billing day is the last day of the month.

Question #2:

When in an average month when are you done billing and the bills are sent, emailed or e-billed in business days?

  •  13%   1 – 4 Business days
  • 40%   5 – 10 Business days
  • 13%   11 – 15 Business days
  • 34%   16 Business days or longer

Note: Many firms reported that their billing routinely stretches into the next month and they are sending bills at the same time they are doing pre-bills for the next month.

Here are some quotes:

Worst: “We are very rarely completely done with the bills prior to sending the pre-bills out for the following month.”

Best: “We give the Attorneys 24hrs to respond back with changes or corrections. The morning following the 24hr review period the invoices are created, stuffed and mailed out within 4-5 hrs.

Conclusions

There is a wide disparity between law firms regarding how efficiently they manage the billing process. My review showed it had little to do with size of firm, number of branch offices or type of law they practiced. For example, the “Best” firm above has over 200 timekeepers and many offices. They however are highly disciplined, automated and structured. The law firms cash flow is directly related to getting bills in the hands of clients in the shortest period of time. There are ways to improve the billing process. You might want to review my 10 part series on improving the billing process starting here.

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Categories: Best Practices, Financial Management, Law firm billing, Management

How to get money for “old” tech gadgets

By on August 14, 2011

Ready to buy that new iPhone, how would you like to get $200 for your Motorola Droid X phone or $100 for your iPhone 3G (8GB)?

 All of us tend to replace our still good tech toys with newer models on a regular basis. Luckily there are now 3rd party resellers who will pay cash for yesterday’s great “must have’s”.

 For example Amazon will give you $200* for an iPad Wi-Fi (16GB), just go to amazon.com/trade-in, you’ll get a store credit deposited into your account. They will even send you a shipping box and special paperwork. Buybackworld.com will pay you $143* for that Motorola Droid X.

 Another interesting possibility is Best Buy’s Buy Back program, for example for $69.99 you get a buy back guarantee of up to 4 years on a new TV. Nothing is older than a 4 year old HD TV if you are a big sports fan, somehow 42”’s just isn’t as big as it used to be.

 * As reported in July Laptop magazine

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Categories: Technology

Changing the Billing Paradigm – Parts 6, 7 & 8: Dealing with the entire Pre-billing Process

By on July 10, 2011

Law firms can improve cash flow and increase profitability if they improve their billing process and practices.

 The client billing process, in many firms is based on a slow, painful monthly schedule. Why … because it’s always been that way. In part 1 of this series we identified the nine (9) current painful and costly steps to client billing. In this posting we’ll discuss the issue of the entire pre-billing process.

 Here is how to improve cash flow and profitability by dealing with both the pre-bill process and the attorneys who review the pre-bills:

  1. The entire pre-bill review process is, quite frankly a poor process to start with. Why do you need to review a pre-bill, what are you looking for? Time entered against the wrong client/matter, time that can’t be billed, lousy narrative …. this is like taking every car off the production line and having to redo poor workmanship in the QA department.
  2. Should bills be reviewed, maybe the larger, more complex ones. If the billing attorney properly supervises work done on his/her matters, a complete pre-bill review should not be necessary.
  3. Pre-bill reviews should be done to match the continual billing throughout the month as covered in my earlier post.
  4. Print pre-bills on a slightly off color paper so that they are real easy to recognize on a crowded desk. .
  5. Set a pre-bill review deadline, for example 3 business days after delivery. Enforce this review time. Where possible allow secretaries to edit narrative for all pre-bill changes and accounting can do such things as adjustments and transfers. Maintain an ongoing list of all outstanding pre-bills by billing attorney, if they are late contact them or their secretaries and work out a timeframe for submission.

 In summary, getting pre-bills reviewed and ready for billing is the final critical step and sometimes the most costly one.

 In the next post we’ll look at finalizing bills and getting them to the clients, why is it a problem and what can you do to improve the process and become more profitable.

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Categories: AFA - alternative fee arrangement, Best Practices, Law firm billing, Productivity

Changing the Billing Paradigm – Part 4: Dealing with attorneys who don’t have their time entered.

By on June 19, 2011

Law firms can improve cash flow and increase profitability if they improve their billing process and practices.

The client billing process, in many firms is based on a slow, painful monthly schedule. Why … because it’s always been that way. In part 1 of this series we identified the nine (9) current painful and costly steps to client billing. In this posting we’ll discuss the issue of chasing attorneys without their time entered.

 Here is how to improve cash flow and profitability by dealing with attorneys who habitually do not enter their time as required:

  1. The first step in dealing with late time is to have a firm wide, iron-clad policy identifying the “rules” for time entry. For example, time entry is required daily and absolutely no later than 9AM the following morning. If the firm is going to constantly bill clients through-out the month there can be no lag in time entry, there is no “monthly cut-off” date.
  2. Step two is to make sure that the senior partners themselves adhere to this rule, otherwise it’s just too hard to get everyone else on board. Even if the secretaries do the entries, at least they get done on time.
  3. At this point you can determine the problem with those that don’t adhere to the rules. They don’t adhere because they just don’t manage their time properly, or just feel that they are above the rules. I’ve heard all the excuses about how their work is too important, they are too busy, what their hourly rate is etc., everyone who is allowed to have an excuse has one.
  4. When an attorney doesn’t follows the rules have the partners deal with it, don’t push this off to the staff who will only be ignored.
  5. What about penalties, such as withholding paycheck or expense checks? First of all, withholding pay may itself be a legal issue, secondly, all this become just a game, how long can I last, who has more power? The fact is that certain occupations require prompt and accurate reporting, it comes with the job. A police officer needs to file a crime report, a surgeon needs to file a report after an operation, income taxes are due April 15th, court filings often have critical dates attached. The attorney just needs to have his/her time entered immediately upon completing the day.

 In summary, get buy-in from the top, stick to the rules and don’t accept excuses, everyone has one.

 In the next post we’ll look at dealing with soft costs, why is it a problem and what can you do to improve the process and become more profitable.

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Categories: AFA - alternative fee arrangement, Best Practices, Financial Management, Law firm billing, Productivity, The Legal Market

Changing the Billing Paradigm – Part 2: Getting Attorneys to Enter Time

By on June 7, 2011

Law firms can improve cash flow and increase profitability if they improve their billing process and practices.

 The client billing process, in many firms is based on a slow, painful monthly schedule. Why … because it’s always been that way. In part 1 of this series we identified the nine (9) current painful and costly steps to client billing. In this posting we’ll discuss the attorney time tracking process.

 There are multiple issues with getting attorneys to track and enter time on a daily basis.

  1. It’s not natural. We can demand and threaten all we want, but quite frankly, detailed time entry is not natural for a professional. How would all of us non-attorneys like to track every tiny task we do all day long, and enter it into a computer down to the tenth of an hour (.10)? You have to be kidding right? Let’s see a show of hands, just as I thought, no hands are in the air.
  2. It’s a form of micro-management. I want to practice law, solve problems, compete like an athlete, and detailed time entry is the client’s form of micro-managing every little thing I do.
  3. It’s not convenient. Stop what you are doing, enter the time, start back up again and switch to work on another matter. This is a painful process, almost as painful as just working all day (week?) and then trying to parcel together all the (hundreds?) of time entries for the day. Let’s see, it’s 5PM and I need to recreate my time for today, did I talk to that client for 6 minutes, or was it closer to 12 minutes, I’ll enter .20 hours (12 minutes).
  4. Out of the office … too bad. I’m off-site doing depositions and meeting with my client, detailed time entry isn’t very easy. It’s a big case and I’ll be doing this for the next few days. I’ll just enter in 8 hours and call it “depositions and meeting with client”, nope can’t do that, the carrier won’t pay they want “micro-management detail”.

 We could of course go on and on about the “issues”, now let’s talk about how to improve the process and profitability.

 Improving Time Entry:

  1. Admit it’s a Pain. The first step to get attorneys on board with the time entry process is to admit that all of the “issues” above are true and painful. No attorney enjoys entering time. Make sure the attorneys know that you know this and are prepared to mitigate the pain as much as possible.
  2. The Real Reason for Time Entry, it’s the Job. When you want to charge clients $250 $1,000/hour with few restrictions or limits they want detail for every moment of your time. If you don’t like this level of scrutiny find a new job, many others have. Just accept this as a way of life, the life you’ve chosen.
  3. The Firm will Help. Firms are smart to individually help attorneys with time entry. Senior attorneys and partners may have secretaries help them, we assume their billing rates are high enough to easily afford the labor costs. Time entry software isn’t always easy, take extra time to train attorneys, be patient, show them short-cuts after they learn the basic program. Provide attorneys the option of using a web time entry product or a mobile app to assist when not in the office.
  4. Send it off-shore. That’s right, if time entry is just going to be a problem and expensive attorneys and staff struggle with it, take a look at off-shore time entry. Scan old-fashion paper sheets and let someone else do it.

 The bottom line is that Time Entry, must be done daily, must be accurate, and is just part of the job. The firm will do everything it can to make it as painless as possible, but it is an ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT.

In the next post we’ll look at the month end process, why is it a problem and what can you do to improve the process and become more profitable.

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Categories: AFA - alternative fee arrangement, Best Practices, Financial Management, Law firm billing

Changing the Billing Paradigm – Part 1: Identify and Acknowledge the Pain

By on June 4, 2011

Law firms can improve cash flow and increase profitability if they improve their billing process and practices.

 The client billing process, in many firms is based on a slow, painful, monthly schedule. Why … because it’s always been that way. We’ll examine the current painful and costly process and then make specific recommendations on how to improve it.

 Here is the painful process:

Painful Step #1: Get attorneys to enter their time, daily.

Painful Step #2: Attempt to close the month, and get all the late time entered.

Painful Step #3: Now go deal with all the attorneys who don’t enter their time.

Painful Step #4: Get all the soft costs entered, normally by downloading data from the cost capture systems such as copiers, phone, fax, postage etc.

Painful Step #5: Print hundreds (thousands) of pre-bills and distribute them.

Painful Step #6: Try and get the billing attorneys to review the pre-bills and return them to accounting.

Painful Step #7: Page through hundreds (thousands) of pages and extrapolate out the attorney changes on the pre-bills and re-enter them into the system.

Painful Step #8: Print the final bills, print the envelopes or labels, stuff the bills into an envelope, add postage, and deliver to the post office.

Painful Step #9: In some firms the attorney/secretary get the final bills and then feel the need to draft a personalized cover letter that must be sent with the bill.

Another painful aspect of all of this is the expensive staff requirements necessary to “babysit” this process. We’ll just save that topic for another discussion.

In upcoming posts we’ll look at each step, why is it a problem and what can you do to improve the process and become more profitable.

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Categories: AFA - alternative fee arrangement, Best Practices, Financial Management, Law firm billing, Productivity

Facebook vs. Google – Will Firm’s allow “Buzz”ing?

By on May 17, 2011

Obviously, Facebook is not going anywhere.  It’s everywhere and has, arguably, become the predominant source of communication, even for attorneys.  With every Tom, Dick, Jane and Harry on Facebook (over 600 million users), it’s no wonder it has inched into the social search engine universe. As a result, Google has tried to get on board and become more relevant and social by adding weak features like Google Buzz.  Google has also tried to add a “like” feature called “+ 1,” where users, when signed into their Gmail account, can “like” a search result.  Since many firms are limiting employee use of Facebook at work, this new feature allows users to do Facebook-like things at work, and, when signed in, allow them to see their social group of friend’s “likes”.  In addition, Google can use the +1 feature to up the popularity of a search engine listing. Hopefully, Google is smart enough to know when a biased source is +1-ing their own link more than once or the organic search engine game could become “processed” very quickly.

To rival the copycat +1 feature (and a copy of pretty much all the Facebook features), Facebook has started to request if users would like to make Facebook.com as their home page which would reduce Google’s traffic extraordinarily.  But, with all the rivalry, does social really matter that much? Google has served its purpose well over the years. There are many non-social products related to law firms that Google has provided. Google Buzz is hardly used, and it isn’t making or breaking Google. Really doesn’t it come down to quality versus quantity? When a brand tries to be all things to all people sometimes the quality suffers. Although Facebook has access to a lot of information, it doesn’t mean that the quality would be the same as Google’s and I think that’s okay. Facebook could, ultimately, become the one stop shop for emails, RSS feeds, etc. but it doesn’t necessarily mean the search quality and proficiency would rival that of Google.

Facebook is good at what it does: provides a mega social media medium for millions of users. Google is good at what it does: provides a practical and centralized location for searches from Ant to Zephyr. Facebook is the Mac of the online world, whereas Google is more the PC. There is nothing wrong with the PC, it provides a function and it is good at it. There is nothing wrong with a MAC, it’s a more fun, creative tool to both communicate and accomplish tasks. Merging the two, although somewhat useful to the computer world, would be a mistake. I suppose it really comes down to is it best to be jack of all trades or does that deflate the tools as “master of nothing”? We shall see.

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Categories: Best Practices, Legal Marketing, Technology

How Valuable are Performance Reviews …. Not Very?

By on May 15, 2011

Most businesses (including law firms) provide employees with annual reviews; employees assume their review will then be tied to adjustments in compensation.  These reviews tend to be very subjective and since, in general, managers don’t like to be honest, everyone gets the same rating.  Therefore, performance reviews tend not to have any usefulness. It’s almost like grade compression, a few at the top and everyone else is in the middle. Tell the manager to be a little stricter and all that happens is the overall average moves in sync, down a little. This may not be a manager issue, but a structural issue. 

 Some jobs come with much more objective review criteria. For example, attorneys can be measured based on a slew of criteria like billed hours, amount billed and new business generated. Sales people can be measured based on performance to quota and other billable people on billings. How about the rest of the employees, those that don’t have specific dollars tied to daily performance? Here is a possible solution.

Step 1
Separate employees into one of two categories:

  • Revenue generation people
  • Cost centered people

Step 2
In the case of revenue generating people, provide them with a highly objective set of goals, based on personal production. Leave room in the review process to accommodate subjective scores for such items as quality, adherence to policies and team related activities. People who generate revenue already understand these types of goals and rewards, that’s why they are willing to take on an element of risk and pressure to perform.

 Step 3
Separate the cost centered employees into two further categories:

  • Steady performers with a “behind the scenes” mentality
  • Innovators and internal leaders who like challenges

 Step 4
Meet with all the cost centered people and explain to them their mission within the business, a supportive role. In such a role their personal productivity and care for the customer (in-house and external) are very important to the overall health of the business. Connect these people with broader business objectives. For the innovators and internal leaders find ways to set personal goals focused on cost reductions and productivity improvements. Let these people know they are in a special group and management expects more from them. This challenge and the expected recognition will be a strong motivator.

Step 5
Completely separate the above performance reviews from any adjustments to compensation. I’ll explain this in a future blog post.

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Categories: Best Practices, Productivity, The Legal Market
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