Modernize Your Law Practice in 3 Steps

Intro

Practicing law is a demanding, time-consuming, and often high-stress job. You have hours to bill, deadlines to meet, and clients to serve. And if you run a solo practice or are a partner in a small- to mid-size firm, you probably have other responsibilities on your plate: like running your business.

If changing how you operate is the last thing you want to think about, you’re not alone. The legal profession is notorious for doing things the way they’ve always been done and sticking with the same systems that have worked for years. After all, what attorney has time for new, complicated technologies?

But here are the facts: modernizing your law practice by strategically integrating the right technologies can benefit you in big ways — and save you time and money that can make a real difference in both your bank account and your personal life. The Internet and online tools have revolutionized the way business is conducted in all industries, including law.

Advances in digital tools give lawyers the flexibility and efficiency they need to fulfill the many duties and deadlines of practicing law in the 21st century.

What are the benefits of a modern firm?

Modernizing your law practice will not only streamline your processes but also give you more time to do what clients hire you to do: practice law. In many ways, you really can’t afford not to come up to speed. Continuing to operate the way lawyers have for decades can give clients — especially prospective clients — the wrong impression, and even lead to costly mistakes. Lost or misfiled documents add up to thousands of lost dollars and hours of productivity per year. And who knows how many clients you may be losing because of an outdated website that no one can find online?

We know that you only have so many hours in the day. We know that as a solo or small firm, your budget is limited. We know that the sheer number of programs and technologies can be overwhelming. That’s why, in this eBook, we walk you through three steps you can take to begin modernizing your law practice today.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to strengthen your online presence via your website, blog, and social media
• How to go paperless (or mostly paperless)
• How to set up remote work capabilities with practice management software, mobile apps, and the cloud

GET STARTED NOW WITH THESE 3 STEPS…

Step 1: Strengthen Your Online Presence

Legal practice management software company MyCase polled 800 solo and small-firm lawyers to ask what steps they would take to modernize their firms in 2015. Survey respondents said their law firm’s website was their biggest focus, with 49 percent indicating that revamping their website was a top priority.

A professional website is a must for law firms. In today’s digital,hyper-connected culture, your website is the first impression most people have of your law firm. It only takes a second for prospective clients to form an impression and decide whether or not to give your firm a call or to click away to the next site.

Good design is essential to a successful website that will turn visitors into clients. This doesn’t just mean the colors, font, images, and layout, though those elements are important. It starts with clearly communicating your firm’s value proposition.

Your value proposition should be more than a tagline on your website. Are you a family lawyer who is a compassionate advocate for your clients? Are you a plaintiff’s lawyer who doesn’t back down from big corporations? Your website needs to communicate this message through the copy and images you use. Clients should be able to understand at a glance what you do and whether you can help them.

Search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play here. You don’t need to spend a lot of time or money on SEO, but you should be aware of it and educate yourself on the basics. Essentially, SEO is the practice of increasing the visibility or ranking of your website in a search engine’s organic (or unpaid) results. There are multiple ways to do this, including everything from making sure title tags and meta descriptions on your site content are both informative and the right length, to pointing internal links to your own relevant content.

Start by Googling the name of your firm and your lawyers, and see what comes up at the top of your search results. Then search for keywords or phrases that potential clients would use to find you. When someone Googles “racketeering lawyers, Jersey City,” for example, does your site come up at the top of the search results page? Set up Google Analytics or another analytics program to track your traffic and see how people are finding your site. Are they finding you through certain keywords? Through referrals from other sites? Maybe they’re coming from a social media channel like LinkedIn. Finding out will help you determine what works, what doesn’t — and where to devote your dollars.

There are countless strategies for improving your SEO and traffic.

These include:

• Using strategic keywords. For example, in the description of your firm, include words that relate to your practice, such as wills, estate planning, business law, and divorce. Also mention the geographic area you serve (Madison, NJ).
• Posting fresh content on your website on a regular basis(like a weekly blog post, which we talk more about below), and linking to your own relevant content on each page of your website.
• Taking the time to fill in the text descriptions of photos of your lawyers.
• Adding video content to your website — a good (but simple) strategy for keeping people on your site longer and boosting SEO.

Another crucial update websites need is responsive design. This means that your website adjusts to look good to visitors on all types of screens — including smartphones and tablets, not just desktops and laptops. In fact, according to a 2014 report from comScore, 80 percent of Internet users own a smartphone, and 80 percent of them use it to search the Internet (compared to 91 percent who use a laptop or PC to search online). If your website isn’t optimized for mobile users, you’re likely to lose those potential clients. In fact, in the spring of 2015, Google changed how it ranks mobile-friendly sites so that non-mobile-enabled sites are now penalized in search rankings. Responsive design is Google’s recommended design pattern. Google offers a Mobile-Friendly Test to find out if your website is responsive. If not, ask your web designer how to go about redesigning your site.

Launch a blog

Once your website is in good shape, consider launching a blog and social media channels, if you don’t already have them. Regularly posting to a blog and other social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ is a widely used strategy to enhance SEO and expand your audience online. Blogging also enables you to build credibility and position yourself as an expert in your field. In addition to blogging on your own website, you can also become a guest blogger on other websites geared toward to your target market. By linking back to your website, these guest posts can generate traffic and improve SEO for your website.

What kinds of things can you write about? Ask yourself what your clients would benefit from knowing about — tax credits, divorce proceedings, matters relating to wills and estates? Also, consider any unique approaches or specialty areas in your firm that you’d like people to know about. All of this can make good fodder for your blog.

Need more ideas for your blog? Try these eight tools and tips from LawFuel.

To get the most out of a blog, you need to write regular posts. Here’s where most small businesses falter: a study from the Content Marketing Institute reports that 70 percent of them struggle to find time to produce high-quality content. If that’s what is holding your firm back from blogging, consider joining the 61 percent of small business owners who outsource blog writing to a marketing firm or freelance writer.

Get Social

Writing and publishing posts to a blog is only the first step, however. Digital media is shared on social networks, so you’ll need to be at least moderately active there as well.

After all, most of your clients, prospective clients, and their influencers are on social media. According to Pew Research, 71 percent of online adults use Facebook, 28 percent use LinkedIn, and 23 percent use Twitter, as of September 2014.

Likewise, results from a 2014 American Bar Association LegalTechnology Report indicate that lawyers are using social media more than ever before. LinkedIn is by far the most popular social network, used by 99 percent of respondents from firms of more than 100 attorneys; 97 percent from firms of 10 to 49 attorneys; and 94 percent from firms of 2-9 attorneys. Facebook comes in second, with solo respondents being the most likely to have a presence there (45 percent), followed by respondents from firms of 2-9 attorneys, 38 percent of which are on Facebook. In contrast, larger law firms are more likely to be on Twitter.

According to the ABA report, 36 percent of respondents from firms of 100 or more attorneys report that their firms have a Twitter presence, compared to just 12 percent of firms with 2 to 9 attorneys.

What can you do on these platforms? You can share your blog posts, for one, each time you publish a new story. You can also share articles from outside sources you find interesting, congratulate coworkers for their achievements, post any available positions, and announce news and events related to your firm.

Like it or not, opting out of blogging and social media gives your competitors who are online (locally and beyond) the advantage. Rather than looking at it as just one more to-do on your list, think of it as a faster, easier way to build relationships and market your law firm.

Best Sites for Lawyers to Be Listed On

The blog and online lawyer community Lawyerist notes that it is worth the time to become listed or active on sites that usually rank well for attorneys’ name searches, such as:

• Avvo.com
• Facebook.com Business Pages
• Twitter (make sure the username is the lawyer or firm name if possible)
• Youtube Channel if you have any videos (be sure to name the channel your name or the law firm’s name)
• Award sites such as Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers, and Martindale Hubbell

Source: “Basic SEO for Law Firms“

Step 2: Cut Down On Paper, Go Digital

If yours is not one of the many law firms that have already gone paperless, what are you waiting for? It’s time to catch up or risk falling behind, says Lawyerist.com founder Sam Glover, who went paperless shortly after starting his solo practice in

If yours is not one of the many law firms that have already gone paperless, what are you waiting for? It’s time to catch up or risk falling behind, says Lawyerist.com founder Sam Glover, who went paperless shortly after starting his solo practice in 2005. The federal courts have been paperless for years, he points out, and even state courts are converting to electronic filing and paperless case files.

While it may not be possible to leave all paper behind in your law practice, there are many compelling reasons to move in the paperless direction. For one thing, the paper could be killing your productivity. A survey by MyCase found that the typical office worker makes 61 trips per week to the copier and printer. And every misfiled document costs firms $125 in lost productivity. That’s an average of four weeks lost each year waiting on misfiled, mislabeled, untracked, or lost documents.

In contrast, digital files streamline your files, are quicker and easier to search, offer greater flexibility in terms of who can access files and from where, and if backed up regularly, are more secure than paper files. Consider what would happen to your files in the event of a natural disaster like a hurricane or fire. Would your files be safe?

Make the switch to digital

There are some essentials your firm will need in order to go paperless. Chances are, you already own a smartphone and use apps regularly to check your email, the weather, sports scores, or what’s happening in your area this weekend. Did you know, though, that your firm can also use apps created especially to help you practice law and boost your productivity? How, exactly, can apps help?

You can use them for operational purposes like tracking time and billable hours, or you can use them to record information or jog your memory as you work. Some apps take the form of checklists that remind you of what to cover as you walk your client through, say, a divorce agreement. Others let you do things like collect signatures or create binding legal contracts signed by all parties on the spot.

What other tools can help you save time and stay organized? Here’s what Glover recommends:

• A dedicated document scanner (such as the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500), and/or a scanning app for your smartphone (such as Scanbot or iOS and CamScanner for Android), makes scanning much faster and easier.
• With a bigger computer monitor (ideally 21” to 24” screen), you can view two pages side-by-side and save time by clicking and opening documents.
• A tablet (such as an iPad) lets you replicate the feeling of holding a document in your hands and allows you to easily hand it to someone else to review.
• A shredder that creates confetti, not ribbons, lets you dispose of paper that has been scanned.
• Cloud storage (such as Dropbox or Box) provides a way to access your files from all your devices and share them with any other members of your firm.
• Backup is critical when going paperless. At a minimum, use an external hard drive for daily backups, and consider backing up your files remotely (such as with CrashPlan).

Practice management software

In addition to digital solutions for managing documents, practice management software is another tool that many attorneys are embracing in their law practices. Currently, 49 percent of law firms already use it, the survey from MyCase reveals, and 25 percent of law firms plan to invest in law practice management software in 2015.

What does the software do? It streamlines attorneys’ workflow and business processes by offering a convenient way to manage client and case information, including contacts, calendars, and documents. It allows information to be shared with others in the firm (and in some cases, even clients) and eliminates having to enter duplicate data. Practice management software “is no panacea,” says Glover, however, it does provide the benefit of improving efficiency

The American Bar Association offers a comparison chart of features and functions of many of the leading practice and case management software programs for solo and small law firms.

By taking the time to put these systems in place and bring your entire firm on board to use them, you can avoid being the disorganized lawyer who loses papers and runs late to appointments. That approach might have worked in the past, but it doesn’t fly today.

Step 3: Set Up Remote Work Capabilities

Today’s lawyers no longer need to be tied to the office. Whether a case requires that you work remotely or a sick child means you need to work from home, attorneys have more flexibility than ever thanks to advances in mobile and cloud technology.

Studies indicate that lawyers are becoming increasingly reliant on mobile and see connections between mobility, efficiency, and productivity. The American Bar Association’s 2014 Legal Technology Survey found that 91 percent of responding lawyers use smartphones in their law practices, and 49 percent of lawyers use tablets. Increasing efficiency is the main goal, with lawyers reporting that they use their mobile devices for a variety of law office functions. More than half use their smartphones to access the Internet, email, telephone, calendars, contacts, and to send texts.

And as we explored earlier, many apps are custom-made for attorneys, and allow you to do things particular to your industry, like enter ABA codes as you track hours or create notarized documents like power of attorney forms and non-disclosure agreements.

The cloud

The cloud is key for busy lawyers in the 21st century. If you haven’t already made the transition, do it now. The cloud has been popularly represented as the great “server in the sky,” as this article from the American Bar Association website explains, but really “it’s just your data residing in a physical server hosted by a third party in a secure location.”

What’s the real benefit? As the ABA article puts it, “the advantage of the cloud is that you’re saving setup and maintenance costs for that server; and, in theory, that third-party corporation will be able to provide a more secure environment for your data with its resources than you could with yours.”

The convenience and flexibility of being able to access your law firm’s data from any Internet-enabled device is unprecedented, and cloud-based programs are more secure and affordable than ever. As a number of lawyers who use them have noted, being able to send emails and retrieve documents away from the office allows you to squeeze more work into the “cracks” of your day.

Many of the law practice management software programs we discussed in the previous section are now cloud-based.

Conclusion

Don’t settle for endless juggling

Practicing law in the modern world isn’t easy. You’re juggling never-ending deadlines, client appointments, court dockets, and more. In many ways, technology speeds up the pace of your workflow, making it possible to send documents across town (or even around the world) in seconds, with just a few clicks. If you’re operating as you have for decades, essential information can slip through the cracks and create all kinds of problems, from overlooked billable hours to a child custody case gone wrong. Your clients also won’t like the long wait times that come with snail-mailed documents and communication.

Outdated operations can hurt your firm in other ways, including your ability to attract talent. Attorneys from the millennial generation are digital natives — they’ve grown up with information at their fingertips and don’t know life without technology.

“Millennials are seeking flexibility and efficiency through technology, with balanced hours, including options such as remote work and job sharing,” an article from The Docket explains. “When other generations do not understand millennial goals and fail to communicate, it impacts turnover rates, tangible and intangible costs, fairness and equality and firm succession.”

These costs add up — and aren’t worth the risk. Even if you’re overloaded with cases and clients, make time to modernize. Don’t try to do it all at once. Start small but set deadlines and hold yourself accountable, just as you do with your legal work.

At Canvas, we offer close to 200 mobile apps for attorneys designed specifically to help solo practitioners and lawyers in small- to mid-sized law firms simplify and streamline their processes.

Ready to Rethink How You Work?

GoCanvas has helped a variety of businesses across multiple industries transform their safety processes and rethink their efficiency, ultimately saving them money. Why not do the same? Reach out to one of our experts today to kickstart your process revolution.