5 New Year’s Resolutions for Small Law Firms

Prepare early succeed later

With 2022 right around the corner, it’s time to commit to New Year’s resolutions. And if you’re running a small law firm, there’s plenty of growth and opportunity ahead.

Each one of these resolutions can make a difference in your firm’s efficiency and productivity. And with each improvement, you can make gains and develop long-term relationships with clients. Even if you follow through on just one of these goals, you’ll notice an improvement before the end of the year. 

But the good news is that it’s not difficult to achieve all five of these resolutions. With effective legal software in your arsenal, you can work towards these improvements with ease:

1. Recognise and eliminate avoidable income loss
2. Step up client communications
3. Stay on top of compliance
4. Streamline workflows with automation
5. Harness the power of data.

Let’s take a look at each of these resolutions in more detail.

1. Recognise and Eliminate Avoidable Income Loss

So many things can eat into a law firm’s income. From letting billable time slip away to forgetting to charge clients for costs covered by the firm, you may be missing out on revenue every day.

Fortunately, some forms of income loss are more easily preventable. This coming year, turn things around using legal software that automates your billing and collection processes, helps you to manage expenses and send reminders for overdue accounts. 

Without adding to your workload or hiring extra help, you can use automation to recognise and eliminate avoidable income loss.

2. Step Up Client Communications

It’s easy to let client communications fall by the wayside when you have so much to do. We all have good intentions, but it’s easy to fall short.

This is another area where automation can give you a hand. Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, you can set up recurring reminders to send updates and messages to your clients. In other words, you can make client communications part of your routine.

Our web-based practice management software can monitor everything relevant to a client’s matter right from the home dashboard. With so much visibility, little things never slip through the cracks, leaving your clients feeling vulnerable and neglected. Even small gestures like an email saying, “I received your message and will be contacting you shortly”, can do wonders for your client relationships.

3. Stay On Top of Compliance

Regardless of their size, all law firms must stay on top of compliance, but it’s not easy. With so much on your plate each day, compliance can often be the lowest priority on your list. 

But in the event of an audit, suddenly compliance takes centre stage. Your license could even be at stake. 

So don’t leave compliance tasks to chance (or your overburdened memory). Instead, use mattero’s suite of reports to keep you informed of productivity, performance and compliance. Deadlines will never sneak up on you again, and you’ll have easily accessible documentation reports at your fingertips. 

4. Streamline Work With Automation

How many times do you arrive at day’s end and find that you have several loose ends to finish before you can call it a day? 

With so many details to address, you need a practice management system that automates repetitive tasks. Not only will this save you time, but it also decreases the likelihood of errors. 

You can free up your time for more valuable endeavours when you automate batch billing, retainer reminders, data entry and other ongoing tasks. And with streamlined workflows, you preserve your memory and energy for high-level work.

5. Harness the Power of Data

The only way to gain a bird’s eye view of your law firm’s position is to analyse your data. But gathering and analysing data is time-consuming (and can be expensive). But with the benefit of high-level software tools, gathering data doesn’t have to be a time-suck. Instead, you can make data analysis a priority and start watching trends and milestones.

With compelling, efficient methods of monitoring your firm, you can set goals and actively work toward achieving them. In addition, you can stop unproductive campaigns early on and learn about the ROI of various initiatives.

This is the Year to Make a Change

If you’ve longed to implement these resolutions, don’t wait a minute longer. Instead, make 2022 the year you take your law firm to the next level.

Start a free trial of mattero to see how your firm improves with improved communications, compliance, data analysis and workflow automation. If you’re like our other clients, you’ll wonder how you managed without it. And if you have any questions, feel free to ring us at 1300 135 214.