It’s that time of year again! The new year is here, and people are making their New Year’s resolutions to improve their personal lives. But did you know that you can also use New Year’s resolutions to help you achieve your professional goals? In this blog post, we’ve compiled four resolutions that will help your law firm succeed in 2022.
Get organized
It can easily get extremely busy in a law firm. Given everyone’s hectic schedules, your firm may find it difficult to stay organized. If things are disorderly, tasks can pile up and paperwork can easily get lost, causing you to experience unnecessary stress and lose valuable time looking for files that should have been readily available. This is why you should aim to be more organized this year.
There are many ways to get organized. For task management, you can use an app like Trello that allows your employees to communicate and collaborate on projects easily. You can also leverage a time-tracking software to make it easy for you to record the hours each lawyer spent working on each case. Moreover, going paperless can simplify file management and reduce the paper clutter in your office.
Equipped with the right organization tools, you will find it easier to manage tasks and deadlines. Just make sure everyone in your firm is on board and understands the new system/s you plan to implement.
Related reading: 12 Tech tools law firms should utilize
Network more actively
When we get swamped with work, we tend to shove networking on the back burner. However, networking is essential to your law firm’s long-term success. According to Clio’s 2021 Legal Trends report, 81% of people ask their friends and family for referrals when they are looking for a lawyer. This means that in order to meet potential clients, you must actively meet other lawyers and reconnect with old classmates or friends.
81% of people ask their friends and family for referrals when they are looking for a lawyer
Start by attending in-person or virtual legal conferences and local industry meetups. You can also give talks at events outside of the legal industry or get involved in your local community events. Moreover, network online by joining LinkedIn professional groups or starting conversations about legal issues. The more actively you network, the more opportunities will come your way.
Invest in your education
Beyond just networking, attending legal conferences and other industry events can also keep you updated on the latest industry trends and best practices. Alternatively, you can take continuing legal education courses, read law journals and blogs, or subscribe to newsletters from industry leaders. By investing in your continuing legal education, you become better equipped to face any challenge that comes your way.
Manage your time more wisely
Many law firms bill their clients by the number of hours they worked on the case. Given this, resolve to improve your firm’s time management this year so that your staff will spend more time on billable work and less on administrative tasks.
To do this, you can use a time-tracking software to monitor how long tasks take and identify bottlenecks. You can also create templates for routine tasks so they can be completed more quickly.
Moreover, you can also outsource some of your work so you can spend more time on client matters. For example, you can save a lot of time and effort by outsourcing your record retrieval needs to Record Retrieval Solutions (RRS). With us, you simply need to submit your record request via our online portal and we will take it from there. You can then use the same portal to check your order status and download your requested documents once available.
Related reading: How US law firms can benefit from outsourcing their record retrieval needs
With RRS, you also get your records faster — in 12 days on average. This is because we know the ins and outs of the entire record retrieval process and have developed personal relationships with the different record custodians. The faster you get your records, the faster you can settle your cases. Get in touch with us today to get started.
