Step 1: Identify your firm’s goals
Determine what's most important to you and your firm, and the goals that you wish to achieve as you build a more successful, client-centered firm.
Here are some common goals that law firms should be focusing on:
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Goal 1: Understand and deliver on client expectations
Market condition
Client expectations have dramatically changed. 67% of consumers agreed lawyers should offer the option of working with clients remotely. A further 79% wanted to work with a lawyer who offered services both remotely and in-person.
How to adapt
Build greater flexibility and more options into your services. Communicating with clients to determine how they prefer to access legal services can help you to align with these expectations to deliver better client experiences.
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Goal 2: Better understand firm performance
Market condition
Only half of solo attorneys and managing partners are very confident in their knowledge of their firm’s major financial metrics.
How to adapt
Adopt reporting tools to continually track key performance indicators (KPIs) like billing and collection rates in your firm. These metrics help identify what is working well, and what needs improvement to drive revenue growth.
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Goal 3: Automate more administrative tasks
Market condition
Successful firms are increasingly adopting technological solutions to automate and streamline their firm’s processes.
How to adapt
Adopt solutions that offload some of the administrative workload of running your firm to free up more time for billable work. These tools include client intake solutions, interactive client portals, electronic court forms databases, and automated court rules solutions.
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Goal 4: Make it easier to get paid
Market condition
66% of consumers ranked online payments as their preferred payment method, and growing firms were 37% more likely to be using these solutions in 2021.
How to adapt
Implement an online payment solution that allows clients to pay quickly, securely, and from anywhere. Look for a tool that enables payment plans, which are sought by 81% of consumers when they are choosing a lawyer. Payment plans are an effective way to expand your client base by making your services more affordable for a wider segment of the population.
Step 2: Implement the right technology to achieve these goals
Implementing the right technologies is a crucial step towards accomplishing your firm’s goals in 2022. Over the course of several years, we’ve seen a consistent trend in which growing firms have adopted client-centered technologies at a much greater pace than firms with shrinking revenues.
Law firms using online payment solutions in 2020 collected nearly 40% more revenue per lawyer than their peers. With the majority of firms now offering online payments, non-adopters will be at a disadvantage.
Your 2022 Checklist for Success
Set your firm up for success with trusted technology that integrates seamlessly and securely with software you already use.
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Case Management System
Online Payments
Client Intake Software
Client Portal
E-signatures
Video Conferencing
Google My Business profile
Electronic Court Forms
Automated Court Rules
The data insights outlined here and more analysis of the current state of the legal industry can be found in the 2021 Legal Trends Report.
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Book a personalized tour and see how Clio can help achieve your 2022 goals.