Law firms and personal injury attorneys handle a large variety of cases and clients. Lawyers in smaller firms could also be handling two large cases and several smaller cases at any given time, while lawyers working for larger personal injury law firms may have to juggle as much as 50 cases on time. To provide high-quality legal services and achieve successful case outcomes, good organization and productivity are essential.
Here are 5 tips to extend your productivity as a personal injury lawyer.
Streamline your intake processes
The strategy of onboarding latest clients and opening latest cases could be time-consuming and require a lot of paperwork and administrative tasks. Look for ways to streamline cumbersome application procedures through checklists, templates, digitization and automation. For example, a personal injury lawyer may ask latest clients to finish a secure online form as an alternative of filling out paper forms in the office.
Invest in legal software
The law practice management software market is price approx $12 billion, with a whole bunch of products on the market, including CaseFlow, Legal Files and Rocket Matter. Law practice management software, document automation programs, and other law-specific technology tools can significantly reduce the time you spend on repetitive administrative tasks. Prioritize tools that help with document drafting, calendar/document management, customer communications, billing, and other workflows. Training staff to make use of the software effectively is crucial. Learning to make use of latest software without specialized training can take as much as a 12 months.
Delegate and outsource appropriately
Personal injury lawyers often take on too much. Know when to delegate tasks to support staff reminiscent of paralegals, paralegals, and interns. Outsource relevant tasks, reminiscent of lawsuits and transcriptions, to third-party vendors. Delegating frees lawyers’ time for more invaluable work. Provide sufficient training and supervision to make sure top quality results.
Optimize meeting structures
Unproductive meetings waste time. Schedule internal team meetings and external client meetings to maximise efficiency. Limit the variety of participants and keep on with the designated timeframe. If vital, consider alternatives reminiscent of email, telephone or video conferencing. Automatically generate meeting minutes using tools like Google Docs for quick responses.
Automate where possible
Ryan Zavodnick, a Philadelphia personal injury lawyer advises looking for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks through tools reminiscent of Zapier and IFTTT. For example, mechanically log incoming emails as calendar events, send meeting reminders to clients, or back up files to the cloud. Create templates for often used documents. Set up email rules and filters. The goal is to cut back manual work.
By streamlining admission processes, using legal technological tools, appropriate delegation, optimization of meetings and automation of tasks, law firms dealing with personal injury can eliminate bottlenecks and time wasters. This allows lawyers and staff to focus their time on substantive legal work that basically moves matters forward. Greater efficiency translates into higher customer support and higher legal outcomes. Personal injury lawyers might have some time straight away to optimize their workflow and processes. However, the long-term performance gains are price the effort.
Creating a more efficient and systematic way of working allows corporations to handle more cases without compromising quality.
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