The most successful personal injury law firms are efficient. Maximizing productivity allows you and your team to spend more time focusing on clients and less time on administrative tasks. The most efficient firms can get more done with less staff, reducing costs.
We’ve identified the key areas your firm may be sacrificing efficiency, and provide you with tips on how to turn things around.
Stop Searching Through Paper Files
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: “time is money.” Minutes wasted looking through files for clients, adjusters, claim numbers, police reports, or pleadings add up. It’s easy to get distracted, and files are not always where you left them.
- Be open to abandoning the traditional and highly overrated paper file
- Scan documents and store them in cloud-based or server-based files
- Evaluate case management systems for storing key data, as well as digital document storage
There are simply better ways to do things. Most legal case management solutions allow you to search instantly for any file with just a name or other identifying information. No more digging through your drawers or computer desktop for the name of that one doctor your client saw that one time.
Prioritize Task Management
Seeing your outstanding tasks establishes a sense of control. Keep a to do list to practice a “top of mind” mentality throughout the workday. Make a habit of recording everything you need to finish by end of day, end of week, and end of month. Prioritizing tasks by difficulty and due date can help you achieve even more.
Personal injury firms are often highly collaborative. One person’s tasks often depend on another’s getting done, and sometimes you don’t remember what’s been done and what hasn’t. When everyone keeps track of tasks using sticky notes, there is no oversight, accountability, or collaboration.
Task management software can help you and your employees stay on the same page and help everyone get things done faster.
Establish Efficient Workflows
Task management is naturally followed by workflows. Establishing workflows for your team to follow increases efficiency and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
Take time to write down a series of tasks each case should go through. Common stages for a personal injury case include intake, treatment, demand writing, settlement, litigation, and lien negotiations. You might need different a few different steps based on case type. Work with your paralegals, assistants, and attorneys to create these tasks. This collaborative approach will increase buy-in by your staff, and ensure your workflows are comprehensive.
Creating workflows or task checklists will not only save your firm time, but will also reduce redundancies, improve training processes, and help avoid malpractice claims. Legal case management software with task workflow management tools can help automate this process for your personal injury firm.
Work Better Together
Collaboration is key to a successful law firm. Are you and your staff working together effectively?
Legal practice management software is the best way for attorneys and staff to collaborate with each other. The best systems will create records of communication, tasks, documents, and more. Instead of walking over to the other side of the office or yelling down the hall and distracting the team, a staff member can quickly find the answer to many questions within a unified database.
As a bonus, better collaboration tools often go hand in hand with better accountability tools.
Track Your Firm’s Data
Aggregating meaningful data takes time, but doing so will help you make better investments of your firm’s people and money. If your law firm is spending money on marketing, for example, you should know how much money that investment is making for you in return.
Make better decisions by analyzing your firm’s data. The more you know, the more time, effort, and money you can dedicate to the things that matter most. Case management software with reporting features is a great way to analyze your existing data.
It’s no secret that personal injury attorneys and staff are busy. Increasing productivity with these tips will free up valuable time. Although you can achieve these goals without it, legal case management software will help make them easier to reach. Solutions like CASEpeer have productivity tools ready right out of the box, so you can start saving time right away.
CASEpeer is a comprehensive case management software for personal injury attorneys. From intake to settlement, our robust features help law firms become more proactive and powerful. Our goal is to help law firms grow. For more practice management tips, visit our blog.