Meeting productivity metrics within a law firm is vital. Employees must meet their productivity metrics for a law firm to meet its obligations. Law firms have vast obligations from payroll, rent, insurance, utilities, supplies, taxes, and other expenses.
Law firms that bill hourly likely have billable hours and accounts receivable requirements. Similarly, law firms that bill flat fees or contingency fee billing likely have specific numbers that they need their employees to meet. Metrics can vary by law firm. However, almost every law firm has them.
Successful law firms have goals and track their employees’ progress. If employees are not successful, they need to be held accountable. In some circumstances, an employee may need a performance improvement plan. In other instances, a law firm may need to let certain employees go if their productivity does not increase.
Employees Need to Become Self-Sufficient
Employees must become self-sufficient in meeting these productivity numbers for a law firm to thrive. Becoming self-sufficient means that the employees at the firm know what the job entails from a productivity standpoint and independently meet it. The specific legal duties may be different in every law firm. However, in most law firms, performing legal work and getting paid for those services is essential. Most law firms also have billable hour or income metrics that they want lawyers and legal staff to meet.
In some law firms, lawyers must conduct initial consultations in many law firms to retain new clients. Sometimes, the lawyer may also be responsible for developing a book of business through referral-based business, becoming involved in the community, and satisfying current clients so that they refer those they know in need of legal services.
Much of the business may already exist in other law firms, representing corporations, insurance companies, and large businesses. However, to be assigned the work, the lawyer must gain the partners’ trust within the law firm by performing solid legal work competently and diligently and meeting productivity metrics. The same is true for paralegals and legal assistants.
Some Employees Are Not Self-Sufficient
While successful employees independently meet their productivity metrics, some do not. Instead of performing excellent legal work and meeting their productivity metrics, some employees repeatedly fall below expectations. Some employees can fall below expectations for a variety of reasons, including:
1.) Some employees do not record their billable time entries contemporaneously and accurately with their tasks. Instead, they try to record their time at the end of the day, week, or month. Many employees lose billable time entries by not recording their time as they go.
2.) Some employees are not performing all the necessary work on their cases, which can cause them to fall below productivity metrics. When employees do not perform all the required work, they can often claim they have no work, as if there is a no work card that gets them out of meeting productivity metrics. Sadly, when law firm managers or owners examine the legal file, many of these employees often have a lot of legal work. They just are not doing it.
3.) Some lawyers who need to bring in new clients through initial consultations and referrals must hone their initial consultation techniques and work harder to get out in the community. Many lawyers struggle with retaining new clients and developing a book of business and take little action to correct it.
4.) Some employees will only work on assigned tasks. Instead of taking a legal file, generally knowing what needs to be done, and moving the case forward with some degree of initiative, many want specific directions at every turn on routine matters in a case where they should have developed fluency already. New lawyers, paralegals, and legal assistants are often notorious for wanting constant feedback and direction or feigning ignorance before doing mundane and routine tasks.
In the end, legal staff within a law firm must know that for the law firm to pay them, they must meet the designated productivity metrics. By proactively meeting these productivity metrics and correcting the areas holding them back, lawyers and legal staff within a law firm can be successful.
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The post Proactively meeting productivity metrics first appeared on Kirk Stange on Law Firm Practice Management.
The post Proactively meeting productivity metrics appeared first on Kirk Stange on Law Firm Practice Management.