How to Grow a Law Firm with Process and Delegation

A lawyer’s goal is to achieve greatness through delivering exceptional work and client experiences. But even if you have the skills to build a stellar reputation, it can still be hard to grow your law firm through word of mouth alone. To stay competitive and unlock your firm’s full potential, you’ll need to leverage modern law firm processes and delegation to drive efficiency and sustainable long-term growth.

In this article, we’ll dive into the many ways you can leverage modern solutions, like CASEpeer, to increase your productivity and achieve greatness. We’ll also share some valuable insights from Zach Herbert of the Herbert Law Group—who participated in our webinar on how to grow your law firm using CASEpeer and other technologies.

Successful vs. Unsuccessful Firms

First, it’s important to understand the key drivers and roadblocks for growth. Having a grasp of your firm’s strengths and weaknesses will help you make the smartest, most effective decisions. In other words, as Mr. Herbert puts it, “It’s not enough to just be awesome practitioners of the law, you have to see yourself as a business owner, too.”

Common Roadblocks to Growth

There are many reasons why a successful law firm can start to stumble as demand increases. Some of the most common issues include:

• Not maximizing hours on work that moves cases forward and/or failing to delegate admin
• Relying on manual processes for data entry, scheduling, and other day-to-day tasks
• Not setting up a clear law firm structure or formal legal processes that can scale as you add more employees
• Not using software that is tailored to your legal practice area
• Not tracking case progress, productivity, and marketing data

Drivers of Successful Growth

Ultimately, the goal of a great modern lawyer is to utilize technology and implement a process and delegation strategy that leads to better client experiences. In the context of how to grow a law firm, that can include items like:

• Streamlining lead generation, client intake, caseload, and practice management 
• Establishing formal law firm processes and business structure
• Setting up legal process automation for data entry and other monotonous tasks
• Delegating non-critical tasks when possible
• Creating streamlined workflows and automation for added efficiency

How to Create a Law Firm Growth Strategy

It’s worth noting that “growth” can mean different things to different law firms depending on your specific business goals. Are you aiming to add more staff to handle a rising caseload? Or maybe you want to drive revenue and improve cash flow? Perhaps you simply want to find ways to offer more client-centric experiences?

This is all the more reason why it’s so important to develop a growth strategy that is based on your firm’s unique strengths and weaknesses. As a starting point, consider a few key questions:

• Who is your target market? What methods and channels have contributed the most to bringing in clients?
• Are there any parts of your process (such as intake or communication) that clients like or dislike?
• How much time do you spend on data entry or admin tasks? Where are you most inefficient?
• Do you have a healthy cash flow? If not, are there areas to increase efficiency or cut costs?
• What are your long-term and short-term business goals?

Ideally, you would want to support this discovery process by developing and tracking law firm KPIs, which is something you can easily do using the best practice management software systems like CASEpeer. Using a data-centric approach can benefit your firm by providing a quantitative view of where to make improvements.

7 Tips For Using Process and Delegation to Sustain Growth

Doing more casework is going to automatically translate into higher profitability. That’s because outdated or manual processes along with a lack of delegation often mean a lawyer isn’t spending nearly enough time on their clients or other strategic tasks. Mr. Herbert also points out that while it might be tempting to hire help to deal with the admin, that’s not always the right solution either.

Ultimately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of how to grow a law firm but, in the end, it’s all about finding ways to be faster without sacrificing the client experience. “If it can be done faster or more efficiently, then that’s money in the bank,” notes Mr. Herbert.

Here are a few tips and best practices to ensure your firm can continue to thrive as it continues to grow:

1. Learn to Delegate

To successfully grow your law firm, building client trust and drawing in new leads are some of the most important items to focus on. This is nearly impossible if you’re spending too much time on work that could just as easily be done by someone else.

This is why learning to delegate is by far one of the most important law firm leadership skills. By delegating, to another person and/or technology, you can free up hours that can better be spent on tasks that will help you grow. “Delegation is so important,” Mr. Herbert notes, “because I think that it’s a direct return on your money and your time.”

Start by keeping track of all of the items you do in a day, ideally automatically using software so you can get an honest look at how you spend your time. Then ask yourself:

• Is this a task only I can do? Are there any ethical issues if it’s delegated?
• How many resources are being spent on this task?
• Is this something that could be handled by automation or technology?
• How much would it cost to assign to a member of staff?

From this, make a list of tasks you can comfortably delegate and figure out the best person (or software) to do it.

2. Create Standard Operating Processes

A common roadblock to law firm growth is not having formal work processes in place. Establishing clear workflows ensures that everyone in your office knows exactly what they should be doing at any given time. Keeping a detailed record of tasks, Mr. Herbert explains, has been key to helping himself and his staff stay on track as his firm grows: “If there’s a way to do something, write it down.”

Keeping a detailed list of tasks will also help keep you and your staff on track as the firm grows. In addition, formally writing down the steps of a process is also the first stage of setting up any sort of legal process automation—covered further in the article.

3. Solidify Your Law Firm Structure

If you’re growing, especially if you’re a small firm, it might feel like you need to do a little bit of everything. Instead, you should focus on establishing clear roles so everyone can work to their own strengths. A healthy law firm structure should separate out the legal and non-legal parts of the business, both to boost efficiency and to avoid any potential ethical issues. Not only that, but a smart business structure ensures that when non-legal problems arise, the right people are informed without putting stress on your legal professionals.

4. Train and Support Your Staff

Technology can’t handle everything and, when it does come time to bring new talent to your firm, good training is essential. When it comes to training, Mr. Herbert explains there are no shortcuts: “You have to spend the time training right now because it’s an exponential return on that time.”

However, by having a solid business structure and task list, you can speed up the training process considerably. Ensuring that everyone has a standardized way of operating both cuts down on mistakes and is a key way to boost law firm productivity. 

When Mr. Herbert was starting his own firm, he took the time to make a process for every task that needed to be done so that when he hired someone, all he would have to do was teach that new hire the process he already had in place.

5. Invest in the Right Marketing to Win New Clients

Winning new clients is a key element of growing a law firm. This is not the same as simply spending more on marketing—it’s ensuring that you’re marketing to the right audience on the right channels. As a starting point, your firm should consider:

• Establishing their brand and developing a client-friendly website
• Determining their niche to market to the right type of client
• Creating lead nurturing and communication processes
• Investing in educational blogs and articles for increased search visibility (SEO)

Spending a bit of extra time on marketing will help you bring in more quality leads and ensure your law firm’s success for years to come.

6. Streamline Your Client Intake Processes

Getting clients interested is only half of the battle. To convert a lead into a client, you also need to establish a consistent and convenient client intake process. Even if you do exceptional work, it won’t matter if your intake process is confusing or slow. In fact, most people today expect a response within 24 hours.

Luckily, intake management is another area where modern software like CASEpeer excels by offering:

• Templates for intake forms and other documents
• Streamlined communication and follow-ups 
• Lead tracking and client relationship management (CRM)
• Reporting to understand where the best leads are coming from

Streamlining parts of the client intake process also ensures that you’ll weed out non-serious clients along with any conflicts of interest so you can focus on more promising leads.

7. Automate Processes with Practice Management Software

Technology is completely transforming how businesses operate, driving unprecedented efficiency and growth across industries. While many law firms have been slow to adopt new technology, there now are a number of practice management solutions specifically designed for the legal industry.

One of the most significant ways legal technology is helping law firms operate more efficiently is through legal automation. While there’s no replacing a human for strategic tasks and actual case work, automation is an invaluable time saver for things like:

• Document creation
• Statute notifications
• Task workflows
• Case cost tracking
• Case notes
• Litigation tracking
• Medical treatment tracking

Mr. Herbert is an avid fan of CASEpeer’s ability to integrate with other automation tools that speed up his day-to-day work. He notes that legal automation has made it much easier for his firm to operate and grow.

Learn How to Scale Your Business With Process and Delegation

Technology is transforming client’s expectations. They now expect faster communication, more efficient payouts, and impeccable service–and it’s imperative that modern law firms pick up the pace to stay competitive. 

That’s why thousands of law firms across the country count on CASEpeer’s personal injury practice management software. As the number one-rated solution for personal injury lawyers, CASEpeer empowers law firms of all sizes to achieve greatness by boosting efficiency, reducing overhead, and helping lawyers get paid faster.

To see more real-world examples of how CASEpeer is helping law firms transform the way they operate, check out the full discussion below with Zach Herbert of the Herbert Law Group and Gabriela Cubeiro, CEO of CASEpeer, in our expert advice webinar, “Scale Your Business With Process and Delegation.”

If you’re ready to see how you can unlock your firm’s full potential, schedule a CASEpeer demo today.