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How to Improve Law Firm Productivity - projectcubicle
How to Improve Law Firm Productivity
In the dynamic and demanding world of legal services, productivity is not just about working harder but working smarter. As a seasoned patent lawyer and a master copywriter, I've seen firsthand how the right strategies can transform a law firm's operations. This article aims to provide law firms with practical, actionable advice on enhancing productivity. We'll explore five key strategies, including the use of AI tools like PowerPatent and efficient project management techniques. Embracing Technology: The Role of AI in Law Firms The legal industry, traditionally slow in adopting new technologies, is now at a crossroads with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI tools offer an unprecedented opportunity to streamline operations, reduce manual workload, and improve accuracy. PowerPatent: A Game Changer in Patent Drafting Take, for instance, PowerPatent. This AI-powered tool is revolutionizing the way patents are drafted. By automating significant parts of the patent drafting process, it not only saves time but also reduces the likelihood of human error. PowerPatent's sophisticated algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data, identify potential patentability issues, and even suggest improvements to patent applications. For law firms specializing in intellectual property, incorporating tools like PowerPatent can significantly enhance productivity and service quality. Other AI Applications in Legal Work Beyond patent drafting, AI applications in legal work include document analysis, contract review, legal research, and even predicting legal outcomes. These tools can process information at a speed and depth that is impossible for human lawyers, freeing up valuable time for more complex, strategic tasks. Enhancing Communication and Collaboration Effective communication and collaboration are vital in any law firm. The complex nature of legal work requires constant coordination among team members. Leveraging Communication Tools Utilizing communication tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom for internal communication can streamline discussions, facilitate quick decision-making, and reduce email overload. These tools also support remote work environments, a growing trend in the legal industry. Encouraging Collaborative Work Culture Fostering a collaborative work culture where information and knowledge are openly shared can significantly boost productivity. When team members feel comfortable sharing insights and seeking advice, it leads to more comprehensive and effective legal strategies. Continuous Learning and Development The legal field is continuously evolving. For law firms to remain productive and competitive, ongoing learning and development are essential. Investing in Training and Professional Development Investing in the training and professional development of lawyers and support staff ensures that the firm stays abreast of the latest legal trends, technologies, and best practices. This could include regular training sessions, attending seminars, or even enrolling in online courses. Encouraging a Culture of Innovation Encouraging a culture of innovation where team members are motivated to explore new ideas, technologies, and methodologies can lead to improvements in processes and client services. Efficient Project Management: Key to Organizational Productivity
Managing projects efficiently is crucial in a law firm setting, where multiple cases and clients demand attention simultaneously. Implementing Project Management Software Project management software tailored for legal practices can help in organizing workflows, tracking billable hours, and managing client communication. Tools like Clio Manage, Asana, or Trello enable lawyers and support staff to stay on top of deadlines, delegate tasks effectively, and maintain a clear overview of each case's progress. Regular Review and Adaptation Processes Incorporating regular review and adaptation processes into project management helps in identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Regular team meetings and feedback sessions can ensure that everyone is aligned with the firm’s goals and working at their optimum capacity. Streamlining Administrative Tasks Administrative tasks, while crucial, can consume a significant portion of a law firm’s resources. Automating Routine Tasks Automating routine administrative tasks like time tracking, billing, and document management can free up valuable time for lawyers. Tools like TimeSolv, QuickBooks, and document management systems can handle these tasks efficiently. Outsourcing Non-Core Activities Outsourcing non-core activities like accounting, IT services, and even certain legal research tasks can allow lawyers to focus on their core competencies and client services. Prioritizing Client-Centric Services As we delve deeper into strategies for enhancing law firm productivity, it's imperative to focus on the heart of the practice: the clients. Prioritizing client-centric services not only improves client satisfaction but also streamlines your firm’s operations, ultimately boosting productivity. Utilizing Client Management Software Investing in client management software can significantly enhance the client experience. These tools can help in organizing client information, tracking communication, and ensuring that no client request goes unaddressed. Platforms like Salesforce or Zoho CRM are designed to provide a holistic view of client interactions, making it easier to provide personalized and timely services. Simplifying Client Onboarding Processes Simplifying the client onboarding process is another crucial step. Clear, streamlined procedures for new clients, supported by digital tools for document submission and data collection, can save time for both the client and the firm. This also sets the tone for a professional and efficient relationship moving forward. Fostering a Productive Work Environment
The productivity of a law firm is deeply intertwined with its work environment. Creating an environment that encourages focus, efficiency, and well-being can have a profound impact on overall productivity. Designing a Functional Office Layout The physical layout of your office should facilitate easy communication while also providing quiet spaces for focused work. This might involve having open-plan areas for collaborative work and private rooms for tasks requiring deep concentration. Promoting Work-Life Balance Promoting a healthy work-life balance is essential in maintaining a productive workforce. Overworked lawyers are more prone to errors and burnout. Encouraging reasonable work hours, offering flexible working options, and recognizing the importance of personal time can lead to a more engaged and efficient team. Leveraging Analytics for Strategic Decision Making Data analytics is not just for tech companies. Law firms, too, can leverage analytics to make informed, strategic decisions. Analyzing Performance Metrics Using analytics to track performance metrics like case turnaround time, billable hours, and client satisfaction can provide valuable insights into your firm’s operations. This data can help in identifying areas for improvement and in making informed decisions about resource allocation. Predictive Analytics for Case Outcomes Predictive analytics tools can help in assessing the likely outcomes of cases, guiding resource allocation, and strategic planning. This can be particularly useful in fields like litigation, where understanding the probabilities of different outcomes can significantly impact case strategy. Implementing Sustainable Practices Sustainability in business practices is becoming increasingly important, and law firms are no exception. Implementing sustainable practices not only contributes to environmental conservation but can also lead to cost savings and improved public perception. Going Paperless Transitioning to a paperless office is a major step towards sustainability. Digital document management reduces the need for physical storage, cuts down on printing costs, and makes document retrieval more efficient. Encouraging Green Initiatives Encouraging green initiatives within the office, like recycling, reducing energy consumption, and using eco-friendly products, can foster a culture of sustainability and responsibility.
Conclusion
Improving productivity in a law firm is about leveraging technology, managing projects efficiently, fostering effective communication, continuously learning, and streamlining administrative tasks. By adopting these strategies, law firms can not only enhance their operational efficiency but also provide better services to their clients. Read the full article
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Global Legal Case Management Software Market is Estimated To Witness High Growth Owing To Increasing Adoption
The global Legal Case Management Software Market is estimated to be valued at US$ 776.14 million in 2020 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 12.4% over the forecast period 2021-2028, as highlighted in a new report published by Coherent Market Insights. Market Overview: Legal case management software is a specialized tool designed to help law firms and legal professionals manage their cases efficiently. It provides a centralized platform to store and organize case information, track deadlines, manage documents, automate workflows, and communicate with clients. The software offers numerous advantages, including improved collaboration, streamlined processes, enhanced data security, and better client management. With the increasing complexity and volume of legal cases, the need for efficient case management solutions has become crucial in the legal industry. Market Key Trends: The key trend driving the growth of the legal case management software market is the increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions. Cloud technology offers several benefits to law firms, including easy access to case information from anywhere at any time, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and automatic updates. Cloud-based solutions also provide advanced security features, ensuring that sensitive client data is protected. For example, Clio, one of the leading players in the market, offers a cloud-based case management software that enables legal professionals to manage their cases seamlessly. PEST Analysis: Political: The political landscape has a significant impact on the legal case management software market. Government regulations related to data privacy and security play a vital role in shaping the market dynamics. For instance, the implementation of data protection laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, has increased the importance of robust security measures in legal software solutions. Economic: The economic factors influencing the market include the overall economic growth and stability of countries. A growing economy translates into increased legal activities, leading to higher demand for case management software. Moreover, the cost-effectiveness of cloud-based solutions makes them attractive to law firms, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited budgets. Social: The social factors impacting the market include changing consumer preferences and the increasing need for remote access and collaboration. The shift towards remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of cloud-based case management solutions, as they enable legal professionals to work from anywhere and collaborate with team members and clients effectively. Technological: Technological advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are revolutionizing the legal industry. These technologies can automate repetitive tasks, analyze large amounts of data, and provide valuable insights for legal professionals. For example, AI-powered software can help in contract review, legal research, and prediction of case outcomes. Key Takeaways: In terms of market size, the global Legal Case Management Software Market Share is expected to witness high growth, exhibiting a CAGR of 12.4% over the forecast period. This growth can be attributed to increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions by law firms and legal professionals. Regionally, North America is expected to dominate the market due to the presence of major players in the region and the early adoption of legal technology solutions. Europe is also anticipated to witness significant growth, driven by strict data protection regulations and the rising demand for efficient case management tools.
#Information and Communication Technology#ICT Industry#Legal Case Management Software#Legal Case Management Software Market
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E Billing Software for Law Firms
e billing software enables law firms to create, review, and send client invoices electronically, rather than the traditional method of developing, enclosing, and mailing paper documents. This improves cash flow, eliminates human error and increases transparency into legal spending. In addition, e-billing software can be used to track time, monitor case costs and manage client payments.
When selecting an e-billing solution, it is important to consider how the product handles online payments. Some products have their own payment platforms that handle ACH and credit card payments, while others integrate with other systems such as Clio Payments. In addition, if the product processes international payments, it is essential to understand transactional fees associated with each payment.
Many of these systems also provide a variety of features that help improve profitability and productivity in the workplace. For example, some offer practice management tools and information about law firm spending, while others include a client portal for tracking expenditures, sending reminders, and managing bills and invoices. It is also important to choose a program that has a user-friendly interface, allowing employees to access the system from anywhere and on any device.
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Legal e-billing solutions are increasingly popular among corporate legal departments. They are easy to implement and can quickly generate savings. They can also be a powerful tool for identifying long-term cost-saving strategies. However, e-billing requires a firm to have robust financial controls in place and a clear understanding of its legal spend.
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Estate Planning Software For Attorneys
Estate Planning Software For Attorneys
Estate plan software needs accurate documentation, workflow automation, and expert legal education. You will want to be sure the estate plan software you review for ease of use, what’s included, support, and compliance with regulations. It is important to take time reviewing estate plan software. Ask about how the estate plan software billing occurs both for you and/or your clients. You will want an all in one solution for your estate plan software. You want it to include documentation, automation, and education with a simple subscription monthly.
Schedule Your Demos
You will want to outline your decision making for your estate plan software. This will include your demos of estate plan software for ease of use, review of what’s included, and pricing and the return on investment. Give yourself time in between each one to take notes on ease, inclusions, pricing, and investment. Then, compare all other software and see what’s best for you.
Analyze Estate Planning Software for: • Asset Inventory • Family Liabilities • Outlining Directives • State and National Laws You will want the software to have the ability to draft these elements into a: • Will and Revocable Trust • General Durable of Attorney • Health Care Power of Attorney • and Living Will
Beyond Counsel
Beyond Counsel focuses on better systems, better practice, and a better life. They offer subscription models with different levels including increasing value at each level. Their estate plan software includes estate plan drafting, workflow management, and legal education. When there is no automation or workflow set up to flag time-sensitive items, it costs the firm reputation, time, and money. Think of how this estate planning software will save you and attorneys at your firm time and money. You want automated scheduling for your clients. Think of all the hours you and your firm spend on this alone.
In your demo or trial, review the questionnaires for the clients covering all estate planning elements such as: • Asset Inventory • Mortgage and Insurance • Directives • Beneficiaries
They also offer added ongoing value for free via their blog with topics including online estate planning, software insights, and attorney checklists. As an attorney, you want to be on top of expert education in the legal field. With estate plan software, you want to ask if expert legal education is included in the estate plan software subscription and/or package.
Clio and Schedule Once
These tools help you transform the way you work as well. Any of the tools will help modernize your law firm. They include automation, scheduling, legal education, payment processing, and timekeeping at a variety of levels. With each of the tools, you will want to experience the demo, see what is offered, get insight on the support, and updates for education. Depending on your caseload, this may be done within less than two weeks. Ask about education with estate plan software such as: • Age Requirements • Specific Distributions • Age Requirements
In addition, you will want to check on the legal education components review for updates to regulations. It is not enough to simply have expert education, it is key that it is continuously updated for accuracy. As a successful estate planning attorney, it’s important to keep up with law marketing trends. This is mostly because it gives your practice an edge over your competitors. Estate planning is an intricate process that, in this age and day, requires an automated document management system. Preparing, securing, and managing estate planning files can be a tedious task that may require many hours of manual work. An automated system can make things much easier and less frustrating for you while ensuring the utmost ensure efficiency in your practice.
Additionally, estate planning requires high levels of organizational skills. You don’t want to subject your clients to your personal assistant’s typos and other mistakes. In a nutshell, estate planning software can do wonders in your practice as an attorney. But is it really worth it? Why use estate planning software?
Less Stress in Your Practice
From ensuring that the right assets are marched with their rightful owners, to maintaining an up-to-date list of beneficiaries, keeping wills in order and updating the clients’ named trustees, these tasks can be quite challenging and time-consuming, especially for an attorney with more than just a few clients. Using an estate or will planning software can make things much easier for any estate planning attorney, thus improving efficiency and boosting the reputation of their legal practice. With your clients’ legal file and document management automated, you will have less stress and more time to utilize in other areas of the business as you expand your practice.
Reduces Estate Planning Costs
Given the complex nature involved in estate planning, there are so many costs associated with the process. A wise lawyer knows what their target legal consumers look for. Well, most of today’s legal consumers have become savvy and are looking for law firms that give them value for money. Using an estate planning software can help you to cut tax and court expenses, meaning that you’ll not be charging your clients for the probate process.
Security
Most times, estate planning also involves handling sensitive private information. In the wrong hands, this information can be used in the wrong way, especially by dissatisfied family members who may decide to challenge a will. It’s, therefore, important that such information is treated with the care it deserves. Some documents may include/contain: • Medical history • Family relationships • Financial records and assets • Title deeds and logbooks
As you can see, these are sensitive documents that if lost, could lead to serious consequences and liabilities. A good estate planning software will also ensure that such confidential information is safe and secure.
Less Room For Errors
The simplicity utilized in estate planning software makes it easy to manage your client list, document management, and boosting staff productivity. In addition to this, using an estate planning solution will help you to customize the estate planning documents depending on the clause preferences and terms. This helps to reduce the odds of making mistakes and errors.
It’s A Client-Friendly Solution
As a successful estate planning attorney, you know all too well that your clients are the backbone of your practice. This means that they should come first in all that you do. Manually handling estate planning tasks, as iterated earlier, can be tedious and time-consuming. This means that you don’t have enough time to attend to your clients or other matters and at the end of the day; it weighs down on your efficiency. A simplified estate planning process that is to the specification of the clients means a happy customer, which is exactly what the estate planning software provides. Utilizing an estate planning software will ensure flawless execution of the estate planning process, allowing you to attend to more clients. So, if you’re looking for ways to save time and money and at the same time increase your client base, an estate planning software is the way to go. To get back to the title question, estate planning software is well worth it!
Wealth Docx
The power of Wealth Docx to automate your document solutions makes client interviews more intuitive, lets you customize your solutions, and provides the consistency you need.
The Features In Wealth Docx Will Give Your Firm The Edge.
With Wealth Docx, you get the input and expertise of leading trusts and estates attorneys. Use the dynamic content and contextual help to keep your practice up-to-date and a step ahead.
LWP’s cloud-based, integrated software isn’t just the industry standard, it has helped revolutionize the way attorneys practice estate planning, elder law, and asset protection. LWP software dramatically reduces the amount of time you and your team devote to drafting without sacrificing accuracy or customization. This in turn frees up your time to focus on other aspects of running a profitable firm, such as the pursuit of new business. Finally, the software is fully integrated with all LWP cloud-based systems, processes, and workflows.
Client Centered
The name says it all: Lawyers with Purpose Client-Centered Software. The estate planning software is designed to address the specific needs of each client. When you meet with a client, the design template is organized to help you firmly establish what clients want their plans to accomplish at every stage of life’s journey: while they are alive and well, if and when they become disabled, and how and when assets are distributed to loved ones when the client passes away. A fully customized plan can be created during a one hour and 30-minute initial interview.
Single Entry System
When you enter a client’s information during the initial interview, all of his or her relevant information will be incorporated into each of the planning documents automatically. In addition, as you move through the interview, the software will warn you if you make choices that are inconsistent or could lead to potential problems. You are protected against errors (and potential malpractice) at every keystroke.
Customized Planning
Most software results in cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all estate planning documents. LWP software allows for unsurpassed customization. It permits generational planning using various trusts and sub-trusts each allowing customizable distribution standards, individual trustee selections, and various uses of powers of appointment.
Comprehensive
LWP document creation software has all the templates an estate planning, elder law, and asset protection attorney needs to run a practice. From powers of attorney, healthcare directives, simple wills to enhanced wills, which include testamentary trusts and estate tax planning, powers of attorney and healthcare directives, revocable and irrevocable trusts, plus a fully customizable personal care plan. Then there are more specialized features, including:
Medicaid
LWP Medicaid qualification software is the only software in the entire industry that allows you to properly calculate Medicaid eligibility for any type of client. Not only does it help you identify the maximum amount of assets that can be protected in the shortest period of time, it helps you present information to clients in a way they can understand. It warns you about potential conflicts and errors, and even helps you demonstrate the value of your services to clients.
Veterans Benefits
LWP VA software allows you to quickly determine if a veteran or surviving spouse is currently eligible for benefits or if planning is required to become eligible. It also includes every document needed to prepare and submit the VA Intent to File, Formal Claim, or Appeal.
Special Needs
The software also includes both first and third-party stand-alone Special Needs Trusts. All of our wills and trusts also include standby Special Needs Trusts for special needs beneficiaries. To be a successful estate planning attorney, you must be extremely well organized and an excellent communicator, your clients’ legacies depend on it. That’s why Smokeball keeps your clients’ estate details in one easy-to-manage and secure place, with files and estate planning specific forms accessible within seconds. No matter what your estate clients need from you, Smokeball acts as your will and estate software, trust software, estate tax planning software, and executor software.
Smokeball includes one of the best apps for lawyers so you can update information and view documents from anywhere, making it easy to get out and see clients in person at their homes. Manage contacts, property information, and other financial assets in our secure and unlimited cloud storage solution. And with advanced document automation features, flawless execution of wills and living trusts come together for you with the click of a button. Smokeball is legal estate planning software for attorneys with a library of documents built by attorneys and other legal professionals. Using Smokeball as your estate planning software means that there is one single place for storage of all estate information details like will and codicil dates and witnesses, executors, agents, and family members, and even detailed trust and property information.
Automated Task Workflows for Estates, Wills & Trusts
Estate planning can be the most important service provided to your clients and their families during and after their lifetime. For attorneys, having a comprehensive estate planning software and trust software should ensure that you never drop the ball. Build standard sets of tasks so that you and your staff know exactly where each matter stands and what needs to be done next. Much of what you do can feel repetitive, so let Smokeball hand you documents and to-dos automatically at the right times. Let Smoke ball’s estate planning software tell you when it’s time to gather financial and asset information, draft documents, schedule client reviews and signings, and make adjustments. Smokeball does something that no other estate planning software for attorneys does, it tracks all your time spent within the system automatically! Even if you bill your clients a flat fee for your estate planning work, knowing where and how your time is spent can quickly help refocus your priorities. Smokeball for estate planning attorneys helps you gain a deeper understanding of your profitability by matter and matter type. Once you put in your staff cost and fee (either hourly or flat), Smokeball will automatically calculate which estate planning services are making you money with the legal billing and time tracking software. It also provides important law firm insights into staff efficiency so that you can better manage your team’s time and positively impact your bottom line. No other will and trust software for attorneys on the market can do this for your practice.
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Business Law Software for Law Firm Workflow Management
Business law software is a cloud-based platform that offers an attorney a way to store, manage, and share documents in real-time. Whether a lawyer is writing business contracts, maintaining client records, or keeping track of court dates and documents, business law software is a convenient way to keep up with the constant changes and demands of the job.
The best legal management software should provide robust workflow systems that integrate with other third-party document automation tools. This helps lawyers create, store, and organize legal documents, while increasing collaboration among team members.
There are a number of different types of business law software to choose from. Each one has its own advantages, but some are better suited for different types of firms.
Amicus Attorney is a software solution that provides integrated billing and business law capabilities. It also has a comprehensive library of more than 17,000 legal forms. By generating documents in just a few seconds, the software gives attorneys the opportunity to stay ahead of the competition.
Time Matters is another program that has been around for a while. It includes features to help track time for multiple attorneys. However, it does not offer full accounting capabilities.
Smokeball's business law software is a comprehensive system that enables easy access to resources and documents from a mobile app. It also has an advanced integration with Microsoft Outlook.
Clio has a number of business law software options, including time tracking, billing, and document generation. The software's time entry functions make it easier to input hours on a mobile device. Similarly, the legal billing features allow users to see and review all of the relevant information for a particular case.
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The Best Legal Tech Tools to Help Entrepreneurs to Manage Legal Processes
By: Amanda Ciccatelli
As we emerge from a global pandemic where working from home for many has become the new normal, smart entrepreneurs must leverage remote work and other technology to manage and scale their businesses.
Twenty years ago, the first dollar of startup revenue was likely not far from Founder Louis Lehot’s elite boutique law firm L2 Counsel in Silicon Valley. Since then, startups have globalized — with one co-founder at one end of the world, another at the other, R&D, sales and marketing all over. Technology businesses are inherently global, so they must operate in compliance with multiple jurisdictional statutes, rules, regulations, commercial contracts, licenses and more. Now more than ever, LegalTech tools will play a key role in running legal processes for your business.
Today, legal process points cause frustration for entrepreneurs everywhere — from harvesting and protecting IP rights, to storing and securing customer information, to negotiating and renewing contracts — the potential for human error is big. To alleviate this issue, LegalTech tools can enable safe, secure and private communication, document storage and management, e-signature and cloud-enabled contract management and AI tools.
We sat down with Louis Lehot who has represented hundreds of startups over the last 20 years, to discuss the best LegalTech tools to use for your business. Below is a list of the best LegalTech tools for collaboration, spend management, and contract review, according to Louis Lehot.
The Best LegalTech Tools for Collaboration:
Zoom has become the poster child for video-conferencing lately. With high quality images and audio, virtual backgrounds, audio calling, conference calls, screen sharing and scheduling, startups have flocked to this affordable technology.
“While it has had some security issues, and could be improved to allow for better recording and editing, it remains a piece of resistance for legal communications and collaboration,” he said.
Skype has been accelerating enterprise penetration since its acquisition by Microsoft, allowing for free web meetings, video conference and VOIP software. There is also an instant messaging feature, audio and video call features, mobile phones and landline calling, paid international calling, and conference call capabilities for up to 25 people.
Louis Lehot added, “During video sessions, users can share their screen, and other features include background blurring, voice and text translation, location sharing, and conversation searching.”
Microsoft Teams combines video conferencing with team collaboration tools, allowing MS Office users to conduct conference calls and share files, as well as join or initiate a group chat. He said, “The shared chat space and ability to break out into smaller groups can enable collaboration tools to share documents.”
However, deletion of messages is not enabled, there is no group calendar option, and the permission settings are not user-friendly.
RingCentral is a VOIP solution available in the cloud, featuring video and audio conferencing, desktop phone rentals, collaboration tools and integrations with other apps. According to Louis Lehot, it is known for quality voice and video communication, consistent interface across platforms, good performance, messaging and texting. But, generating reports takes about 24 hours and often contain inaccuracies, group calls are challenging, and there is no forwarding to an external number or group texting features as of this writing.
Google Hangouts provides a communication and extension of the Google collaboration platform to include messaging, voice, VoIP, and video call capabilities. Louis Lehot explained that users can “Hangout” to start a chat or video call, phone call using Wi-Fi or data, send text messages with a Google Voice or Google Fi phone number. “They sync across devices, and you can start a call on one device and switch to another. It’s free, can run on almost any platform, easy to set up, with a clean and intuitive interface,” added.
Cisco WebEx is a cloud-based phone system optimized for midsized and large enterprises. It presents essential business calling capabilities and removes complexity of managing a phone system infrastructure on premises. According to Louis Lehot, this tool has an easy interface, fast notifications to email, clear connections, easy to add users, mobile use, easy to switch between devices and collaboration with WebEx document sharing teaming. The only problem is that it can take 5–10 minutes to download the local client, so Louis Lehot advises that you make sure your other users have previously installed it.
The Best LegalTech Tools for Spend & Matter Management:
Clio, Practice Panther, Thomson Reuters (Serengeti), and other programs attempt to solve the problem of managing budgets, billing and time management. Clio and PracticePanther are web-based legal practice management software packages, principally for small law firms and solo practitioners, with case management, accounting and document storage functions.
SimpleLegal focuses on modern legal operations management that combines matter management, e-billing and spend management, vendor management, knowledge management and provides business insights through robust reporting and analytics.
“It is best for tracking expenses, creating, analyzing matters, reporting and analytics,” he said. “However, some wish that it had the functionalities of QuickBooks and out-of-the-box API integrations.”
Acuity Elm is a cloud-based enterprise legal spend management solution, providing business solutions to in-house counsel and legal ops teams of all sizes. Louis Lehot likes that it helps teams reduce spend, increase productivity and improve outcomes and transparency.
“It serves as a communication for clients and counsel to share and organize documents, as well as manage time entry, and it keep track of cases,” he explained. “But it is criticized for provoking tension between companies and counsel and being overly complex.”
The Best LegalTech Tools for Contract Review:
Contract Companion provides a proofreading tools that leverages AI to ensure documents meet quality standards, automatically identifies and reviews errors in real-time and quickly bacs back to higher-value activities.
He added, “It consistently demonstrates capabilities and work integrity and has time management tools designed to reduce time pressure and complete a precise review that is difficult to achieve manually.”
Kira Networks is a machine learning software tools that identifies extracts and analyzes content in contracts and documents with accuracy and efficiency. From increasing efficiency of the contract review process to the flexibility of building and integrating solutions together, according to Louis Lehot, Kira is designed to allow users to easily extract insights from contracts and documents.
Contract Express automates your legal document creation process and ensures your documents are complete and accurate. In Louis Lehot’s experience, this tool provides an intuitive markup, compliance and relevancy tool and automates the drafting process for complex legal documents without requiring IT programmers.
ParleyPro is a new contract review and management platform designed to close better contracts faster with smart collaboration. He explained, “It is praised for its ability to enable the legal team’s ability to scale its effectiveness, by facilitating effective creation, negotiation, execution and management of all contracts across vendors and partners in one place.”
One thing to keep in mind is that while its flexibility is praised, there is still complexity that requires advance planning.
Concord is a contract lifecycle management platform built to work across an organization’s many functions. It has a simple design, with an end-to-end solution to make it easier to create, collaborate, negotiate, e-sign and manage agreements.
Louis Lehot shared some advice for entrepreneurs who are in search of a LegalTech tools right now. He said, “LegalTech tools are necessary to automate processes, communicate, collaborate, manage projects, improve accuracy and reduce spending. There is no one legal tech tool that solves everything.”
About the Author: Amanda is a Freelance Journalist for a variety of online publications where she covers legal technology, intellectual property, litigation and more. She has been writing about technology, business and law for almost 10 years. Amanda earned a B.A. in Communications: Public Relations and Journalism from Central Connecticut State University. Follow her at @AmandaCicc.
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Six Attorney Practice Management Tools Added as OBA Member Benefits
Right before our Oklahoma Bar Association Solo & Small Firm Conference kicks off, the OBA announces six new practice management member benefits.
(June 6, 2018) Six new member benefits to help Oklahoma lawyers better manage their practices have been announced by the Oklahoma Bar Association. Members who sign up for new subscriptions will receive discounts to Clio, CosmoLex, MyCase, PracticePanther, Rocket Matter or Zola Suite, all cloud-based practice management services for law firms.
“Supporting Oklahoma lawyers as they incorporate modern technology tools into their law practices is an important goal of the OBA. Better efficiency and security tools benefit both lawyers and their clients,” said OBA President Kimberly Hays of Tulsa. “Different solutions focus on different aspects of law practice, which is why the OBA provides free consulting for Oklahoma lawyers who are shopping for a practice management tool.”
Practice management solutions organize digital copies of all client documents, lawyer’s notes, calendar information, pending tasks and all other client information using easy-to-access dashboards. Lawyers can review documents, record time, assign tasks to others in the firm and do many other functions, all within these applications. These tools also provide online client portals for the secure sharing of information with clients.
“There are many available and affordable tools to assist lawyers. While there is a learning curve, the time savings in day-to-day operations becomes apparent rather quickly,” said OBA Practice Management Advisor Darla Jackson.
As part of the vetting process, each vendor demonstrated their product and provided access to complimentary accounts to allow a hands-on preview experience. Additionally, each product was reviewed by OBA Member Services Committee members.
Jim Calloway, OBA Management Assistance Program Director, said, “These cloud-based services were designed to protect confidential client information and to provide both better security for client data and better remote access than many other methods.”
OBA members can find brief descriptions of the practice management solutions, their features and access codes for discounts by logging in to MyOKBar and accessing Practice Management Software Benefits at the bottom of their Profile page.
The 18,000-member Oklahoma Bar Association, headquartered in Oklahoma City, was created by the Oklahoma Supreme Court to advance the administration of justice and to foster and maintain learning, integrity, competence, public service and high standards of conduct among Oklahoma’s legal community.
from Law and Politics http://www.lawpracticetipsblog.com/2018/06/six-attorney-practice-management-tools-added-as-oba-member-benefits.html via http://www.rssmix.com/
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6 Tips for Running a Small Law Firm
Running a small law firm is much easier than attempting to operate an expansive one, but it’s still far from uncomplicated. It pays to look at the details behind it to find ways to make it easier.
Here are 6 tips for running a small law firm.
Use Software to Make Financial Management Easier
Dealing with billing and other financial matters is time-consuming for any law firm. Getting it right and ensuring bills are regularly sent out in the correct format is critical to ensuring the firm has a steady stream of income from the billable hours it accrues.
One software package that is widely used within the legal profession is Clio. Take a look in the charlottelaw.org Clio review to find out just why it saves law firms considerable time, especially when running a small operation.
Perform Conflict Checks
Before agreeing to hire a new client, always run conflict checks to avoid any conflict of interest.
It’s not just having a real conflict of interest that could sway which direction or action a legal representation takes; the mere appearance of, or potential for a conflict of interest, is sufficient to get removed from a legal case.
It’s best to not get involved with representing either an individual or company when there’s this potential. It will only come back to bite the firm later otherwise.
Ask questions, perform necessary searches and look at the existing client list and the cases to verify that there are no conflict concerns to worry about.
Specialization is a Good Marketing Hook
While a law firm can be a generalist that takes on many different kinds of cases, it’s difficult to build up an enviable reputation that way. Few recommendations or referrals come to lawyers when they’re not known for any specific area of the law.
There’s the option to employ lawyers who specialize in one area of the law, such as a divorce attorney, but it’s also possible to create a legal firm where everyone is focused on a single specialization. The advantage of the latter is that the research, experience, and depth of knowledge across the team can create a formidable advantage.
Outsourcing Non-legal Tasks
The idea of outsourcing non-essential or non-legal tasks is a game-changer for many firms. It can save considerable sums of money versus trying to do it all in-house. Look at what administrative and other tasks are suitable for outsourcing to a third party that can get them completed faster and better. This relieves the legal team of the responsibility and unburdens the receptionist too.
Care must be taken to not outsource tasks with the potential to breach the attorney-client privilege, but beyond that, there are plenty of tasks worth outsourcing.
Every Staff Member Must Contribute Significantly
While larger companies will commonly have a few employees seen as “dead weight” that aren’t as productive as other team members, the smaller the business, the less it can afford such indulgences.
The same goes for a legal firm. Every lawyer must get enough clients and deliver sufficient billable hours to make them a valuable member of the legal team in their own right. Similarly, support staff also must be present and vital to the successful provision of legal representation. There’s no room for people who cannot deliver what’s needed in the workforce with smaller law firms – there is just too much to get done.
Be Careful with How Many Systems Are Used
The systems that are deployed by a small law firm compared to a larger one are quite different.
For tiny firms with only a small handful of employees, many of the systems are ad hoc and patched together to avoid investing huge sums into solutions. However, this quickly becomes a problem when there are too many temporary systems, often overlapping each other. This is especially true as the firm attempts to scale up and finds their systems holding them back.
Poor systems frustrate lawyers on the team because it takes them longer to do their job. Also, when they’re used to working at larger firms, then it’s not tolerated for very long either.
It requires skill and determination to operate a small law firm. It’s not necessarily better than a larger one, but it does have some unique challenges.
The post 6 Tips for Running a Small Law Firm appeared first on Legal Desire.
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Top 7 legal tech stories from the Journal in 2019
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Top 7 legal tech stories from the Journal…
Year in Review
By Victor Li
December 23, 2019, 11:59 am CST
Image from Shutterstock.com.
Between facial recognition, Facebook and state privacy laws, it was a busy year for law and technology. The ABA Journal takes a look back at 2019's biggest legal tech stories.
1. Facial Recognition Goes Mainstream
Smile! You’re on camera! And chances are, your image is being analyzed and run through a database so that you can be identified for all sorts of reasons. Facial recognition programs are already being used by several law enforcement and governmental agencies throughout the country, and admitted as evidence in criminal trials. Meanwhile, businesses, airports, and venues, including Amazon, are either using facial recognition or plan to identify new customers or make user experiences easier. This year, several cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, California pushed back and banned the use of facial recognition by government agencies, citing privacy concerns, as well as reported inaccuracies in the software. “Good policing does not require that we live in a police state,” Lee Hepner, legislative aide to San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Aaron Peskin, who championed the bill, told the ABA Journal in September. Proponents of the technology feel like they’re being singled out unfairly. “A lot of people miss the value of facial recognition because they’ve got a lot of questions about how it actually works,” Peter Trepp, CEO of FaceFirst, a facial recognition company told the ABA Journal in September.
2. Rough Year for Facebook
Good thing Facebook added sad and angry emojis for users to use in reacting to posts on their timeline. Mark Zuckerberg could use either to describe the year he and his company have had. In July, Facebook was hit with a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission over its privacy practices, most notably relating to its association with Cambridge Analytica. The social media giants promised to overhaul their privacy policies and do more to safeguard user data. Then, in October, Zuckerberg was grilled by Congress over a myriad of things, including Facebook’s planned cryptocurrency, Libra, as well as defend its stance against fact-checking political ads. While Facebook’s stock price remains healthy, the social media company has lost nearly 15 million users over the past two years, according to reports. Am Law firms, in particular, are fleeing. According to a November report from Good2BeSocial, lingering concerns over privacy have caused large firms to turn to other social media platforms, in particular LinkedIn and Instagram (the latter is owned by Facebook).
3. Alternative Legal Service Providers Rake in the Cash
It’s a good time for alternative legal services providers—at least when it comes to their bank accounts. In September, cloud-based practice management company Clio announced a $250 million Series D funding round, one of the largest ever in legal technology. Meanwhile, in February, Axiom announced plans to file an IPO—only to change course seven months later and sell a majority stake to private equity company Permira. The new majority shareholders in Axiom are no strangers to the legal tech arena, having purchased a controlling stake in LegalZoom in 2014. Those were only a couple of examples. In September, Bob Ambrogi of LawSites reported the $1.2 billion invested in legal tech companies in the first three quarters of 2019 was already a record for any year. Additionally, the ABA Journal reported in May that eight for-profit and nonprofit legal tech organizations have taken part in Silicon Valley’s prestigious accelerator, Y Combinator, since 2018—a sign that some experts believe is indicative of a robust legal tech market.
4. Bar Associations Lead the Way on Controversial Reforms
Nonlawyer ownership, fee splitting and allowing certain nonlegal professionals to provide legal services have long been a no-go zone for many lawyers and bar associations. But in 2019, bar associations in three states took the first steps toward entering that previously forbidden territory. In California, the Task Force on Access Through Innovation of Legal Services released a report over the summer recommending reforming unauthorized practice of law regulations to allow certain nonlegal professionals to provide legal services under certain conditions and amending state ethics rules to allow for fee-splitting and nonlawyer ownership of law firms. The proposals engendered quite a bit of controversy and opposition from public commenters. As such, the California bar’s board of trustees announced in November that the task force’s final recommendations would be delayed until March 2020 to better evaluate the public comments. Meanwhile, in August, the Utah Work Group On Regulatory Reform put forth its suggested reforms. Stopping short of allowing nonlawyer ownership or reforming UPL regulations, the group, instead, called for a regulatory sandbox where alternative legal services providers could test out new ways to deliver legal services without running afoul of ethics rules. Then, in October, Arizona’s Task Force on the Delivery of Legal Services proposed removing the prohibition on nonlawyer ownership of law firms.
5. States Lay Down the Law on Digital Privacy
When the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, one of the big questions would be whether the United States would follow suit. That hasn’t happened at the federal level, but that hasn’t stopped some states from taking the initiative. In January, the California Consumer Privacy Act went into effect. Seen as “GDPR-lite,” the California law is the strongest data privacy law in the country, giving consumers access to their data, the right to have their personal data deleted and the ability to opt out of having their data sold. That same month, Vermont enacted a law regulating third parties that buy or resell consumer data.
6. EU Courts Grapple with Takedown Requests
This autumn saw a pair of seemingly contradictory court decisions in Europe concerning the right to force an internet company to take down or de-list information online. In September, the European Court of Justice ruled Google did not have to de-list or de-reference information pertaining to a French citizen worldwide—just in the EU. In its opinion, the court seemingly shut down the argument that the so-called “right to be forgotten” applied throughout the world, finding: “It follows that, currently, there is no obligation under EU law, for a search engine operator who grants a request for de-referencing made by a data subject … to carry out such a de-referencing on all the versions of its search engine.” Some experts, however, pointed to another line in the opinion, which refused to rule out a worldwide application: “EU law does not currently require that the de-referencing granted concern all versions of the search engine in question, it also does not prohibit such a practice.” Meanwhile, in October, the same court ruled that EU courts can force Facebook to remove specific posts on all versions of its site internationally if said posts violate national laws. “This judgment raises critical questions around freedom of expression and the role that internet companies should play in monitoring, interpreting and removing speech that might be illegal in any particular country,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement. “It undermines the long-standing principle that one country does not have the right to impose its laws on speech on another country.”
7. Keep an Eye on China
The country is rapidly moving forward with several technological innovations, including blockchain, all-virtual internet specialty courts and, most controversially, DNA surveillance. In February, the New York Times reported that the government set up “free physicals for all,” took DNA swabs from the patients that showed, and then put them into a DNA tracking database built, in part, with help from a Massachusetts-based company. The Times reported that the information was used to track ethnic minorities, primarily Uighur Muslims, in the name of national security. Then, in December, China instituted a rule requiring all citizens to get their faces scanned by telecommunications carriers before they can sign up for mobile telephone service or access the internet. The government’s rationale, is to “safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of citizens in the cyberspace” and prevent fraud, according to Quartz.
https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/top-7-legal-tech-stories-from-the-journal-in-2019/
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Automating Manual Processes: Some of the Latest Applications to Consider
Many articles have addressed the fact that recent advances in legal technology allow law firms to enhance the delivery of their legal services by automating manual processes using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These advances provide significant reductions in overhead expenses, execution timelines, and productivity.
As the legal tech community continues to grow through acquisitions and greater funding over the last decade, the legal sector saw the birth of many legal tech startups looking to solve the problem of “how to help law firms do more with less.” This is now possible with many low-cost automation tools available in the market today.
The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that 23% of a lawyer’s job can be automated with current technology. Eliminating manual processes through automation will give your law firm an advantage to more efficiently assist your clients and to attract new business.
This article explores some of the latest advances in legal task automation.
Contracts
Contract and document review are a long and time-consuming process, especially when doing so manually. Reviewing contracts requires a careful eye to avoid mistakes or to not miss a detail, as well as safely sharing the contract or document with the necessary parties. For these reasons, a wide variety of contract and document automation tools were created.
Manually reviewing contracts is a process in itself. Legal tech tools like Kira Systems automates the process altogether. From beginning to end, its machine learning and artificial intelligence assists you to help review projects quicker, investing less time and effort doing so, as well as eliminating the possibility of human error. Its users have reported time savings of 20-40% for first-time users, and up to 90% for those with more experience.
Similarly, Elevate, a legal services provider, saved a client $500,000 and eliminated over 5,000 hours of contract review and analysis using Kira and advanced workflows. Quick returns, better results—sounds like a win-win and a very happy client.
Once the contract or document review is completed, and the contract is executed, guaranteeing and enforcing performance often created new challenges.
With room for improvement, “smart contracts” came in to play.
Smart contracts use blockchain technology to help you exchange money, property or anything of value in a transparent and conflict-free way without dealing with or paying intermediaries. Imagine the time saved and the conflicts averted by utilizing smart contracts to facilitate, verify or enforce the performance of a contract automatically?
Time Entries
Entering and keeping track of hours worked can be the bane of most lawyers.
Aderant’s Marie Burgess states “lawyers work on multiple matters often for multiple clients on any given day. It’s time-consuming and challenging to reconstruct what they worked on at the end of a long day… This may well compound the problem because many of us have a hard time remembering what we did yesterday, let alone what we did last week, or even several weeks ago.”
Time entries can be automated to eliminate the frustration associated with entering time. These tools work to streamline the process altogether, improving accuracy, eliminating lost time and it provides greater transparency.
With applications like Smokeball, your law firm can automate the manual process of entering time. Its application automates time and activity tracking, document automation, and seamlessly integrates with Word and Outlook. Small firms on average see a 34% increase in profitability using Smokeball’s software.
Other platforms like Time by Ping, focusing on large law firms, automate timekeeping through building a timesheet for the lawyer and analyzing the time data for the firm. Another application called BillerAssist increases revenues by using machine learning to prevent non-billable work and ensure compliance with client billing rules.
Task Coding
Does your practice focus mainly on insurance, institutional, or corporate clients? Your prayers may be answered with automated task-based coding. With the emergence of Unified Task Based Management System and the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard, clarity was brought to billing.
Lawyers that manually deal with UTBMS/LEDES coding are all too familiar with the hassle of searching through a drop-down menu list to find the correct code associated with the task you are billing for.
An application called LedesAssist eliminates the headache all together with automated UTBMS/LEDES coding. The application automatically codes your entries as you bill, or process an entire month’s worth of entries in a matter of minutes. With this cutting-edge technology, lawyers can enter their time, and have compliant task coded invoices, easier and more efficiently.
According to Rocket Matter, 30% of law firm work is left uncollected because of the hassles associated with LEDES billing. Automating this function will save your law firm time and money.
Research
Legal research is another time-consuming manual process, and the process of sifting through statutes, regulations, case law, and other legal authorities to extract key quotations is tedious. However, automation tools that exist today to conduct legal research as well.
For example, let’s take a look at Ross Intelligence, a legal research platform powered by artificial intelligence. A bankruptcy partner at a Miami firm decided to go toe-to-toe with this legal research application to see what the outcome would be. The result was, “[a]fter 10 hours of searching online legal databases, he found a case whose facts nearly mirrored the one he was working on. Ross found that case almost instantly.”
The value is clear and the results are accurate. Imagine notifying your client that you completed the necessary legal research on the matter in minutes, not hours or days? Your client will be pleased, and will most likely give you more work.
Furthermore, if you think that your legal research skills are superior and that you do not need the assistance of artificial intelligence, you might want to consider a recent ruling by a court in Canada.
In his ruling, the judge penalized two lawyers for failing to use AI to assist their case, resulting in overbilling. As noted in Robert Ambrogi’s Above the law article, the judge stated that if AI sources were used, the counsel’s preparation time would have been significantly reduced. After cutting the requested disbursements, the judge eliminated the entire amount sought for legal research, ruling that”[i]f artificial intelligence sources were employed, no doubt counsel’s preparation time would have been significantly reduced.”
Moving Forward
Automating your manual processes to enhance the delivery of your legal services will benefit your law firm in many ways. The time and money saved are clearly evident when automating manual processes, as well as the increase in efficiency and accuracy that legal technology offers.
Early adopters can stay ahead of the curve staying up-to-date on the latest legal tech tools the market has to offer through researching online, as well as attending one of the many legal tech conferences like the Clio Cloud Conference, the ABA TECHSHOW, and more.
Law firms should be proactive and not reactive to find solutions that improve workflows to do more with less. Early adopters who are at the forefront of improving their processes become more attractive to their clients and to potential ones in the future.
The post Automating Manual Processes: Some of the Latest Applications to Consider appeared first on Law Technology Today.
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Efficiency is the Name of the Game… or Is It?
Everyone wants to be efficient. Doesn’t matter what you are doing. And let’s face it, we’re all a bit stressed out. We all need more downtime.
So, how does technology give attorneys more downtime? Can you be efficient and keep clients happy? Because that’s the goal.
Legal tech is a tool built specifically for that reason; however, it is a tool, not the focus of your practice. The right software supports attorneys and clients. And yes, efficiency is important, but not as important as client confidence.
What We’re Up Against
Clients already come into the legal process a bit worried. In Clio’s most recent Legal Trends Report, 46% of clients feel anxiety when dealing with their legal matters. Additionally, 40% of clients report feeling frustration.
The good news is attorneys have an accurate perception of clients’ feelings of anxiety. But there’s a sizable gap when it comes to frustration, with attorneys estimating that only 8% of clients feel frustrated. That tells you something… based on our experience with clients, the frustration stems from lack of insight to their case. But we will come back to that later.
Suffice it to say, regardless of the perception gap on frustration, the real concern is the emotional state of clients and how attorneys can help alleviate those issues.
What You Can Do
First, recognize your clients’ concerns. Having an open dialogue, where clients aren’t worried about being ‘“on the clock,” can get things started on the right foot. Let them share their questions and concerns. After all, most people don’t have extensive experience in managing legal matters. And the topic area is likely one of contention if they are hiring an attorney.
You can also gather some great information that has already been developed to help clients understand some of the basics of any legal case. Whether it’s documents about options in legal billing or a description of the various roles in your practice, information is key to understanding.
Although they may still have concerns, at least being uninformed isn’t one of them. So, how can attorneys provide the clients’ necessary case updates and still be efficient? Technology is the right tool. But make sure it’s the right technology.
Peace of Mind for Clients, Efficiency for Attorneys
Back to that efficiency thing. Yes, attorneys can be more efficient with legal tech. And clients can be more informed and therefore a bit more at ease. But that’s just the beginning.
Many attorneys spend quite a bit of time keeping clients up to date on their case, and rightly so, for all the reasons we just reviewed. But, what if clients can be informed and attorneys can save time? In fact, attorneys report a savings of 25% of their time keeping clients informed and improved client satisfaction when using legal tech.
But that is just the beginning of the benefits. Document management, client communications, co-counsel, referral, appointments, invoicing, payments, and so much more are seriously streamlined. In fact, one firm reported increasing attorney productivity to the point of handling three times the number of cases with the same staff. And they kept their clients happy at the same time.
Legal tech isn’t about efficiency alone. It’s about attorneys having a growing, productive, and efficient firm while delivering superior client care. Technology can do a lot of things but increasing client satisfaction takes both tech and some human touch.
For more information on how legal technology can make your cases simple, visit the SimpleLaw at Booth #904 at the 2019 ABA TECHSHOW.
This is a guest post from SimpleLaw. Visit them at ABA TECHSHOW in the EXPO Hall at Booth #904 and learn more about the Conference.
The post Efficiency is the Name of the Game… or Is It? appeared first on Law Technology Today.
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A Future Of J.D. Advantage Jobs?
It’s been a lucrative year for legal tech. We’re closing in on $1 billion in investment for 2018 with significant capital contributions from high-flying investors like Mark Cuban (undisclosed investment in pro bono facilitator, Paladin), Kobe Bryant ($500 million financing round in LegalZoom from his fund and others) and Justin Kan (raised $65 million for legal start up, Atrium).
That’s just naming a few.
These are big, financial wins for the legal entrepreneurs building the companies now set to reshape the legal services industry. But, they’re also equally big wins for those “misfit” lawyers and law school graduates who increasingly find themselves disillusioned with traditional practice – veering towards a new category of “J.D. Advantage” jobs for which a law degree is strongly preferred, but not necessarily required.
Might the future be in fact filled with J.D. Advantage jobs?
Here are a few worth pondering.
Director of Legal Technology Sales Starting Salary: $110,000 + Commission
Venture firms wouldn’t be going in on legal tech to the tune of millions of dollars if they didn’t expect see 5x to 10x returns on investment. The pressure to “sell, sell, sell” legal tech solutions will lead to the rise of the new J.D. preferred Director of Legal Technology Sales role.
Increasingly, legal tech sales are driven by demand from lawyers as opposed to non-lawyers. This is especially true in B2B markets and belies the conventional headline that technology will replace lawyers by selling solutions to those without law degrees. More and more solutions are being consumed by law firms and in house counsels looking to boost competitiveness. Who better to sell legal tech to lawyers than other lawyers?
Enter the Director of Legal Technology Sales role, responsible for legal tech solution selling and strategy. Tasks for this role include presenting sales materials to potential legal client customers, leading product demonstrations, Q/As and providing critical feedback back to internal engineering teams for product enhancement. A J.D. is preferred for the Director Legal Technology Sales who must properly evaluate the practicality of tools designed to improve some aspect of legal services and establish credibility in product pitches to potential legal customers.
Ethical A.I. Designer & Manager Starting Salary: $250,000
Artificial Intelligence solutions have entered the legal market and are being deployed to automate many aspects of practice. Of the almost $1 billion in new legal tech investment raised this year, roughly half ($355 million) has gone to Legal A.I. ventures.
Legal A.I. is busy becoming competent at many traditional legal tasks (like contract review, document drafting and due diligence). However, it still requires an experienced attorney to program, manage and correct it along the way. There also remain legitimate questions as to whether a software system can ethically practice law if not under the supervision of an attorney. For these reasons, we’ll need to recruit, hire and train for a new, highly specialized role tasked with designing and watching over Legal A.I.
The Ethical A.I. Designer & Manager will advise and supervise machine learning teams working on Legal A.I. projects. They will act as subject matter experts, helping engineers identify the proper inputs and workflows to ultimately apply this powerful new automation technology to live practice. Post deployment, they will work with customers on A.I. implementation and practice integration, and manage and correct any errors made by the Legal A.I. system to ensure its continual learning and development.
Public and private entities will be tempted to apply A.I. to dispute resolution, leading to the emergence of “Smart Judges” and “Automated Arbiters” issuing A.I. supported legal opinions and formal dispositions. This is why it’s especially critical for Ethical Legal A.I. Designer & Managers to be well-versed in the ethical rules of legal practice.
Chief Innovation Officer (Law Firm or Law School) Starting Salary: $180,000
Recent investments in legal tech will rapidly accelerate innovation, as well as the need for both law firms and law schools to undergo both “digital” and “cultural” transformations to keep pace with consumer trends.
No law firm will be immune to disruption. As pointed out by legal futurist Richard Susskind in Priori’s recent interview, smaller firms will “struggle for survival” in the short term unless they “radically change what they do.” Medium and large firms also face brutal competition with alternative legal service providers, like Priori, and the Big Four accounting firms. The pressure on law schools to evolve for their very survival is similar. Law schools failing to adequately prepare students for the future through innovative coursework and technical work-study programs will watch employment figures decline, along with applications.
The crucial role, therefore, of the Chief Innovation Officer is to ensure the needed organizational transformations take place, including both digital and cultural changes. This demands critical examinations and the identification of strategic projects designed to ensure long term success. Examples on the “digital” side may include implementation of enhanced knowledge management and work collaboration platforms. On the “cultural” innovation side, it may include a new talent acquisition strategy, promoting diversity efforts, and social media engagement. The Chief Innovation Officer must also be intimately familiar with the latest products and solutions offered by competing organizations to ensure strategic competitiveness in the rocky years ahead.
Virtual Courtroom Designer
Starting Salary: $90,000
Lastly, the future of justice is looking virtual. Online dispute resolution platforms and courts are on the rise.
We recently learned that they’re the subject of Richard Susskind’s next book. Susskind predicts that 15 years from now our courts will be “changed beyond recognition.” We’re already seeing legal tech start ups attacking the larger social problem of the high cost of dispute administration and resolution. Take for example, FairClaims, the downtown LA based start up offering a vastly cheaper means to resolve small claims disputes through an online portal. The ability to one day integrate virtual courts with legal practice dashboards like Practice Panther and Clio will further reduce the need for physical congregation in actual reality (“AR”) courts, providing compelling incentives for public and private institutions to experiment with and one day implement online dispute resolution portals.
Designing our virtual courts of the future will not be left entirely to user-experience (or “UX”) designers and “VR artists” without law degrees. Virtual Courtroom Designers with J.Ds will be responsible for ensuring online dispute resolution platforms retain the essential characteristics of due process, including proper evidentiary and civil procedure rules. They will also be tasked with collaborating with VR artists directly on re-creating a virtual court system consistent with modern legal norms and advising on any applicable State or Federal requirements.
A Future Full of J.D. Advantage Jobs?
The sizable legal tech investments we’re seeing in 2018 are likely to continue for many years to come, accelerating the advent and adoption of many new types of law jobs. Many of these new jobs I predict will be in the form of J.D. Advantage jobs.
The more I think about it, the more plausible it seems that the legal services industry will soon see more law school graduates working in J.D. Advantage jobs as opposed to practicing as traditional licensed attorneys.
The end result may be an advantage to all of us.
Ian Connett, Esq. (@QuantumJurist) is the Founder of QuantumJurist, Inc., a LegalTech consulting and technology venture dedicated to improving and creating efficiencies in the legal services industry. Ian is also a Contributing Editor to the EvolveTheLaw.com Legal Innovation Center and Host of the Evolve the Law Podcast. Ian resides in New York, where he has served as an in-house counsel to numerous technology companies. You can connect with Ian on Twitter and LinkedIn and you can reach him by email at [email protected] (for story ideas, personal correspondence, media inquires or speaking engagements).
A Future Of J.D. Advantage Jobs? republished via Above the Law
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TECHREPORT 2018: Solo and Small Firm
The Solo and Small Firm report is sponsored by Clio.
The annual ABA TECHREPORT combines data from the annual Legal Technology Survey Report with expert analysis, observations, and predictions from leaders in the legal technology field. For the first time, we are bringing TECHREPORT to Law Technology Today for you. Every Monday we’ll be posting a new report from one of our experts, so stay tuned!
In the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center’s 2018 Legal Technology Survey Report volumes “Technology Basics & Security” and “Law Office Technology,” the light continues to shine on the intricacies of adoption and usage of technology in the modern law firm. 30% of the respondents to the 2018 Survey are sole practitioners and 29% are lawyers in firms with 2 to 9 attorneys. Almost half of the responses come from sole practitioners and small firm lawyers.
This article will explore findings for solo and small firms and highlight trends and information relating to small firms. As solo and small firms make up the largest demographic of US lawyers, both in general and by percentage of those surveyed, this article can be a reference when exploring the habits and technology usage among them compared to that of their colleagues in larger firms.
The full report contains much more demographic trend information on practice areas and fee structures in use by sole practitioners and small firms with 2 to 9 lawyers. One interesting statistic to follow is that of fixed fees; when looking to determine the state of the billable hour, solos have the highest percentage of fixed fees at 22%, with 2 to 9 attorney firms next at 15%. Despite this, 69% of firms responding continue to rely upon hourly billing methods. Direct technology conclusions may not be directly drawn, but it is a trend to consider when regarding future technology surveys.
Basic Technology
Among the respondents, Windows 10 was chosen over the Mac OS by most solo and small law firms. The number of users now using Windows 10 has grown from 46% in the past year to 59%. This growth is noteworthy, as Microsoft has enhanced its market share. Particularly, the Office 365 platform has shown maturity as an option for more and more law offices.
Apple’s Mac OS is not as widely used, but 14% of solos reported using Mac OS as their primary operating system and 9% of the firms with 2 to 9 lawyers did. 8% of all lawyer respondents are using Macs, and while this number is holding steady around where it has been over the last several years, the level of loyalty to the Apple brand continues to have a grip among some of the smaller law firms and solo lawyers.
Most firms are still using laptops for law-related tasks. 77% overall are using laptops, and in the small firm space responses were at 82% for solos and 73% for firms with 2 to 9 attorneys.
iPads are still the most popular device among tablet devices for the lawyers surveyed. 77% percent of the respondents naming their product’s brand chose the iPad as their tablet. Microsoft Surface products took second place among user respondents and were up to 22% from 18% in 2017. The rise in users of Surface tablet devices might be the result of more firms looking at the Microsoft brand. This would be consistent with the large number of Windows 10 users who might seek a tablet device utilizing that operating system.
Eighty-six percent of firms with 2 to 9 attorneys have a server available to them where only 48% of the solos responding have servers available. It will be interesting to see if this server availability divide shrinks as more cloud computing is adopted.
Remote access continues to grow in usage with 84% of respondents indicating it is available for their firm. This, along with the 99% of users who continue to find email available in their firms for communication, indicates that much of the legal work continues to happen in the digital age. E-mail has not changed by an increase or decrease over the last year. However, contact systems were in place at 77% for solos and 89% for lawyers in firms of 2 to 9 lawyers.
Document assembly availability remained steady at 44% for solos and 47% for firms of 2 to 9 attorneys, with the actual use of such programs at 34% and 30% respectively. Looking at these numbers, both the work in the digital world and the adoption of systems across office space continues slowly.
Web-based Services and Cloud Computing
Fifty-five percent of respondents say they have used cloud computing technology for work-related tasks. Usage is up by 2% overall since last year, and up 17% over the numbers for 2016. This trajectory has stabilized a bit versus the rapid growth between 2015 and 2016. Still, 59% of solos and 58% of lawyers in firms of 2 to 9 lawyers indicated they use cloud computing for legal work-related tasks. The cloud services named specifically in the survey include products for online document storage, file sharing, collaboration, and to a much lesser degree, practice management solutions. As the market continues to develop services to be consumed via the internet, it is likely this move toward the cloud will continue steadily.
Security precautions and measures undertaken by firms also remain stable, with only 13% of respondents saying they use no precautions for their data. Yet, the adoption of cloud computing has brought with it measures like reviews of privacy policies, regular local data backups, reviews of terms of service, ethics rules and opinions review, and advice from law firm peers.
The most cited benefits of using cloud computing for law-related tasks include easy browser access from anywhere and 24/7 availability. These benefits are cited by 68% and 59% of respondents respectively as most important, closely followed by the low-cost for cloud services at 48%; robust data backup and recovery at 46%; quick to get up and running at 40%; eliminating IT and software management requirements at 34%, and better security at 31%. Interestingly, only 8% indicated no benefit from cloud computing programs.
Sixty-three percent of respondents felt confidentiality and security were their biggest concerns. When compared the general consensus regarding perceived benefits, only two things were cited by more than 25% of respondents: confidentiality and security and the lack of control over data. Likewise, among those not using cloud-based services, these concerns were seen at 56% and 40% respectively as what has prevented them from adopting these solutions.
Only 10% of respondents indicated they would be replacing traditional software or services with the cloud-based alternative in the next 12 months. This percentage includes 5% of solos and 15% of lawyers in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys. These numbers are only up by 1% and 3% respectively over last year’s numbers.
Data Protection and Security
Thirty-three percent of the solos and 51.2% of those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys said they had data retention policies in place. Regarding where lawyers back up their files, solos most often chose external hard drives. 58.1% of solos and 41.5% of those in firms with 2 to 9 attorneys use this method. Offsite storage is used by 18.5% of solos and 33.8% of lawyers in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys. Online backup is used by 38.5% of solos and 39.6% by those in firms with 2 to 9 attorneys.
When asked if they use any password management tool, 26.6% of solos and 22.9% of those in firms with 2 to 9 attorneys indicated that they did. Interestingly, 70.1% of solos and 63.2% of those in firms with 2 to 9 attorneys do not make use of this security measure. Perhaps the idea of this precaution being too cumbersome has some credibility among solos and those in smaller firms, even though 30.6% of solos and 47.7% of those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys say they have been infected by a virus, spyware or malware.
Fourteen percent of solos and 24.2% of those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys have experienced a breach, but no significant business disruption or loss was reported by 65.8% of the solos and 65.1% of those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys. Perhaps this is why cybersecurity insurance is held by 26.6% of solos and 36.1% of those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys.
Technology Budgeting and Education
Over 60% of the respondents say they are required under ethical competency rules to stay abreast of the benefits and risk of technology. This was true for both solos and those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys.
For technology purchasing decisions, lawyers are most influenced by various informational sources, from print ads to CLE programs and peers. Solos are most influenced by consultants, with 32.7% saying they were very influential. In firms of 2 to 9 attorneys, 43% say they are most influenced by staff feedback. The next most influential source for solos were their peers, at 30.7%, and consultants at 41.8% for those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys.
More than 39% of solos and 40.9% of those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys found training on firm technology to be important. Despite these numbers continuing to hover around 40%, the growth in this area seems bleak because as surveyed, when lawyers need or want to learn about technology, they first search Google or another online source—solos would first search Google or another online source by 33.3% and those in firms of 2 to 9 attorneys look to Google or another source at 27.2% after first asking their IT staff first at 44.7%.
Conclusion
Even though legal technology continues to grow in products and services, and particularly in the area of viable cloud-based systems, the adoption rates still remain low. This seems to be the case again for solo and small firm lawyers, even though they are the ones most likely to be in a position to more freely and easily choose, learn, train, and use technology for law-related work. Future growth, while certain, is also likely to continue to happen at a relatively slow pace.
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Clio CEO to Give Keynote Address at SBM NEXT Conference - Michigan Top Lawyers
Clio CEO to Give Keynote Address at SBM NEXT Conference
Jack Newton, CEO and Founder of Clio, will kick off the State Bar of Michigan NEXT Conference with a keynote address at 9 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 27.
Newton is a pioneer in cloud-based practice management with more than 150,000 legal professionals in 130 countries depending on Clio’s software every day. Newton has been recognized as EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and Clio has been named to Deloitte’s Best Managed Companies, the Deloitte Fast 50, Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures and more. Newton has spearheaded efforts to educate the legal community on issues surrounding cloud computing, including security, ethics and privacy, and has become an internationally recognized writer and speaker. He is cofounder and president of the Legal Cloud Computing Association, a consortium of leading cloud computing providers with a mandate to help accelerate the adoption of cloud computing in the legal industry.
Newton’s keynote presentation, “The 2018 Legal Trends Every Michigan Lawyer Must Know,” will uncover the findings that impact Michigan lawyers straight from Clio’s Annual Legal Trends Report, the most extensive data-driven report of its kind in the legal industry. Learn how you can build a data-driven law firm by leveraging key performance indicators, and review data from a large-scale consumer that reveals rapidly shifting consumer expectations. This talk will leave you inspired to deliver legal services in innovative and competitive ways, and will provide insights into how you can drive new business in an increasingly competitive world by adapting to rapidly shifting consumer behavior.
Don’t miss Jack Newton’s keynote speech at #SBMNext. Save your spot at SBM NEXT Conference.
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See more at https://www.michigantoplawyers.com/clio-ceo-to-give-keynote-address-at-sbm-next-conference-2/
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Podcast #139: 14 Low-Cost Ways to Improve Your SEO Profile, with Jeff Skrysak
In this episode, Jeff Skrysak lists 14 things you can do to improve your SEO profile that don’t cost much money. (They do require a bit of effort, though.)
Give each page a good, relevant title (HTML tag).
Write good content for each page, and give each a good meta description.
If you use WordPress, install the Yoast SEO plugin.
Create a directory structure for your pages that is descriptive and makes sense.
Get listed on Google Maps for better local search.
Ask your clients to leave a review on your Google listing (need a Google+ account).
Match your Google+ account to your website.
Create content around topics that are rarely discussed on other websites about your practice area.
Create Facebook and LinkedIn pages for your law firm, and update them regularly, including with links back to your website.
Write blog posts.
Link to other websites.
Use photos on every page and post.
Do not make your law firm website all about you.
Use headings in your pages and posts!
Jeff Skrysak
Jeff is a former IT professional who practices in estate planning and business law in Oregon. He is both an attorney and legal solutions architect, which means he uses his software engineering skills to automate and improve all aspects of a lawyers’s business.
To listen to the podcast, just scroll up and hit the play button (or click the link to this post if you are reading this by email).
Transcript
This transcript was prepared by Rev.com.
Voiceover: Welcome to the Lawyerist Podcast with Sam Glover and Aaron Street. Each week, Lawyerist brings you advice and interviews to help you build a more successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Now here are Sam and Aaron.
Sam Glover: Hi, I’m Sam Glover.
Aaron Street: I’m Aaron Street and this is episode 139 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, we’re talking with Jeff Skrysak who has 14 things you can do to make your website more visible that don’t cost much money.
Sam Glover: Today’s podcast is sponsored by Ruby Receptionists and it’s smart, charming receptionists who are perfect for small firms. Visit callruby.com/lawyerist to get a risk-free trial with Ruby.
Aaron Street: Today’s podcast is also sponsored by Clio Legal Practice Management Software. Clio makes running your law firm easier. Try it for free today at clio.com. Sam, on today’s episode, you and Jeff are going to talk about some low cost webs or no cost website improvements, lawyers can consider including a bunch of advice on kind of specific tactics for search engine optimization and rankings improvements and stuff.
Aaron Street: Rather than jumping in right into kind of the dirt, I’d love to step back a bit and talk about marketing goals. You and I have talked a bit about how too many lawyers think that marketing means being known as Dallas divorce lawyer and that they then spend all of their marketing time and advertising dollars on things like billboards or even search engine optimization and Google ads for Dallas divorce lawyer and that I think that isn’t how a lot of clients find lawyers.
Aaron Street: That there are different ways lots of lawyers should be thinking about how they do marketing.
Sam Glover: Yeah, my kind of thinking about it is that advertising and marketing yourself as so and so personal injury lawyer whatever, works great if you’re trying to be there when people are shopping for a lawyer, but shopping for a lawyer is the last thing that people do in their process of trying to solve their problems.
Aaron Street: Yeah, I mean if you’d think about, there’s a lot of kind of terminology in the marketing and sales world generally around kind of the customer journey, but the concept is the perfectly applicable to a client journey, which is people start not being aware they have a problem. Then they have some sort of epiphany or realization over time that there’s a problem and then they start trying to figure out what the solution to that problem is. Then they start trying to figure out who and where that problem can be solved and then they start doing buying decisions about trying to find places, trying to figure out prices and features et cetera.
I think so many lawyers jump into a client’s journey near the end of once they’re looking for Dallas divorce lawyer, I want to be the one they find rather than providing advice, content, relationships, networking, online tools, offline tools, teaching et cetera, to move kind of front further forward in that journey where you’re helping people who don’t yet know they have a problem, figure out what their problems might be. You’re helping people who just have a sense they have a problem, figure out what the solutions might be before they’re shopping at all.
Sam Glover: Yeah, I mean in order to get your ahead around search engine marketing, I think it helps to remember that search engines are massive question answering machines and so the people who do well in search engine marketing are people who have the answers or the information that people are looking for before they start looking for the information about who to hire and yeah, move yourself up the client journey. I think thinking about your client’s journey is a great way to start identifying more opportunities. Jeff and I are going to talk a little bit about it in a minute, but I think just changing the way you think about what you’re trying to do with your marketing, not just advertising, but actually being the question and answer person so that people find you before they’re ready to hire can be really helpful.
Aaron Street: If we want to get really deep, I would even go a step further and say it’s even more about the client’s experience, which is every touch point with you should facilitate, reinforcing your brand identity, reputation along the entire client journey, which actually doesn’t end with the shopping for a lawyer.
Sam Glover: Yeah, fair point.
Aaron Street: It then goes into intake and interaction and working on the case and closing the case and whatever follow ups happen after that. Those are all part of the continuous journey and that you want to reinforce your brand and reputation and client expectations consistently throughout that entire path. It’s worth also thinking about the fact that these are all people and so doing robotic marketing around Dallas divorce lawyer, may or may not actually relate to the people who are asking questions of Google.
Sam Glover: Right, yeah. I think it’s worth expanding your idea of the problems that your clients are trying to solve beyond just the legal problem in general and then helping them with those things all the way from the beginning. If you’ve already helped somebody, they’re going to have a much easier time walking into your office and writing you a check in the end, and if you take care of them and make that journey, that experience easy and as effortless as possible throughout, then you’re going to win and that should start with your marketing. With all that in mind as backdrop, here are some concrete tips from Jeff and our conversation about those and I will put the list of tips up on the show notes. Here’s the conversation.
Jeff Skrysak: I’m Jeff Skrysak. I’m an attorney in Oregon and a former IT professional so I get to help clients and law firms automate their processes and improve all aspects of their business, backend and front end.
Sam Glover: Jeff, you’re sort of an alumni by association because Kristin LaMont was on our podcast a while back, talking about the firm and you work with her.
Jeff Skrysak: I do. She was a professor of mine in law school and I took one of her classes and did really well. What she teaches and what she sort of searches for in terms of client service and internal back office work is exactly what I love to do so we connected.
Sam Glover: Cool, and so what is your day to day look like then when you’re, I assume you do some client representation, but when you’re trying to architect legal solutions, I mean how do you approach that?
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, well, I’ve been working in IT for 15 years before going to law school and so I do at the law firm, what I used to do as an IT professional, which is this, I sit down and I talk with staff, internal staff and I find out what they do. I want to improve their life, improve the processes, not do something different, but look at where the road blocks are in terms of too much time spent on something or their frustrations and see if technology can’t improve it in some way and make it faster, make their life easier whatever it might be. How that comes to play is on a day to day basis, I might automate templates so instead of copy, pasting into a contract, we use software instead that stores client information and it inserts automatically.
Sam Glover: It sounds like so, at your firm, it sounds like you’ve institutionalized the taking time to step back and look at things at a systems level and then make those improvements where many lawyers just never get that kind of a perspective on, they just can’t get away from their day to day work to do that systems level work, but it sounds like that’s basically your job.
Jeff Skrysak: That’s correct. That’s what I do on a day to day basis. I do see clients, but I’m really dedicated to helping us being more efficient and building systems to do that and it’s working out pretty well so far.
Sam Glover: Very cool. Today, we were going to talk about search engine optimization, which we haven’t talked about in the podcast in a while, but we’re going to talk about it from a very nuts and bolts perspective and maybe it’s always probably worth backing up and saying what is search engine optimization, and we’ll probably just call it SEO from here on, so what is SEO and why should lawyers care about it?
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, SEO is a fancy way of saying we want search engines to find me when someone searches for a certain question or a certain piece of information like keywords. We want them to find us, that search engine to find us and so how you do that is you optimize your website so that it’s more friendly to Google or Bing or whatever search engine you like. It’s going to be cataloged in a sense in that search engine’s database and then found with higher relevance so basically it shoots up to the first page.
Sam Glover: I’ve been thinking about SEO in my own way since, and I’m building websites since SEO was something we used to talk about AltaVista. Back then, it was really about making sure that you had the right meta tags on your page so you’re telling AltaVista this is a page about law and specifically, personal injury law or whatever and obviously, that was really easy to game and the search engines got more sophisticated and so the ways that you started needing to craft your page to help the search engines understand it changed and now it’s a big discipline, but you’re right. It still boils down to helping search engines read your stuff so they can figure out what it’s about so they can show relevant results to visitors.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, it’s exactly right and those AltaVista related tips still apply, but they’re almost like a fundamental base line. You have to get way more sophisticated now.
Sam Glover: Well, so the idea today is we wanted to give a collection of tips to lawyers that you can probably do yourself and that you might even be able to do while you’re listening to the podcast and so that you can bring yourself up to a baseline. For those who know about it, our annual websites contest, we’re looking for baseline stuff like if your homepage still is called home, then we’re flagging that as well, you probably haven’t done any work on this. Let’s just start, what’s the first thing that you should probably be looking at on websites?
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, well, that’s it. You touched on it, the give each page a good relevant title. It shouldn’t be just home. A bad example is Home or Jones Law, or as a better example is Jones Law Construction and Employment Law in Athens, Georgia, because that gives you some kind of context. It’s in Georgia so it applies to me if I’m in Georgia or it doesn’t apply to me if I’m in Florida for example.
Sam Glover: It’s the SEO version of your elevator speech, right? You’re trying to tell Google who you are and what you do in a short sentence, right?
Jeff Skrysak: Correct, yes and this is sort of where people stop short when they come to content as well. When you take this elevator speech carried over, it does meta tags I believe that you referred to.
Jeff Skrysak: If you can edit them [crosstalk 00: 10: 55]
Sam Glover: The meta keywords is no longer a thing, but yeah.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, and so the content of the page will then follow that too so when you write the content for the page, don’t just say keywords that are familiar to you such as employment law. The regular person out there doesn’t really understand what that means and so you’re going to flesh that out as you go.
Sam Glover: It’s my understanding that Google in particular has gotten a lot more sophisticated about how it looks at your content on your page when it comes to things like keyword density. It used to be that you could just add up the number of times you said personal injury on the page and call it a day and now my understanding is Google understands both what words mean and that they have synonyms and that there are other words that you’re probably talking about if you’re talking about that thing and so my understanding is that when you, keywords are a fundamental place to start. If you’re not talking about personal injury on a website that’s about personal injury, you’re probably doing it wrong, but you should probably also be using words like accident and insurance and doctor and car, automobile, whatever. It’s going to expect to see those terms around the central keyword. Does that sound right?
Jeff Skrysak: It does sound right and so one of the things that I like to tell people is there’s two competing interests here. There is you, the attorney, and you want people to call you, ultimately call you and become a client. Google has a different interest. It’s related in some sense, but it’s different. Google wants to provide relevant results and answers to questions and so as an attorney, we don’t want to provide free answers so we don’t want to put content out there that has all these words that you just described, right?
Jeff Skrysak: We just want to say employment law and then put a phone number and hope they call or a personal injury and hope they call, and so [inaudible 00: 12: 40] is to think about what Google wants. Google wants good content for human beings and so.
Sam Glover: Google wants the same things your potential clients want.
Jeff Skrysak: That’s exactly right.
Sam Glover: Ideally, right?
Jeff Skrysak: Ideally, so some good Google indexing tips for SEO are to write a lot of content so it’s not just a certain number of keywords, but it’s a certain number of sentences and paragraphs. We want to reward people not just for finding you, but for sticking around and reading your page. Google is measuring that now. They’re measuring how long people stay.
Sam Glover: You know one of the things that I think about too is when you’re writing a post or creating a page on your website, when you’re drafting that content, think about what are people coming for and I think a lot of lawyers are under the mistaken impression that most consumers are shopping for lawyers online.
Sam Glover: Right, like I think most lawyers think that, I went to Google to find a divorce lawyer, but while that may be true for some people, I think what’s more likely true is people go turn to Google for answers about things related to the problems that they’re having and so like I’m going to go to, before I start looking for a divorce lawyer, I’m probably going to start looking for advice on how to save my marriage and if you are publishing advice about how to save a marriage, then you’re going to get those people to your website and so I think it’s important to think about like, what are the kinds of problems that or the kinds of answers that my potential clients are going to be using Google to search for and how can I give them those answers so that they already know who I am when they finally realize that a lawyer can help them, or maybe I need to be the one who can tell them that a lawyer can help them.
The internet is not Amazon for law practices. The internet is where people go to find answers and so you need to provide those answers and there’s your idea for all the content that should be on your website.
Jeff Skrysak: Absolutely correct. I don’t want to bring up a source subject for any of us, but I say treat it like a law school essay. The professor doesn’t know what you know. You have to show them what you know so write it.
Jeff Skrysak: Write out everything. A good example of the Ron Swanson blog article post that I wrote, in the TV show, Ron Swanson pulled out a piece of a paper and it says Last Will and Testament, and he wrote it when he was nine, and he said and then he read it aloud and it had some weird symbols on it and it was hand written and it said, “I give everything I own to the man or animal that kills me.”, and it was just 20 or 30 seconds, but I wrote for pages and pages on it, can a handwritten will be recognized? Was he old enough to actually be able to write a will? Can an animal take property from an estate, especially if it had been the one that killed him or not and things like that.
You get to explore out these avenues just from something that’s funny, but it’s only about 10 to 20 seconds so I say pick a topic. Is it a personal injury thing? Is it a DUI thing? Whatever it is, and then write about it. Just explore all these aspects, tell me about the law, show me what you know because people are searching for answers and Google is going to index that and when they do search to find answers to those questions, they’ll find you.
Sam Glover: I guess it’s also worth sort of reiterating, the only way that people are going to find your law firm website in most cases is by searching for it. There are certainly law firms who’ve done better jobs of building followings on social media and things like that, but for most law firms most of the time, the way people find your website is by searching for it and so this is really what you need to be focused on. Let’s keep moving forward here, so what’s another thing that people can do?
Jeff Skrysak: The other thing is when you create content, put it in a good directory structure, folder structure. Let’s say you have a domain lawfirm.com and you write about contempt of court so if it’s lawfirm.com/familylaw/contemptofcourt, so Google is actually going to be smart enough to know that that’s a family law topic and then it’s contempt of court so it’s pretty quick and easy. Yeah, the thing you can do-
Sam Glover: Yeah, it’s sort of like think about how you organize things in the same way that you would if you were stacking it in folders because that structure of what comes in between the slashes is how Google sort of thinks about it too so it understands that contempt of court Minnesota is a subset of family law on your website.
Jeff Skrysak: Correct, exactly and it’s going to know, yup. The other thing is it’s not just about content Google likes to play fair with others and if you play well with Google, it’ll like you even more, at least that’s the idea because Google doesn’t exactly publish its search engine optimization tips.
Jeff Skrysak: If you get a Google Plus account, go out and get one and match it to your website. Tell Google that you’re the owner of it and start to install tags that Google provides you and you can get a little sophisticated. This is a little bit of a more of a medium advanced tip, but you can do it.
Sam Glover: Do you still think that’s true? I mean Google Plus is like a barren wasteland that I think Google is kind of ignoring until it dies.
Jeff Skrysak: It’s true, but you’re not going to use it to get out there like LinkedIn or Facebook. You’re going to use it to sort of have an account with Google and not really use it for a public face.
Sam Glover: They’re just really using it to gather information.
Jeff Skrysak: That’s exactly right. They’re going to use it for analytics and data tracking.
Sam Glover: That goes for Google Maps too, doesn’t it?
Jeff Skrysak: Use the Google Maps to your benefit. There’s a lot of local SEO or local searches and Google’s going to give results to people based on the area that they’re in. They know where people are situated or sitting if it’s a wifi café or at home. They know they’re in Salem, Oregon, for example.
Jeff Skrysak: They’re going to show results and make sure you have a Google Maps present. Find your business and own it. Tell Google that that’s you.
Sam Glover: That’s more for people who might actually be searching for a law firm in, while they’re in a certain area.
Jeff Skrysak: Right, it will and that’s what you want.
Sam Glover: To help with some of this stuff, I know a lot of people, I hope a lot of people are using WordPress for their websites. I think you recommend the Yoast plugin, which is what we use too.
Jeff Skrysak: Yoast SEO, and it’s spelled Y-O-A-S-T. It’s a great plugin. It’ll help you with all these tools. If you install it in your WordPress backend, it’ll sort of lead you and guide you through some of these tips that we’re talking about.
Sam Glover: We recently upgraded to premium, which is really affordable. I can’t, it was like $60 a year something like that and honestly, the additional features are so worthwhile so.
Sam Glover: We use the free for years and kind of didn’t realize what we were missing out on so my pro tip is just get the premium edition of the plugin. You will be happy you did.
Jeff Skrysak: It’s very good, yeah.
Sam Glover: It does really convenient stuff like every time you delete a post or a page, it asks you if you want to redirect it or if you change the page slug or change the URL, it automatically leaves a redirect for you, which is one of the most, so no broken links and that’s one of the things I see a lot on lawyers websites is they keep moving stuff around, changing names and it breaks things, yeah.
Sam Glover: All right, so get a Google Plus account, Maps, link them to your website if you can. I’m looking at our outline here and you say to think about topics of law that are rarely discussed in online articles, which sounds to me like go outside of the typical things, the frequently asked questions that you see on every law firm’s website. How do you do that? How do you think about that?
Jeff Skrysak: I use Google to help me with this so let’s say, someone, a client asks me, if I get married, does that affect my estate plan? I’ll search for that in Google.
Jeff Skrysak: Google now has this feature where it shows you other questions that people have searched for relevant to that and I use that as a little bit of a trick to look at what other people are searching for and then find those little nuggets that are rare, that might you know, esoteric or something like that and I write on them because they’re related to that topic.
Jeff Skrysak: It’s important for example, but it’s not always discussed.
Sam Glover: You talked about analyzing legal issues from TV shows, for example, which some lawyers do that and I wonder if that is helpful in sort of branding and raising your profile, but I wonder about it in terms of search engine optimization because people aren’t searching for those kinds of legal problems and the kinds of people that come across your post if it goes viral, I mean it sounds awesome to get thousands or hundreds of thousands of hits on a post, but those aren’t clients so I wonder how you think about stuff like that, you know kind of going for publicity seeking posts?
Jeff Skrysak: Well, and this is what’s interesting. Google is a popularity contest. The AI isn’t yet developed well enough to know that the content in your site is really relevant to answer someone’s question so they used to get around that by understanding that the more popular you are, that must mean that you’re really good at it. That’s how Google gauges how “good” your website is and how good you are or how much of an expert you are so if you have more people coming to your site, if you have more other websites linked to your site, then that increases your popularity in the eyes of Google and then you increase your rank in their results.
Sam Glover: Let’s take a quick break to hear from our sponsors and when we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about that link piece and how those votes work. We’ll be right back.
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Sam Glover: Okay, we’re back so you just dropped something that I want to spend a couple of minutes on, but I just, as an introductory concept, but we could spin it out into many podcasts of its own and that’s links. You tell somebody that Google counts the links that come in and potentially it counts the number of shares and likes on Facebook and Twitter and things like that. That’s where everybody who publishes a website start seeing all kinds of spammy comments and request to link and all that kind of stuff. That’s not what we’re talking about, is it?
Jeff Skrysak: We don’t want that and I try to avoid that kind of SEO work where someone just wants you to help them out and trade links or to, you may even pay someone else and they put your links to your site elsewhere. We don’t want to really do that. That’s not something that Google likes either and sort of seen through it. It does work you know if you pay a service to help you with SEO, that’s one other tactics, it’s to get you linked at other websites and actually other prominent websites so it’s not just a link, but if it’s a signed law or somewhere else that’s really a strong presence on the internet and you’re linked on there, you sort of rise with them.
Sam Glover: What I usually say is look to the opportunities to build links within your memberships and communities and things like that so if you’re a member of a club and there’s a list of people who are in that club, maybe you can get a link from that website. If you are an adjunct at the shool, maybe they will link to your firm’s website from your faculty page.
Sam Glover: If you do write an article that gets really popular and goes viral, make sure that if other people are writing about it on their websites that they include a link to your page and maybe your homepage as well because those are links that you’ve earned and you should get them.
Jeff Skrysak: I agree, I wholly agree. I think it’s one comes before the other. The one is write good content and then get it links. Sometimes, people who design and make websites will do the reverse. They’ll put something up and with very little text. It looks very pretty and then they want lots of people to link to them, but once people come to the website, future clients, potential clients, other attorneys visit that site, there’s not much to read. There’s not much to sink their teeth into. It should do the reverse.
Sam Glover: Yeah, if you spend a lot of time on something and you’ve built something really valuable that you’re really proud of, that’s not a sales pitch, but is actually valuable stuff, then you’re not going to be afraid to go and pitch it to people and say look, I wrote this thing. I think you might be interested in it because I’ve noticed you’ve been writing about similar things or something like that, and then you can build links deliberately, but without just being a spammy.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, and the reverse is true, so one of the other tips and this sounds maybe counterintuitive, but Google likes it when you link to other websites as well. They like that sharing, that network because it is an internet of course, and so the more that you link to other sites that are relevant to the topic you’re discussing in that particular page or post, the more relevant they think you are as well.
Sam Glover: Do you think that’s because Google gets suspicious if you’re never linking out?
Jeff Skrysak: It does, that’s one part of it, yes. They want to also encourage good behaviors so all of these tips if you really think about it, Google trying to encourage good writing, good network, professionalism let’s call it, and not being scammy or slimy, no.
Sam Glover: What about photos?
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, and that’s the other one so tagging onto that is, photos. We are very visual people and in the marketing world where I did work for a little bit, we learned that people don’t really read so as much as we tell you to put content out there, we like to scan. Website visitors like to scan and one of those things we look for is a photo and Google knows this and they reward you if you put in an appropriate photo on a page or a blog post.
Sam Glover: When you do, make sure you take care of those, the alternative text for that image, right?
Jeff Skrysak: Exactly, otherwise Google doesn’t know yet that that’s a photo of a house that needs repair or a farmer if you deal with agricultural clients because if you don’t tag it with that alt tag or the title tag appropriately, it doesn’t yet know that that’s a photo that’s relevant.
Sam Glover: It’s working on that, but it’s not quite there yet.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, it is. They are getting very close.
Sam Glover: We’ve been sort of throwing around words like posts and pages and things. I mean what are we really talking about? How are we telling lawyers to write regularly or to think about their website as sort of a book that they can write and then be finished? What are we talking about? How are we adding all this stuff to websites and how should we be doing it strategically?
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, well I think first of all, when you write content, make sure it’s not about you all the time. You should have a bio page and it should be a great one and I know lawyers who have a great set of articles and podcasts about this, all of that, but the rest of the content should be about your clients, your potential clients, about the industry that you’re in, about them because when people visit the website, they want to be heard and understood and understand that you understand them. Get a good set of fundamental pages, a page about divorce law or personal injury, a bio about you or your team, your parking directions, things like that, just the basics, contact us. Then I like to use blog posts or posts like if I didn’t have WordPress or even a website. Write about those smaller, little nuggets, those esoteric, those random topics, you name it. What’s it like to visit with a lawyer? What should I bring when I talk to an attorney? What should I wear when I go to court? Those kind of little things that don’t really belong in a full page but are certainly relevant for what people want to know.
Sam Glover: Anything related to current events or sort of analyzing a legal issue or topic, like those sort of things lend themselves I think more to blog posts will then be arranged in reverse chronological order. I think those lend themselves better to blog posts than to pages, because I think a page is something that is sort of the authoritative evergreen last word on this subject that the page is about.
Jeff Skrysak: Correct. It’s like a page is a really good informational tool. It’s like a reference and a post is more of a news item or something that’s more topical.
Sam Glover: These labels are kind of arbitrary but if you use a post to create sort of your everlasting authoritative take on what personal service requires. It doesn’t work quite right because that’s a page that you’re going to want to go back to and keep updated and it should live on a permanent spot on your site and blog posts are usually presented as with the date and the expectation is that they represent the truth as of that date, not that they’ve been updated constantly since then. That’s kind of arbitrary but that’s how we think about them.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, it’s exactly right, but you also touched on something important, which is your pages should be something you would look at every once in a while and make sure they’re up to date. Don’t just write it and let it sit for six years.
Sam Glover: I guess and maybe this is about when I’m afraid listeners had started tuning out because it all sounds like too much work.
Jeff Skrysak: It does, yeah.
Sam Glover: What I like to say is yeah, there’s some work. It’s more work than you’re doing now probably but less than you’re worried it might be and I think the trick is just block aside some time. It could be an hour a week or a couple hours a month when you sit and look at your website or when you spend time writing. Don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself. If what you want to do is sit down and tweak and update pages and expand pages, just try and make things 1% better every time you do that, and you will. You’ll eventually get there.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, I like that advice. People should realize that it’s not like you’re going to press with a physical document. You can update it and correct it. It’s live so it’s a little bit easier and less stressful in that regard.
Sam Glover: Which is one of the problems of just hiring a web development company and then if you don’t know how to log in to your WordPress website or whatever you use, that’s a problem. You need to, you can’t always be going to somebody else to do this. If you see a typo, you should be able to just log in and fix it and you should be able to create new posts and pages even if you let somebody else review them before you publish them. Get control over it and even if you let somebody else do the design, you can put yourself in charge of some of the content.
Jeff Skrysak: It’s really good. By doing that, there’s more of a benefit because people are attracted to you for who you are. You attract certain types of clients and your competitors ought to know you attract other types, and if your website’s pink or blue or if you use certain words, your personality’s going to show through and you want that because ultimately, when they do call you, you’re going to have an easier time convincing them to become a client.
Sam Glover: Last thing on the checklist here is use headings. This is near and dear to my heart because I love styles.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, same here. Don’t just write. Let’s say you do actually take our advice. You write a good amount of content. Don’t just let it go for page after page. Put in headings, subheadings so that when somebody does scan your site, that human beings can, that they can find the content but more importantly, Google and Bing and other search engines will index these headings and use them and sort of store them in their database and allow people to search on them as keywords for example.
Sam Glover: The heading is not bold-facing the text and making it bigger.
Jeff Skrysak: Right, correct.
Sam Glover: A heading means using that dropdown that you’ve always ignored in Microsoft Office that says Heading 2, except you’re doing it on your website, which has the same dropdown but don’t ignore it. Use headings.
Sam Glover: Call it Heading 2 is where they start. The Heading 1 should be the title of the page but Heading 2 should be what you’re using for your headings and the body of your post and actually use that.
Jeff Skrysak: Again, it’s Google trying to foster good design and it’s something that takes a little bit of savvy but it’s not hard, just like you said. Just find that little dropdown.
Sam Glover: Think about the user experience again, right? Lawyers sometimes write for their websites the way they write for courts. It probably isn’t good for courts either but you’re kind of disrespecting your user there. You’ve got somebody who is coming for answers or information with a limited amount of time and the most important part of any page is the title, followed by the first sentence of the page, the first words that somebody read and that first sentence is really your only chance to get somebody to stay on the page and read more and then I think the headings are the next most important. Not all of that content that you spend so much time on, not the body of it but let somebody skim the page and get the idea from the heading so I usually try to write the introductory paragraph and the headings first after the title and then the rest is I want it to be great information and I want to reward people who dig in and read it but realistically, most people are going to check the title, skim the first couple of sentences and then look at the headings and they’re going to use those pieces to make a decision about whether or not to try and dig in and read the rest so those have to be spot on.
Jeff Skrysak: It’s exactly right, and so you’re going to help that person find the content that they really care about but the other thing you’re going to do is you’re going to wow them in a sense by showing them that you wrote about so much more, your knowledge about the topic is more than they realized and in the future, a year or two later, they’ll call on you because you are in their mind an expert on that topic.
Sam Glover: Yeah, and the wall of text, you see that and you’re like, “I don’t have time for that.”
Jeff Skrysak: You’re out. Your eyes gloss over, you can’t find those words you’re looking for. That’s write.
Sam Glover: There’s a, I can’t remember what the exact number is but the last I saw, you have something like 10 seconds to make an impression on somebody and they will decide whether to stay on your page and read more or click a link or go, and most people click the back button within five or 10 seconds. If you’ve buried your point on page three of your dissertation, you’ve got no chance.
Jeff Skrysak: Yeah, it’s very true and if you have somebody sit on your website on a page or a post and read it for 30 seconds, a minute, that’s an eternity in the world of the internet.
Sam Glover: Absolutely. Well Jeff, thank you and I hope we can put this together in a checklist and include it with the show notes.
Jeff Skrysak: Definitely. I’ll work it out.
Sam Glover: Fantastic. Thank you for being on the show and folks, if you’ve got SEO questions, dig in to Lawyers Archives. There’s a lot there and we’re working on organizing it but you can go down the rabbit hole there and Jeff, I hope you’ll agree with me that moz.com is probably the next place to go for sort of a good solid geeks introduction to SEO. Is that right?
Jeff Skrysak: 100%, I totally agree with you.
Sam Glover: Well thanks so much for being on the show today, Jeff.
Jeff Skrysak: Thanks so much, Sam.
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