The largest technological investment many law firms will make is in a database. Not only are databases expensive, but they also require untold man-hours to set up, implement, and maintain. A law firm’s existing corporate culture will change surrounding the initial implementation of a database or the transition to a new database. Take time to consider the following before making this important purchase.
Attorneys and legal staff devote time and effort to organizing their email inboxes, but how often is paper mail organized? The paper that stacks up on your desk is just as distracting as having 1,000 emails in your digital inbox. Your desktop mail inbox pile likely contains a number of extremely important items.
Lawyers and staff are often frustrated by workflow bottlenecks inside their law firms, and they often reach for an expensive solution such as an entirely new calendaring system, document management system, or equipment upgrade. Nine times out of ten, implementing a simple office-wide procedure can eliminate bottlenecks and help workflow recuperate. Today, we’ll discuss the value of implementing naming conventions.
Small law firms can often be caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to technology. Technology issues common to small firms can include both software and hardware. For example, the firm may not be large enough to warrant a brand new, expensive document management or case management software solution, but the old filing system on a shared drive just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Do you feel that your email inbox dominates a large portion of your workday? If so, you feel like most lawyers and law firm staff, receiving over 100 emails each day. Utilizing Microsoft Outlook tools and tricks can help you organize your inbox so that you and your staff can focus on what is really important to your law practice.
In this day and age, it has become virtually impossible to keep our personal and professional lives organized without our electronic calendars and to-do lists to remind us where to be, what to do, and who to see. The economic downturn forced many law firms to scale down, while asking each staff member to take on an increased workload. Using our calendars, reminders, and tasks more efficiently means that we can relax a little knowing that nothing will be missed.
As computers have proliferated our society over the last 60 years, one main fear has remained prevalent: computers will one day take our jobs. We fear that there will no longer be a “personal touch” to our business transactions, and that we will all just be talking to machines. In the professional services space, automation and computerization are all the more scary, as customer relationships are paramount.
Stacey E. Burke