How to organize the work of a law firm? That's a question lawyers keep asking themselves. The number of tasks they have to perform and which they must remember is enormous. Some lawyers stick to the current solutions at work (paper calendars, notes, e-mail), others are looking for modern solutions to support the work of a law firm.
Recently, we asked you to fill in a questionnaire regarding the organization of work in the office and you provided us with a lot of information for analysis. In this article, we will try to share the conclusions with you and indicate possible solutions on the way to optimizing the work of the law firm.
At the beginning, we wanted to find out what type of law firms you represent. The largest group of lawyers indicated belonging to an advocate's corporation and legal advisers - 49% and 39% respectively. The remaining group participating in the survey are owners of compensation and bailiff offices.
The group of respondents turned out to be very experienced, as over 72% of the respondents were people with over 9 years of work experience.
Number of employees at law firms. When asked how many colleagues you supervise, the answers were as follows:
0 - 17%
1-3 - 55%
4-8 - 22%
9-12 - 0%
13 or more - 6%
The above data give us a preliminary view of what group of lawyers constituted the majority in the study. These are usually small law firms with a vast majority of up to 3 employees.
The respondent could select several answers from: Microsoft Office tools, Google Calendar, notebook, crm system, other applications, network drive, others.
Microsoft Office and Google Calendar received the most responses, as much as 52%. 20% are other applications, 12% network drive, 7% notebook and others, 2% CRM system.
We also asked a few questions about the time spent (on a weekly basis) on:
Work time registration:
| Answer | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0-30 minutes | 39% |
| 30-60 minutes | 44% |
| 1-2h | 11% |
| 2-4h | 0% |
| 4h or more | 6% |
Settlement of orders:
| Answer | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0-30 minutes | 39% |
| 30-60 minutes | 28% |
| 1-2h | 22% |
| 2-4h | 0% |
| 4h or more | 11% |
Contact with customers:
| Answer | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0-1h | 6% |
| 1-2h | 0% |
| 2-4h | 17% |
| 4-8h | 38% |
| 8-16h | 11% |
| 16h or more | 28% |
By indicating the most frequently chosen answers from the above questions, we will notice that law firms spend up to 38 hours a month on settling working time, orders and contacting clients.
We asked the respondents whether, in their opinion, the introduction of an IT solution would improve their daily work. Answers below:
| Definitely yes | 28% |
| Probably yes | 33% |
| Hard to say | 22% |
| Probably not | 17% |
| Definitely not | 0% |
We do not see the vast majority who fully believe in the IT development of their law firm. Currently, in order to improve the processes carried out in the office, lawyers are leaning towards employing an additional person to help.
Lawyers very rarely decide to introduce a CRM system. When asked if you are currently using a CRM system, the answers are as follows:
| Yes | 11% |
| No | 89% |
Among the people who answered "NO" to the above question, we asked what was the reason.
| the current offer of systems on the market does not meet my expectations | 22% |
| I don't have time to implement the system and learn new things | 28% |
| I don't believe in keeping sensitive data safe in a CRM system | 0% |
| CRM systems are too complicated | 33% |
| CRM systems are incomplete and I have to use a few tools | 11% |
| I don't see the need to change the current work organization | 22% |
| Others | 6% |
The above answers indicate the biggest problem in the IT development of your law firm.
Many of you also pointed to the constant lack of time and repetitive activities that each lawyer has to perform, i.e. supervision of cases, deadlines, control of documentation flow and its search, and preparation of letters.
It is hard to imagine that a lawyer in the heaps of daily duties would still have time to learn a new CRM system to manage a law firm.
Due to the multitude of tasks, it must work according to the currently created pattern. A law firm is more likely to hire an assistant than to implement a CRM system.
Implementation of the LegallyCRM system in the office
The LegallyCRM system meets the expectations. The implementation of the system is very simple and supported by stationary or on-line training for lawyers.
The system significantly improves everyday work through, for example, quick contact with the customer (SMS, e-mail - ready-made message templates), a calendar with notifications about upcoming tasks. The system allows you to create templates of letters that will be automatically completed with customer data. This saves a lot of time that is spent constantly creating the same forms, letter patterns and contracts.
In addition, the system for measuring the time of work on the case allows you to automatically calculate customer receivables. We will check our working time and customer settlements in one place.
The LegallyCRM system will help you manage a significant number of processes in the office.
If you have any questions about the operation of the LegallyCRM system, leave your contact details and we will contact you.
We will talk about the specifics of your business and together we will determine whether our system will be able to help you.
Grzegorz Rzepka
A specialist in legal marketing, CRM systems, generating leads for companies and law firms.