Becoming a successful, modern law firm

Regardless of your goals, running a successful modern law firm involves mastering the operational basics and adopting habits that help you remain competitive.

The results from the LPM and Briefing 2022 Frontiers reports, that documents UK law firm’s current challenges and strategic priorities, highlight that, no matter your firm’s size, focusing on implementing the right technology will help you remain competitive.

Whether utilising existing solutions or implementing new ones, firms that adopt a digital-first approach will be able to effectively compete in the market – whether that’s to attract new clients or retain top talent.

This resonates more than ever thanks to the move to hybrid working. The LPM report states only 15% of SME law firms are expecting their employees to go back to the office full time, so flexible digital tools are key for operational effectiveness.

Building successful habits

Your habits help form your business reputation; even the smallest have a great impact on overall performance and therefore the longevity of a firm.

Without good operational, compliance, and client service practices in place, legal professionals could be hindering their chances of meeting their goals, exceeding client expectations, or having a stress-free workload.

Building successful processes creates freedom to focus on the bigger picture and your wider goals.

It frees the team from repetitive manual admin tasks and provides the luxury of time and space to look for improvements, make change, and drive the firm forward.

The fundamental digital habits of a modern law firm

Without purpose, habits don’t stick. The processes and habits you implement need to connect with your firm’s wider goals and ambitions, otherwise your team may easily slip back into old, less effective habits.

We’ve categorised the mindset law firms should adopt first to effectively implement the subsequent habits.

Think ‘digital-first’

To operate successfully, directors and partners need to have a digital-focused operational strategy.

Thinking digital-first is about adopting an ‘anywhere operations’ strategy, ensuring your business can operate, collaborate and service clients without the reliance on physical locations, infrastructure, or processes, providing the ultimate flexibility and continuity.

This mindset should help your firm identify digital transformational changes you can make to your daily habits that embraces technology to make daily workloads easier, hybrid-working simpler, and going paperless the aim.

Be client-focused

The success of any modern law firm will rely heavily on the quality of service you provide for your clients. A key benchmark of the value you have provided to your clients is how timely, convenient, and personal the service is.

In Osprey’s latest survey, 59% of SME firms ranked managing clients’ expectations and communications as their biggest daily challenge this year.

Client-focused software solutions will help you stand out from the crowd and better compete with larger firms, who, according to LPM’s Frontiers report, 54% of SMEs believe are their biggest threat.

Continuous improvement

To run a continually effective operation, your processes need to be reviewed so processes don’t become inefficient. Having a continuous improvement mindset will ensure you’re always optimising for the best outcome to remain competitive.

LPM’s aforementioned report found 43% of firms believe optimising back-office technology for business efficiency is the organisational challenge that causes them the most concern.

To facilitate a continuous improvement mindset, you first need to document existing processes. Then it’s important to work on a cultural shift that encourages feedback, reviews and ideas for improving them. Finally, having the right digital foundations, platforms and tools in place is key to implementing improvements and optimising operations.

Empower employees

With your processes, technology and clients taken care of, the final change to implement is to empower your employees.

76% of SMEs, in LPM’s Frontiers report, believe recruitment challenges pose the biggest impact to their business strategy; empowering your employees to perform at their best and achieve their targets is crucial to the longevity of your firm.

Empowering your team with the right digital tools is one of the best investments you can make for your firm.

Technology facilitates better business habits

No matter your firm’s goals, practice and case management software provides the digital tools and centralised platform to implement effective business habits.

With the essentials running smoothly with legal tech, you can focus on driving the firm forward.