Everybody gets the same 24 hours in a day. Few people get maximum efficiency out of this resource, but that’s not always their fault. If your firm uses outdated attorney software, there’s no question your associates’ working hours – and their talents - aren’t being used to full effect. For instance, maybe they’re taking way too long compiling estate planning documents or hunting down and eliminating errors in these documents. Or maybe they spend too much time idle because your marketing delivers new work at a fitful pace: either they’re too busy or not nearly busy enough. Or possibly they lack the fire or sense of vision to work at a brisk enough pace. Whatever’s holding your team back is costing you money and aggravation.
These five strategic fixes can help:
- Identify the most time-consuming task that your associates perform and measure and track it ruthlessly. As management guru Peter Drucker famously said: what gets measured, gets managed. Just putting your collective attention on this constraint can work wonders and get everyone aligned.
- Ask your associates what their least favorite and most favorite projects are at the firm. Based on this feedback, to the extent possible, assign your people to work that they love – and that they’re good at doing – and pull them off projects they loathe and that they show poor aptitude for completing.
- Take a hard look at the associates’ performances. It could be that one or two underperformers are dragging down the whole team because of subconscious social pressure or an attitude or value system that’s inconsistent with what the firm needs. Don’t be afraid to move people around or even let people go if they are a poor fit for the firm.
- Stop taking on non-essential projects. There’s no reason to keep people busy for the sake of being busy. Assess what you’re doing and stop doing the least productive/profitable/fun work. You’ll free up time and boost morale in one go.
- Switch to intuitive, easy-to-learn estate planning documents solution, like Wealth Docx®. If your associates – educated, bright individuals – have trouble understanding or using your current law firm software or document prep systems, it may not be their fault. Place the blame on clunky, ad hoc systems that create unforced errors or fail to account for new important changes to the law. (For instance, you might currently do your document work manually or using stodgy templates. Even when followed precisely, this type of process can create a ton of errors, especially when you do things like cut and paste a client’s information into a form. Wrong names, wrong pronouns, and even wrong beneficiaries can sneak into the paperwork. The Wealth Docx client interview tools, by contrast, allow you to collect all that information just once and then populate it through the rest of the documents. One and done. No more nagging feelings to the effect of “did we get it all?” Wealth Docx also guides you through drafting complex TEP documents with contextual help. The bigger point is that the accuracy problems provoking associates to take extra coffee breaks or “head clearing” walks around the building may have their root in software or systems that just aren’t up to the task.
Hopefully these five ideas will jog some creative thinking. And if simplified drafting, troubleshooting and formatting would jazz your associates and clients alike, consider exploring the functionalities of Wealth Docx, the premier drafting software for estate planning attorneys.
